Early Books in New Zealand

Our exploration of New Zealand’s history continued in Russell, a town off the north eastern coast of New Zealand that served as a center for trade in the early days of European settlement. Early European settlers to New Zealand quickly established missionary posts. The English settlers established Protestant missions while the French established Catholic missions. One of the primary means the missionaries had of spreading their faith was through distributing religious writings such as the bible. In Russell, the French mission set up a printing press in order to print religious materials in the Maori language. Though the Maori language was originally an oral language, when the Europeans came, they quickly adopted Maori into a written form. We were able to visit the French mission and see a recreation of the book making operations from the tanning of the leather binding to the handset printing and the stitching of the spines. Books were very labor intensive to produce and yet the missionaries worked side by side with Maori to print over 6000 books. It was interesting to see the role books played in the early days of European settlements.