In his reminiscences in the 1930s, Sir George Fowlds, Minister of Education and Public Health in the Ward cabinet 1906-11, whose papers I arranged in 1975, referred to himself as a New Zealander, although he was born a Scot. [1]

Linguistics

Why New Zealander? According to the lexicographers Elizabeth and Harry Orsman, 'New Zealander' was at first 'applied to an aboriginal Polynesian inhabitant of New Zealand, then, with increasing white settlement after 1840, applied to a later non-Maori immigrant, with 'native' or 'Maori replacing the earlier application in its place'. [2] The Orsmans' New Zealander reference is dated 1904, earlier than Fowlds's use of the term. Obviously to a non-Maori Fowlds wished to identify himself as a permanent resident in New Zealand and it is in this sense that we use the term today 'to include Maori or non-Maori born or resident in New Zealand'. Fowlds was a member of the predominant cohort in New Zealand—the immigrants—yet he called himself 'a New Zealander' and his use of the term gives rise to the question when did immigrant dominance in New Zealand end?

The purpose of the paper

This paper is designed to examine the demographic evidence of the rise and decline of United Kingdom immigrants as a major cohort in the population. It will trace the rise and fall of the European/Pakeha immigrants, and the important junctures in this process: minority, equality with the Maori population, dominance overall, and finally minority and then decline, contrasted with the rise of the New Zealand-born Pakeha.

First contact

Estimates of the pre-1840 Maori population vary between 100,000 and 180,000. [3] The Europeans in 1840 numbered about 2,000, a small minority. The earliest Pakeha residents included traders. They were here in search of collectibles—sealskins, whale products, timber, flax and also souls. As for Maori, after centuries of accommodating themselves to the limitations of Aotearoa, they were clearly on the verge of a great leap forward. Within a short time of European contact they seized upon many features of European culture and made them their own.

At first contact there was Pakeha lack of understanding of Maori culture, in consequence of which the Boyd and du Fresne massacres gave New Zealand an unhealthy reputation. However, both races had need of one another. The Europeans could not survive in Aotearoa without Maori help and the Maori were ready to exploit the expansion of their horizons that came with European contact. According to Evelyn Stokes, 'it is doubtful whether white colonisation of New Zealand would have succeeded without the help of Maori farmers and Maori or Pakeha-Maori traders'. [4] The demand for European know-how and goods was strong. In the wake of the first disasters, the Ngapuhi chief Patuone went to Australia in 1826 to reassure the Sydney merchants that it was safe for them to trade in New Zealand. He offered to leave his son as a hostage. [5]

Patuone was to give effect to his promise shortly afterwards in his negotiations with the English-born Sydney trader Ranulph Dacre in Hokianga Harbour, as related in the Stout Centre Review. [6] When Dacre's ship anchored in the harbour for trade, Patuone came aboard to negotiate. Trusting Patuone's assurances, Dacre brought with him his wife and baby daughter. Patuone liked to dandle the baby on his knee during his visits to the ship. One day she seized his top-knot. Immediately the chief and his followers took to their canoes and departed. What was to happen after such a gross breach of tapu? Another massacre? But Patuone had given his word. The solution he found was to send word that he would excuse the insult 'since the child was mad'. Both parties needed one another. This incident was a sign of the stage in race relations in which both parties were prepared to accommodate themselves to one another's susceptibilities. But that process took some time to accomplish, as witness the Wairau affair and later ineptitude.

Early traders

Among the early traders in addition to Ranulph Dacre were Logan Campbell (Campbell and Ehrenfried Co. is still listed in the Auckland telephone book), Phillip Tapsell, James Reddy Clendon, Samuel Stephenson and Richard Barrett. The descendants of all of these are still about. In this period Maori survival depended upon having an association with a European trader. The nature of that trade has been described in Roger Wigglesworth's thesis about eighteenth and nineteenth century Pacific trade, and by James Belich among others. [7]

By the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 the Europeans were in a minority dependent upon the goodwill of the Maori majority. There were not enough of them for the Maori to feel threatened and in fact, as a number of events showed, they could and did challenge Pakeha arrogance.

