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Chemical weapons in World War I

The use of toxic chemicals as weapons dates back thousands of years, but the first large-scale use of chemical weapons was during World War I. They were primarily used to demoralize, injure, and kill entrenched defenders, against whom the indiscriminate and generally very slow-moving or static nature of gas clouds would be most effective. The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas, to lethal agents like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas. These chemical weapons caused medical problems. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. The killing capacity of gas was profound, with about 90,000 fatalities from a total of 1.3 million casualties caused by gas attacks. Gas was unlike most other weapons of the period because it was possible to develop countermeasures, such as gas masks. In the later stages of the war, as the use of gas increased, its overall effectiveness diminished. The widespread use of these agents of chemical warfare, and wartime advances in the composition of high explosives, gave rise to an occasionally expressed view of World War I as "the chemist's war" and also the era where weapons of mass destruction were created.

The use of poison gas by all major belligerents throughout World War I constituted war crimes as its use violated the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare. Widespread horror and public revulsion at the use of gas and its consequences led to far less use of chemical weapons by combatants during World War II.

1914: Tear gas
The most frequently used chemicals during World War I were tear-inducing irritants rather than fatal or disabling poison. During World War I, the French Army was the first to employ tear gas, using 26 mm grenades filled with ethyl bromoacetate in August 1914. The small quantities of gas delivered, roughly 19 cm3 per cartridge, were not even detected by the Germans. The stocks were rapidly consumed and by November a new order was placed by the French military. As bromine was scarce among the Entente allies, the active ingredient was changed to chloroacetone.

In October 1914, German troops fired fragmentation shells filled with a chemical irritant against British positions at Neuve Chapelle; the concentration achieved was so small that it too was barely noticed. None of the combatants considered the use of tear gas to be in conflict with the Hague Treaty of 1899, which specifically prohibited the launching of projectiles containing asphyxiating or poisonous gas.

1915: Large-scale use and lethal gases

The first instance of large-scale use of gas as a weapon was on 31 January 1915, when Germany fired 18,000 artillery shells containing liquid xylyl bromide tear gas on Russian positions on the Rawka River, west of Warsaw during the Battle of Bolimov. Instead of vaporizing, the chemical froze and failed to have the desired effect.

The first killing agent was chlorine, used by the German military. Chlorine is a powerful irritant that can inflict damage to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. At high concentrations and prolonged exposure it can cause death by asphyxiation. German chemical companies BASF, Hoechst and Bayer (which formed the IG Farben conglomerate in 1925) had been making chlorine as a by-product of their dye manufacturing. In cooperation with Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin, they began developing methods of discharging chlorine gas against enemy trenches.

It may appear from a feldpost letter of Major Karl von Zingler that the first chlorine gas attack by German forces took place before 2 January 1915: "In other war theatres it does not go better and it has been said that our Chlorine is very effective. 140 English officers have been killed. This is a horrible weapon ...". This letter must be discounted as evidence for early German use of chlorine, however, because the date "2 January 1915" may have been hastily scribbled instead of the intended "2 January 1916," the sort of common typographical error that is often made at the beginning of a new year. The deaths of so many English officers from gas at this time would certainly have been met with outrage, but a recent, extensive study of British reactions to chemical warfare says nothing of this supposed attack. Perhaps this letter was referring to the chlorine-phosgene attack on British troops at Wieltje near Ypres, on 19 December 1915 (see below).

By 22 April 1915, the German Army had 167 tons of chlorine deployed in 5,730 cylinders from Langemark-Poelkapelle, north of Ypres. At 17:30, in a slight easterly breeze, the liquid chlorine was siphoned from the tanks, producing gas which formed a grey-green cloud that drifted across positions held by French Colonial troops from Martinique, as well as the 1st Tirailleurs and the 2nd Zouaves from Algeria. Faced with an unfamiliar threat these troops broke ranks, abandoning their trenches and creating an 8,000-yard (7 km) gap in the Allied line. The German infantry were also wary of the gas and, lacking reinforcements, failed to exploit the break before the 1st Canadian Division and assorted French troops reformed the line in scattered, hastily prepared positions 1000 – apart. The Entente governments claimed the attack was a flagrant violation of international law but Germany argued that the Hague treaty had only banned chemical shells, rather than the use of gas projectors.

In what became the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans used gas on three more occasions; on 24 April against the 1st Canadian Division, on 2 May near Mouse Trap Farm and on 5 May against the British at Hill 60. The British Official History stated that at Hill 60, "90 men died from gas poisoning in the trenches or before they could be got to a dressing station; of the 207 brought to the nearest dressing stations, 46 died almost immediately and 12 after long suffering."

On 6 August, German troops under Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg used chlorine gas against Russian troops defending Osowiec Fortress. Surviving defenders drove back the attack and retained the fortress. The event would later be called the Attack of the Dead Men.

Germany used chemical weapons on the Eastern Front in an attack at Rawka (river), west of Warsaw. The Russian Army took 9,000 casualties, with more than 1,000 fatalities. In response, the artillery branch of the Russian Army organised a commission to study the delivery of poison gas in shells.

Effectiveness and countermeasures

It quickly became evident that the men who stayed in their places suffered less than those who ran away, as any movement worsened the effects of the gas, and that those who stood up on the fire step suffered less—indeed they often escaped any serious effects—than those who lay down or sat at the bottom of a trench. Men who stood on the parapet suffered least, as the gas was denser near the ground. The worst sufferers were the wounded lying on the ground, or on stretchers, and the men who moved back with the cloud. Chlorine was less effective as a weapon than the Germans had hoped, particularly as soon as simple countermeasures were introduced. The gas produced a visible greenish cloud and strong odour, making it easy to detect. It was water-soluble, so the simple expedient of covering the mouth and nose with a damp cloth was effective at reducing the effect of the gas. It was thought to be even more effective to use urine rather than water, as it was known at the time that chlorine reacted with urea (present in urine) to form dichloro urea.

Chlorine required a concentration of 1,000 parts per million to be fatal, destroying tissue in the lungs, likely through the formation of hypochlorous and hydrochloric acids when dissolved in the water in the lungs. Despite its limitations, chlorine was an effective psychological weapon—the sight of an oncoming cloud of the gas was a continual source of dread for the infantry.

Countermeasures were quickly introduced in response to the use of chlorine. The Germans issued their troops with small gauze pads filled with cotton waste, and bottles of a bicarbonate solution with which to dampen the pads. Immediately following the use of chlorine gas by the Germans, instructions were sent to British and French troops to hold wet handkerchiefs or cloths over their mouths. Simple pad respirators similar to those issued to German troops were soon proposed by Lieutenant-Colonel N. C. Ferguson, the Assistant Director Medical Services of the 28th Division. These pads were intended to be used damp, preferably dipped into a solution of bicarbonate kept in buckets for that purpose; other liquids were also used. Because such pads could not be expected to arrive at the front for several days, army divisions set about making them for themselves. Locally available muslin, flannel and gauze were used, officers were sent to Paris to buy more and local French women were employed making up rudimentary pads with string ties. Other units used lint bandages manufactured in the convent at Poperinge. Pad respirators were sent up with rations to British troops in the line as early as the evening of 24 April.

In Britain the Daily Mail newspaper encouraged women to manufacture cotton pads, and within one month a variety of pad respirators were available to British and French troops, along with motoring goggles to protect the eyes. The response was enormous and a million gas masks were produced in a day. The Mail's design was useless when dry and caused suffocation when wet—the respirator was responsible for the deaths of scores of men. By 6 July 1915, the entire British army was equipped with the more effective "smoke helmet" designed by Major Cluny MacPherson, Newfoundland Regiment, which was a flannel bag with a celluloid window, which entirely covered the head. The race was then on between the introduction of new and more effective poison gases and the production of effective countermeasures, which marked gas warfare until the armistice in November 1918.

British gas attacks
The British expressed outrage at Germany's use of poison gas at Ypres and responded by developing their own gas warfare capability. The commander of II Corps, Lieutenant General Sir Charles Ferguson, said of gas:

"It is a cowardly form of warfare which does not commend itself to me or other English soldiers ... We cannot win this war unless we kill or incapacitate more of our enemies than they do of us, and if this can only be done by our copying the enemy in his choice of weapons, we must not refuse to do so."

The first use of gas by the British was at the Battle of Loos, 25 September 1915, but the attempt was a disaster. Chlorine, codenamed Red Star, was the agent to be used (140 tons arrayed in 5,100 cylinders), and the attack was dependent on a favourable wind. On this occasion the wind proved fickle, and the gas either lingered in no man's land or, in places, blew back on the British trenches. This was compounded when the gas could not be released from all the British canisters because the wrong turning keys were sent with them. Subsequent retaliatory German shelling hit some of those unused full cylinders, releasing gas among the British troops. Exacerbating the situation were the primitive flannel gas masks distributed to the British. The masks got hot, and the small eye-pieces misted over, reducing visibility. Some of the troops lifted the masks to get fresh air, causing them to be gassed.

1915: More deadly gases

The deficiencies of chlorine were overcome with the introduction of phosgene, which was prepared by a group of French chemists led by Victor Grignard and first used by France in 1915. Colourless and having an odour likened to "mouldy hay," phosgene was difficult to detect, making it a more effective weapon. Phosgene was sometimes used on its own, but was more often used mixed with an equal volume of chlorine, with the chlorine helping to spread the denser phosgene. The Allies called this combination White Star after the marking painted on shells containing the mixture.

