Unpacking the Kists: The Scots in New Zealand 9780773589773

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Unpacking the Kists

McG i l l - Qu e e n ’s S t u di es i n Et hn ic H is to ry Se ri e s O n e  Don al d H a r ma n A k en s o n , Ed ito r   1 Irish Migrants in the Canadas A New Approach Bruce S. Elliott (Second edition, 2004)   2 Critical Years in Immigration Canada and Australia Compared Freda Hawkins (Second edition, 1991)   3 Italians in Toronto Development of a National Identity, 1875–1935 John E. Zucchi   4 Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs Essays in Honour of the Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Kr. Barons Vaira Vikis-Freibergs   5 Johan Schroder’s Travels in Canada, 1863 Orm Overland   6 Class, Ethnicity, and Social Inequality Christopher McAll   7 The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars James Belich   8 White Canada Forever Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia W. Peter Ward (Third edition, 2002)   9 The People of Glengarry Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820 Marianne McLean

10 Vancouver’s Chinatown Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980 Kay J. Anderson 11 Best Left as Indians Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973 Ken Coates 12 Such Hardworking People Italian Immigrants in Postwar Toronto Franca Iacovetta 13 The Little Slaves of the Harp Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York John E. Zucchi 14 The Light of Nature and the Law of God Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877 Allen P. Stouffer 15 Drum Songs Glimpses of Dene History Kerry Abel 16

Louis Rosenberg Canada’s Jews (Reprint of 1939 original) Edited by Morton Weinfeld

17 A New Lease on Life Landlords, Tenants, and Immigrants in Ireland and Canada Catharine Anne Wilson 18 In Search of Paradise The Odyssey of an Italian Family Susan Gabori 19 Ethnicity in the Mainstream Three Studies of English Canadian Culture in Ontario Pauline Greenhill

20 Patriots and Proletarians The Politicization of Hungarian Immigrants in Canada, 1923–1939 Carmela Patrias 21 The Four Quarters of the Night The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh Tara Singh Bains and Hugh Johnston 22 Cultural Power, Resistance, and Pluralism Colonial Guyana, 1838–1900 Brian L. Moore

23 Search Out the Land The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867 Sheldon J. Godfrey and Judith C. Godfrey 24 The Development of Elites in Acadian New Brunswick, 1861–1881 Sheila M. Andrew 25 Journey to Vaja Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family Elaine Kalman Naves

McGi l l - Qu e e n ’s S t u di es i n Et hn ic H is to ry Se ri e s Two  J ohn Z u c c h i, Ed ito r   1 Inside Ethnic Families Three Generations of Portuguese-Canadians Edite Noivo

  8 Brigh an Orain / A Story in Every Song The Songs and Tales of Lauchie MacLellan Translated and edited by John Shaw

  2 A House of Words Jewish Writing, Identity, and Memory Norman Ravvin

  9 Demography, State and Society Irish Migration to Britain, 1921–1971 Enda Delaney

  3 Oatmeal and the Catechism Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec Margaret Bennett

10 The West Indians of Costa Rica Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority Ronald N. Harpelle

  4 With Scarcely a Ripple Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880–1920 Randy William Widdis   5 Creating Societies Immigrant Lives in Canada Dirk Hoerder   6 Social Discredit Anti-Semitism, Social Credit, and the Jewish Response Janine Stingel   7 Coalescence of Styles The Ethnic Heritage of St John River Valley Regional Furniture, 1763–1851 Jane L. Cook

11 Canada and the Ukrainian Question, 1939–1945 Bohdan S. Kordan 12 Tortillas and Tomatoes Transmigrant Mexican Harvesters in Canada Tanya Basok 13 Old and New World Highland Bagpiping John G. Gibson 14 Nationalism from the Margins The Negotiation of Nationalism and Ethnic Identities among Italian Immigrants in Alberta and British Columbia Patricia Wood

15 Colonization and Community The Vancouver Island Coalfield and the Making of the British Columbia Working Class John Douglas Belshaw 16 Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War Internment in Canada during the Great War Bohdan S. Kordan 17 Like Our Mountains A History of Armenians in Canada Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill 18 Exiles and Islanders The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island Brendan O’Grady 19

Ethnic Relations in Canada Institutional Dynamics Raymond Breton Edited by Jeffrey G. Reitz

