Rhys Richards | |
---|---|
Nationality | New Zealand |
Occupation | Diplomat |
Years active | 1980s to the present |
Known for | Historian |
Notable work | Whaling and sealing at the Chatham Islands (1982) |
Rhys Morgan Richards is a former New Zealand diplomat and a current historian and ethnographer. He has written extensively on maritime history and Pacific artifacts and art. He has also spoken on these subjects on New Zealand radio and at many conferences and seminars around the world.
He attended the University of Canterbury in Christchurch where he completed a Master of Arts degree. The title of his MA thesis is, An historical geography of Chatham Island (1962).
After graduating from university he worked as a career diplomat in the New Zealand Foreign Service. His diplomatic postings included New York, Hong Kong, Manila, Geneva, Apia, and Honiara . [1]
He was responsible for overseeing New Zealand government aid to Melanesia.
From 1996 to 1999 he was the New Zealand High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands.
He was a programme editor, writer and presenter for Radio New Zealand International. [2] He has served as chairman of the Pacific Conservation and Development Trust. [3]
In retirement he and his wife Margaret live in Wellington, New Zealand. They have three children.
He has written many books, journal articles, chapters in books, book reviews and articles in newspapers. He has also contributed content to online resources, such as The Encyclopedia of New Zealand [4] and the British Southern Whale Fishery website. [5]
Richards served on the committee of the Friends of the Turnbull Library (2000-2016). [6] [7]
In the year 2000, he was presented with the 16th annual L. Byrne Waterman Award for his "outstanding contribution to maritime history," in a ceremony at The Kendall Whaling Museum, Massachusetts. [8]
In 2002, he held a Visiting Research Fellowship for Pacific Arts at the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. [9]
In 2008, he was awarded a Tasmanian Research Fellowship by the State Library of Tasmania. [10]
He describes his research as, “strongly committed to testing prevailing generalities through quantitive research drawing on primary materials.” [11]
Tangaroa is the great atua of the sea, lakes, rivers, and creatures that live within them, especially fish, in Māori mythology. As Tangaroa-whakamau-tai he exercises control over the tides. He is sometimes depicted as a whale.
The Auckland Islands are an archipelago of New Zealand, lying 465 kilometres (290 mi) south of the South Island. The main Auckland Island, occupying 510 km2 (200 sq mi), is surrounded by smaller Adams Island, Enderby Island, Disappointment Island, Ewing Island, Rose Island, Dundas Island, and Green Island, with a combined area of 626 km2 (240 sq mi). The islands have no permanent human inhabitants.
Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki was a Māori leader, the founder of the Ringatū religion and guerrilla fighter.
The Chatham Islands are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 800 km (430 nmi) east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about 10 islands within an approximate 60 km (30 nmi) radius, the largest of which are Chatham Island and Pitt Island (Rangiauria). They include New Zealand's easternmost point, the Forty-Fours. Some of the islands, formerly cleared for farming, are now preserved as nature reserves to conserve some of the unique flora and fauna.
The Moriori are the indigenous Polynesian people of the Chatham Islands, New Zealand. Moriori originated from Māori settlers from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 CE. This was near the time of the shift from the archaic to classic Māori culture on the main islands of New Zealand. Oral tradition records multiple waves of migration to the Chatham Islands, starting in the 16th century. Over several centuries these settlers' culture diverged from mainland Māori, developing a distinctive language, mythology, artistic expression and way of life. Currently there are around 700 people who identify as Moriori, most of whom no longer live on the Chatham Islands. During the late 19th century some prominent anthropologists mistakenly proposed that Moriori were pre-Māori settlers of mainland New Zealand, and possibly Melanesian in origin.
Tame Horomona Rehe, also known by the anglicised name Tommy Solomon, is believed by most to have been the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry. Moriori are the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands.