Phosgene was a potent killing agent, deadlier than chlorine. It had a potential drawback in that some of the symptoms of exposure took 24 hours or more to manifest. This meant that the victims were initially still capable of putting up a fight; this could also mean that apparently fit troops would be incapacitated by the effects of the gas on the following day.

In the first combined chlorine–phosgene attack by Germany, against British troops at Wieltje near Ypres, Belgium on 19 December 1915, 88 tons of the gas were released from cylinders causing 1069 casualties and 69 deaths. The British P gas helmet, issued at the time, was impregnated with sodium phenolate and partially effective against phosgene. The modified PH Gas Helmet, which was impregnated with phenate hexamine and hexamethylene tetramine (urotropine) to improve the protection against phosgene, was issued in January 1916.

Around 36,600 tons of phosgene were manufactured during the war, out of a total of 190,000 tons for all chemical weapons, making it second only to chlorine (93,800 tons) in the quantity manufactured:

 * Germany 18,100 tons
 * France 15,700 tons
 * United Kingdom 1,400 tons (also used French stocks)
 * United States 1,400 tons (also used French stocks)

Phosgene was never as notorious in public consciousness as mustard gas, but it killed far more people: about 85% of the 90,000 deaths caused by chemical weapons during World War I.

1916: Austrian use

On 29 June 1916, the Austro-Hungarian Army attacked the Royal Italian Army's lines on Monte San Michele with a mix of phosgene and chlorine gas. Thousands of Italian soldiers died in this first chemical weapons attack on the Italian Front.

1917: Mustard gas

The most widely reported chemical agent of the First World War was mustard gas. Despite the name it is not a gas but a volatile oily liquid, and is dispersed as a fine mist of liquid droplets. It was introduced as a vesicant by Germany on July 12, 1917, weeks prior to the Third Battle of Ypres. The Germans marked their shells yellow for mustard gas and green for chlorine and phosgene; hence they called the new gas Yellow Cross. It was known to the British as HS (Hun Stuff), and the French called it Yperite (named after Ypres).

Mustard gas is not an effective killing agent (though in high enough doses it is fatal) but can be used to harass and disable the enemy and pollute the battlefield. Delivered in artillery shells, mustard gas was heavier than air, and it settled to the ground as an oily liquid. Once in the soil, mustard gas remained active for several days, weeks, or even months, depending on the weather conditions.

The skin of victims of mustard gas blistered, their eyes became very sore and they began to vomit. Mustard gas caused internal and external bleeding and attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. This was extremely painful. Fatally injured victims sometimes took four or five weeks to die of mustard gas exposure.

One nurse, Vera Brittain, wrote: "I wish those people who talk about going on with this war whatever it costs could see the soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning. Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke."

The polluting nature of mustard gas meant that it was not always suitable for supporting an attack as the assaulting infantry would be exposed to the gas when they advanced. When Germany launched Operation Michael on 21 March 1918, they saturated the Flesquières salient with mustard gas instead of attacking it directly, believing that the harassing effect of the gas, coupled with threats to the salient's flanks, would make the British position untenable.

Gas never reproduced the dramatic success of 22 April 1915; it became a standard weapon which, combined with conventional artillery, was used to support most attacks in the later stages of the war. Gas was employed primarily on the Western Front—the static, confined trench system was ideal for achieving an effective concentration. Germany also used gas against Russia on the Eastern Front, where the lack of effective countermeasures resulted in deaths of over 56,000 Russians, while Britain experimented with gas in Palestine during the Second Battle of Gaza. Russia began manufacturing chlorine gas in 1916, with phosgene being produced later in the year. Most of the manufactured gas was never used.

The British Army first used mustard gas in November 1917 at Cambrai, after their armies had captured a stockpile of German mustard gas shells. It took the British more than a year to develop their own mustard gas weapon, with production of the chemicals centred on Avonmouth Docks. (The only option available to the British was the Despretz–Niemann–Guthrie process.) This was used first in September 1918 during the breaking of the Hindenburg Line with the Hundred Days' Offensive.

The Allies mounted more gas attacks than the Germans in 1917 and 1918 because of a marked increase in production of gas from the Allied nations. Germany was unable to keep up with this pace despite creating various new gases for use in battle, mostly as a result of very costly methods of production. Entry into the war by the United States allowed the Allies to increase mustard gas production far more than Germany. Also the prevailing wind on the Western Front was blowing from west to east, which meant the Allies more frequently had favourable conditions for a gas release than did the Germans.

When the United States entered the war, it was already mobilizing resources from academic, industry and military sectors for research and development into poison gas. A Subcommittee on Noxious Gases was created by the National Research Committee, a major research centre was established at Camp American University, and the 1st Gas Regiment was recruited. The 1st Gas Regiment eventually served in France, where it used phosgene gas in several attacks. The Artillery used mustard gas with significant effect during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on at least three occasions. The United States began large-scale production of an improved vesicant gas known as Lewisite, for use in an offensive planned for early 1919. By the time of the armistice on 11 November, a plant near Willoughby, Ohio was producing 10 tons per day of the substance, for a total of about 150 tons. It is uncertain what effect this new chemical would have had on the battlefield, as it degrades in moist conditions.

Post-war
By the end of the war, chemical weapons had lost much of their effectiveness against well trained and equipped troops. By that time, chemical weapon agents had inflicted an estimated 1.3 million casualties.

Nevertheless, in the following years, chemical weapons were used in several, mainly colonial, wars where one side had an advantage in equipment over the other. The British used poison gas, possibly adamsite, against Russian revolutionary troops beginning on 27 August 1919 and contemplated using chemical weapons against Iraqi insurgents in the 1920s; Bolshevik troops used poison gas to suppress the Tambov Rebellion in 1920, Spain used chemical weapons in Morocco against Rif tribesmen throughout the 1920s and Italy used mustard gas in Libya in 1930 and again during its invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. In 1925, a Chinese warlord, Zhang Zuolin, contracted a German company to build him a mustard gas plant in Shenyang, which was completed in 1927.

Public opinion had by then turned against the use of such weapons which led to the Geneva Protocol, an updated and extensive prohibition of poison weapons. The Protocol, which was signed by most First World War combatants in 1925, bans the use (but not the stockpiling) of lethal gas and bacteriological weapons. Most countries that signed ratified it within around five years; a few took much longer—Brazil, Japan, Uruguay, and the United States did not do so until the 1970s, and Nicaragua ratified it in 1990. The signatory nations agreed not to use poison gas in the future, stating "the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world."

Chemical weapons have been used in at least a dozen wars since the end of the First World War; they were not used in combat on a large scale until Iraq used mustard gas and the more deadly nerve agents in the Halabja chemical attack near the end of the eight-year Iran–Iraq War. The full conflict's use of such weaponry killed around 20,000 Iranian troops (and injured another 80,000), around a quarter of the number of deaths caused by chemical weapons during the First World War.

The Geneva Protocol, 1925

The Geneva Protocol, signed by 132 nations on June 17, 1925, was a treaty established to ban the use of chemical and biological weapons during wartime. As stated by Coupland and Leins, "it was fostered in part by a 1918 appeal in which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) described the use of poisonous gas against soldiers as a barbarous invention which science is bringing to perfection". The Protocol required that all remaining stockpiles of chemical weapons be destroyed. Chemical warfare agents that contained bromine, nitroaromatic, and chlorine were dismantled and destroyed. The destruction and disposal of the chemicals did not consider the long-term and adverse impacts on the environment. Although the Geneva Protocol banned the use of chemical weapons during wartime, the Protocol did not ban the production of chemical weapons. In fact, since the Geneva Protocol, the stockpiling of chemical weapons has continued, and weapons have become more lethal. As a result, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was drafted in 1993, which prohibits the development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. Despite there being an international ban on chemical warfare, the CWC "allows domestic law enforcement agencies of the signing countries to use chemical weapons on their citizens".

Effect on World War II
All major combatants stockpiled chemical weapons during the Second World War, but the only reports of its use in the conflict were the Japanese use of relatively small amounts of mustard gas and lewisite in China, Italy's use of gas in Ethiopia (in what is more often considered to be the Second Italo-Ethiopian War), and very rare occurrences in Europe (for example some mustard gas bombs were dropped on Warsaw on 3 September 1939, which Germany acknowledged in 1942 but indicated had been accidental). Mustard gas was the agent of choice, with the British stockpiling 40,719 tons, the Soviets 77,400 tons, the Americans over 87,000 tons and the Germans 27,597 tons. The destruction of an American cargo ship containing mustard gas led to many casualties in Bari, Italy, in December 1943.

In both Axis and Allied nations, children in school were taught to wear gas masks in case of gas attack. Germany developed the poison gases tabun, sarin, and soman during the war, and used Zyklon B in their extermination camps. Neither Germany nor the Allied nations used any of their war gases in combat, despite maintaining large stockpiles and occasional calls for their use. Poison gas played an important role in the Holocaust.

Britain made plans to use mustard gas on the landing beaches in the event of an invasion of the United Kingdom in 1940. The United States considered using gas to support their planned invasion of Japan.

Casualties

The contribution of gas weapons to the total casualty figures was relatively minor. British figures, which were accurately maintained from 1916, recorded that 3% of gas casualties were fatal, 2% were permanently invalid and 70% were fit for duty again within six weeks.

"It was remarked as a joke that if someone yelled 'Gas', everyone in France would put on a mask. ... Gas shock was as frequent as shell shock."

