ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses 'raced' and gendered stories of national and individual identity in law and policy. It uses postcolonial theory to highlight the repetition of colonial tactics in the two periods. Scholarship and debate on nations, globalisation and postcoloniality has blossomed in recent years. The book traces the outlines of the 'good citizen' of free trade imperialism, and the 'global entrepreneur' of free trade globalisation, embodying and enacting law and policy reform and national identity. It analyses the dominant legal story of the founding of New Zealand, in which the indigenous Maori people cede sovereignty to the British in the English version of the Treaty of Waitangi 1840. The book works through the ways in which marriage law and jurisdiction in nineteenth century New Zealand participated in the emergence and production of a raced and gendered modern nation.
