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Posts by James Cronan

I'm a Records Specialist in diplomatic and colonial records and I have worked at The National Archives for 20 years. My main interests are in South West Europe - Italy, France, Spain and Portugal and their colonies.

Happy Waitangi Day!

A very happy Waitangi Day to all New Zealanders everywhere.

To coincide with Waitangi Day, The National Archives has digitised a series of photo albums from the Colonial Office Library, in Australasia Through a Lens. The images, released on Flickr, include 211 images of New Zealand and New Zealanders. Among these are a signed photo of the All Blacks touring team of 1953-1954, scenic photographs published by Burton Bros, and scans of lithographs from the publication ‘The New Zealanders Illustrated’ by George French Angas.

The National Archives also holds three transcriptions of the Treaty of Waitangi, including the one depicted below, but I don’t want to focus this blog post on the treaty itself. The official copy of the treaty is held in The National Archives of New Zealand in Wellington, and there are plenty of people who can discuss it with far more authority than me.

Treaty of Waitangi, 6 February 1840: copy of the text of the treaty, in Maori, with the names of some of the signatories. Certified, in English, as a true copy by George Clarke, Chief Collector of Aborigines. Reference MFQ 1/402/1

Titanic, 100 years on

Today is the eve of the centenary of the sinking of Titanic. The ship struck the iceberg on 14 April at about 11.40 pm, but the anniversary of the sinking is on the 15th, since it had not become fully submerged until 2.40 am.

RMS Titanic at Belfast 1 April 1912

RMS Titanic at Belfast 1 April 1912

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