- H. Allen, Towards the Flame, 1934

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

— Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum est", 1917

Death by gas was often slow and painful. According to Denis Winter (Death's Men, 1978), a fatal dose of phosgene eventually led to "shallow breathing and retching, pulse up to 120, an ashen face and the discharge of four pints (2 litres) of yellow liquid from the lungs each hour for the 48 of the drowning spasms."

A common fate of those exposed to gas was blindness, chlorine gas or mustard gas being the main causes. One of the most famous First World War paintings, Gassed by John Singer Sargent, captures such a scene of mustard gas casualties which he witnessed at a dressing station at Le Bac-du-Sud near Arras in July 1918. (The gases used during that battle (tear gas) caused temporary blindness and/or a painful stinging in the eyes. These bandages were normally water-soaked to provide a rudimentary form of pain relief to the eyes of casualties before they reached more organized medical help.)

The proportion of mustard gas fatalities to total casualties was low; 2% of mustard gas casualties died and many of these succumbed to secondary infections rather than the gas itself. Once it was introduced at the third battle of Ypres, mustard gas produced 90% of all British gas casualties and 14% of battle casualties of any type.

Mustard gas was a source of extreme dread. In The Anatomy of Courage (1945), Lord Moran, who had been a medical officer during the war, wrote:

"After July 1917 gas partly usurped the role of high explosive in bringing to head a natural unfitness for war. The gassed men were an expression of trench fatigue, a menace when the manhood of the nation had been picked over."

Mustard gas did not need to be inhaled to be effective—any contact with skin was sufficient. Exposure to 0.1 ppm was enough to cause massive blisters. Higher concentrations could burn flesh to the bone. It was particularly effective against the soft skin of the eyes, nose, armpits and groin, since it dissolved in the natural moisture of those areas. Typical exposure would result in swelling of the conjunctiva and eyelids, forcing them closed and rendering the victim temporarily blind. Where it contacted the skin, moist red patches would immediately appear which after 24 hours would have formed into blisters. Other symptoms included severe headache, elevated pulse and temperature (fever), and pneumonia (from blistering in the lungs).

Many of those who survived a gas attack were scarred for life. Respiratory disease and failing eyesight were common post-war afflictions. Of the Canadians who, without any effective protection, had withstood the first chlorine attacks during Second Ypres, 60% of the casualties had to be repatriated and half of these were still unfit by the end of the war, over three years later.

Many of those who were fairly soon recorded as fit for service were left with scar tissue in their lungs. This tissue was susceptible to tuberculosis attack. It was from this that many of the 1918 casualties died, around the time of the Second World War, shortly before sulfa drugs became widely available for its treatment.

British testimony
A British nurse treating mustard gas cases recorded:

"They cannot be bandaged or touched. We cover them with a tent of propped-up sheets. Gas burns must be agonizing because usually the other cases do not complain even with the worst wounds but gas cases are invariably beyond endurance and they cannot help crying out."

A postmortem account from the British official medical history records one of the British casualties:

"Case four. Aged 39 years. Gassed 29 July 1917. Admitted to casualty clearing station the same day. Died about ten days later. Brownish pigmentation present over large surfaces of the body. A white ring of skin where the wrist watch was. Marked superficial burning of the face and scrotum. The larynx much congested. The whole of the trachea was covered by a yellow membrane. The bronchi contained abundant gas. The lungs fairly voluminous. The right lung showing extensive collapse at the base. Liver congested and fatty. Stomach showed numerous submucous haemorrhages. The brain substance was unduly wet and very congested."

Civilian casualties
The distribution of gas cloud casualties was not limited to the front. Nearby towns were at risk from winds blowing the poison gases through. Civilians rarely had a warning system to alert their neighbours of the danger and often did not have access to effective gas masks. When the gas came to the towns it could easily get into houses through open windows and doors. An estimated 100,000–260,000 civilian casualties were caused by chemical weapons during the conflict and tens of thousands (along with military personnel) died from scarring of the lungs, skin damage, and cerebral damage in the years after the conflict ended. Many commanders on both sides knew that such weapons would cause major harm to civilians as wind would blow poison gases into nearby civilian towns but nonetheless continued to use them throughout the war. British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig wrote in his diary: "My officers and I were aware that such weapon would cause harm to women and children living in nearby towns, as strong winds were common on the battlefront. However, because the weapon was to be directed against the enemy, none of us were overly concerned at all."

Countermeasures
None of the First World War's combatants were prepared for the introduction of poison gas as a weapon. Once gas was introduced, development of gas protection began and the process continued for much of the war, producing a series of increasingly effective gas masks.

Even at Second Ypres, Germany, still unsure of the weapon's effectiveness, only issued breathing masks to the engineers handling the gas. At Ypres a Canadian medical officer, who was also a chemist, quickly identified the gas as chlorine and recommended that the troops urinate on a cloth and hold it over their mouth and nose, urine would be left to sit for a period so that the ammonia would activate, this would neutralize some of the chemicals in the chlorine gas, this action would allow them to delay the German advance at Ypres giving the allies time to reinforce the area when French and other colonial troops had retreated. The first official equipment issued was similarly crude; a pad of material, usually impregnated with a chemical, tied over the lower face. To protect the eyes from tear gas, soldiers were issued with gas goggles.

The next advance was the introduction of the gas helmet—basically a bag placed over the head. The fabric of the bag was impregnated with a chemical to neutralize the gas—the chemical would wash out into the soldier's eyes whenever it rained. Eye-pieces, which were prone to fog up, were initially made from talc. When going into combat, gas helmets were typically worn rolled up on top of the head, to be pulled down and secured about the neck when the gas alarm was given. The first British version was the hypo helmet, the fabric of which was soaked in sodium hyposulfite (commonly known as "hypo"). The British P gas helmet, partially effective against phosgene and with which all infantry were equipped with at Loos, was impregnated with sodium phenolate. A mouthpiece was added through which the wearer would breathe out to prevent carbon dioxide build-up. The adjutant of the 1/23rd Battalion, The London Regiment, recalled his experience of the P helmet at Loos:

"The goggles rapidly dimmed over, and the air came through in such suffocatingly small quantities as to demand a continuous exercise of will-power on the part of the wearers."

A modified version of the P helmet, called the PH helmet, was issued in January 1916, and was impregnated with hexamethylenetetramine to improve protection against phosgene.

Self-contained box respirators represented the culmination of gas mask development during the First World War. Box respirators used a two-piece design; a mouthpiece connected via a hose to a box filter. The box filter contained granules of chemicals that neutralised the gas, delivering clean air to the wearer. Separating the filter from the mask enabled a bulky but efficient filter to be supplied. Nevertheless, the first version, known as the large box respirator (LBR) or "Harrison's Tower", was deemed too bulky—the box canister needed to be carried on the back. The LBR had no mask, just a mouthpiece and nose clip; separate gas goggles had to be worn. It continued to be issued to the artillery gun crews but the infantry were supplied with the "small box respirator" (SBR).

The Small Box Respirator featured a single-piece, close-fitting rubberized mask with eye-pieces. The box filter was compact and could be worn around the neck. The SBR could be readily upgraded as more effective filter technology was developed. The British-designed SBR was also adopted for use by the American Expeditionary Force. The SBR was the prized possession of the ordinary infantryman; when the British were forced to retreat during the German spring offensive of 1918, it was found that while some troops had discarded their rifles, hardly any had left behind their respirators.

Horses and mules were important methods of transport that could be endangered if they came into close contact with gas. This was not so much of a problem until it became common to launch gas great distances. This caused researchers to develop masks that could be used on animals such as dogs, horses, mules, and even carrier pigeons.

For mustard gas, which could cause severe damage by simply making contact with skin, no effective countermeasure was found during the war. The kilt-wearing Scottish regiments were especially vulnerable to mustard gas injuries due to their bare legs. At Nieuwpoort in Flanders some Scottish battalions took to wearing women's tights beneath the kilt as a form of protection.

Gas alert procedure became a routine for the front-line soldier. To warn of a gas attack, a bell would be rung, often made from a spent artillery shell. At the noisy batteries of the siege guns, a compressed air strombus horn was used, which could be heard nine miles (14 km) away. Notices would be posted on all approaches to an affected area, warning people to take precautions.

Other British attempts at countermeasures were not so effective. An early plan was to use 100,000 fans to disperse the gas. Burning coal or carborundum dust was tried. A proposal was made to equip front-line sentries with diving helmets, air being pumped to them through a 100 ft (30 m) hose.

The effectiveness of all countermeasures is apparent. In 1915, when poison gas was relatively new, less than 3% of British gas casualties died. In 1916, the proportion of fatalities jumped to 17%. By 1918, the figure was back below 3%, though the total number of British gas casualties was now nine times the 1915 levels.

Delivery systems

The first system employed for the mass delivery of gas involved releasing the gas cylinders in a favourable wind such that it was carried over the enemy's trenches. The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibited the use of poison gasses delivered by projectiles. The main advantage of this method was that it was relatively simple and, in suitable atmospheric conditions, produced a concentrated cloud capable of overwhelming the gas mask defences. The disadvantages of cylinder releases were numerous. First and foremost, delivery was at the mercy of the wind. If the wind was fickle, as was the case at Loos, the gas could backfire, causing friendly casualties. Gas clouds gave plenty of warning, allowing the enemy time to protect themselves, though many soldiers found the sight of a creeping gas cloud unnerving. Gas clouds had limited penetration, only capable of affecting the front-line trenches before dissipating.