20 A Kingdom of the Mind The Scots’ Impact on the Development of Canada Edited by Peter Rider and Heather McNabb 21 Vikings to U-Boats The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador Gerhard P. Bassler 22 Being Arab Ethnic and Religious Identity Building among Second Generation Youth in Montreal Paul Eid 23 From Peasants to Labourers Ukrainian and Belarusan Immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada Vadim Kukushkin 24 Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities Migration to Upper Canada in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Elizabeth Jane Errington

25 Jerusalem on the Amur Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924–1951 Henry Felix Srebrnik 26 Irish Nationalism in Canada Edited by David A. Wilson 27 Managing the Canadian Mosaic in Wartime Shaping Citizenship Policy, 1939–1945 Ivana Caccia 28 Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905–1945 Rebecca Margolis 29 Imposing Their Will An Organizational History of Jewish Toronto, 1933–1948 Jack Lipinsky 30 Ireland, Sweden, and the Great European Migration, 1815–1914 Donald H. Akenson 31 The Punjabis in British Columbia Location, Labour, First Nations, and Multiculturalism Kamala Elizabeth Nayar 32 Growing Up Canadian Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists Edited by Peter Beyer and Rubina Ramji 33 Between Raid and Rebellion The Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1867–1916 William Jenkins 34 Unpacking the Kists The Scots in New Zealand Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking, and Jim McAloon



Unpacking the Kists The Scots in New Zealand

Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking, and Jim M c Aloon with Rebecca Lenihan and Tanja Bueltmann

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca Otago University Press Dunedin, New Zealand



© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2013 ISBN 978-0-7735-4190-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7735-8977-3 (ePDF) ISBN 978-0-7735-8978-0 (ePUB) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2013 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% postconsumer recycled), processed chlorine free Published simultaneously in New Zealand and Australia by Otago University Press. ISBN 978-1-877578-67-0 A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand. This book has been published with financial assistance from the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund. Grants have also been received from Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Otago. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Patterson, Brad, author   Unpacking the kists : the Scots in New Zealand / Brad Patterson, Tom Brooking and Jim McAloon, with Rebecca Lenihan and Tanja Bueltmann. (McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series two ; 34) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-7735-4190-0 (bound). – ISBN 978-0-7735-8977-3 (ePDF). – ISBN 978-0-7735-8978-0 (ePUB)   1. Scots – New Zealand – History.  2. Scotland – Emigration and immigration – History.  3. New Zealand – Emigration and immigration – History.  I. Brooking, Tom, 1949–, author  II. McAloon, Jim, author  III. Bueltmann, Tanja, 1979–, author IV. Lenihan, Rebecca, author  V. Title.  VI. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in ethnic history. Series two ; 34. DU424.5.S3P38 2013 993.004’9163 C2013-903713-6 C2013-903714-4 Typeset by Jay Tee Graphics Ltd. in 10.5/13 Sabon

Contents

Tables, Figures, and Maps  ix Acknowledgments xiii Preface xvii 1 Taking Stock: New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants  3 2 Distinguishing Former Worlds: Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants? 21 3 Diaspora or Dispersion? Scottish Settlement Patterns in New Zealand 56 4 Success in a Settler Society: The Scots in New Zealand Economic Life 84 5 Building New Worlds: Scottish Contributions to New Zealand Civil Society  116 6 Transforming the Landscape: Scots and the New Zealand Environment 144 7 “Brither Scots Shoulder tae Shoulder”: Scottish Associational Culture in New Zealand  173 8 Hearth and Home: Cultural Traditions, Old World Customs, and New World Habits  197 9 Occupying the Non-Working Hours: Piety, Leisure, and Discourse 224 10 New Zealand’s Place in the Scottish Diaspora and Settler Worlds 255 Notes 283 Selected Bibliography  335 Index   381

