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Unity Books Wellington warmly invites you to attend our evening panel in the shop with Catherine Comyn about her bestselling book, The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa. Catherine will be joined by Matthew Scobie, author of The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation with Anna Sturman, published by BWB. Matthew teaches Indigenous economics and corporate responsibility in the Business School at the University of Canterbury. His research is committed to Indigenous reconstruction and draws from political economy and critical accounting.
Catherine Comyn (Ngati Ranginui/Pakeha) is a London-based Kiwi whose first book, The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa (ESRA, 2023), was longlisted for this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Jack Foster will be the convener of the event. Jack works in the labour movement and completed a PhD in the Sociology of Central Banking at Te Herenga Waka University of Wellington.
Comyn shows that Aotearoa's colonial history is one of the joint-stock company, a speculative London property market that romanticised the distant lands of indigenous peoples, and the calculated use of credit and taxation by the British to dispossess Māori of their land and subject them to colonial rule. Finance was at the centre of every stage of the colonisation of Aotearoa, from the sale of Māori lands and the emigration of early colonists to the founding of settler nationhood and the enforcement of colonial governance. By illuminating the centrality of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa, Comyn not only reframes our understanding of this country’s history, but also the stakes of anticolonial struggle today.
Limited seating available - all welcome!
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
57 Willis Street, Wellington, New Zealand 6011, New Zealand