Finally, the cylinders had to be emplaced at the very front of the trench system so that the gas was released directly over no man's land. This meant that the cylinders had to be manhandled through communication trenches, often clogged and sodden, and stored at the front where there was always the risk that cylinders would be prematurely breached during a bombardment. A leaking cylinder could issue a telltale wisp of gas that, if spotted, would be sure to attract shellfire.

A British chlorine cylinder, known as an "oojah", weighed 190 lb (86 kg), of which 60 lb (27 kg) was chlorine gas, and required two men to carry. Phosgene gas was introduced later in a cylinder, known as a "mouse", that weighed 50 lb (23 kg).

Delivering gas via artillery shell overcame many of the risks of dealing with gas in cylinders. The Germans, for example, used 5.9 in artillery shells. Gas shells were independent of the wind and increased the effective range of gas, making anywhere within reach of the guns vulnerable. Gas shells could be delivered without warning, especially the clear, nearly odourless phosgene—there are numerous accounts of gas shells, landing with a "plop" rather than exploding, being initially dismissed as dud HE or shrapnel shells, giving the gas time to work before the soldiers were alerted and took precautions.

The main flaw associated with delivering gas via artillery was the difficulty of achieving a killing concentration. Each shell had a small gas payload and an area would have to be subjected to a saturation bombardment to produce a cloud to match cylinder delivery. Mustard gas did not need to form a concentrated cloud and hence artillery was the ideal vehicle for delivery of this battlefield pollutant.

The solution to achieving a lethal concentration without releasing from cylinders was the "gas projector", essentially a large-bore mortar that fired the entire cylinder as a missile. The British Livens projector (invented by Captain W.H. Livens in 1917) was a simple device; an 8 in diameter tube sunk into the ground at an angle, a propellant was ignited by an electrical signal, firing the cylinder containing 30 or 40 lb (14 or 18 kg) of gas up to 1,900 metres. By arranging a battery of these projectors and firing them simultaneously, a dense concentration of gas could be achieved. The Livens was first used at Arras on 4 April 1917. On 31 March 1918 the British conducted their largest ever "gas shoot", firing 3,728 cylinders at Lens.

Unexploded weapons
Over 16000000 acre of France had to be cordoned off at the end of the war because of unexploded ordnance. About 20% of the chemical shells were duds, and approximately 13 million of these munitions were left in place. This has been a serious problem in former battle areas from immediately after the end of the War until the present. Shells may be, for instance, uncovered when farmers plough their fields (termed the 'iron harvest'), and are also regularly discovered when public works or construction work is done. After the armistice, people sought unexploded weapons for their metal value, as well as preventing the danger that they posed to civilians. Toxic chemicals were emptied from shells, resulting in many deaths and health defects.

Another difficulty is the current stringency of environmental legislation. In the past, a common method of getting rid of unexploded chemical ammunition was to detonate or dump it at sea; this is currently prohibited in most countries.

The problems are especially acute in some northern regions of France. The French government no longer disposes of chemical weapons at sea. For this reason, piles of untreated chemical weapons accumulated. In 2001, it became evident that the pile stored at a depot in Vimy was unsafe; the inhabitants of the neighbouring town were evacuated, and the pile moved, using refrigerated trucks and under heavy guard, to a military camp in Suippes. The capacity of the plant is meant to be 25 tons per year (extensible to 80 tons at the beginning), for a lifetime of 30 years.

Germany has to deal with unexploded ammunition and polluted lands resulting from the explosion of an ammunition train in 1919.

Aside from unexploded shells, there have been claims that poison residues have remained in the local environment for an extended period, though this is unconfirmed; well known but unverified anecdotes claim that as late as the 1960s trees in the area retained enough mustard gas residue to injure farmers or construction workers who were clearing them.

Disposal methods of chemical weapons
After World War I, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations had stockpiles of unfired weapons. It has been estimated that 125 million tons of toxic gases were used to manufacture bombs, grenades and shells. The remaining weapons were destroyed, dismantled, and disposed of in oceans and seas. It was believed that the chemicals would be diluted when disposed of in the ocean, and therefore ocean and sea dumping was a "safe and convenient" practice. Hundreds of thousands of tons of chemical agents, such as sulphur mustard, cyanogen chloride and arsine oil, were disposed of at sea. Chemical weapons have since washed up on shorelines and been found by fishers, causing injuries and, in some cases, death. Other disposal methods included land burials and incineration. After World War 1, "chemical shells made up 35 percent of French and German ammunition supplies, 25 percent British and 20 percent American". Weapons that contained chemicals such as bromine, chlorine and nitroaromatic were burned. The thermal destruction of chemical weapons negatively impacted the ecological environment of disposal sites. For example, in Verdun, France, the thermal destruction of weapons "resulted in severe metal contamination of upper 4–10 cm of topsoil" at the Place à Gas disposal site.

Long-term health effects
Soldiers who claimed to have been exposed to chemical warfare often presented unusual medical conditions which has led to much controversy. The lack of information left doctors, patients, and their families in the dark in terms of prognosis and treatment. Nerve agents such as sarin, tabun, and soman are believed to have had the most significant long-term health effects. Chronic fatigue and memory loss were reported to last up to three years after exposure. In the years following World War One, there were many conferences held in attempts to abolish the use of chemical weapons altogether, such as the Washington Naval Conference (1921–22), Geneva Conference (1923–25) and the World Disarmament Conference (1933). The United States was an original signatory of the Geneva Protocol in 1925, but the US Senate did not ratify it until 1975.

Although the health effects are generally chronic in nature, the exposures were generally acute. A positive correlation has been proven between exposure to mustard agents and skin cancers, other respiratory and skin conditions, leukemia, several eye conditions, bone marrow depression and subsequent immunosuppression, psychological disorders and sexual dysfunction. Chemicals used in the production of chemical weapons also left residues in the soil where the weapons were used. The chemicals that were detected can cause cancer and can affect the brain, blood, liver, kidneys and skin. The development and production of chemical weapons threatened public health and introduced a new set of challenges. Not only did war gasses like mustard and chlorine endanger the lives of soldiers, but also threatened the safety of workers who manufactured them.

title: Chemical weapons in World War I


text:
SimCity 4

SimCity 4 is a city-building simulation computer game developed by Maxis, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. The game was released in January 2003 for Microsoft Windows and in June 2003 for Mac OS X. It is the fourth major installment in the SimCity series. SimCity 4 has a single expansion pack called Rush Hour which adds features to the game. SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition contained the original game and Rush Hour combined as a single product.

The game allows players to create a region of land by terraforming, and then to design and build a settlement which can grow into a city. Players can zone different areas of land as commercial, industrial, or residential development, as well as build and maintain public services, transport and utilities. For the success of a city, players must manage its finances, environment, and quality of life for its residents. SimCity 4 introduces night and day cycles and other special effects for the first time in the SimCity series. External tools such as the Building Architect Tool (BAT) allow custom third-party buildings and content to be added to the gameplay.

SimCity 4 was praised for being the first game in the main SimCity series to primarily use a 3D engine to render its graphics, following the implementation of 3D graphics in SimCity 64 for the Nintendo 64DD. It received widespread acclaim, won several awards, and was one of the top ten selling PC games of 2003. However, it was criticized for its difficulty and its demands on computer performance.

Regional gameplay
As with previous SimCity titles, SimCity 4 places players in the role of a mayor, tasked with populating and developing tracts of lands into cities, while fulfilling the needs of fellow Sims that live in the cities. Cities are now located in regions that are divided into segments, each of which can be developed. The player has the option of starting the city in a segment of any of three area sizes. In real measurements, the smallest has a length of one kilometer on a side, and the largest has a length of four kilometers on a side. The size of a region and its layout of segments can be changed in a bitmap file provided for each region.

Neighbor cities play a larger role than in the previous versions of the game. For example, neighbor deals can be established, where a city can exchange resources such as water, electricity and garbage disposal with other cities for money. Players may develop several inter-dependent cities at the same time, eventually populating the entire region.

Game modes
Upon selecting a specific segment in a region, the gameplay is divided into three "modes": god mode, mayor mode, and MySim mode. Mayor and MySim modes become available after establishing a city. God mode is available before establishing a city and afterwards, albeit with fewer functions. By obliterating the city, which resets the map, all functions in God mode are reactivated.

God mode
God mode allows players to design or terraform a selected tract of land where the city will be built. God mode also allows players to trigger disasters, including tornadoes and earthquakes among several others. Players can select an area where a disaster will occur and even control the direction of certain disasters. Most terraforming tools are disabled after the city is named and founded. The player still has some terraforming tools made available in mayor mode, although they become very limited and expensive, and they can still trigger disasters at will.

In addition to these abilities, god mode also gives the player tools to reconcile the borders of the cities, so as to fix any discrepancies created during the terraforming process, and a day/night cycle adjustment, so that one can make it always day, always night, or alternate between day or night in accordance with the in-universe game clock. Both the ability to reconcile the city edges and the ability to modify the day/night cycle are available even once the city has been established.

Mayor mode

In mayor mode, city building is conducted. Several advisors may give advice to the player on how to best manage a city. Players can build transportation networks, which include roads, streets, avenues, highways, railways, subway lines, and bus stations, draw out building zones, construct civic buildings, and adjust city funding and tax rates. Players can also terraform and plant trees in this mode, but in a much smaller scale than in god mode and costing money.

Zones are planned building plots that are empty at first but then populated by buildings depending on the type and density of the zone. Areas of land can be zoned as residential, commercial or industrial areas in various densities where the city will begin to grow. Agriculture is a separate industrial zone-type, unlike previous versions of SimCity, enabling farms to grow regardless of high land value, so long as demand exists for agriculture and agricultural zones have been provided. Zones are now automatically aligned towards roads and most buildings must be adjacent to a road in order to function properly; streets are automatically created when zoning on large tracts of land.

