Seminar presented by historian Margaret Tennant at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage on 3 July 2013.
While writing an institutional history requires attention to the framework of the organisation itself, its membership, leadership and changes over time, it invariably provides a lens into broader historical themes and how they are played out within particular local and national frameworks. In the case of the New Zealand Red Cross, we have the example of a transnational organisation which, in New Zealand, emerged within an imperial framework, but operated in minutely local contexts - it links with the history of high diplomacy and nation states, but equally embraces the iconographic wartime sock knitter, the home nursing class, neighbourly social caring and school-room pen pals.
The wide range of activities undertaken by the Red Cross during its history sheds light on such areas as disaster relief, children's voluntarism, the militarisation of charity, the business of fundraising, the policing of professional boundaries and the relationship between government and non-profit formations. Margaret's presentation will explore some of these themes while commenting on the tension between the requirements of a conventional, largely chronological institutional history and the desire to 'dig deeper' in pursuit of wider historical questions.
Margaret Tennant was formerly Professor of History at Massey University, and is currently working as a contract historian. Margaret is the author of The Fabric of Welfare. Voluntary Organisations, Government and Welfare in New Zealand 1840-2005, Children's Health, the Nation's Wealth, and numerous articles on women's history and the history of health and welfare in New Zealand, the most recent being 'Fun and Fundraising: the Selling of Charity in New Zealand's Past' (Social History, 2013).
An Open Conversation on a Secret History
Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand’: Jared Davidson
Adoption: From severance and secrecy to connection and openness
Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay
Te Motunui Epa – making history from the underground
‘An overview of New Zealand’s radical right tradition’: Matthew Cunningham
Archives in Place: Deep Histories in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station: Redmer Yska and Cherie Jacobson in conversation
Musicians, Myths and Manifestos
Solidarity and the Right to Strike
Making Space: A history of New Zealand women in architecture
New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History
A Biography of Lake Tūtira
Women Will Rise! Recalling the Working Women’s Charter
Mahuru Māori: Māni Dunlop and Jamie Tahana
Shifting perspectives about colonial conflict: The Wairau Affray and the Battle of Boulcott’s Farm
With the Boys Overseas: radio listening during World War II and New Zealand’s first broadcast war correspondents
Learning in and from primary schools: Teaching Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories at Years 1 to 6
‘There was no honour in it’: Two aspects of New Zealand’s military history
The Platform: the radical legacy of the Polynesian Panthers
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Lore