Mid-century Maori-Pakeha population balance

By the 1850s the number of immigrants had reached sufficient numbers to demand from the British government and to achieve, representative government, and to reach approximate parity with the Maori population. It is no wonder that this was the juncture when Maori resistance to loss of land arose, resulting in the New Zealand Wars, the consequence of the belligerence of the new (settler) government's intent on forcing the the freeing up of Maori land for settlement, thus abrogating the rights of Maori under the Treaty of Waitangi. The resultant confiscation policy has had consequences that we are still in the process of resolving.

Immigration peaks; parity

The next peaks of immigration came with the gold rush period and with Vogel's scheme for assisted passages. An emigration industry had arisen and by 1881 the New Zealand-born had reached parity with the United Kingdom-born (both 46 per cent). But one assumes that the latter were the dominant cohort, the locally-born being younger people.

By 1901 the New Zealand-born had reached 67 per cent of the population of one million, another landmark. [8] It is significant that this period was marked by the proclamation of dominion status in 1907, and the participation of New Zealand premiers in the imperial conferences. However, the idea of imperial federation failed in the face of the growing national spirit exhibited by the colonial leaders. Also came the first landmark of an indigenous literature with the publication in 1898 of The Long White Cloud by William Pember Reeves, the first New Zealand-born writer to have a scholarly work published. In anticipation of the centennial of the Auckland Grammar School in 1969, in a letter to me, Alan Mulgan recalled the stir of interest it aroused when he was a boy at school, and the book was one of the prizes at the end-of-the-year prize-giving.

Immigrant dominance

Immigrant dominance is illustrated by the composition of early cabinets, which were predominantly composed of UK-born ministers. John Sheehan was the first New Zealand-born minister, in the Grey cabinet, appointed in 1877. Edwin Mitchelson was the only New Zealand-born one in the Atkinson ministry of 1883-4. In the Liberal government of 1891 there were two, James Carroll and Reeves. In 1909, when the composition of the Ward cabinet was announced, the caricaturists David Low and F. Blomfield enjoyed drawing attention to the predominance of Scots by depicting them in kilts. Low had them as a Highland band and Ward as the drum major. At that time the majority of university faculties, mayors of cities, ministers of religion, businessmen, senior public servants and leaders of the professions were all UK-born.

The twentieth century influx of immigrants was not big enough to challenge the rising dominance of the New Zealand-born. There was an immigration high in the 1920s, when my family arrived. After staying with relatives, eventually we found a house at Northcote, a fringe suburb of Auckland. It was full of Lancashire people. I recall a little girl piping up in the bus, 'Mummy, is anyone left in Manchester?'

The rise of the New Zealand-born

In 1961 I was asked by Keith Sinclair and Bob Chapman to write an essay for a festschrift for Professor W. T. G. Airey on his retirement from the History Department of Auckland University College. The essay included statistics showing the juncture at which even the older generation of the population were predominantly New Zealand-born. [9] The Department of Statistics was unable to supply the figures for 1926 birthplaces, since there had been economies in the census questions at that time. The figures in brackets are interpolated by this writer.

New Zealand: Percentages of residents 55 years and over according to country of birth (excluding Maori)

The table shows that between 1921 and 1936 the predominance of the UK-born was lost even in the older generation. However, what seemed an important discovery drew no reaction. The table was buried in an essay on political ideas, which showed that the innovators of the Liberal period were immigrants, whose mental baggage included the Corn Laws, Land Reform, Chartism, Irish Land Acts, enclosures, Highland clearances, Free Trade, John Stuart Mill and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. They were not 'pioneer innovators', as some commentators have suggested.

As the 1961 article said, 'the table shows that in 1916 three-quarters of the older age group were United Kingdom immigrants. The pattern of a society is set by the older age groups, to which belong the managerial class, the heads of families, the party leaders and so on. Until about 1930 New Zealand was dominated by immigrants, and it is only in the last 30 years that New Zealand life has taken on a more distinct New Zealand character'.

The climactic juncture

There were other signs that confirmed the end of immigrant domination. The first full-term New Zealand-born prime minister was Gordon Coates (1925-8). It is also noted that this turning point in population composition was an augury of two other developments: the advent of a Labour government in 1935 with a programme of social reform, and the celebration of the centennial in 1940. The latter was the occasion of the publication of the Centennial Surveys, which included some notable literary works.

