We feature each week Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books
“FAR FROM ‘HOME’ -
The English in New Zealand” edited by Lyndon Fraser and Angela McCarthy
(Otago University Press, $NZ45)
At all
times since New Zealand was first settled by Pakeha, the largest single group
of immigrants has been the English. But the very dominance of the English
strain in New Zealand has made it virtually invisible. If such a large portion
of the population are of English descent, then English-derived customs and
habits of thought are taken as the New Zealand norm, and therefore not worthy
of special study. Irish-, Scottish- and other-derived customs and habits of
thought are seen as deviations from this norm, and therefore of greater
historical interest. The English strain is merely part of the landscape.
Recently in
our universities there has been an upsurge of interest in our Celtic forebears.
History departments offer courses and papers in Irish and Scottish studies, and
many academics have contributed to these studies, including Lyndon Fraser and
Angela McCarthy. Fair enough. Older – and now superseded – history books tended
to be very Anglo-centric in the judgements they made, often conveying
uncritically ideas about English skills as colonisers and settlers in the
Wakefield and Canterbury myths. But perhaps the pendulum has swung a little too
far. Perhaps papers and monographs on West Coast Irish and Dunedin Scots have
begun to give the impression that these were the only interesting nineteenth
century immigrants to New Zealand. Maybe the time is right to say something,
with real documentation, about specifically English immigrants and their
experience.
This, at
any rate, appears to be the impulse behind
Far From ‘Home’, a collection
of eight academic essays by various hands. From different perspectives, the
essays look at the Englishness of immigrants between 1840 and the early
twentieth century with, in some cases, briefer afterthoughts on the situation
since then. In their introduction the editors make it plain that Far From ‘Home’ can hardly be the last
word on the topic. Among these essays there is, for example, no systematic
study of the religion that the English brought with them, unlike the way
migrant studies of the Scots or Irish inevitably discuss their Presbyterianism
and Catholicism.
As I see
it, the eight essays divide into two types – those that give the necessary
documentation on English migration in general; and those that offer some quirky
or individual perspective.
Take the
“necessary” essays first.
Stephen Constantine’s contribution “In Search of the English and Englishness” is the inevitable
demographic study making clear that of British emigrants to any part of the old empire, the majority
were always English rather than Scots or Irish, but that majority was never as
great a proportion of the total as the majority of English was in Britain
itself. For example, by 1901, and judging from their points of departure,
British immigrants to New Zealand were 54% English, 23% Scots,
21% Irish and 1% Welsh. In Britain itself, the English made up 74% of
the total population, the Irish and Scots about 11% each, and the Welsh 5%.
Even if the English were the largest group, therefore, New Zealand was
proportionately more Scots and Irish than Britain itself was. To compound this
fact, Constantine also notes that many immigrants listed as “English” in
demographic records were people of Irish and Scots parentage who had settled in
England only a short time before emigrating to New Zealand.
Constantine’s
study is empire-wide, and in discussing reasons for emigration it balances up
need (pauperism; poverty etc.) with inducements (the imperial power’s desire to
stock colonies with the British-born). In the matter of the ruling class in
colonies (governors, premiers etc.) Constantine concludes that there were more
English-born than Irish-born or Scots-born, but again English dominance was not
as overwhelming as it was in Britain itself. Most intriguingly, however,
Constantine considers the difficulties of defining “Englishness” in this
empire-wide context. It is reasonable to see the Anglican church as English,
but professing Anglicans were a minority in all major British dominions, and
were never the majority that the English-born were. Many English people were,
after all, Methodists, Baptists etc. Likewise, the playing of certain games
(rugby, cricket) and social class are useless as demographic markers of
“Englishness”. Judiciously, Constantine concludes:
“Englishness, like other expressions of
national identity in most peacetime circumstances, was usually a ‘soft’ force.
It rarely predominated over a sense of self, prompted social behaviour, defined
social interactions, determined a particular church allegiance, or constrained
cultural interactions with others from the United Kingdom….there was not, in
any case, a singular English identity, but many.” (Pg.38)
Marjory Harper’s “Everything is English” deals in detail
with how English immigrants were recruited, what areas of England they came
from, and the preconceptions they had about New Zealand (fear of “cannibal
islands” etc.). She considers such matters as how disappointed many were when
prospects in New Zealand were oversold to them. In her conclusion she notes
there was not one uniform system of emigration from England and she speaks of “the consistently contentious status of
agency activity, manifested in internal jealousies, external rivalries and the
complaints of disappointed immigrants.” (Pg.59)
The
contribution of Lachlan Paterson “Pakeha or
English?” raises the obvious question of whether the indigenous people saw
any difference between the various strands of British immigrants. Ingarangi (England) and Ingarihi (English) tended to be used by
Maori as synonyms for “Britain” and “British”. Drawing extensively on both
Maori-language and English-language nineteenth century newspapers, Paterson
argues that Maori also tended to see “English” and “Pakeha” as synonymous.
Because the English were numerically the largest immigrant group from Britain,
it was predominantly their culture which became the Pakeha norm in Maori eyes.
As for the
perspective of English immigrants themselves, David Pearson’s “Arcadia
Reinvented?” differs from other essays in this book by being based on the
twentieth century experience of living witnesses. Drawing on 82 long interviews
with English immigrants who arrived between 1953 and 2007, Pearson attempts to
reconstruct their attitudes and reasons for coming to New Zealand, and their
attitudes towards both New Zealand and Britain after they had put down roots
here. He sees some differences in attitudes between pre-1980s and post-1980s
migrants.
