Palenski - The Making of New Zealanders

RON PALENSKI

I cannot remember when first the light bulb appeared above my head that shone brightly with the thought that I must write about the evolution of the national identity of New Zealanders. When I first mentioned it, some people tried to persuade me otherwise because it had been done already or because there was too much contention associated with it. I discussed nationalism and parochialism and postmodernism and a whole basket of other isms with various people and eventually took a proposal to the postgraduate committee of the History and Art History Department of the University of Otago. The idea became a doctoral thesis and now it has become a book.

No book can be the product of just one person, especially not an academic book. This one draws on the works of a great many people, some of them still active historians and other professionals, some of them not, some of them gone but certainly not forgotten. Some of them knew their expertise was being drawn on, some did not. Some of those I have consulted and whose work I have studied disagree with my views, but willingly tendered their advice anyway.

The thesis that has become a book would not have been started, let alone finished, without the support and encouragement of the History and Art History staff at Otago University. They, like academic historians at other institutions, do their invaluable work largely away from the publics gaze, yet all are leading experts in their particular fields and have a profound influence on students who pass their way. The department head, Professor Barbara Brookes, had the ultimate say on whether my plan became a reality, and my supervisors, Professor Tom Brooking, Associate Professor Alexander Trapeznik and Dr Rani Kerin, held my hand through the process. Others in the department who provided invaluable advice and support were Professor Tony Ballantyne and Professor Judy Bennett, though I am loath to name names because everyone with whom I came into contact was unfailingly supportive. I could name the whole staff and not be overdoing it. The departments Student and Academic Support Administrator, Mrs Frances Couch, was especially helpful. Academic staff in other areas also kept me headed in the right direction, especially the Dean of the School of Physical Education, Professor Douglas Booth, and Whakarongotai Hokowhitu of Te Tumu, the School of Mori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies. Professor Brian Moloughney, now the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Division of Humanities at Otago, was more responsible than he knew for my pursuit of academic endeavours. Emeritus Professor Erik Olssen and, outside of Otago, Professor James Belich at Victoria University of Wellington provided valuable ideas. Word of the thesis reached the ears of Dr Sam Elworthy of Auckland University Press and he added his support and encouragement to that of all the rest.

But careful readers should not blame any of these people for any omissions or errors; I am wholly responsible.

Academic researchers are extremely well served in New Zealand. The various institutions which preserve the past for the present and the future deserve the gratitude of all, and they certainly have mine. In particular, I thank the respective staffs of Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hkena, University of Otago, and the universitys Central Library; Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kwanatanga; the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mtauranga o Aotearoa which among many priceless assets has the best multi-newspaper archive website in the world New Zealanders do not know how lucky they are until they try searching newspaper archives in other countries.

My family, especially Kathy, knows how grateful I am for their support.

Ron Palenski

March 2012

Rather than using the Latin term sic, which can be intrusive and disrupt the flow for readers, quotations are true to their original and footnotes when necessary clarify or correct. Odd spellings, misspellings and letter case are retained as they first appeared. The macron in Mori words in quotations is used when it appeared in the originals.

let a man trouble himself little about the decadence of
England but think much of the rise of New Zealand
Anthony Trollope, The New Zealander

In 1877 a son of Scottish immigrants wrote to the editor of the Auckland Star because he was concerned about his nationality. His parents were Scottish, he said, or Scotch in the manner of the time, but he had been born in Auckland. Now, am I Scotch or am I a young colonial? he asked. An agony uncle letter may seem an odd way to have the matter resolved, but the editor of the Star or someone acting for him led the correspondent out of his quandary. The young man was fully entitled to call himself a colonial in preference to the perpetuation of old country distinctions:

The sinking of national identity in the first generation of native born population is followed in all the colonies and is fully warranted by the fact that the colony has become the adopted country of the parents and the children know no other.

In other words, the erstwhile Scot had become a New Zealander. This metamorphosis lies at the heart of this book. At what point in the nineteenth century did transplanted English, Scots or Irish, or people from anywhere else, make the mental leap to considering themselves New Zealanders? At what point did they acknowledge to themselves, and have it acknowledged by others, that Home was part of a distant and increasingly nostalgic past and that home was where the heart literally was? And what brought about this transformation?

This book suggests that identity was established in New Zealand much earlier than most historians have previously thought. The catalyst was not the debate, such as it was, about whether New Zealand should be part of the Australian Commonwealth; it was not the concurrent sending of troops off to fight in South Africa in the Boer War; it was not the New Zealand rugby teams tour of the British Isles, France and North America in 190506 and, if it was none of those things, it certainly could not have been New Zealands role in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915.

In the beginning, New Zealander meant Mori the indigenous people as opposed to the settlers. But over time, and as the country developed and more and more people were born in New Zealand, the meaning changed. The country for a time, in the words of historian and twentieth-century man of letters Eric Hall McCormick, became the focus of a stock Romantic sentiment that though Europe might be decadent or even doomed, in the newer countries across the ocean its civilisation would be renewed and perpetuated.

In the same vein, the great nineteenth-century English historian Thomas Babington (Lord) Macaulay in 1840 introduced a subsequently much-quoted New Zealander. Macaulay had plucked this individual from his imagination when writing of Leopold von Rankes history of the papacy for the Edinburgh Review. Talking of the enduring strength of the Roman Catholic Church, Macaulay was of the view that that institution may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst Macaulays traveller from New Zealand became, in the retelling, a New Zealander.

New Zealander by French illustrator Gustave Dor. From B. Jerrold, ed.,