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Tables, Figures, and Maps

Tables 2.1  Proportion of New Zealand immigrants from each region of Scotland with indices of representation based on the Scottish population distribution in 1871  25 2.2 Indices of representation relating county of birth of NZSG Scottish emigrants to NZ by period of arrival to the population of Scotland in those counties at the relevant censuses  28 2.3 New Zealand Scots immigrant age statistics  40 2.4 Showing the proportion of the Scottish population and of the NZSG migrants married or single  43 2.5 Showing the proportion of children who were male and the ratio of female children to every 100 male children in the home population and the NZSG data, from each region of Scotland  44 2.6 Showing the ratio of female to male children and the proportion of children who were in the NZSG data and at the 1878 Census by New Zealand province  46 2.7 Proportion of the occupied population of Scotland employed in each sector  49 2.8 Occupational mobility within individual lifetimes: proportion of migrants in each occupational sector of Scotland by subsequent sector in New Zealand  51 2.9 Change subsequent to emigration to New Zealand: proportion of New Zealand Occupation 1 sector totals engaged in by migrants in New Zealand Occupation 2  53 3.1 Numbers recording Scotland as their place of birth in the mid- and late-nineteenth century census returns  58 4.1 Occupational categories, New Zealand: Scots and English  108

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Tables, Figures, and Maps

4.2 Major occupational categories, Auckland: Scots and English  108 4.3 Major occupational categories, Taranaki-Hawke’s Bay: Scots and English 109 4.4 Major occupational categories, Wellington: Scots and English  109 4.5 Major occupational categories, Nelson-Marlborough-West Coast: Scots and English  110 4.6 Major occupational categories, Canterbury: Scots and English 110 4.7 Major occupational categories, Otago: Scots and English  110 4.8 Major urban occupational groups, New Zealand: Scots and English 111 4.9 Major urban occupational groups, Otago: Scots and English  111 4.10 Manufacturers, New Zealand: Scots and English  111 4.11 Occupations of women listed in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Scots and English  113 4.12 Marital connections, Scots and English  113 4.13 Men and women from Scottish counties most likely to marry within same county  113 4.14 Men and women from English counties most likely to marry within same county  114

Figures 2.1 Distribution over time of migrant arrivals 1840–1920  24 2.2 Showing the proportion of the adult population of Scotland, of New Zealand and of Scottish emigrants to New Zealand who were single, married, or widowed  41 3.1 Provincial distribution of the Scots-born population of New Zealand between 1871 and 1911  60 3.2 Distribution of the Scottish regional origins of migrants in New Zealand’s five principal provinces  63 7.1 Phases of the Scottish associational culture and foundation patterns of Caledonian societies  176 7.2 Attendance estimates for Timaru Caledonian Games, 1876–1900 185 7.3 Pringle brothers’ network  195



Tables, Figures, and Maps

xi

Maps 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3

Counties of Scotland to 1890  27 The regions of Scotland  31 The provinces of New Zealand  57 The counties of New Zealand at 1876  65 Distribution of Scotland-born population of New Zealand at 1916 Census 67 7.1 Caledonian Games locations in South Canterbury and North Otago 188

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Acknowledgments

Having researched and written this book over more than seven years, a host of debts have accumulated, far more than it is possible to acknowledge in a short note. Over that time the project team has been a tight one. While the names of the survivors are recorded on the title page, the contributions of a number of other individuals must be noted. Angela McCarthy’s involvement with the project, a little more than a year, was unfortunately short. Rosalind McClean participated fully until compelled to withdraw at a late stage for personal reasons. Her critiques throughout were thoughtful, and the book’s title was her suggestion. Gerard Horn, who was pursuing research on a parallel project, New Zealand’s Irish Protestants, offered valuable comparative insights and was a full team member from 2006. Three other post-graduate students assisted greatly through their linked research projects: Kim Sullivan, Jill Harland, and Debra Powell. Don MacRaild, while not officially a team member, was a constant source of support and encouragement during his time at Victoria University of Wellington, and this generously continued after his return to posts in the United Kingdom. Vincent O’Sullivan regularly offered wise counsel, especially when the research proposal was being prepared. It is appropriate, too, to record with appreciation the vision of Stuart McCutcheon, Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University of Wellington (2001–04), without whose backing the University’s Irish-Scottish Programme would never have been established and the subsequent research proposal on the New Zealand Scots formulated. Without the generous support of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund the project would not have proceeded. The team extends its thanks to the panel who positively assessed the proposal, to the anonymous referees who offered valuable comment,