Thus far
for the sensible, inevitable and “necessary” essays in a collection of this
sort – an essay on demographics; an essay on how English immigrants were
recruited; an essay on Maori understanding of immigrants; and an essay on
English immigrants’ self-understanding. As source material they are valuable,
but I admit to finding the remaining essays in the book – namely those that
take a more unexpected aspect of the English influence – to be more readable
and entertaining.
Greg Ryan’s essay “ ‘Burton ale’, London Porter and Kentish Hops” concerns the
production of beer and beer-drinking habits in New Zealand. Most beer consumed
here was imported from England until the mid-19th century. Ryan
recounts such bizarre tales as brewers of inferior local beer in Dunedin
seeking out empty bottles from England so that they could palm off their
inferior local product as the real English thing. From his account it is clear
that New Zealand-brewed beers were regarded as much inferior to imported
English varieties right into early 20th century and only gradually
was a distinctive New Zealand beer standard established.
Angela McCarthy’s “Migration and Ethnicity among English Migrants in New Zealand Asylums”
notes that while the English made up the largest group of inmates, they were not as over-represented in
New Zealand psychiatric institutions as the Irish were. Her speculation on why
this should have been so suggests how the “scientific racism” of
superintendents’ notes on patients did not apply to English patients, whose
ethnicity was not commented upon. In other words, English aberrations and
eccentricities could be accepted as “normal”. Irish (and other ethnic)
eccentricities and aberrations would be regarded as dangerous mental ailments.
Lyndon Fraser’s “Memory, Mourning and Melancholy” concerns English attitudes to
death and funerary customs as revealed in New Zealand cemeteries and other
records. It is more diffuse and, dare I say it, more entertaining than some
more tightly-structured essays in this volume. Fraser says much of his material
comes from records in the more “English” settlements of Canterbury and Nelson,
but he also quotes extensively from English imaginative literature. He
considers the extent to which middle-class and upper-class funerals had been
commercialised and become ostentatious in the nineteenth century, in a way that
was often ridiculed by writers like Dickens and Emily Bronte; and that was
later frowned upon in New Zealand.
He
considers the frequency of child mortality (“Death tracked birth like a bloodhound in the nineteenth century and, as
the Christchurch registers show, exacted a terrible toll on infants and young
children.” Pg.115 ). To his immense credit, Fraser enters into the spirit
of the age he is writing about, and deals respectfully with the words of
comfort – which can seem sentimental to us – which grieving parents had
engraved on the tombstones of children. He also notes the real comforts of
religion which nineteenth century mourners were given. In nineteenth-century
New Zealand there was the habit, inherited from England, of carving up
municipal cemeteries into denominational plots.
There is a
bizarre side to Fraser’s chapter when he deals with funerary portraits,
trinkets, mementi mori and other
keepsakes of the dead. Even more bizarre are his comments on the dangers of
burial at sea for immigrants en route
to New Zealand (sharks were likely to feed on “buried” corpses descending
through the briny).
If this
chapter has a weakness, as far as the overall theme of the volume is concerned,
it is a failure to point up the Englishness of it all by showing how these
English mortuary practices differed from those of the Irish and the Scots.
The final
essay, Janet Wilson’s “ The ‘New Chum’ ”, examines “Writings of the English Diaspora in New
Zealand 1860-1914”. It marches through that New Zealand-English poetry
which is no longer esteemed (Alfred Domett attempting to transpose
Victorianisms into heroic epic by the use of Maori names); and that which is
still esteemed (Blanche Baughan). It does the same with novels and prose from
Butler’s Erewhon, and the works of
Lady Barker to Satchell’s The Greenstone
Door. In each case, Wilson considers how much these writers expressed a
certain dislocation in adjusting to a radically different climate and
landscape, and how much they attempted to depict New Zealand according to
established English literary norms.
Wilson’s
judgements are very much those of the current lit-crit “revisionism” (as in
Stafford and Williams’ Maoriland)
which refuses to see authentic New Zealand literature as beginning only in the
1930s, and which sees much literary merit in those colonial perspectives that were
once regarded as passé. In other words, Wilson does not accept the
“nationalist” idea of New Zealand literature which saw it as becoming more
“authentic” the further it got from the colonial era. She posits that our
literature will always to some extent be connected with that of Britain and
ends with comments on the (New
Zealand-born, English-resident) Fleur Adcock; and (English-born, New
Zealand-resident) Peter Bland.
As you can
see from these extensive comments, I have retreated into my common trick of
summarising this book’s contents without passing too much judgement upon them.
Of course Far From ‘Home’ will be a
great source-book for researchers and other historians. Of course not all the
essays are written with the same panache and style.
Only two
other comments need be made.
First, I am
still a little uneasy about the use of the term “diaspora” (“scattering” or
“dispersal”), which is justified in the editor’s introduction and which is most
clearly explained in Janet Wilson’s essay, where she says “migration” suggests
going from one culture to another whereas “diaspora” suggests taking your
culture with you and trying to implant it. Very well. I accept that in this
sense the term can be justified of English emigrants. Nevertheless, ‘diaspora’
is still most commonly used for forced migration (as in the Jewish
diaspora after the destruction of the second temple; or the Irish diaspora
after the famine). I think it remains an inappropriate term for an English
migration that was largely voluntary. To overuse the word is to drain it of any
real meaning.
Second,
while some essays in this book do raise the problem of defining “Englishness”,
I am not satisfied that all essays really tell us how distinctive English
immigration to New Zealand was from Scots or Irish migration. As with the
matter of English religious practice, this could mean that there is much more
study yet to be done on this topic.
