Penguin Books Australia

New Zealand in the 1820s had no government or bureaucratic presence; no newspapers were published; the literate population was probably no more than a couple of dozen people at any one time. Early explorers' assessments of New Zealand were haphazard at best - few knew what to make of this foreign land and its people.

In 1822 Marianne Williams, with her missionary husband Henry and their three small children, left England forever.

Their new home, in New Zealand's Bay of Islands, was a remote one-house settlement – the Church Missionary Society mission station headquarters. This was nearly twenty years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Marianne's only contact with the outside world was in letters...

'An amusing and lively book, stuffed full of anecdotes and interesting titbits' Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

'May God forgive us for our sorry deeds and for our glorious intentions'

Who were the men governing the Empire in the nineteenth century? How were they chosen and controlled? How did they see their mission? And why did they do it?

A wave of internal conquest, settlement and economic growth took place in Europe during the High Middle Ages, which transformed it from a world of small separate communities into a network of powerful kingdoms with distinctive cultures. In this compelling and provocative book Robert Bartlett vividly shows how Europe was itself a product of colonisation...