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By Colonel Colin Richardson
The inaugural New Zealand Chief of Army’s History Seminar was held at Massey University in Wellington on June 21.
This was the first major piece of work undertaken as part of CA’s Army Project 200, which he announced during the 175th Army Anniversary commemorations at Pukeahu in 2021. The core aim of Project 200 is to complete and publish a comprehensive history of the Army in time for its bi-centenary in 2045.
With such a large subject, it’s best to break it down into manageable bits, and also to start at the beginning. The plan is therefore to write three volumes covering the major developments in the Army’s history, and to start with the period dominated by militias and volunteers – which is from 1845 to 1912. LTCOL Peter Wood, RNZIR, who leads battlefield tours around New Zealand, is the author of this first work. He quickly identified that there were gaps in his understanding of the period and therefore suggested it would be great if he could come together with a group of people with a deeper understanding of those things. CA agreed it was a good idea for such a discussion to go ahead, but thought more people should benefit from the opportunity to listen in. The seminar in the Tea Rooms venue at Massey’s Wellington campus was the result. Seventy five people, mostly from Army, but also a wide range of interested academics, students and from the Corps’ associations attended. The topics addressed were diverse, with a keynote address from Professor Craig Stockings of the Australian Defence Force Academy dealing with the Australian Frontier Wars. It’s probably only because those individual fights were so spread out across the Australian continent, and over such a long period, that they have not received the same attention as the New Zealand
