Category Archives: History

Where to buy ‘Foundations’

Updates on where you can find my memoir/literary nonfiction novel, ‘Foundations’: In Aotearoa, the paperback (ISBN: 9780473636890) can be purchased from Unity Books in Wellington or online: https://unitybookswellington.co.nz/product/foundations/ Or from Good Books in Wellington or online: https://shop.goodbookshop.nz/p/foundations Or by contacting me directly: speedyresearchconsulting@gmail.com The paperback, ebook (ISBN: 9780473636906) and Kindle (ISBN: 9780473636913) versions are alsoContinue reading “Where to buy ‘Foundations’”

New book published: Foundations

Overnight (NZ time) my memoir/literary nonfiction novel, Foundations was published. All versions (Paperback, Epub and Kindle) are now available to purchase on Amazon or in a number of other online stores. The paperback is distributed through Ingram so bookstores and libraries can purchase it. In New Zealand, libraries can order it through Wheelers. The ebookContinue reading “New book published: Foundations”

Foundations is coming soon!

Historian Karin Speedy’s writing on power struggles and colonialism becomes personal when she investigates her own family stories. Her memoir reminds us that “…fascinatingly, unknowingly, sometimes spookily, we can find ourselves on paths once trodden by our forebears”. Genre: Memoir, history, literary nonfiction Publication date: 17 June 2022 ISBN: 978-0-473-63689-0 (Softcover POD), distributed by IngramSpark and Amazon; ISBN: 978-0-473-63690-6 (Epub),Continue reading “Foundations is coming soon!”

Marsden Fund grant success

Associate Professor Karin Speedy has been awarded a Marsden Fund grant in the 2021 round for her trans-imperial historical project titled, ‘When colonial worlds connect: trans-imperial networks of forced labour between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the untold stories of Reunionese Creoles in Oceania’. How interconnected was the colonial Pacific? To what extent wasContinue reading “Marsden Fund grant success”

Things that make you go hmmm: cinemas, sores and intergenerational palimpsests

Here’s one of those weird stories that make you go hmmm. A few years ago, I read Mum one of my poems (Tropical Depression) that I had written about a missionary nun in the Pacific. The poem contained a very graphic description of leg sores that the nun, one of the missionary sisters of theContinue reading “Things that make you go hmmm: cinemas, sores and intergenerational palimpsests”

The Mysterious “Arab” Castaways: Mobilities, Border Protection and White Australia

Originally posted on Embruns:
This paper was given at the Colonial Formations Conference, University of Wollongong, 23-25 November, 2016.  The arrival, in 1901, on the Far North Queensland coast of a suspicious group of brown men, ‘Arabs’ in a boat, or ‘refugees’, as they were initially referred to in some headlines, provides interesting insights into…

A Pacific Blackbirding Narrative

This post was first published on The Coastal History Blog, blog 34. Georges Baudoux’s Jean M’Baraï the Trepang Fisherman, is a masterful, ambiguous, semi-fictional novella that relates the brutal history of the Kanaka trade and highlights 19th century imperial connections between the French and British Pacific.[1] First published in 1919, based on the real lives of three métis orContinue reading “A Pacific Blackbirding Narrative”

Indentured workers and the bubonic plague in New Caledonia

Originally posted on Embruns:
Today I was sorting through my huge collection of notes gathered from various archives over the years. While I was reconnecting with many of the documents and stories that I have written about, I also came across some of those random archival snippets – the stories you stumble upon that are…