scholarly journals Soldiers & Colonists: Imperial Soldiers as Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
John McLellan

<p>The approximately 18,000 imperial troops who arrived in New Zealand with the British regiments between 1840 and 1870 as garrison and combat troops, did not do so by choice. However, for the more than 3,600 non-commissioned officers and rank and file soldiers who subsequently discharged from the army in New Zealand, and the unknown but significant number of officers who retired in the colony, it was their decision to stay and build civilian lives as soldier settlers in the colony. This thesis investigates three key themes in the histories of soldiers who became settlers: land, familial relationships, and livelihood. In doing so, the study develops an important area of settler colonialism in New Zealand history. Discussion covers the period from the first arrival of soldiers in the 1840s through to the early twentieth century – incorporating the span of the soldier settlers’ lifetimes. The study focuses on selected aspects of the history of nineteenth-century war and settlement.  Land is examined through analysis of government statutes and reports, reminiscences, letters, and newspapers, the thesis showing how and why soldier settlers were assisted on to confiscated and alienated Māori land under the Waste Lands and New Zealand Settlement Acts. Attention is also paid to documenting the soldier settlers’ experiences of this process and its problems. Further, it discusses some of the New Zealand settlements in which military land grants were concentrated. It also situates such military settlement practices in the context of the wider British Empire.  The place of women, children, and the regimental family in the soldier settlers’ New Zealand lives is also considered. This history is explored through journals, reminiscences, biography and newspapers, and contextualised via imperial and military histories. How and where men from the emphatically male sphere of the British Army met and married women during service in New Zealand is examined, as are the contexts in which they lived their married lives. Also discussed are the contrasting military and colonial policies towards women and marriage, and how these were experienced by soldier settlers and their families.  Lastly, the livelihood of soldier settlers is explored – the thesis investigating what sort of civilian lives soldier settlers experienced and how they made a living for themselves and their families. Utilising newspapers, reminiscences, biography, and government records the diversity of work army veterans undertook in the colony is uncovered. Notable trends include continued military-style roles and community leadership. The failed farming enterprise is also emphasised. Going further, it offers analysis of the later years of life and the different experiences of soldier settlers in their twilight years, particularly for those with and without family networks in the colony. The thesis challenges the separation between ‘war’ and ‘settlement’ by focusing on a group whose history spanned both sides of the nineteenth-century world of colony and empire.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
John McLellan

<p>The approximately 18,000 imperial troops who arrived in New Zealand with the British regiments between 1840 and 1870 as garrison and combat troops, did not do so by choice. However, for the more than 3,600 non-commissioned officers and rank and file soldiers who subsequently discharged from the army in New Zealand, and the unknown but significant number of officers who retired in the colony, it was their decision to stay and build civilian lives as soldier settlers in the colony. This thesis investigates three key themes in the histories of soldiers who became settlers: land, familial relationships, and livelihood. In doing so, the study develops an important area of settler colonialism in New Zealand history. Discussion covers the period from the first arrival of soldiers in the 1840s through to the early twentieth century – incorporating the span of the soldier settlers’ lifetimes. The study focuses on selected aspects of the history of nineteenth-century war and settlement.  Land is examined through analysis of government statutes and reports, reminiscences, letters, and newspapers, the thesis showing how and why soldier settlers were assisted on to confiscated and alienated Māori land under the Waste Lands and New Zealand Settlement Acts. Attention is also paid to documenting the soldier settlers’ experiences of this process and its problems. Further, it discusses some of the New Zealand settlements in which military land grants were concentrated. It also situates such military settlement practices in the context of the wider British Empire.  The place of women, children, and the regimental family in the soldier settlers’ New Zealand lives is also considered. This history is explored through journals, reminiscences, biography and newspapers, and contextualised via imperial and military histories. How and where men from the emphatically male sphere of the British Army met and married women during service in New Zealand is examined, as are the contexts in which they lived their married lives. Also discussed are the contrasting military and colonial policies towards women and marriage, and how these were experienced by soldier settlers and their families.  Lastly, the livelihood of soldier settlers is explored – the thesis investigating what sort of civilian lives soldier settlers experienced and how they made a living for themselves and their families. Utilising newspapers, reminiscences, biography, and government records the diversity of work army veterans undertook in the colony is uncovered. Notable trends include continued military-style roles and community leadership. The failed farming enterprise is also emphasised. Going further, it offers analysis of the later years of life and the different experiences of soldier settlers in their twilight years, particularly for those with and without family networks in the colony. The thesis challenges the separation between ‘war’ and ‘settlement’ by focusing on a group whose history spanned both sides of the nineteenth-century world of colony and empire.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 002198942098201
Author(s):  
Sarah Comyn ◽  
Porscha Fermanis

Drawing on hemispheric, oceanic, and southern theory approaches, this article argues for the value of considering the nineteenth-century literary cultures of the southern settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa from within an interconnected frame of analysis. First, because of their distinctive historical and structural conditions; second, because of the density of their interregional networks and relations across intersecting oceanic spaces; and third, because of the long history of racialized imperialist imaginaries of the south. This methodological position rethinks current approaches to “British world” studies in two important ways: first, by decoupling the southern settler colonies from studies of settler colonialism in North America; and second, by rebalancing its metropolitan and northern locus by considering south-south networks and relations across a complex of southern islands, oceans, and continents. Without suggesting either that imperial intercultural exchanges with Britain are unimportant or that there is a culturally homogenous body of pan-southern writing, we argue that nineteenth-century literary culture from colonial Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa — what we call a “southern archive” — can provide a counterbalance to northern biases and provide new purchase on nation-centred literary paradigms — one that reveals not just south-south transnational exchanges and structural homologies between southern genres, themes, and forms, but also allows us to acknowledge the important challenges to foundational accounts of national literary canons initiated by southern theory and Indigenous studies scholars.