Buildings are classified into several wealth levels, zone types, and building size stages, which are affected by the region's population and the city's condition. The game simulates urban decay and gentrification with buildings deteriorating and refurbished accordingly. Buildings originally constructed for occupation by higher wealth tenants can now support lower wealth tenants in the event surrounding factors forces the current tenants to vacate the building; this allows certain buildings to remain in use despite lacking its initial occupants. Buildings and lots can be constructed on slopes.

Civic buildings can be constructed that need constant funding to work properly, such as schools, hospitals, parks, police stations, jails, and fire stations. These buildings come in two or more sizes compared to the single, universal types that were used in previous games. Settlements also need public utilities such as electricity with more or less polluting and more or less expensive types of power stations, water pumps, water purification plants, and waste management services. Facilities that had previously provided citywide coverage, such as educational facilities and medical facilities, have been modified to provide more limited coverage, as it has been with police stations and fire stations in previous SimCity titles.

Funding can be adjusted for individual buildings rather than having to change the funding to all buildings, allowing users to specify how much money should be spent to supply a service in accordance to the local population. Maintenance expenses for public utility facilities will increase as they age. The maximum output of facilities also decreases as they get older, with the rate dependent on the facility's percentage of its capacity being used and level of funding.

MySim mode
MySim mode enables players to create user-defined Sims, who will live and work in the city the player has created. When moving a Sim into a city, the player can choose from a selection of characters or import others from The Sims. Sims can be killed by certain disasters or catastrophic events, leave the city if conditions are unfavorable, or die of old age. After they die, their "child" sometimes takes over for them by taking their name, house, and job.

Building designs
Buildings in SimCity 4 are based on four distinct architectural styles, which can be selected simultaneously or only on one era to be built. The earliest era is based on early office towers from Chicago, Illinois, in the 1890s, an Art Deco-based set from New York City based on the 1940s, a modernist/international style based on buildings from Houston, Texas, in the 1990s and modern European architecture based mostly around Germany. There are a number of buildings based on those found in San Francisco, including the Shell Building (appearing as "Wren Insurance"), 450 Sutter Street (appearing as "Vu Financial"), and the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building also known as 140 New Montgomery Street (as "The Galvin Corp"). The May Company store (now LACMA West) in Los Angeles appears as "Dennis Department Store." The game also includes famous landmarks from various cities, such as the Empire State Building from New York City.

Graphics
Unlike its predecessors, which used an engine based on 2D isometric graphics and sprites, SimCity 4 primarily uses a 3D engine to render its graphics. The landscape and moving props such as vehicles are modeled as fully polygonal and rotatable 3D objects. Small buildings and props are drawn as flat images, which are pasted onto billboards; polygons with their surface normal facing into the camera. Larger buildings are modeled using a hybrid approach; a simple polygonal model defines the shape of the building, then textures are added to create detail such as doors, windows and rooftop clutter.

Although a 3D engine is used, the camera in SimCity 4 is restricted to a fixed trimetric orthographic projection for performance reasons. Additionally, a simulated city can now be seen at nighttime as well as during daytime. The time of the day does not affect the gameplay.

Audio
The game includes over three hours of background music in MP3 format, ranging from three to eight minutes in length. The music is divided between that used in region mode and god mode, and that used in the city view in mayor mode and MySim mode. In addition, the game has a facility for players to use their own music in the game, also divided between the two views. The music, largely composed by Jerry Martin, was also released separately as a soundtrack.

Maxis releases
Following SimCity 4 release, several add-ons and development kits were made available on its official site.

New landmarks, including Rockefeller Center, the Brandenburg Gate, and Stonehenge were made available online. Later, landmarks were primarily used to demonstrate the capability of Gmax and the Building Architect Tool (BAT) around the time of the BAT's release.

The Terrain Generator tool allowed users to create maps based on any of the 48 contiguous United States. The maps are based on data collected by the United States Geological Survey.

The Building Architect Tool (BAT) is a suite of tools developed for producing custom buildings. The suite consists of three applications: The Building Architect game pack for Gmax, which enabled users to render Gmax models into SimCity 4 sprites or props to be imported into the LE; an updated version of the LE; and the standalone Plug-in Manager, which enables users to modify simulation properties for new lots. Several modified versions have been released that have, in effect, served as bug fixes for various problems that had not been discovered before the initial release. First released in February 2004, it enabled the modding community to produce custom buildings and props for SC4. SimCity 4 Building Architect Tool is similar in function to SimCity 3000 Building Architect Tool and SimCity 2000 Urban Renewal Kit; however, previous programs of this kind were created from scratch by Maxis and used completely different interfaces. The SC4 BAT required a third-party application (Gmax) to function and was never bundled with SC4 or the Rush Hour expansion pack, as SimCity 3000 Unlimited had with its own BAT.

The Lot Editor (LE) is a tool which allows users to edit or design lots for SimCity 4 using available props. Because it was released several months before the BAT as a stand-alone version, users at the time were only capable of producing lots that consisted of built-in props from SC4. The BAT provided users with an updated version of the LE, which rendered the original LE utility obsolete. However, the old version is still made available in the official site.

Third-party content
In addition to official tools, third-party programs were released for further accessibility in editing SimCity 4 contents, potentially allowing users to change the nature of the game itself. Following the release of the Lot Editor and the "BAT" (Building Architect Tool), the majority of add-ons in circulation consist of user-created content; most are buildings and lots, including real-life landmarks, chain stores, extra houses, etc., while others include cosmetic changes for terrain, flora, custom vehicles and modifications in the game's behavior. Some even fundamentally change the mechanics of the game (for instance, by introducing multi-function transportation networks and stations, or by modifying the distance Sims are willing to walk in order to reach transit or their jobs). In some cases, both the skills of lot building and modding are combined, producing lots that are capable of affecting a city in a variety of ways. Some third-party content is only available to those with expansion packs or another mod.

Sales
In the United Kingdom, SimCity 4 sold over 100,000 units during the first half of 2003. This made it the United Kingdom's third-best-selling computer game for the period, or eighth across all platforms. At the time, Kristan Reed of GamesIndustry.biz wrote that its performance proved "you can still have big hits on PC". By the end of the year, British sales of the game had reached 105,000 units, which made it 79th-biggest seller across all platforms that year. The game later received a "Gold" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 200,000 copies in the United Kingdom. Its Deluxe edition earned a "Silver" award from ELSPA, for at least 100,000 sales.

Reviews and awards
Shortly after its release, the PC version of SimCity 4 garnered mainly positive reviews, gaining 84/100 from Metacritic, and an 85.09% overall score from GameRankings.

The game got a 9.2/10 rating at IGN, calling it a "major evolutionary step in the series". The review commented that the addition of the region view mode adds more depth to SimCity 4 and that the gameplay has a "more accurate representation of city planning and maintenance" than of previous titles in the SimCity series.

The game scored an 8.1/10 rating at GameSpot, stating that the game had a "sleek, attractive interface" and "great audio"; it added however that SimCity 4 was "rather rushed" and that the MySim mode "seems like an afterthought." The review concluded that it was a "complex and detailed strategy game," "though not as polished as it could have been." The publication later named it the best computer game of January 2003.

GameSpy gave the game a score of 75/100, commenting that SimCity 4 is "graphically stunning"; the review also criticized the game for having issues "that will likely kill the game for casual players" including performance and difficulty.

1UP.com rated the game at B+ and praised the region view feature as well as the detail of the graphics which create a "deeper sense of simulation." The review however criticizes SimCity 4 for suffering crashes and performance issues.

SimCity 4 received further reviews after the release of the Mac version. The game received a rating of 7.25/10 from InsideMacGames. The review commented that the regional gameplay was a "new and welcome addition" and that it had detailed and realistic graphics; it was also said however that the game was not "revolutionary," had "horrendous bugs," and that the tutorial and manual lacked information.

Urban planner Jeff Speck said that SimCity 4's traffic model is "more advanced than what most traffic engineers use in real life".

Awards
SimCity 4 was chosen as one of IGN's "Editors' Choice" games for January 2003. It was also given the Parents' Choice Award by the Parents' Choice Foundation.

SimCity 4: Rush Hour
On September 22, 2003, Maxis released an expansion pack for SimCity 4 dubbed Rush Hour. The expansion pack enhances the range of transportation facilities available to the player, such as being able to build four-lane avenues and elevated rail networks, as well as allowing them to trace traffic flow, while also allowing them to construct larger civic facilities; some such facilities have greater capacities, but all have increased maintenance costs. Additional features with the expansion also included the ability to control vehicles, take on missions that can unlock reward buildings much faster, affect their rating with the city and sometimes acquire a cash bonus, and introduced the ability to change between four architectural styles - three of these focus on architectural styles of American cities of differing eras, while the fourth introduces a new range of contemporary European-inspired architecture.

On the same day that the expansion pack Rush Hour was released, a bundle pack combining both the main game and the expansion pack was released, entitled SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition. On August 25, 2004, Aspyr Media released SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition for Mac OS X.

A year later, the expansion was released for Mac OS X on September 4, 2004.

Digital distribution release
On July 20, 2010, Electronic Arts released the Deluxe Edition (SimCity 4 and its Rush Hour expansion) for digital download on Steam, a digital distribution service by Valve. The game is also available on GOG.com, Direct2Drive and Impulse as well as EA's own Origin service. On April 10, 2014, Aspyr released an updated version of their port of the Deluxe Edition on the Mac App Store. The updated version includes bug fixes and performance enhancements, native resolution support, and support for the latest versions of Mac OS X.

