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UK settlement of New Zealand
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Message 1.Â
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Tuesday, 27th September 2011
Emigration from Britain apparently brought 11 million people to different parts of the globe between 1821 and 1914. I am reading a book (Settlers: New Zealand Immigrants from England, Ireland and Scotland 1800 – 1945) with details of those who came to New Zealand.
Immigration here was somewhat later than other places, so NZ didn’t have direct transportation for criminals, though freed or escaped convicts made their way across later. Indeed many of our early settlers (especially Irish people whose travels took them in smaller leaps than the English and Scots who made one fairly irrevocable journey) didn’t come straight from Britain, but via Australia.
New Zealand took a tiny proportion of those 11 million. Apart from having to share people with other countries New Zealand was the furthest away, cost more, took forever and wasn’t a traditional place to go. And people worried about cannibals and earthquakes.
For all that people still came. The incentives were assisted migration, sometimes free passage, strong selling by agents in the UK, the promise of quick wealth, including gold and personal incentives (family members or lovers or friends already there). Health reasons, career movements, political hopes, and lacks of jobs at home brought people here.
Generally about 60% of the new settlers were from England, though this dropped to under 50% from 1853 – 70 when lots of Scottish and Irish came here, for gold-mining and because of conditions in their homeland. For some reason the Welsh didn’t come to New Zealand, though they did go to places like the USA and Canada. Scots on the other hand were over-represented here. About 10% of the UK population was Scottish but up to 30% of those arriving here were Scottish. In Australia it was never more than 15% and other countries didn’t attract so many either. There was early interest from seamen and then a strong recruitment programme, they were desirable immigrants, and they followed the lure of gold, often coming from Australia.
The Irish weren’t so welcome (unreliable workers with a propensity to drink!) but they came, often unassisted and mostly from Australia. Quite a number of them were former soldiers or with the RNZ Fencibles (ex-soldiers brought here with families on a just-in-case basis). They also came for gold in the 1860s. And their relatives, already here, would nominate them for assisted passages. Slightly later Irish people from the Ulster region, at least half of whom were Protestant were recruited. Some of our most important political figures of the time came from Ireland – our most popular PM ever (I read yesterday that our present PM is the most liked since him) Michael Joseph Savage, also other Premiers/PMs and leaders like John Ballance, Joseph Ward, William Massey Ferguson, John Robert Godley and Edward Stafford. (In fact nearly every important man I can think of!)
From England the southern Â鶹ԼÅÄ Counties and London and the south-west was well represented, as were the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. This was especially marked before the 20th century; after that the north was better represented here. My book gives a number of explanations – closeness to ports, where the recruiting agents focussed their efforts. chain migration, agricultural unionism, downturn in tin mining and increasing mechanisation on farms and rural areas.
The book has checked the occupations of fathers of settlers (as recorded on their death certificates). About 40% worked on the land, much the same as their numbers in Britain overall. But there were fewer from an industrial background. White collar workers were quite numerous – the children of clerks and professionals ‘who saw new opportunities in the New World’. And what the writers call ‘pre-industrial’ workers were well represented. Builders, bakers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, butchers, wheelwrights, sawyers, tanner, coopers, millers, carters. These people were hit with a downturn in rural populations and agricultural depression as much as farmers themselves. Many would still be working in a rural setting. The figures for agriculture and pre-industrial workers were much higher coming to Australasia than those going elsewhere. We attracted a more rural people, since working in the land was very important.
At various times gender imbalance was strong. In the early days it was about 2 – 1 (I’m surprised it was as low as that really), and during strong gold-mining days and when soldiers were brought in many more men than women came. But at other times, when peaceful, useful settlements were aimed for or when the Fencibles came both men and women came equally. In the earliest times settler New Zealand (and probably Maori NZ too) was a very young society, as immigration schemes only paid for people under 40 and many families with quite a number of young children made the trip. (Ghastly thought – coming all that way in those ships with half a dozen kids.)