2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 749-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mohr

The enactment of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 represents one of the most significant events in the history of the British Empire. The very name of this historic piece of legislation, with its medieval antecedents, epitomizes a sense of enduring grandeur and dignity. The Statute of Westminster recognized significant advances in the evolution of the self-governing Dominions into fully sovereign states. The term “Dominion” was initially adopted in relation to Canada, but was extended in 1907 to refer to all self-governing colonies of white settlement that had been evolving in the direction of greater autonomy since the middle of the nineteenth century. By the early 1930s, the Dominions included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, and the Irish Free State.


Te Kaharoa ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Moon

The execution of a minor chief in 1842 in Auckland Prison for the crime of murder would normally be of little significance in the evolution of a nation’s statehood, unless it triggered some form or rebellion or even revolution.  The history of colonial rule in the British Empire in the nineteenth century contains many examples of murderers receiving capital punishment for their crime. However, the constitutional significance of the Governor’s determination to execute the criminal was of substantial, principally because it signified the Crown’s willingness – at this relatively early stage in Crown Colony Government in New Zealand – to extend its jurisdiction so that British law would apply to Maori communities.  Too often, it has been taken for granted that the Treaty of Waitangi asserted (initially in principle and gradually in practice) British sovereignty over Maori as well as Europeans in the country.  However, what the Maketu example illustrates is that the limits of British sovereignty in New Zealand prior to 1842 were confined exclusively to the non-Maori population, as had been the expectation of the Colonial Office in the two years leading up to the conclusion of the Treaty.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Laidlaw

Rooted in the extraordinary archive of Quaker physician and humanitarian activist, Dr Thomas Hodgkin, this book explores the efforts of the Aborigines' Protection Society to expose Britain's hypocrisy and imperial crimes in the mid-nineteenth century. Hodgkin's correspondents stretched from Liberia to Lesotho, New Zealand to Texas, Jamaica to Ontario, and Bombay to South Australia; they included scientists, philanthropists, missionaries, systematic colonizers, politicians and indigenous peoples themselves. Debating the best way to protect and advance indigenous rights in an era of burgeoning settler colonialism, they looked back to the lessons and limitations of anti-slavery, lamented the imperial government's disavowal of responsibility for settler colonies, and laid out elaborate (and patronizing) plans for indigenous 'civilization'. Protecting the Empire's Humanity reminds us of the complexity, contradictions and capacious nature of British colonialism and metropolitan 'humanitarianism', illuminating the broad canvas of empire through a distinctive set of British and Indigenous campaigners.


Balcanica ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Cedomir Antic

The following article deals with the image of Montenegro, a little country from the south-east European periphery, as perceived by a member of the nineteenth century British political elite. The history of this petty entity, less populated than an average English city, became especially important on the eve of the Holly Places Crises (of Palestine, 1853). A single dispute over the Montenegro-Ottoman border threatened to turn into European war, just a year before the Crimean War commenced. In regard the Montenegrin question, the always sensitive European "balance of power" was upset with the appearance of the unexpected alliance between Russia and Austria. The unique interest of the British Empire then started, for a short period of time, to be tied in with this almost unknown principality. The attitude of British diplomacy to Montenegro, image of the principality reconstructed in the Colonel Hugh Rose's report and its sources, could contribute not only to the advance the history of British foreign relations, but also to the development of the history of Montenegro.


1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 283
Author(s):  
Michèle Powles

This article traces the development of the New Zealand jury system. Most noteworthy in thisdevelopment has been the lack of controversy the system has created. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, the pursuit of equality in the legal system generally led to debate and reform of juries in relation to representation, race and gender.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brickell

Purpose – Many scholarly disciplines are currently engaged in a turn to affect, paying close attention to emotion, feeling and sensation. The purpose of this paper is to locate affect in relation to masculinity, time and space. Design/methodology/approach – It suggests that historically, in a range of settings, men have been connected to one another and to women, and these affective linkages tells much about the relational quality and texture of historically experienced masculinities. Findings – Spatial settings, in turn, facilitate, hinder and modify expressions and experiences of affect and social connectedness. This paper will bring space and time into conversation with affect, using two examples from late nineteenth-century New Zealand. Originality/value – If masculinities scholars often focus on what divides men from women and men from each other, the paper might think about how affect connects people.


2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Mancall ◽  
Paul Robertson ◽  
Terry Huriwai

Objective: To document aspects of the history of alcohol use among Maori, with a particular focus on the period from 1840 to 1872 and to identify potential use of this knowledge in the development of strategies for the prevention and treatment of alcohol-related harm among Maori in contemporary New Zealand. Method: A survey of the surviving documentation about alcohol in nineteenth-century New Zealand; materials were predominantly drawn from the writings of pakeha (non-Maori) missionaries, officials and travellers, as well as available statistical records. Results: Analysis of early written historical records suggests significant variation in the response of Maori to the introduction of alcohol in different parts of New Zealand during the period following European contact. Conclusions: One stereotype that has arisen suggests Maori have been incapable of and/or unable to manage the production and use of alcohol. On the other hand, another commonly held belief has been that Maori supported abstinence or ‘resisted alcohol’ because they recognised its ‘ruinous nature’ and because it was contrary to traditional custom and practices. Historical information indicates that the Maori response to the introduction of alcohol was in fact diverse and for much of the nineteenth century alcohol was non-problematic for many Maori. This reinterpretation of the historical record can potentially empower contemporary Maori to take greater responsibility for the use of alcohol. It also challenges the negativity of the stereotypes generated by historical misinformation.


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