EA digital storefront controversy
Around 2014, it was discovered that the copy of SimCity 4 sold on EA's own digital distribution platforms (Origin and later the EA App) was an outdated "digital version" that had a different checksum, rendering the game unpatchable even by Maxis' own update utilities. This version of the game lacked the stability and modding capabilities compared to those sold on other platforms, such as Steam or GOG.com. Following a small outcry from the SimCity 4 community on August 27, 2014, EA pushed an update that replaced the SimCity executable with the one being distributed on other platforms. However, on February 5, 2017, SimCity community members reported that their copy was once again downgraded to the unpatchable "digital version," to which EA provided no explanation. During this duration, the SimCity 4 storefront page utilized screenshots containing community-made mods which were impossible to use on this version of the game. On June 1, 2023, EA once again upgraded the game to the version sold on other platforms.

Future updates
Will Wright stated in an interview on May 16, 2003, that there would probably be more expansion packs after Rush Hour, but none were ever released. In another interview on May 22, 2004, Wright stated that Maxis was attempting to work out a "new direction" for SimCity after new versions had become "steadily more complex".

Two SimCity games for PC have followed SimCity 4. The first was SimCity Societies, which was developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment and released on November 13, 2007. The second was SimCity, which was announced in March 2012 and was released in March 2013.

In popular culture
During the Republican presidential primaries of 2012, candidate Herman Cain's 9-9-9 taxation proposal was widely attributed to a similar tax structure presented in SimCity 4; the CNBC cable networks relayed the story of the linkage of the SimCity "ideal parameters" as a possible origin of the taxation proposal (the story itself may have originated in the technical press), but Cain denied any link to the game.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: SimCity 4


text:
New Zealand literature

New Zealand literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by the people of New Zealand. It often deals with New Zealand themes, people or places, is written predominantly in New Zealand English, and features Māori culture and the use of the Māori language. Before the arrival and settlement of Europeans in New Zealand in the 19th century, Māori culture had a strong oral tradition. Early European settlers wrote about their experiences travelling and exploring New Zealand. The concept of a "New Zealand literature", as distinct from English literature, did not originate until the 20th century, when authors began exploring themes of landscape, isolation, and the emerging New Zealand national identity. Māori writers became more prominent in the latter half of the 20th century, and Māori language and culture have become an increasingly important part of New Zealand literature.

New Zealand literature has developed into a major part of modern New Zealand culture through a growing readership, financial support and publicity for writers through literary awards and fellowships, and the development of literary journals and magazines. Many New Zealand writers have obtained local and international renown over the years, including the short-story writers Katherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson and Jacquie Sturm, novelists Janet Frame, Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Maurice Gee, Keri Hulme and Eleanor Catton, poets James K. Baxter, Fleur Adcock, Selina Tusitala Marsh and Hone Tuwhare, children's authors Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley, historians Michael King and Judith Binney, and playwright Roger Hall.

Early works: pre-1870
Polynesian settlers began arriving in New Zealand in the late 13th or early 14th century, and became known as Māori developing a distinct culture, including oral myths, legends, poetry, songs (waiata), and prayers. Public speaking on the marae, a communal and sacred gathering place, was (and remains) a particularly important part of Māori culture, and performance was a key part of the oral tradition; for example the karanga (a ceremonial call) as part of the pōwhiri (welcoming ceremony). The first book published in Māori language was in 1815 called A korao (korero) no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander's first book; being an attempt to compose some lessons for the instruction of the natives, printed in Sydney and written by Thomas Kendell in collaboration with Tuai, a young chief. Kendell, chief Hongi Hika, his nephew Waikato and linguist Samuel Lee developed a systematic written form of Māori language at Cambridge University in England in 1820. The first printing press arrived in New Zealand in 1834, and the first book printed in New Zealand was a Māori translation of a catechism in 1830 by William Yate, Ko Te Katikihama III.

In New Zealand, as European settlers arrived, they collected many Māori oral stories and poems, which were translated into English and published, such as Polynesian Mythology (1855) by George Grey and Maori Fairy Tales (1908) by Johannes Andersen. These stories, such as those about the god Māui, became widely known among the non-Māori population of New Zealand as well as the Māori people. A foundation was also laid for future Māori literature through Māori newspapers, Māori histories and literature associated with Māori religions, such as the Rātana and Pai Mārire movements.

In the 19th century, most Pākehā New Zealanders saw themselves as British, and most publications were written by British authors for a British audience. While the first uses of the term "New Zealand literature" appeared in the 1860s, it was used in an aspirational sense; it took time for a distinctly New Zealand literature to develop. Early New Zealand books were generally narratives of visits and travel to New Zealand, such as A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 (1832) by Augustus Earle or Station Life in New Zealand (1870) by Mary Anne Barker, or scientific works such as The New Zealanders Illustrated, a rare book by natural history artist George French Angas (1847) and A History of the Birds of New Zealand (1872) by ornithologist Walter Buller. Early expressions of New Zealand identity in literature included, notably, Old New Zealand by "a Pakeha Maori" (Frederick Edward Maning) and Erewhon by Samuel Butler, which drew on the author's experiences of living in Canterbury for five years.

Maoriland movement: 1870–1914
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, New Zealand nationalism began to emerge, with Pākehā writers adopting Māori stories and mythology. The term "Maoriland", proposed and often used as an alternative name for New Zealand around this time, became the centre of a literary movement in which colonialist writers were inspired by and adopted Māori traditions and legends. They were encouraged by a widespread belief among settlers that the Māori were a dying race who would not survive contact with Europeans. Māori themselves were not creators or proponents of Maoriland work.

For example, Thomas Bracken's book Musings in Maoriland included the poem "New Zealand Hymn", which later became the New Zealand national anthem under the title "God Defend New Zealand". Bracken and other poets such as Jessie Mackay and Arthur Henry Adams published poems about the Māori rangatira (chief) Te Rauparaha, while Alfred Grace, Jessie Weston, and others wrote fictional short stories and novels with Māori themes. New Zealand's fourth premier, Alfred Domett, wrote an epic poem, Ranolf and Amohia: A South-Sea Day-Dream (1872), which was over 100,000 words long and described a romance between a shipwrecked European man and a Māori woman. In 1901, William Satchell launched a magazine called The Maorilander, and the leftwing labour journal The Maoriland Worker ran from 1910 to 1924.

Colonial romances were popular, for example the works of Louisa Baker, Ellen Ellis, Edith Searle Grossmann and others, as were books about the New Zealand Wars were popular subject, typified by The Rebel Chief: A Romance of New Zealand (1896), by Hume Nisbet. The popular English children's author G. A. Henty wrote Maori and Settler: A Tale of the New Zealand Wars (1890). Lady Barker wrote two books about life in New Zealand; Station Life in New Zealand (1870) and Station Amusements in New Zealand (1873), and her husband Frederick Broome wrote Poems from New Zealand (1868).

Maoriland culture was artificial and grounded in romance rather than reality; as academics Jane Stafford and Mark Williams have said, "Maoriland signifies an effort to deny the real presence of Maori in New Zealand in favour of a mythologised or decorative presence". For this reason, the term is now seen as archaic and colonial. By the time of the First World War, apart from a few individuals such as James Cowan and Rudall Hayward, the movement had largely ended. The term has been adopted in current times by the Māoriland Film Festival, an organisation in Ōtaki that promotes indigenous storytelling on screen.

Early 20th century: 1914–1939
New Zealand literature continued to develop in the early 20th century, with notable writers including the poet Blanche Edith Baughan and novelist Jane Mander. New Zealand's most famous and influential writer in these years was the short-story writer Katherine Mansfield, who left New Zealand in 1908 and became one of the founders of literary modernism. She published three collections of stories in her lifetime: In a German Pension (1911), Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). She died in 1923, having (in the words of C. K. Stead) "laid the foundations for a reputation that has gone on to grow and influence the development of New Zealand literature ever since". Another notable early writer was Ursula Bethell, whose first poetry collection was published in 1929; her poetry is ascribed by the Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English as having "a plainness and spareness (as well as freshness of image) which distinguishes it from the more ornamented verse the country had previously produced". Edith Joan Lyttleton, who wrote as G.B. Lancaster, was New Zealand's most commercially successful writer in this period, known for her epic colonial romances. Herbert Guthrie-Smith's Tutira: The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station (1921) was New Zealand's first significant environmentalist publication, and remains a classic of ecological writing; Michael King said in 2003 that it is "still the best example of this genre."

By the 1930s, New Zealand writing was starting to become established, assisted by the growth of universities and small publishers. Notable works included Man Alone (1939) by John Mulgan, an influential classic describing an isolated and alienated New Zealand man (which has itself become a cultural stereotype), influenced by the Great Depression, Show Down (1936) by Margaret Escott, and Frank Sargeson's short story collection, A Man and His Wife (1940). It was common at this time for writers, like Mansfield, to leave New Zealand and establish careers overseas: including Mulgan, Dan Davin, who joined the Oxford University Press, and journalist Geoffrey Cox. Ngaio Marsh, who divided her time between New Zealand and England, wrote detective fiction in the 1930s and was known as one of the "Queens of Crime". After the Depression, foreign theatre companies stopped touring New Zealand, which led to the establishment of a thriving amateur dramatic scene and playwrights such as Isobel Andrews achieving success through competitions held by the New Zealand Branch of the British Drama League.