New Zealand has immigration patterns from outside the UK – Dalmations (now Croatians) came in the 1880s for gum-digging from kauri, Polish children came (and stayed) during WWII, Italian rural communities came en bloc often, a few Greeks settled mostly in Wellington. (In the 1874 census there were 40 Greek men and one Greek woman.)
But the vast majority of early settlers were from Britain and Ireland.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 2
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Tuesday, 27th September 2011
My understanding, which is limited on this issue, is that the New Zealand Company was involved in the settlement of New Zealand by Europeans certainly until the 1830s. Whilst New Zealand is farthest away from the UK I don't think that cost would have been an issue until recent times although the journey times would have been. The issues over earthquakes is of course fairly recentv in historical time as the science is fairly new.
On the Scottish numbers a lot of people left or were forcibly forced to leave the Scottish Highlands by landowners who found sheep were more economical than people and the difference whereby most Scots emigrated to Canada or New Zealand whereas English people emigrated to the USA from the 1770s. The comparison between Australia and New Zealand are of course different, not least because of the difference in size and until 'the Interior' of Australia was explored most people lived around the coastal areas. -
Message 3
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Tuesday, 27th September 2011
The New Zealand Company originated in 1837 under Edward Gibbon Wakefield and was most active in the 1840s, bringing people to Canterbury and Nelson and Wellington. They knew about earthquakes in those days - two severe one hits Wellington in the 1850s and quite a lot of the European population left then. (I was surprised to see by a Glaswegian couple somewhere up in northern England this year and find they didn't know NZ was earthquake-prone.)
Most Scottish people to NZ came from the Lowlands, from near Glasgow and Edinburgh and were either from rural backgrounds or small industries. Quite a lot of people (relatively) came from the Shetlands, seamen affected by poor harvests, collapse of the fishing industry and then the clearances of the 1869s and 70s. Farming and mining were the attractions here mainly.
The Highland Clearances were a little before the main migration to NZ, so people from the Highlands were more likely to go to the US or Canada - or just to the Lowlands of Scotland apparently. Quite a number of Highlanders who were single came here, domestic servants and farm labourers. There are anecdotal stories that say that when single women stepped off the boats local men would choose one for a wife, and quite a number of marriages resulted from this sort of "courtship".
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 4
Posted by RusEvo (U2126548) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
I forget that I live in the most isolated landmass on earth. With modern transport and communications it certainly doesn't feel like it nowadays.
One thing to remember is that we have never ceased being a landing place for immigrants. But now the British have been joined by South Africans, Chinese, Pacific Islanders and South-East Asians.
Do you think the Scots came to NZ because of the similarity of the climate down in the Wild South? Or did they prefer to make a new start in a lonelier place due to cultural or religious reasons?
I really should know this stuff aye? Dang our education system! -
Message 5
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
I think that for many English people the attraction of NZ -over and above practical ones- are just those that brought people there to film the "Lord of the Rings". series.
Tolkien imagined that otherworldliness in Oxford- but already in the 1850's Matthew Arnold had described Oxford as a place of "sweetness and light" at the calm centre of the vortex of the modern age..
As an Oxford townee I could understand the attraction.. and four years ago our daughter- and Oxford gownee- fell in love with NZ when she finally got around to doing her "world tour". I was worried that we might lose her.
As for the Welsh Caro, a couple of weeks ago I met a couple who are having a house built in Argentina (next door to a brother who married an Argentinian).. They mentioned the different European nationalities that still remain as small alien enclaves in Argentina..
I mentioned the Welsh- having read not only "How Green Was My Valley" but also "Green Green My Valley Now".. And I was told that way down south near to Patagonia there is a little Welsh mining village transported right from "The Valleys".. The land is a flat plain that stretches to the horizon in all directions- but the Welsh built rows of little two-up two-down terraced cottages just like "Back Â鶹ԼÅÄ".
