“This Racial Menace”?: Public Health, Venereal Disease and Maori in New Zealand, 1930–1947

In 1939, Whakatane, on the remote east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, came to the attention of the New Zealand Department of Health as an area where syphilis was ‘‘suspected [to be] widespread’’. This isolated part of the country was largely inhabited by Maori communities, and the revelation that venereal disease (VD) was so prevalent caught the Department by surprise, especially as a nationwide public health campaign against venereal disease had been in progress since 1917. In response, a comprehensive venereal disease campaign targeting Maori alone was developed––the earliest example of such a focus by the Department. This reaction highlighted what Dr Thomas Ritchie, Director of the Division of Public Hygiene, described as the ‘‘separate’’ problem of Maori health. The intersection of issues of venereal disease and race in the twentieth century is increasingly the subject of historical investigation. Some studies of South Africa and