The comments of R. M. Chapman, writing about that period in 1961, were notably prescient:

The expression of this national consciousness followed straight on from the depression of the nineteen-thirties, in which profound and general experience our community appears to have recognised itself truly for the first time. [10]

It is appropriate to quote from Chapman since he and Sinclair were appointed to the History Department of Auckland University College in 1947 and 1948 respectively, marking the entry of New Zealand-born and educated graduates into the department. In his history of the university Sinclair devoted a chapter to 'New Zealanders and Britons 1935-49'. [11] This change to New Zealand-born appointments was a recognition by their British-born professors that the demand warranted the appointment of teachers capable of dealing with New Zealand and Pacific topics. Another example is that of the New Zealand-born graduate John Cowie Reid, who was appointed to the Auckland University College English Department by Professor Sydney Musgrove, who insisted on over-riding the recommendation of the London-based committee of the Association of Commonwealth Universities in favour of a British candidate, since he needed Reid to introduce New Zealand literature as a subject. [12]

Music

In 1946 Owen Jensen, the music tutor at the Community Arts Service attached to Auckland University College, chose St Peter's School near Cambridge in the Waikato as the venue for what was to become a seminal development in the history of music in New Zealand, the Cambridge Summer School of Music. '[Jensen] invited Douglas Lilburn to be resident composer, to help with the conducting, and to talk to the whole school'. On that occasion Lilburn said:

But now something new has happened - happened for the first time, and we've got together, not to admire what the big shots from overseas can do, but to see what we're capable of doing for ourselves … Here again I want to remind you that we are New Zealanders, that our cultural problems have to be worked out in the totally new context of these islands we live in, a context that has an infinite potential richness we've hardly drawn on as yet. [13]

At the next Summer School Jensen invited Lilburn to take the first composers' class, 'a historic gathering which brought together musicians who were to become leading figures in the next decade'. [14] The sessions at the Summer Schools were not confined to composers but included instrumental and vocal work, and a wide variety of musical topics, and ended with a public concert. 'No other single organisation has done so much to integrate and stimulate New Zealand musical life in so many fields'. [15]

It is significant that Lilburn altered the title of his 1946 composition from 'Song of the Antipodes' to 'Song of Islands'. He is quoted on the sleeve of the recording of the work as saying 'it was then entitled "Song of the antipodes". But New Zealand perspectives have radically changed in the last 30 or so years and words like Home, Antipodes, Empire, have lost value of meaning, so the work was later renamed in more intrinsic and regional terms'. [16]

Education

I entered Auckland Teachers' College in 1936, the year after it was reopened following the depression of the 1930s. It was at the beginning of an exciting period of developments with the appointments of Clarence Beeby as Director of the Council for Educational Research, which he revitalised. He was responsible for what William Renwick calls 'the landmark New Education Fellowship Conference in July 1937, when a panel of distinguished overseas educationalists presented the ideas and aspirations of child-centred education to large, enthusiastic audiences.' The immediate result was that Beeby came to the attention of Minister of Education Peter Fraser, and became Director of Education. 'The policies initiated and presided over by Fraser and administered by Beeby transformed public education'. [17]

Never a Soul at Home: New Zealand Literary Nationalism in the 1930s

In June 1999 Vincent O'Sullivan's enthusiastic review in New Zealand Books of Stuart Murray's Never a Soul at Home was published. The book's significant subtitle was New Zealand Literary Nationalism and the 1930s. The book is a detailed critique of the works of the literary figures of the period. However, it is surprising to find that Murray refers to these New Zealanders as 'colonists' and 'settlers'! How could he entitle the book Never a Soul at Home? Allen Curnow's poem 'House and Land', published in 1941 includes the lines

The spirit of exile, wrote the historian

Is strong in the people still

And the last lines read:

Awareness of what great gloom

Stands in a land of settlers

With never a soul at home. [18]

Never a Soul at Home?