Cass -
Message 6
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
The Welsh didn't come to NZ much, Cass, in the period of my book. The Scots came in much larger numbers than their ratio in Britain, but the Welsh, making up around 5% of the UK population at the time never were more than 2% of the UK population that came to New Zealand. They didn't come in organised groups or in numbers. They did go to places like the US and Canada, so it wasn't that they didn't leave Wales - they just didn't come here or to Australia. My book is uncertain why - a more industrial society when we wanted agricultural workers? no recruiters from the NZ Company or others? strong tradition of going elsewhere? ports not close enough?
My book doesn't mention natural attractions of NZ as a contributing factor to whether people came. It must have had some effect, because I recall reading of Charles Heaphy's artwork, somewhat airbrushed to appeal to Britons, being published there for its propaganda effect. My books talks of it starting early with seamen coming before 1840, then Paisley migrants to Auckland, other northern settlements, then the major one to the south. (Scots people made up more than half the UK people who settled in Otago and Southland at times.) There was one English joke that "Scotsmen hasten to NZ principally out of a sense of duty, to relieve the first settlers of every sixpence they legitimately could," - but generally the Scots were highly sought after, being hard-working and moral - and Protestant. There was at one stage a five pound bonus for any man who brought a sheepdog with him, so Highlanders sometimes arrived with a dog and were quickly snapped up.
I really should know this stuff aye? Dang our education system!Â
I feel I always knew NZ was the first country to give women the vote (though it is only recently that I realised people could quibble with the word 'country') and I don't remember ever not knowing the date of the Treaty of Waitangi (but my father used to quiz me on dates of battles, capital cities, etc). Other than that I don't recall any NZ history being taught to me at all. I only took history at 7th form level and for a year at university, but that was Tudors, Stuarts, a little American early settlers, Huns and Visigoths, Pitt and Walpole, and that's about it.
NZ history is so interesting, and it's been so foreign to me, really. I want to learn more of the constitutional history and to learn our premiers and PMs in some order. My dil says they learnt that at school.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
Caro
But I think that the fact that the first major English overseas colony came to be called "New England" shows an English taste for "green and pleasant lands" and temperate climates..
I remember our daughter being captivated by "Anne of Green Gables".
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
I read my Anne books so constantly that I could probably repeat bits of them word for word. But I don't think it was really the scenic bits that appealed - it was the romance and humour. I also learnt quite a bit of things that were useful later - LM Montgomery popped in references to things like Fox's Book of Martyrs, or Gog and Magog, voting corruption or Biblical references that didn't always mean much at the time, but that bring a frission of recognition when I come across them now.
Calling it New England might mean that, or it might just mean people like to give their places names that have a familiarity about them. There are names here that hark back to Scotland and England but don't seem to have much connection with them, beyond the fact that the people here came from those places. Dunedin in its early days wouldn't have had much in common with an urban long-established Edinburgh, for instance.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 9
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
Caro
I am not sure my daughter ever read the books we had them on TV- and she may have had them on Video.
And the whole nature of New England was vitally important for the American Revolution.. New England produced more or less the same things as England, and so was not allowed according to the Mercantilist System to develop as a competitor.. Just one of the frustrations making people break away from the Crown.
Mind you it seems to work both ways.. No-one tried to be more quintessentially English than T.S. Eliot- who made the journey back from the New to the Old.. And our Druid friend- whose pre-New England routes I guess are Scandinavian- came "back" to England to be closer to those ancient sites like Stonehenge.
Cass -
Message 10
Posted by bishenbertie (U13222350) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
Having found the Letters from Settlers & Labouring Emigrants in the New Zealand Company by the New Zealand Company is available online by putting the name into your search engine I wanted to share this information with you incase you hadn't already read them.
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Message 11
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 28th September 2011
Thanks for that, bertie. I haven't time to check it out now and aren't very good at reading off a computer screen, but I'll be interested to see what they have there. I had letters from the wife of the superintendent of Canterbury, Charlotte Godley, and have read letters of Marianne Williams, wife of one of the early missionaries involved in the Treaty of Waitangi work.
