One for the history books

Renowned New Zealand historian and writer, James Belich, has his latest book Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-world reviewed by The Times’ Bernard Porter, who believes Belich’s fresh approach to old ideas have created a provocative and compelling read. “This is one of the most important works on the broad processes of modern world history to have appeared for years – arguably since Sir Charles Dilke’s pioneering Greater Britain introduced a concept very like Belich’s “Anglo-world” to his Victorian contemporaries in 1868,” writes Porter. The crux of the book sets out to uncouple the terms ‘setterlism’ and ‘imperialism’ (“the most valuable insight of the book”), “to free the former from some of the stigmas attaching to the latter'” Belich deals with most of them, and one in particular: the injury (to put it mildly) done to most of the indigenous races that stood in the settlers’ path. “[Replenishing the Earth] is written with verve and wit. Reading it is almost bound to undermine old assumptions, and to suggest radically new ways of thinking about why we are where we are (many of us), in the “Anglo-world”, today.”