It is apparent that Curnow is referring to the pioneer period, but this pontificating is just nonsense. By using this title, Murray implies that it applies to the twentieth century. The sentiment is not true of either century according to the letters of immigrants such as Sir George Fowlds and Sir Donald McLean, among the many others who wrote encouraging responses to inquirers about life in New Zealand. Rollo Arnold has quoted the glowing accounts of immigrant workers in The Farthest Promised Land. The archives of the emigration societies are full of enthusiastic letters of immigrants, e.g., Ladies' Female Emigration Society, in the Fawcett Library in London.

As an immigrant, I never looked back, but my father did. Immigrant friends who were unhappy and critical of New Zealand went back to the United Kingdom, some for good. Others returned to New Zealand, having found that their world had moved on, and that they missed New Zealand. They had found a new identity. But does the fact that some immigrants were mistaken in their expectations of New Zealand and that it was for a few a place of enforced absence, validate the title of a work about nine New Zealand writers of the mid-twentieth century, suggesting that they were exiles, prisoners banished against their will? It is not even true of the pioneers. No convicts here.

The antecedents of the writers referred to in Never a Soul at Home are: Robin Hyde was born in South Africa but came to New Zealand as a baby; Ursula Bethell was born in England; Frank Sargeson and Eileen Duggan were first generation New Zealanders; John Mulgan and Denis Glover, second, and Allen Curnow, R. A. K. Mason and A. R. D. Fairburn, fourth. It is significant that Mason was described by Curnow as 'New Zealand's first wholly original, unmistakeably gifted poet'. He was a grandson of 1840s colonists. These writers were certainly not exiles. Nor were they settlers or colonists; New Zealand ceased to be a colony with dominion status in 1907 (even if some Brits haven't registered the change).

'The old destructive myths'

The explanation for Curnow's mythical exiles can be found in Heather Murray's review of Curnow's last published volume, The Bells of St Babel's: Poems 1997-2001, in which she says 'to read the new volume of poems is to be seized by the blackness and negativity of his vision', going on to note that 'the fondness of Curnow and the first generation of 'real' New Zealand writers to see the country falling short in every way when matched against the European homelands'. She ends her review with 'I no longer want to hear the old destructive myths. Allen Curnow may write all the books of verse he likes, but I am not listening any more'.

'When did you last go Home?'

The change in the climate of ideas includes the decline of the 'cultural cringe' referred to by Heather Murray, signified by the disappearance from the 1930s onwards of the expression 'Home' from common speech. A story went around the secondary schools in the 1950s about the visit of the vice-regal party to King's College in Auckland, where there were many teachers recruited from Britain. Part of the ritual was 'meeting the staff'. As the official party did the rounds of the room Lady Norrie asked each man in turn, 'Mr X., when did you last go Home?' The newcomer replied 'I went home for lunch ma'am!' This tale aroused roars of laughter in the common-rooms of other schools, where most of the staff were locally-born. As Bob Chapman used to say, 'another blow struck!'

'The end of colonial cringe'

Richard Mulgan (son of John, grandson of Alan) in his autobiographical essay Godwits Return, has this to say:

Few of my parent's generation, let alone my own, were at ease with the title of his [Alan's] book about his visit to Britain, Home: A Colonial's Adventure. But though their view of England might be less rose-tinted, it still held their attention. There was little doubt that London was the centre of our world in much the same way as it might be for someone living in Cornwall or the Hebrides.

He goes on to discuss his motives for returning to New Zealand and concludes:

As for the ongoing experiment of European settlement in New Zealand, much has happened in the last quarter-century and much of it for the better. True, we still underestimate our own abilities and accord excessive deference to overseas experts or the returning expatriate. Pakeha New Zealanders have had to face the growing recognition that the process of European colonisation which brought us here was unjust and indefensible. We also have to put up with being regularly told that we do not know who we are—a very mystifying claim. At least there can be no doubt that Pakeha New Zealanders are at home here and nowhere else [my emphasis]. More worrying is the erosion of those distinctive aspects of New Zealand life which made it seem fairer and more comfortable than life in Britain or the US. [19]

The last British settlement colony

Since New Zealand was the last British settlement colony, it is obvious that the end of immigrant dominance came much earlier in the Canadian and Australian colonies. The data shows that native-born Australia comprised 77 per cent of the population in 1898. In the case of Canada, the 'first British colony', 87 per cent were native-born in 1901 and 70 per cent in 1891. Hence the signs of nationalism emerged much sooner than in New Zealand.