I think it was Charlotte Godley who wrote what we would consider extraordinary racist views, even though she was an intelligent, educated, thoughtful, relatively sensitive person. Things about savages not knowing how to use knives and forks and looking dirty. Though I saw a family recently who are much purer Maori than we usually see and they had a more Aboriginal look to them, which is less strong and attractive than we are used to, and her views made a little more sense. But still not what any modern novelist would put into a speech by such a character, no matter how much they were trying for veracity.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 12
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
One of the points made throughout this book is that the settlers didn't stay in enclaves of their own nationalities to any particular degree. Although people from Cornwall and Devon settled in Taranaki and called their main town New Plymouth (where my son now lives and which he loves) in later years there weren't a strong number of people originating from there left. More Scots people came to the south but they went elsewhere in numbers too; likewise the Irish on the West Coast, and even the English in Christchurch, which has turned out not to the most English of cities at all, looking at the statistics.
They also say that the traditions of Britain continued only if they extended to the wider community. Because English people made up the greatest numbers, and because they were more highly represented in wide-collar people and government admin sort of people, it is English administrative things NZ adopted. And the tradition of Christmas, not celebrated by the Scots, became widespread. And being the dominant culture they didn't need things like the Albion Clubs. The English also brought municipal cemeteries, public parks, cricket, rugby, horse-racing, Methodism. the union movement, and food preferences. They speculate whether the large number of migrants from Cornwall might have indluenced the adoption of meat pies and Cornish pasties "as an unusually favoured food item in New Zealand".
The Scots have left a legacy of Highland culture (an 'invented tradition' rather than a real one from their home places - some people made up Highland origins when they didn't have them at all!), public schools and a high value on education, New Year's celebrations (it's been a public holiday here for a long time), pipe bands. Gorse, the bane of farmers, was brought by the Scots - one lady mentioned wrote home to Forfarshire for gorse seeds and carefully planted them. It is now a huge (if rather beautiful) pest plant.
The Irish were two societies, geographically and with religion. The Ulster people left the Orange Lodge; the Catholics were a little radical at times, but not to the degree in other countries. Some tension over teh conscription of priests in WWI but generally the numbers volunteering was much the same as for others.
This lack of distinction between the home nations they put down to a lack of large cities, itinerancy, intermarriage, compulsory education from 1877,and the emphasis on Empire.
The divisions they see more clearly came from religion - four groups - Irish Catholics, English Anglicans. low-church Protestants (Scots and Methodists and Ulster Protestants), and frontier blokes (who didn't bother much with religious observance). These divisions came to the fore in temperance/alcohol battles.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 13
Posted by RusEvo (U2126548) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
What is a conscripted priest expected to do?
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Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
Caro
Your mention of gorse reminds me of a prgramme about the way that immigration changed the NZ environment.. In view of the ideas of Gilbert White perhaps the most important- according to this programme- was the introduction of earthworms which are so vital for soil fertility.. These had to be introduced.
The massive Australain toad also featured-- a continent-sized creature for your small islands and its lakes and ponds.
As for the lack of nationalism it may well be that many of the communities were planted before the last decades of the Nineteenth Century that saw the real rise of nationalism.. In the early 19c an "alien" for most peope was anyone who lived more than about 20 miles away- and old hostilities and suspicions lumped all aliens together irrespective of the realms- that people then decided were based on Nations. .. And it is quite probable that many who emigrated from a fractious and divided British Isles did so in the hope of leaving those conflicts behind.
