Abstract
Covering the period from German occupation of the western islands of Samoa in 1899 to the establishment of a trade relationship between New Zealand and Germany in 1937, this thesis explores New Zealand’s ideas about nationhood and geopolitics through its perception of Germany and its people. Three chapters analyse the influence New Zealand’s interactions with Germany had on decision making and tolerance of non-British or alien races within New Zealand and the Pacific.
The first chapter covers widespread discontent across New Zealand at the division of the Samoan islands between Germany and the United States of America from 1899 to 1914 - when New Zealand obtained military occupation of the western German islands. The second looks at how, after the Paris Peace Conference stripped Germany of its imperial territories, the League of Nations mandate systems gave New Zealand a new place on the world stage by granting total political and martial control of what was to become Western Samoa. The final chapter returns to the New Zealand domestic front to explore how the nation grappled with the spread of new – and particularly ‘German’ – ideologies in the 1920s and 1930s. An assessment of media, personal accounts, and parliamentary debates, extends across the three phases of interaction between New Zealand and Germany in search of a more complex understanding of the influences that shaped decision making and development of values at different levels across New Zealand.