After the Armistice · the war does not simply stop
He pātai: What happens when soldiers return, disease travels, and New Zealand gains more power over the Pacific?
Keep the chain connected. This is not “three extra topics”. Returned soldiers, influenza and Samoa all test the same national-identity claim: what kind of country was New Zealand becoming after the Great War?
Timeline · consequences overlap
1914
New Zealand occupies German Samoa.
1915
Discharged Soldiers Settlement Act creates mechanisms to set aside land and finance settlement for returning veterans.
1918
Armistice ends fighting with Germany; influenza pandemic strikes New Zealand and Western Samoa.
1919
Large-scale demobilisation / return continues; Massey signs Versailles for New Zealand.
1920
League of Nations mandate formalises New Zealand administration of Western Samoa.
A · Coming home to land
The Discharged Soldiers Settlement scheme was intended to help returning veterans establish themselves on land. A 1917 Tāpapa settlement map near Tīrau, between Hamilton and Rotorua, gives Waikato classes a concrete local carrier.
Map/source questions:
What does the map reveal about government ideas of rehabilitation and citizenship?
What does the map not tell us about earlier relationships to that land?
What additional Māori land / iwi history would be needed before making claims about whenua?
B · Influenza in Aotearoa
The 1918 influenza pandemic arrived as the war was ending and killed thousands in New Zealand. Troop movement, shipping, exhausted health systems and demobilisation connect war and pandemic history.
Think: why is “the war ended on 11 November” a military statement rather than a statement that suffering stopped?
C · Influenza in Samoa
Western Samoa was under New Zealand military occupation. Influenza arrived from Auckland aboard the Talune in November 1918. About 8,500 Samoans — more than one-fifth of the population — died. NZHistory attributes responsibility to failures of the New Zealand administration, including the decision not to quarantine the ship and rejection of outside assistance.
Question: how does this change a story in which NZ’s rising international status is only a success?
D · The Samoa mandate
Germany lost its colonies after the war. In 1920 the League of Nations allocated Western Samoa to New Zealand as a mandate. Samoan people were being governed by a New Zealand state whose own national independence was still evolving.
Question: can a country become less subordinate to one empire while exercising colonial power over another people?
Cause chain · one event becomes another
Connect at least four boxes:
Empire / occupation → war movement → influenza → grief / grievance → mandate / administration → later resistance / memory
Whenua / tūrangawaewae guardrail
The draft Years 9–10 curriculum asks students to consider post-war settlement, effects on Māori efforts to retain tribal lands, and return to ancestral tūrangawaewae. That is a rich inquiry, but the canonical national resource must not invent a local land story.
Teacher move: pair the national soldier-settlement source with an appropriate local iwi / hapū / Waitangi Tribunal / historical authority before making claims about specific Māori land impacts.
National identity synthesis
Place each statement under supports “NZ became more independent” or complicates that story. You may place some in both.
Massey signed Versailles for New Zealand.
NZ administered Western Samoa.
Returned soldiers were supported through state settlement schemes.
Different groups did not experience the post-war state in the same way.
Influenza exposed consequences of NZ administrative decisions in Samoa.