xiv Acknowledgments

and to the Marsden Fund Council, who made a substantial award in 2004. Dealings with the Fund’s staff have been invariably helpful and cordial. It is incumbent on the authors to also note the helpfulness of the staff of Viclink, especially Paul Froggatt, in preparing the funding application, and later the advice of Jeannette Vine of the Victoria University Research Office when it became necessary to surmount administrative impediments. The material for the study has been collected from a very large number of institutions and individuals, both in New Zealand and overseas. Beyond the major repositories, team members have been welcomed and assisted in smaller centre libraries and museums, while there have been many encouraging responses from individuals to appeals for information. Even if the thanks must be combined, our appreciation is immense. In developing a statistical profile of Scottish migration to New Zealand two particular gestures were fundamental to the results presented here. In 2005, the then-chair of the Scottish Special Interest Group of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, Moira Neal, with the agreement of her executive, made available to the team a full microfiche set of the individual returns for the Group’s Register of Scottish Immigrants to 1921. For the duration of the project the team continued to receive enthusiastic support from NZSG members. Also in 2005, Jock Phillips (Ministry of Culture and Heritage) generously agreed to, then organized, access to the raw data for the ministry’s “Peopling of New Zealand” project. He and his collaborator Terry Hearn later freely answered questions and offered methodological advice. Dr Phillips continued to actively back the project to its conclusion. From the outset there was a close association with the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. When the project was first mooted the Centre’s then-director, Tom Devine, lent full support to the funding application, then offered sage counsel in the formative stages. With the project underway Devine’s successor in 2005, Cairns Craig, developed the relationship, fostering a more active partnership. This included hosting research students, organizing joint conferences, and collaborating on publications. It is hoped the returns were mutual. The Centre’s late George Watson provided friendly encouragement, while Marjory Harper, of Aberdeen’s School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, was associated with the project from the beginning, assisting research students and visiting New Zealand on several occasions. John MacKenzie, a



Acknowledgments xv

leading member of the Centre’s Advisory Board, was a further constant influence, also visiting New Zealand and offering assistance in a range of ways. For the greater part of its existence the research team was administratively based in Victoria University of Wellington’s Irish-Scottish Studies Programme, a research unit of the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies. Particular thanks must be extended to the successive administrators of the Programme, whose willingness to assume a multiplicity of tasks greatly assisted the research (and eased the mind of the director): Karen Cheer, Megan Simpson, and Judy McKoy. Maureen West, although employed elsewhere in the Centre, rendered conspicuous support. A succession of Stout Centre administrators cheerfully provided aid when needed, in particular Katherine Meachem, Sarelle Reid, and especially Louise Grenside. Senior Stout colleagues Lydia Wevers and Richard Hill acted as willing sounding boards, providing encouragement when difficulties were encountered, especially in the later stages of the project. From time to time administrative staff at the University of Otago and Lincoln University also provided appreciated aid. In the course of such an extended exercise numerous friends and colleagues have been liberal with their time and expertise, sharing experiences and offering suggestions. Internationally these have included: Donald Harman Akenson, Stewart Gill, Graeme Morton, Malcolm Prentis, Lindsay Proudfoot, Eric Richards, Michael Vance and David Wilson. In New Zealand, among those to share knowledge have been: James Beattie, Seàn Brosnahan, Warwick Brunton, Lyndon Fraser, Hugh Laracy, Kirstine Moffat, Greg Ryan, Claire Toynbee, and David Young. Although the contact has been less immediate, there are those, including many thesis writers mentioned in the notes and bibliography, whose work has provided insights and inspiration. To the fore among these have been Alison Clarke, Maureen Molloy, and Robert Peden. Finally, we thank members of the New Zealand Scottish community, whose enthusiasm has been infectious. While it is perhaps invidious to list names, prominent in this support group have been Jessie Annabell, George Baird, Edith Campbell, Bruce Cameron, the late Neil Corballis, Maisie Earle, Ewen and Roz Grant, and Geraldene O’Reilly. The team would also like to express its thanks to Kathryn ­Patterson, a long-term background supporter of the project, who has devoted many hours in the final stages to assist in bringing the

xvi Acknowledgments

manuscript for this book to a point of submission readiness. Our thanks also to Donald Harman Akenson, Ryan Van Huijstee, Jessica Howarth, and the staff of McGill-Queen’s University Press for their advice and assistance in turning the manuscript into print. Gillian Scobie diligently undertook the copyediting, contributing greatly to imposing a single authorial voice on the co-authored study. Kathryn Patterson co-ordinated compilation of the index. Finally, the team records its gratitude to Victoria University of Wellington and to the University of Otago for contributions to the costs of publication.

