This book is a sequel to Paul Moon's very successful Fatal Frontiers, published by Penguin in 2006 and reprinted. The decade after the Treaty was signed saw growth in settler pressures, the arrival of Governor Grey, the first formal European settlements in Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch, Hone Heke's rebellion, the War in the North, and the movement of the capital to Auckland. Moon takes a 'new' approach, just as he did with Fatal Frontiers, in which he argued that it's a mistake to view the 1830s as a simple inexorable path to the signing of the Treaty. In fact, he asserted, nobody knew what would happen. In The Newest Country in the World he argues that in the following decade the Treaty meant virtually nothing and that its alleged importance then has been blown out of all proportion in the present day. As we know, many Maori refused to sign. The new government just ignored the Treaty, and didn't use it for political justification of what it was doing. Within five years there was the War in the North. Like Fatal Frontiers before it, The Newest Country in the World is very good popular, accessible NZ history, written for the general reader.