Writing was still largely a Pākehā endeavour at this time; many Māori were living in rural areas and recovering from the loss of their land and language, depopulation, and educational challenges. Te Rangi Hīroa and Apirana Ngata wrote non-fiction and collected Māori songs and chants for publication, but there were limited opportunities for Māori in written literature.

Second World War and subsequent years: 1939–1960
From 1941, New Zealand writing gained an international audience through John Lehmann's periodical, Penguin New Writing. A local version was produced between 1942 and 1945. In 1945, Frank Sargeson edited an anthology of short stories by New Zealand writers, called Speaking for Ourselves, published by Caxton Press in New Zealand and by Reed & Harris in Melbourne, Australia. It received favourable reviews and writer Janet Frame later remembered how the stories in the collection "overwhelmed me by the fact of their belonging". In 1945, Allen Curnow published the anthology A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–45, which marked the beginning of New Zealand literature's post-colonial and nationalist phase; Charles Brasch compared it to "a hard frost" that "killed off weeds, and promoted sound growth", and said it "set a standard not for poetry alone but for all the arts". Curnow and Brasch were just two of their generation of poets who began their careers with Caxton Press in the 1930s, and had a major influence on New Zealand poetry; others in the group were A. R. D. Fairburn, R. A. K. Mason and Denis Glover. Their poems can be contrasted with the work of South African-born Robin Hyde, who was excluded from this nationalist group, but whose novel The Godwits Fly (1938) was considered a New Zealand classic and continuously in print until the 1980s. In 1946, the New Zealand Literary Fund was established to provide subsidies and scholarships for local publishing and writing.

It was in the 1950s that, as historian and poet Keith Sinclair said, "New Zealand intellect and imagination came alive". By the 1950s there were a wide range of outlets for local literature, such as the influential journal Landfall (established in 1947), and the bilingual quarterly Te Ao Hou / The New World, which from 1952 to 1975 was a vehicle for Māori writers. Janet Frame's first novel, Owls Do Cry, was published in 1957, and she became the most acclaimed and well-known New Zealand novelist of the 20th century. Her work often drew on her experiences in psychiatric hospitals and featured stylistic experimentation and exploration of social conditions.

A new generation of young New Zealand poets eventually emerged, in particular the "Wellington Group", which rejected the nationalism of Curnow and the other Caxton poets. They argued that New Zealand poets could now focus on universal themes, rather than the New Zealand identity. James K. Baxter was the most famous and prolific of these poets, and is widely regarded today as the definitive New Zealand poet. Baxter was a controversial figure who was known for his incorporation of European myths into his New Zealand poems, his interest in Māori culture and language, his religious experiences, and the establishment of a commune at Jerusalem, New Zealand. Other members of the Wellington Group included Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and Fleur Adcock; the scholars C. K. Stead and Vincent O'Sullivan also became well-known for their poetry around this time.

Māori and Pasifika writing
After the Second World War, Māori began to move into urban areas and had more educational opportunities available, which led to the emergence of Māori writing in English. In 1948 the debut novel The Cunninghams by Māori author David Ballantyne was published. He was not promoted at that time as being a Maori author. In 1964, Hone Tuwhare, the first Māori poet to be distinguished for English poetry, published his first book, No Ordinary Sun, and in 1966 Jacquie Sturm became the first Māori writer to appear in a major anthology of New Zealand short stories. Authors like Sturm, Arapera Blank, Rowley Habib and Patricia Grace were published for the first time in Te Ao Hou and became widely known and respected. Witi Ihimaera was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories (Pounamu, Pounamu) in 1972 and the first to publish a novel (Tangi) in 1973. His novel Whale Rider (1987) was adapted into an internationally successful film in 2002. The notable anthology Into the World of Light (1982), edited by Ihimaera and Don Long, collected the work of 39 Māori writers. The editors observed that publishers in the mid-20th century were reluctant to publish books by Māori writers because of a belief that Māori "don't read books". Grace was the first Māori woman writer to publish a short story collection (Waiariki) in 1975 and has since received international awards and acclaim for her books for adults and children. Keri Hulme and Alan Duff were the best-known Māori writers to follow Grace and Ihimaera. Duff is known for the widely acclaimed Once Were Warriors (1990), which became a successful 1994 film and has never been out of print. A 1985 article published in the literary journal Landfall by Miriama Evans outlined a lack of publishing of Māori writers with the following being recognised but "largely unpublished": Ani Hona (Te Aniwa Bisch) who received a Literary Fund grant in 1977, Rowley Habib who held the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1984, Bub Bridger who received a grant to attend the First International Feminist Book Fair (London) in 1984, and Bruce Stewart, who received grants from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent New Zealand at The Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies Conference in Fiji in 1985. The Māori owned independent publisher Huia Publishers was established in 1991 by Robyn Bargh to platform Māori writers and perspectives.

Māori literature is closely connected to Pasifika literature. Notable Pasifika (Pacific Islander) writers with connections to New Zealand include Albert Wendt, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Karlo Mila, John Pule, Lani Wendt Young, Courtney Sina Meredith, Oscar Kightley and Selina Tusitala Marsh.

Wendt is known for Sons for the Return Home (1973), which describes the experiences of a young Samoan man in New Zealand, and his later novels and short-story collections have formed the foundations for a Pasifika literature in English.

Fiction
Notable writers in the post-Second World War period include Janet Frame, Owen Marshall, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Bill Pearson, Sylvia Ashton-Warner and Essie Summers. In the 1960s, two young novelists, Maurice Shadbolt and Maurice Gee, both became well-known for their traditional, socially realistic novels featuring New Zealand politics and history. Gee's Plumb trilogy continues to be widely read, and the first novel, Plumb (1979), was voted by literary experts in 2018 to be the best New Zealand novel of the last fifty years. The feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s was the context for many women writers who emerged in that period, including Fiona Kidman, Marilyn Duckworth and Barbara Anderson, who wrote works exploring and challenging gender roles.

New Zealand fiction has grown exponentially since the mid-1970s, due to a growing readership locally and internationally, creative writing courses such as the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, and financial support through literary awards and scholarships. Internationally successful New Zealand writers include Elizabeth Knox, known for The Vintner's Luck (1998) and her other diverse fiction, Emily Perkins, Fiona Farrell, Damien Wilkins, Nigel Cox and crime novelist Paul Cleave. Keri Hulme gained prominence when her novel, The Bone People, won the Booker Prize in 1985; she was the first New Zealander and the first debut novelist to win the prestigious award. Writer Lloyd Jones was shortlisted for his 2007 novel Mister Pip. In 2013, Eleanor Catton became the second New Zealand winner (as well as the youngest winner) of the award for her novel The Luminaries.

Non-fiction
New Zealand has a significant non-fiction tradition, with natural history, colonisation, Māori/Pākehā relations, childhood and identity being recurring themes. Important autobiographical works by New Zealand writers include trilogies by Frank Sargeson in the 1970s (Once is Enough, More than Enough and Never Enough!), Janet Frame in the 1980s (To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table and The Envoy from Mirror City), and C. K. Stead's two-part series South-west of Eden (2010) and You Have a Lot to Lose (2020).

Much of New Zealand's significant non-fiction is historical in nature. James Belich is known for his writing on the New Zealand Wars. Judith Binney is known for her biography of Te Kooti, Redemption Songs (1995) and her history of Tūhoe, Encircled Lands (2009). Linda Tuhiwai Smith's 1999 academic work Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples has been an important contribution to Māori and indigenous research.

Historian Michael King began his career writing biographies about notable Māori people, including biographies of Te Puea Hērangi (1977) and Whina Cooper (1983). In the mid-1980s, aware of the importance of allowing Māori voices to speak, he wrote about what it meant to be a non-Māori New Zealander in Being Pākehā (1985), and published biographies of Frank Sargeson (1995) and Janet Frame (2000). His Penguin History of New Zealand was the most popular New Zealand book of 2004 and was named by The New Zealand Herald in 2009 as the best book of the preceding decade.

Rose Lu is one of a few emerging Asian New Zealand writers and published a series of essays about growing up in New Zealand called All Who Live on Islands, which received the 2019 Creative Nonfiction Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington.

Children's and young adult literature
Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley both had their first children's books published in 1969. Both became prolific and beloved authors, and have made a significant contribution to New Zealand children's literature. Mahy won the Carnegie Medal twice in the 1980s and in 2001 she won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the world's most prestigious children's literature award. Cowley is internationally known for her children's educational books for children learning to read, as well as for her picture books, children's fiction, and young adult novels. Other well-known authors for young children include Lynley Dodd (known for her picture books featuring small dog Hairy Maclary), Patricia Grace, Kāterina Mataira (a leading Māori language author), Gavin Bishop (known particularly for illustration) and Peter Gossage (known for his picture book retellings of Māori myths and legends).

New Zealand has a strong tradition of fantasy and social realism in novels for children and young adults. Maurice Gee became well-known for his science fiction and fantasy books, notably Under the Mountain (1979) and The Halfmen of O (1982). Other internationally well-known fantasy writers for children and young adults include Sherryl Jordan, Gaelyn Gordon, Elizabeth Knox, Barbara Else and David Hair. From the 1980s, young adult literature emerged in New Zealand, with authors like Gee, Jack Lasenby, Paula Boock, Kate De Goldi, Fleur Beale, and David Hill tackling serious and controversial topics for teenage readers. Tessa Duder's Alex quartet (1987–1992) explored issues of sexism, racism and personal trauma in 1950s and 1960s New Zealand. Bernard Beckett and Mandy Hager became well-known in the 2000s for socially realistic and dystopian young adult fiction.

