‘Godwits and kiwis’: J. G. A. Pocock’s ‘antipodean perception’ and the purpose of history

A. (John) Pocock was a supremely successful historian.One joke had it that the G. A. stood for 'God Almighty', such was his renown between the late 1970s and early 1990s.His The Machiavellian Moment (1975) was among the most significant works of scholarship of the era.Pocock was credited, alongside Quentin Skinner and John Dunn, with the creation of a research field known as the Cambridge School (of the history of political thought and intellectual history) from the 1960s.Perhaps he created two: he also promoted a 'new British history' in 1973, which was attuned to the lives and thoughts of the peoples of every island, archipelago and continent comprising the diverse and ever-changing British Empire.Although born in London, Pocock always considered himself as a New Zealander, the place he moved to when a child, aged three, after his father Lewis Greville Pocock was appointed to a chair in classics at Canterbury College, Christchurch.Christchurch shaped John Pocock, remaining an intellectual and cultural home while his professional life led him elsewhere.Pocock later wrote that he had been:moved … since student days in giving New Zealand an imagination of history which would not be merely provincial, but belonged to one which the 'British' peoples now global in their distribution might share in its plurality.2 The term 'plural' mattered greatly to Pocock.Danger lay in narrow histories and the cultures that emanated from them.Pocock in the 1960s became fascinated with Māori rejection of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) on the grounds 1 Thanks to Rosario Lopez for comments on a draft and to all the contributors to the Workshop on Intellectual Biography at the University of Canberra, 5-6 December 2024, but especially Melanie Nolan and Kate Fullagar and the anonymous referees.