Conclusions

This book demonstrates how New Zealand’s perceptions about Asia have developed since the start of colonisation of the country. It is wrong in suggesting that New Zealand ‘borrowed a British view of the world’ and ‘unthinkingly adopted a British way of naming its own immediate surroundings’. New Zealand was not separate and distinct from Britain, it was an integral part of Britain. By the 21st century, in trading terms, New Zealand’s many agreements with Asian-Pacific countries suggest that it had become an Asian-Pacific country and no longer a European outpost in the South Pacific. But that has not yet been grasped by most New Zealanders.