Poetry
James K. Baxter, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Fleur Adcock, C. K. Stead, and Vincent O'Sullivan became well-known for their poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, with Baxter in particular dominating New Zealand poetry in the 1960s. Adcock is one of only two New Zealanders to have received the prestigious Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (2006), with the other being Allen Curnow (who received the award in 1989). The 1970s and 1980s saw a shift away from New Zealand nationalism and the rise of confident young poets, often influenced by American writing and counterculture and writing about personal relationships; poets included Ian Wedde, Bill Manhire, Cilla McQueen, Elizabeth Smither, Sam Hunt and Murray Edmond. Cilla McQueen and Hunt are both well-known for their performance poetry. In 1985, Ian Wedde and Harvey McQueen edited and published a new edition of The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, which included poetry in Māori, a first for a New Zealand poetry anthology. Since then, New Zealand poetry has become more diverse and more difficult to characterise by theme. The National Library of New Zealand appoints a New Zealand Poet Laureate every two years. Pasifika poet Selina Tusitala Marsh was the Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019. David Eggleton is the Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022 (his position being extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Other notable contemporary poets include Robert Sullivan, known for his first collection Jazz Waiata (1990) and more recent work including the collection ''Shout Ha! to the Sky (2010), Hera Lindsay Bird, known for her popular autobiographical and provocative work, and Karlo Mila, whose work addresses both personal and political issues such as concerns of identity, migration, and community, some of which is included in the collections Dream Fish Floating (2006) and Goddess Muscle'' (2020).

Playwriting
The 1960s saw significant developments in New Zealand playwriting, and the country's first professional theatre, the Downstage Theatre, opened in Wellington in 1964. Playmarket was also founded in 1973 to represent and market New Zealand playwrights and their work. Bruce Mason was the country's first professional playwright. His one-person show The End of the Golden Weather (1962), about a boy's loss of innocence in Depression-era New Zealand, was performed widely throughout New Zealand, and he explored Māori themes and the disintegration of Māori identity in The Pohutakawa Tree (1960) and Awatea (1969). Mervyn Thompson, a controversial playwright, wrote plays with autobiographical and political elements such as O Temperance! (1974). In 1976, a group of Downstage actors left to found the Circa Theatre, and produced Glide Time by Roger Hall as one of their first productions. Hall became New Zealand's most commercially successful playwright, and Glide Time became a New Zealand icon and was turned into a TV sitcom. Greg McGee's Foreskin's Lament (1981), about small-town rugby culture in New Zealand, likewise achieved iconic status.

Drama further developed in the 1980s and 1990s with new playwrights finding success, including Renée, Stuart Hoar, Hone Kouka and Briar Grace-Smith. Jean Betts's feminist play Ophelia Thinks Harder (1993) was still widely performed in New Zealand and overseas as of 2014, and may be the most widely performed New Zealand play. The collective Pacific Underground developed the groundbreaking play Fresh off the Boat (1993), written by Oscar Kightley and Simon Small, which was praised for its portrayal of Samoan life in New Zealand. New Zealand also has a tradition of independent theatre with companies creating original plays and collective works, including the Red Mole theatre group (1970s–2002), Barbarian Productions in Wellington (led by Jo Randerson), the Christchurch Free Theatre, the work of poet Murray Edmond with the Living Theatre Troupe, and the early work of Paul Maunder with the Amamus Theatre.

Literary awards
In the early 20th century, literary competitions in New Zealand were hosted by newspapers and magazines, and the university colleges hosted some literary prizes such as the Macmillan Brown Prize. In the 1940s the government-run New Zealand Literary Fund began to offer state-sponsored literary prizes in a wide range of genres. The first private literary award was the biennial Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award, a short-story competition organised by the New Zealand Women Writers' Society and funded by the Bank of New Zealand, which became available in 1959; this award ran until 2015.

, the annual Ockham New Zealand Book Awards offer five principal prizes: fiction (currently known as the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction), general non-fiction (sponsored by Royal Society Te Apārangi), illustrated non-fiction, poetry (currently known as the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry) and Te Mūrau o te Tuhi Māori Language Award for books written entirely in te reo (Māori language). These annual awards have changed names several times due to different sponsors over the years, and were created in 1996 from the amalgamation of the Montana Book Awards (previously the Goodman Fielder Wattie Awards, running from 1968 to 1995) and the government-run New Zealand Book Awards (running from 1976 to 1995). The New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults are also presented annually to recognise excellence in literature for children and young adults. These awards began in 1982 and have had several name changes due to different sponsors over the years.

A number of literary fellowships are available in New Zealand. These fellowships give writers the opportunity to stay at a particular place with their accommodation and other costs funded. The first fellowship was the Robert Burns Fellowship, set up anonymously (although widely attributed to Charles Brasch) at the University of Otago in 1958. Another prestigious fellowship is the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, founded by a trust in 1970, which enables writers to spend at least three months in Menton, France, where Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote.

The Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement were established in 2003 and are awarded annually to writers who have made a significant contribution to New Zealand literature.

Literary festivals
There are a number of regular literary festivals held in different locations across New Zealand. Some are stand-alone and some are part of arts festivals. Stand-alone festivals include Going West (established in 1996), WORD Christchurch (established in 1997), the Auckland Writers Festival (established in 1999), the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival (established in 2014), the Verb Writers Festival & LitCrawl (established in 2014), the Hokianga Book Festival and the Whanganui Literary Festival. The small town of Featherston is one of 22 recognised book towns in the world and holds a Featherston Booktown event annually in May. Former literary festivals include New Zealand Book Month, which ran from 2006 to 2014. The Verb festival in Wellington in 2019 held a panel event where three out of five panellists were writers of Chinese heritage, Rosabel Tan, Gregory Kan and Chen Chen; writer Nina Mingya Powles said she thought this was the first time that had happened in New Zealand and that this felt like a "groundbreaking moment" for Chinese New Zealand writers.

Other literary events include the writers' section of the Hamilton Gardens Summer Festival (held in February and March), the Verb Wellington writers and readers programme at the New Zealand Festival (held every two years in March), the Aspiring Conversations with authors at the Festival of Colour (held in April in Wānaka), the New Zealand Mountain Film & Book Festival focusing on adventurous sports and lifestyles (held every two years in Queenstown in July), the readers and writers' week at the Taranaki Arts Festival (held every two years in July and August), the readers and writers programme at the Tauranga Arts Festival (held every two years in October), the Hawke’s Bay Readers and Writers Festival (held annually in conjunction with the Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival, usually in mid to late October) and the Nelson Arts Festival Readers and Writers week (held annually in October). In 2020 and 2021 many literary festivals were disrupted or cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Literary journals and periodicals

Early New Zealand literary journals included The Triad (founded by Charles Nalder Baeyertz in 1893 and closed in 1926), The New Zealand Illustrated Magazine (founded in Auckland in 1899 and closed in 1905) and Art in New Zealand (founded by Charles Allan Marris in 1928 and closed in 1946). The short-lived magazine Phoenix, published in 1932 by students at the University of Auckland and edited by James Munro Bertram and R. A. K. Mason, was an early outlet for New Zealand nationalist writers such as Brasch and Curnow. Left-wing artist Kennaway Henderson founded the fortnightly magazine Tomorrow in 1934, which was influential in shaping New Zealand nationalist literature and literary criticisms, but was shut down by the government as subversive in 1940. Other early journals and magazines included New Zealand Mercury (a poetry magazine established by Helen Langford, 1933 to 1936), Oriflamme and Sirocco (published in 1933 by students of Canterbury University College, including Denis Glover), Book (featuring Caxton Press writers and edited by Anton Vogt, 1942 to 1947) and the New Zealand Railways Magazine (published by the Railway Department from 1926 to 1940).

In 1947, Caxton Press began publishing the quarterly journal Landfall, edited by Charles Brasch; it is still published today on a twice-yearly basis. The journal has been described by Peter Simpson as "the most important and long-lasting journal in New Zealand's literature". Brasch's successor as editor, Robin Dudding, left Landfall in 1972 to set up a competing journal called Islands, and some of Landfall's key contributors switched their allegiance to this new journal; Landfall did not recover its status as the leading literary journal of New Zealand until the editorship of David Dowling in the early 1980s. Other important literary journals in New Zealand include Sport, founded by Fergus Barrowman in 1988, takahē, a Christchurch journal founded in 1989 focussing on short stories, poetry, and art, and Poetry New Zealand, which has published local and overseas work since 1993.

The magazine New Zealand Listener was founded by the government in 1939 to publish radio listings, but extended its brief to cover current affairs, opinion, and literary works. Among the writers featured in the magazine over the years were Maurice Duggan, Noel Hilliard, Keith Sinclair, Maurice Shadbolt, Fiona Kidman, and Joy Cowley, and poets James K. Baxter, Allen Curnow, Ruth Gilbert, and Ruth France. In 1990, the magazine was privatised and subsequently became more of a lifestyle magazine, although it continues to have a focus on literary works. Another important government-founded magazine was Te Ao Hou / The New World, a quarterly magazine published in both English and Māori from 1952 to 1975 by the Māori Affairs Department; it was the first national magazine for Māori. The New Zealand School Journal was founded by the New Zealand Department of Education in 1907 and has been published by a private firm since 2013; since the 1940s it been known for the high quality of its children's literature.

title: New Zealand literature