Philip Soutar died at Ypres in 1917. Before becoming a soldier, Soutar’s life revolved around his farm at Whakat?ne, where he lived with his M?ori wife Kathleen Pine in an ‘as-you-please marriage, uncelebrated by a clergyman’. Matters of the Heart introduces us to couples like Philip and Kathleen to unravel the long history of interracial relationships in New Zealand.
12th November 2025
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Summary
Philip Soutar died at Ypres in 1917. Before becoming a soldier, Soutar’s life revolved around his farm at Whakat?ne, where he lived with his M?ori wife Kathleen Pine in an ‘as-you-please marriage, uncelebrated by a clergyman’. Matters of the Heart introduces us to couples like Philip and Kathleen to unravel the long history of interracial relationships in New Zealand.
Description
In the history of intimate relations between Maori and Pakeha, public policy and private life are woven together. Matters of the Heart reveals much about how Maori and Pakeha have lived together in this country and our changing attitudes to race, marriage and intimacy. That history runs from whalers and traders marrying into Maori families in the nineteenth century through to the growth of interracial marriages in the later twentieth. It stretches from common law marriages and Maori customary marriages to formal arrangements recognised by church and state. And it runs the gamut of official reactions - from condemnation of immorality or racial treason to celebration of our unique intermarriage patterns as a sign of us being 'one people' with the 'best race relations in the world'.
Awards
Winner of Ernest Scott Prize for History 2014
Short-listed for W. H. Oliver Prize for the Best Book on New Zealand History 2015
About the Author
Angela Wanhalla is a Kai Tahu historian and senior lecturer in history at the University of Otago. She is the author of In/visible Sight: The Mixed-Descent Families of Southern New Zealand and co-editor of Early New Zealand Photography: Images and Texts.
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12th November 2025
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