Preface

The concept of the present study was first canvassed at a New Zealand conference held in October 2002, Celtic Connections: IrishScottish Studies Down Under, an initiative by Victoria University of Wellington’s newly established Irish-Scottish Studies Programme, in association with scholars from the University of Melbourne. What the conference sought to establish, beyond existing knowledge, was the extent and depth of contemporary research on the Irish and Scots as distinct migrant groups in Australia and New Zealand. It was already apparent that academic interest in the Irish was flourishing on both sides of the Tasman Sea, but the Scots’ position was far less clear. It was suspected that inquiry there had been considerably less active and the response to a call for papers bore this out. More papers on the Irish were offered than the conference could equitably accommodate, whereas contributions on the Scots were principally the outcome of personal approaches and invitations. The hope that the conference might flush out previously unsuspected research was scarcely fulfilled. Of the thirty papers presented, only ten were of Scottish concern, with five from New Zealand-domiciled scholars. The observation from an invited keynote speaker, Tom Brooking, that “emphasis upon New Zealand’s Irish heritage over the Scottish... [was] ... counter historical,” given Scots had always outnumbered the Irish, and “that Scots made distinctive and special contributions to New Zealand’s economic, political and cultural life,” contributions which nevertheless needed to be contrasted with those in other former settler colonies, amounted to a call to arms.1 It was agreed in plenary sessions that some form of academic affirmative action was required. The greatest perceived need was for a soundly researched overview of Scottish migration to New Zealand, one that might balance the work already produced on Irish inflows into the country.

xviii Preface

Through 2003 a small group of interested New Zealand-based scholars, all participants in the Celtic Connections conference, met regularly, with the objective of initiating a major new research project on the New Zealand Scots to help accurately determine the dimensions and patterns of migration from Scotland and assess the long-term impacts. There were two early organizational decisions: the first, that it was desirable that any investigation of the scale envisaged be a team project, thus enabling wider coverage and securing complementary research interests and skills; the second, that every attempt should be made to engage with other historians of the Scottish diaspora, especially with historians in Scotland itself. To act on this second decision, in late 2003 Brad Patterson, director of Victoria University’s Irish-Scottish Studies Programme, visited the University of Aberdeen’s Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, also host of the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, for discussions, and secured an enthusiastic pledge of support for the project. Thus encouraged, in early 2004 the initiating group applied to the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund for substantial financial backing, and were notified of their success in September of that year. The initial funding was for three years, with a possibility of an extension. The project was to be administratively based in Victoria University’s Irish-Scottish Studies Programme. The initial research team included scholars from four New Zealand universities: Brad Patterson (Victoria University of Wellington); Tom Brooking (University of Otago); Jim McAloon (Lincoln University); and Rosalind McClean (University of Waikato). Three associate investigators were based at the University of Aberdeen: Tom Devine, Marjory Harper, and Angela McCarthy. Launched in January 2005, the “Scottish Migration to New Zealand” project continued until early 2010, when funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand ceased. During that time the composition of the research team underwent several important changes. Two of the initial members (Angela McCarthy and Rosalind McClean) found it necessary to withdraw, and it became evident that the roles of the Scotland-based members would be primarily advisory. Any consequent diminution of research capacity, however, was offset by a far stronger involvement of senior research students than had been ­ ealand team memoriginally conceived, and by the remaining New Z bers accepting enhanced responsibilities. Whereas the initial project proposal had provided for the ­recruitment of a single ­doctoral