Conclusion

New Zealanders were never 'exiles', nor are they 'colonials', 'colonists' or 'settlers'. This study shows that the 1930s was the decade in which 'New Zealanders' became New Zealanders unadorned. That decade was a prelude to the centennial when, to quote Vincent O'Sullivan's review, 'the official agenda… [was] the need of the country and its government to define themselves in a way that reflected a deep aspiration to be different, distinctive, more demonstrably independent than might have been thought possible until that magic figure of 100 rolled over'. The result of this was a different path, less oriented to Britain, and the creation of a national identity, that was present at least from the end of World War Two, despite the current use of the term as if it were new.

The consequences may be seen in the success of the Labour Party in 1935; the founding of the National Party in 1936; the New Education Fellowships Conference in 1937; the adoption of an independent foreign policy; the establishment of the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1941; the adoption of the Statute of Westminster, the founding of the national orchestra, the founding of the first Cambridge Summer School of Music in 1947, and, lost in the flood of novels, the end of the search for the Great New Zealand Novel. At the time of the centennial who could have thought that these might happen: the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, the National Youth Choir becoming Choir of the World; winning the America's Cup; The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature and its Companion. We can congratulate ourselves on how far we have come.

I do not dream of Sussex Downs,

or quaint old England's

quaint old towns—

I think of what may yet be seen

In Johnsonville or Geraldine. [20]

References:

[1] Fowlds, George, 'South African Reminiscences', listed in The Fowlds Papers: An Inventory of the Sir George Fowlds Collection , University of Auckland Library, Bibliographical Bulletin 2, 64. ref FP 7.

[2] Orsman, Elizabeth and Harry, The New Zealand Dictionary, New House Publishers, Takapuna, 1994, p. 181.

[3] Bloomfield, G. T., New Zealand: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, G. K. Hall, Boston, 1984.

[4] Stokes, Evelyn, 'The Traders', in New Zealand's Heritage, No. 14, Paul Hamlyn, Auckland, 1971, p. 388.

[5] Ballara, Angela, 'Patuone Eruera Maihi', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, URL: http://www.dnzb.govt.nz.

[6] Rogers, Frank, 'Ranulph Dacre and Patuone's Topknot', in Stout Centre Review, March 1995, pp. 13-18.

[7] Wigglesworth, R.P., 'The New Zealand Timber and Flax Trade 1769-1840', PhD thesis, Massey University, 1981; Belich, James, Making Peoples, Allen Lane, Auckland, 1996.

[8] New Zealand Official Year-Book 1902, Government Printer, Wellington, p. 228.

[9] Rogers, Frank, 'The Influence of Political Theories in the Liberal Period 1890-1912: Henry George and John Stuart Mill', in Chapman, Robert and Keith Sinclair, eds, Studies of a Small Democracy, Paul's Book Arcade for Auckland University, 1963, Auckland, pp. 173-4.

[10] Sinclair, Keith, Distance Looks Our Way, Paul's Book Arcade for Auckland University, 1961, Auckland, p. 43.

[11] Sinclair, Keith, A History of the University of Auckland 1883-1983, OUP/AUP, Auckland, 1983, chapter X.

[12] Ibid, pp. 176-7.

[13] Lilburn, Douglas G., A Search for Tradition. A Talk Given at the First Cambridge Summer School of Music, January 1946, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, 1984.

[14] Thomson, J. M., The Oxford History of New Zealand Music, OUP, Auckland, 1991, p. 232.

[15] Ibid, p. 274.

[16] Song of Islands, SLD 79 (LP), NZSO, conducted by John Hopkins.

[17] Renwick, William, 'Beeby, Clarence Edward', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, URL: http://www.dnzb.govt.nz.

[18] Curnow, Allen, Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems 1941-1997, AUP, Auckland, 1997, p. 234.

[19] Mulgan, Richard, 'Ending the Colonial Cringe', in Margaret Clark, ed., Godwits Return, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1992, pp. 91, 97-8.

[20] Glover, Denis, 'Home Thoughts' in The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, Penguin, Auckland, 1985, p. 211.