History Programme Seminar: "Caught between nuclear nationalisms: from French nuclear testing to the collapse of ANZUS"

The Vietnam War produced an unexpected spinoff in the South Pacific that led to the collapse of the ANZUS alliance. New Zealand forces joined US forces in Vietnam in July 1965, and one year later France began using Mururoa for nuclear testing. Resentment to both grew in New Zealand into the 1970s. During the Vietnam War, US ships were often the object of anti-war pickets and protests. After the war, US nuclear-powered ships suddenly found themselves the objects of the combined anti-nuclear and residual anti-Vietnam sentiments, while regional support for the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone also grew. From 1976 to 1984 activists successfully built support and engaged popular sentiment to constrain NZ politicians to refuse US navy entry to NZ ports.

Seminar details

Aaron Jackson is a history PhD candidate at VUW. He has spent the past several months going though newly-released materials from the French archives that give new insights on New Zealand’s evolution towards an antinuclear national identity starting in the 1960s and 1970s.

When:

4.10 pm on 4 June 2026

Where:

OK406, Kelburn Campus and Online via Zoom