Preface xix

c­ andidate who would accept responsibility for preparing the projected statistical profiles, ultimately four were directly engaged in project-related research (Rebecca Lenihan, Tanja ­Bueltmann, Kim Sullivan, and Jill Harland), while a fifth (Gerard Horn) worked on what proved to be an invaluable comparative study of Irish Protestant migrants, many of whom were Ulster Scots. In addition, the project supported several masters students. These post-graduate studies have greatly contributed to the overall project. In two instances they are reflected in acknowledged joint authorship of parts of the present volume. Equally, the change of roles in Scotland strengthened, rather than weakened, Aberdeen’s partnership with the New Zealand research team. When Cairns Craig succeeded Tom Devine as director of the AHRC Centre he was generously supportive of the project. Liaison with the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies was ongoing throughout. At various times the Centre hosted four of the New Zealand doctoral candidates on extended research visits. In addition, the Aberdeen Centre and Victoria University’s Irish-Scottish Studies Programme co-hosted two international conferences in Wellington, in 2006 and 2008, the former also underwriting the participation of New Zealand researchers at other international gatherings.2 It is fair to claim that the relatively modest number of prospective outputs put forward in 2004 has been substantially exceeded. In its final report to the Royal Society of New Zealand the team recorded nearly 200 outputs: published chapters and journal articles, conference papers, addresses, and public talks. Research generated by the project has been presented in several special issues of scholarly journals. Team members have contributed to radio and television discussions (including a BBC Scotland presentation), while support was afforded the National Museum of New Zealand: Te Papa Tongarewa’s 2007 exhibition “The Scots in New Zealand.” One hope expressed at the outset was that the project might lead to individual team members producing supporting specialist monographs and other associated publications. One monograph has already appeared, several others are being prepared, and a collection of methodological essays on ethnic counting was published in 2012.3 This volume, then, rather than the sum total, should be regarded as the synoptic overview of the exercise. It is from the accumulated store of knowledge that the findings in the following chapters are drawn.

xx Preface

Angela McCarthy’s Scottishness and Irishness in New Zealand since 1840 (2011) appeared only when the present volume was at an advanced draft stage. This accounts for any apparent failure to directly engage with that study or its arguments. Relevant earlier publications by McCarthy are nevertheless cited in several chapters. More pertinently, although apparently covering some common ground, the two studies are very different, both in their interpretations and in the sources employed. Focusing particularly on how the New Zealand Scots (and Irish) perceived themselves, on their distinctive expressions of identity, McCarthy overtly adopts a more literary and cultural history approach. She engages with personal testimonies, print material, and visual representations, among others, to highlight the perpetuation of Highland identity. The present study relies more strongly on hard data in its attempt to reliably establish the dimensions of Scottish migration to New Zealand, and to document how the migrants coped in their new environment, with particular emphasis on the experiences of the Lowlands Scots. Its stress is on adaptation rather than stasis. The two studies, with their differing emphases, should be regarded as complementary, together offering new insights into the lives and conditions of New Zealand’s migrant Scots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A corollary of the early decision to have a team undertake the present study was agreement that the resulting book would be jointly authored. The approach adopted has been that each team member would assume primary responsibility for preparing a draft chapter or chapters, which were then circulated for comment and criticism, with discussion at scheduled team meetings. In no way can the chapters be considered a collection of independently authored essays. Each has passed through several hands and been extensively revised as a result of wider input. In this way the volume is genuinely a joint effort. Primary responsibility for the preparation of the chapters was distributed as follows: Brad Patterson (Chapters 1, 8, and 9); Tom Brooking (Chapters 6 and 10); Jim McAloon (Chapters 4 and 5); Rebecca Lenihan (Chapters 2 and 3); and Tanja Bueltmann (Chapter 7). Brad Patterson was allotted the responsibility for coordinating the writing phase and preparing the final manuscript.

unpacking the kists

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1 Taking Stock: New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

When curators of the National Museum of Scotland were invited to prepare a travelling exhibition to mark the opening of the Centre for Scottish Studies at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University in 1998, the theme chosen was “The Emigrant’s Kist.”1 The centrepiece of the exhibition was a simple pine chest (or kist), the kind that accompanied Scottish individuals and families when embarking on new lives, filled with the kinds of belongings they would have taken with them. This nineteenth-century kist included mainly practical items: axes, a chisel, a cooking pot, and wooden plates, as well as items of sentimental value such as letters, framed pictures, a christening robe, a heart-shaped broach, and the indispensable Gaelic bible. Symbolically, the kist contained not only the basic things needed for everyday living, but also heirlooms imbued with memory and the migrants’ Scottishness. It was not just for Canada, of course, that the Scots migrants embarked. Even by the early nineteenth century, few countries had as strong a migration tradition. It is conservatively estimated that between 1825 and 1938 over 2.3 million people left Scotland for overseas destinations.2 Whether travelling cabin or steerage, what remained of their worldly possessions went with them in kists, the number and sophistication of construction determined by family size and passenger status. But the baggage the emigrants carried with them was not just confined to what they stowed in the holds. They also brought less tangible possessions: customs and traditions, inherited folkways and folklore, their religion, and the gifts of language and literature. And not least, ingrained attitudes, preconceptions, and prejudices, transported in kists of the mind. In the 1840s the passage from Scotland to New Zealand could take up to five months by sail. By the end of the 1920s, with ­steamships,