The Musket Wars were a series of as many as 3,000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand among Māori between 1807 and 1837, after Māori first obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race in order to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats. The battles resulted in the deaths of between 20,000 and 40,000 people and the enslavement of tens of thousands of Māori and significantly altered the rohe, or tribal territorial boundaries, before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.
Michael King was a New Zealand historian, author, and biographer. He wrote or edited over 30 books on New Zealand topics, including the best-selling Penguin History of New Zealand, which was the most popular New Zealand book of 2004.
Moriori was a Polynesian language most closely related to New Zealand Māori and was spoken by the Moriori, the indigenous people of New Zealand's Chatham Islands, an archipelago located east of the South Island.
Edward Robert Tregear, Ordre des Palmes académiques was a New Zealand public servant and scholar. He was an architect of New Zealand's advanced social reforms and progressive labour legislation during the 1890s.
The Ngāti Tama is a historic Māori tribe of present-day New Zealand. Their origins, according to Maori oral tradition, date back to Tama Ariki, the chief navigator on the Tokomaru waka. They are located in north Taranaki, around Poutama. River Mōhakatino marks their northern boundary with the Tainui and the Ngāti Maniapoto. The close geographical proximity of Tainui's Ngāti Toa of Kawhia and the Ngati Mutunga explains the long, continuous, and close relationship among these three tribes.
Commercial whaling in the United States dates to the 17th century in New England. The industry peaked in 1846–1852, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, sent out its last whaler, the John R. Mantra, in 1927. The Whaling industry was engaged with the production of three different raw materials: whale oil, spermaceti oil, and whalebone. Whale oil was the result of "trying-out" whale blubber by heating in water. It was a primary lubricant for machinery, whose expansion through the Industrial Revolution depended upon before the development of petroleum-based lubricants in the second half of the 19th century. Once the prized blubber and spermaceti had been extracted from the whale, the remaining majority of the carcass was discarded.
Commercial whaling in New Zealand waters began late in the 18th century and continued until 1965. It was a major economic activity for Europeans in New Zealand in the first four decades of the 19th century. Nineteenth-century whaling was based on hunting the southern right whale and the sperm whale and 20th-century whaling concentrated on the humpback whale.
Abraham Bristow (c1771-1846) was a British mariner, sealer and whaler. In August 1806 he discovered the Auckland Islands.
Alexander was a 301-ton merchant vessel launched at Shields in 1801. She became a whaler and made a voyage to New Zealand and the South Seas whale fisheries for Hurry & Co. She was wrecked while outbound from Liverpool in October 1808.
Commercial whaling in Britain began late in the 16th century and continued after the 1801 formation of the United Kingdom and intermittently until the middle of the 20th century.
Rambler was launched in America in 1812. The British captured her in 1813 as she was returning to America from Manila. She then briefly became a West Indiaman. In 1815 she became a whaler in the Southern Fishery. She made four complete whaling voyages and was wrecked on her fifth.
Sir Andrew Hammond was launched at Bermuda in 1800. She spent almost a dozen years as a West Indiaman. From 1812 on she was a whaler. On her first whaling voyage she sailed to the Pacific where the United States Navy captured her. She then served briefly in the United States Navy before the British Royal Navy recaptured her. She returned to whaling and made a further eight whaling voyages. She was lost in 1841 on her tenth whaling voyage.
Deveron was launched at Sunderland in 1814. She initially traded with Argentina and then from 1822 with Van Diemen's Land. Her owner, William Wilson transferred her registry to Hobart. She traded with England, and between Hobart and Port Jackson. From 1830 she engaged in whaling off New Zealand. She was lost on 21 July 1833 while looking for whales off the Australian coast.
The Moriori genocide was the mass murder and enslavement of the Moriori people, the indigenous ethnic group of the Chatham Islands, by members of the mainland New Zealand iwi Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from 1835 to the early 1860s. The invaders murdered around 300 Moriori and enslaved the remaining population, causing the population to drop from 1,700 in 1835 to only 100 in 1870.