Background
Of Croatian descent, he was born in Wellington in 1956, the son of Sir James Belich, who later became Mayor of Wellington.
historian university professor
Of Croatian descent, he was born in Wellington in 1956, the son of Sir James Belich, who later became Mayor of Wellington.
He attended Onslow College.
One of his major works on the 19th-century clash between Māori and Pākehā, the "revisionist" study The New Zealand Wars (1986), was also published in an American edition and adapted into a television series and Digital Video Disc. Since 2013 Belich has been the Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History and as the Director of the Oxford Centre for Global History at the University of Oxford. He gained an Master of Arts in history at Victoria University before being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1978 and travelling to Oxford to complete his Doctorate.Phil at Nuffield College. He lectured at Victoria University of Wellington for several years before moving to the University of Auckland.
In 2007 he was appointed Professor of History at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University.
lieutenant was later turned into a major documentary series for Television New Zealand. I Shall Not Die": Titokowaru"s War (1990), based on his Master of Arts thesis, was also highly praised, winning the Adam Award for New Zealand literature.
Belich has written a two-volume work A History of the New Zealanders, consisting of Making Peoples (1996) and Paradise Reforged (2001). He expanded his area of research to colonial societies in general and the place of settler colonialism in world history with Replenishing the earth (2009).
In 2011 Belich was appointed Beit Professor of Commonwealth History at Oxford University.
