Knowledge,power and the city since 1700

Between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century the trend of recorded violence in New Zealand broadly paralleled that of Britain. This review appraises critically two local interpretations of social attitudes and behaviour seen to be reflected in the colonial trend. Both provide 'frontier-type' theses in viewing disorder as a by-product of either colonial masculinity or the social atomization of migrants. Accordingly the decline in recorded violence is viewed as the outcome of either a local civilizing process or the emergence of social networks. However, the parallelism of the colonial and British trends suggest that there could be common processes at work. In this context, the nature of colonial violence, patterns of colonial litigiousness and the applicability of V. A. C. Gatrell's interpretation of the development of a disciplinary 'policeman-state' are considered. The need for further comparative research in both the colonial and British context is suggested, so as to test the extent to which the colonial experience of violence may be explained by 'frontier' and/or 'cultural fragment' explanations.