Facts, Ron Palenski says, speak for themselves.
But sometimes they need a spotlight, and a spokesman.
Launched this week, The Making of New Zealanders argues supposedly seminal moments in our history - fighting in the turn-of-the-19th century Boer War, the 1905 Originals rugby tour of Britain, and Anzac soldiers in Gallipoli's muddy, bloody trenches in 1915 - were expressions of New Zealanders' sense of national identity, not, as is often touted, the causes of it.
The only reasonable conclusion, he states in his book based on that thesis, is that this nation's sense of self was evolving steadily and strongly well before the dawn of the 20th century.
The crystallisation of Dr Palenski's theory is lost in the mists that hang between completing his master's degree on New Zealand's only official World War 1 war correspondent, Malcolm Ross, in 2007, and getting approval several months later for a PhD thesis exploring the origins of New Zealanders' sense of identity. But his unease with the received wisdom about the key events and timing of New Zealand's nascent self-awareness had been growing for some time.
"But the argument in each of these cases was that New Zealand identity was forged in those events ... I disagreed with that, so I looked for the evidence."
Having found a theory, was he always going to find the evidence to fit?
"I see what you mean. Could someone else have come along and found evidence that would have led to a different conclusion?"
Brief pause. No.
"The facts speak for themselves. Even if you look at the most basic plank of the argument - there were increasing numbers of people being born in New Zealand in the later part of the 19th century, so they couldn't have any other identity."
There were moments, however, when Dr Palenski sat back and wondered whether he was on the right track.
His wide-ranging research, which took in alternative viewpoints, included the postmodernist theory that "the concept of national identity is flawed, if not downright misleading".
Several pieces of the evidential jigsaw "delighted" Dr Palenski when he found them.
It was not generally known that there was a move to establish a penal colony in New Zealand - a move which was widely resisted, he says.
"A desire for New Zealand not only to be different from other British colonies, but also to be seen as being different, was apparent early ... One of the manifestations of this individuality was the desire shown by New Zealand not to be 'tainted' by being a repository for unwanted British criminals, as some of the Australian colonies were."
One expression of that sentiment was delivered by a public meeting in Dunedin in 1849 at which those gathered were unanimous in their resolve "that a young colony is the very last which could venture to receive any portion of such a class [of] persons into its bosom".
Another delight was the little-known fact that before 1868 there was no standardised time in New Zealand. Prior to that, each town set its own time based on its longitude. The effect of which, for example, was that a judge operating on "Wellington time" turned up at court in Dunedin 34 minutes late.
When New Zealand did adopt a standardised time, it did so 27 years before Australia and almost half a century before the United States.
"It was this creation of a national time that had the effect of bringing New Zealand together," Dr Palenski says.
Otago played a "critical role" in the formation of New Zealand's sense of identity, he says.
"Because gold brought so many people here and created the wealth on which New Zealand built itself."
But for gold, Julius Vogel would not have come to New Zealand in 1861; would not have established New Zealand's first daily newspaper, the Otago Daily Times, which played a formative role in setting up the United Press Association in 1880 that gave New Zealanders more ready access to national, rather than just international, news; and would not have become the New Zealand premier remembered for developing significant road, railway and communication infrastructure linking previously isolated settlements.
The province was also the birthplace of the Union Steam Ship Company.
Launched by James Mills in Dunedin, in 1875, it went on to become a 73-vessel fleet that New Zealanders considered to be "their" shipping company.
"The Union company was only one example, although a leading one, of commercial enterprises playing their part in drawing New Zealanders together."
New Zealand's distinctive way of dealing with issues also facing other nations in the latter half of the 19th century - including becoming the first nation state to give women the right to vote - "spurred the development of national identity".
But New Zealand also had conditions unique to itself, Dr Palenski says.
"The most crucial difference between New Zealand and other settler colonies was that Maori were legally acknowledged, if not wholly embraced.
"Maori ... played significant roles in the underpinning and affirmation of New Zealand identity."
One such person was Ngai Tahu's Tamati Rangiwahia Erihana (Tom Ellison), of Otakou, on Otago Peninsula.
Ellison first played rugby in 1882 and went on to become one of the most influential figures in the sport in the 19th century.
"He played for Wellington when they were 'all black', he was one of the leading members of the Natives team that wore all black, and it was he who transferred the Natives' jersey to the shoulders of all who played for New Zealand, and then captained the first New Zealand team to be known, if only briefly, as All Blacks, in 1893."
Finding primary sources to explore the role of sport in the development of national identity was a key challenge, Dr Palenski says.
Sport was an important element in the equation, because it provided insight to widely held attitudes.
"It's all very well saying the Government said this or that. But what we need to know is what the average person thought. Sport was important in that because it wasn't driven by the Government.
"[But] sport is not documented in the way other things are. If Tom Ellison had left a diary that would have been tremendous."
So what was the average pre-1900 New Zealand inhabitant saying about themselves when they called themselves a New Zealander?
This was not within the scope of his research.
"[Historian] James Belich asked me the same question. But this book is not talking about the characteristics of New Zealanders. It's saying these were the factors that made them think of themselves as New Zealanders."
Nor did the research change the way Dr Palenski - a New Zealander of Scottish, Polish, Danish and Norwegian extraction - viewed or understood his own sense of identity.
"I didn't even think about it. I was born here - what else could I be?"
Whether it is the distinctive geography and physical environment of New Zealand, the unique mix of peoples, the legacy of initiatives which raised the domestic and international profile of New Zealand as the "social laboratory" of the world, or our fondness for sport of all codes, the factors that contributed to 19th-century New Zealanders' sense of themselves are still all around us.
"Is it important to people outside the university? I think, yes," Dr Palenski says.
"I got a sense during the [Rugby] World Cup of evidence before my eyes of what I had written. Even people who professed not to like rugby were benefiting from it and even caught up in it.
"Taken on its own and in isolation, sport may have just fleeting importance. But in the context of how the people of a country feel about themselves, about what they regard as important to their collective make-up, sport becomes another building block of national identity.
"Re-examination of all such building blocks, both individually and collectively, leads to the conclusion that in New Zealand they were put in place a great deal earlier than has generally been supposed."
Dr Palenski's thesis, which is comprehensively and convincingly argued, brought this to the attention of academics. His well-written and illustrated book now does that for the public.
He is not sure why earlier researchers had not seen the evidence and joined the dots before he did.
The possibility that it is because people put forward theories and arguments which others then react to with their own ideas, does not wash with him.
"The past does not change. What happened, happened. People look at it in different lights, but the facts don't change."
The book
The Making of New Zealanders, by Ron Palenski, published by Auckland University Press, is out now.