Cass
PS.. regarding what you wrote about the aboriginal inhabitants.. I think that when one looks at really old photos and early films when people were confident about showing themselves totally as the products of their own culture one can see the difference between then and now.. It is a long time since most "indigenous peoples" around the world have come to know how to present themselves "for interview" by the "Western World". [Good luck in the ones that you wish to have it]
I remember what happened in 1970 when our Boys Secondary Modern School mixed with the girls equivalent.. The boys quickly learned not to talk to openly about things like taking baths, changing clothes, having hair-cuts etc.. A few gasps and disgusted faces from the "young ladies" exposed to such "masculine" depravity was enough to dampen their bravado.. I dare say many a "man alone" in NZ found himself similarly being "civilized" if he managed to get a wife. -
Message 15
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
This lack of distinction between the home nations they put down to a lack of large cities, itinerancy, intermarriage, compulsory education from 1877,and the emphasis on Empire.Â
This is a somewhat shortsighted conclusion. Imo, the biggest contributing factor to the lack of distinction or a major ethnic division in the southern colonies would have been largely because of the (relatively) sparce white or European population and daily survival depended on mutual co-operation and everyone assisting eachother where possible. It is a mentality that still exists in Australia to this day, for instance.
To some extent there were religious divisions, however not nearly to the level that existed (or still exists) in Britain. Again, survival and prosperity for all depended on leaving many of the old anomosities at the door, so to speak. -
Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
Id
Two sides of the same coin-- you have described the conditions that disappeared within much of Britain leading to the cult of mass conflicts based upon class, folk, race and nationality- conditions which have continued to exist in parts of the world where as Charles Kingsley put it Nature had not been tamed and people just had to all stick together
And which are now beginning to be felt in the British Isles once more in these times of climate change and economic super-storm.
Cass -
Message 17
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
Hi Caro,
It is is an extremely interesting subject that you have brought up. I think one factor that has kept immigration to NZ down is the fact that it is so far away. I suspect the Scottish people were somewhat more adventurous than the Welsh so they came to NZ in greater numbers.
Do you think NZ culture is preponderantly Scottish or is it a kind of Hybrid. Whence comes your propensity for good relations with the Maori people and your propensity to 'live and let live.'
Most New Zealanders that I know infuse you with a feeling of Bonhomie, like my cardiologist, who is also a New Zealander.
Tas -
Message 18
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 29th September 2011
There's lots of little bits to comment on here. Starting with the small European population and mutual support - that is mentioned in this book as one feature, but you can get that by sticking together firmly in the group you came with, and generally NZers didn't do that fully. Some groups did - the Waipu Highland highly religious community still has much of its population related to those early settlers, and the Canterbury English settlers made their community based on English values.
But what Jock Phillips and Terry Hearn stress is that NZers were very itinerant when they got here and that didn't lead to people of one society sticking together. Especially young male miners, seamen etc. They mention several that it is families that keep heritage and culture - and it was the English who came in family groups mostly.
Tas, NZ immigration has been mainly from England rather than Scotland. The Scots came out of proportion to their numbers in the home country but still were never the dominant culture here. Down south where I live, they formed half or more the population, and there are traces in accents and entertainments that show that, but generally how do you know what the ancestors of you neighbours are. I looked down my road and don't know the ancestry of hardly any of my neighbours, except that they are mostly white and have British surnames generally (one's surname suggests a Dutch background). No Macs or O's to give a clue.
Cass, we don't have Australian toads in NZ; we have three Aussie frogs, including one that is endangered there, but considered feral here. Certainly don't have the cane toad here.
And RusEvo, the conscripted priests were mentioned twice as a source of friction, but it wasn't explained, and I thought it was a slightly odd thing to focus on too. However I see in a number of sites (those sites that are very academic and hard to copy) that conscription for priests was resisted because they would be expected to fight as soldiers, and priests were honour-bound not to take up arms. Chaplains were one thing, fighting priests were another. This site (from old NZ newspapers) has a RC heirarchy statement stating their objections.
As for the live and let live attitude of NZers, I suppose that comes from a small largely rural community; apparently it is in large cities that frictions arise mostly and that there are big enough populations for factions to arise fully. I am not sure we are showing a live and let live attitude to the Australian rugby players at the moment but I hear their coach (a NZer) saying the players don't mind at all and don't really notice it - they would notice if there was respectful silence though.
Cheers, Caro.
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