Colonial history of convict and Māori political prisoners’ labour revealed in new book

Blood and Dirt author Jared Davidson. Photo / Supplied

The author of a new book says New Zealanders don’t realise how much colonial infrastructure – including tracks, roads, ports, buildings and even Crown forests – was created using forced prison labour.

Archivist Jared Davidson’s book Blood & Dirt explores the history of forced prison-labour – including using Maori political prisoners.

Davidson says conditions were awful, and deaths were common – and the practice has never been acknowledged by subsequent governments.

“If this book can contribute to that conversation – and people can start to look at the lands differently, and have some of those conversations, and honour some of those people, then that would be a good start,” Davidson says.

Jared Davidson's book Blood & Dirt. Photo / Supplied

Blood & Dirt explains, for the first time, the making of New Zealand and its Pacific empire through the prism of prison labour.

Davidson asks readers to look beyond the walls of our 19th- and early 20th-century prisons to see penal practice as playing an active, central role in the creation of modern New Zealand.

Journeying from the Hohi mission station in the Bay of Islands through to Milford Sound, vast forest plantations, and on to Parliament itself, Davidson hopes his book will change the way you view New Zealand.

Blood & Dirt is published by Bridget Williams Books.

Waatea.News.Com