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Unpacking the Kists

it could take as many weeks. Even so, it has been estimated that between 1840 and 1936, about 117, 000 Scots made the journey.3 What did these emigrants bring with them to their new homeland? What did they contribute to an evolving society and culture? In short, how comprehensively were their kists unpacked? A good deal, some have argued. In the first volume of his history of New Zealand, published in 1996, James Belich claims that New Zealand in the nineteenth century was twice as Scottish as the British Isles. This had its effect on P ¯akeh ¯a (European) culture.4 Five years later, in his second volume, Belich is even more emphatic. New Zealand, he states, became “the neo-Scotland.”5 Belich’s case, while perceptive and convincingly presented, was nevertheless a bold one, since it was based on impressions and evidential fragments rather than the fruits of extended research. Ironically, although Scots accounted for up to a quarter of all migrants to New Zealand from the British Isles to the early 1920s, they have been the least studied of the country’s major ethnic minorities. Before Belich, general histories of New Zealand paid little attention to the Scots’ characteristics and contributions. In the most celebrated of the short histories, Keith Sinclair’s 1959 Penguin History of New Zealand, the Scots failed to rate even an index reference.6 Scholarly overviews of immigration and New Zealand’s migrant groups were similarly mute, the usual recourse being to several “popular” studies, each heavy on stereotypes, anecdotes, and myths.7 Almost the only New Zealand Scottish settlement to attract more than passing interest specifically for its Scottishness, Waipu, in the north of the North Island, was notable more for its atypicality than as a case study of Scottish new-world adaptation.8 Studies of Otago, celebrated as the New Zealand Scottish heartland, had focused more on the province’s character as a “special” New Zealand Company settlement than on the origins of the settlers.9 Beyond several notable theses, odd snippets in regional histories, and occasional vignettes in works of economic and social history, the experiences and contributions of the New Zealand Scots remained unassessed.

Studying New Zealand’s Scots: The Background As it entered the twentieth century, New Zealand was still a nation of immigrants in many respects. As a site of European settlement it was still young, the founding years still within the memories of at



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

5

least a few. Not including the indigenous M ¯aori, the overseas-born outnumbered the local-born until the mid-1880s. Even in 1901, over one-third of New Zealand’s P ¯akeh ¯a residents had been born beyond its shores. From 1840 England was the primary source of migrants, but Scotland was in clear second place as a supplier of bodies.10 Ireland was more erratic as a migrant source and Welsh migration was minuscule. Migration from “home” was thus made up of several clearly differentiated strands. Moreover, it is evident from contemporary publications and private papers that these were not displaced persons, refugees ready to discard their identities. Despite the claims of their pietistic distant antipodean descendants, New Zealand accommodated few Famine Irish or Cleared Crofters. The first echelons of migrants, no less than their direct descendants, clung to their Englishness, Scottishness, or Irishness, and, if for ¯ identities differentiated only a few, their Welshness. Just as M aori between iwi and hapu (roughly translated as tribes and sub-tribes), Geordies, Cornishmen, and Cockneys knew they were different, as all were from the genteel émigrés from the Home Counties. Equally, there were clear divisions between Kerry Catholics, Antrim Protestants, and Dublin Anglos, and between Highland and Lowland Scots, those from Shetland and Orkney, and folk from the Borders. And yet, within three to four generations, the differences for most had become blurred, though not for all: Irish Catholics, bolstered by separate church and schools, more or less held on to their culture ¯ of mixed heritand traditions. Less obviously, with many M aori age, respect for whakapapa (genealogy) extended to their P akeh  ¯ a¯ as well as indigenous ancestry. However, as Phillips and Hearn have recently pointed out, for most of the twentieth century a majority of the descendants of the earlier migrants from “the Atlantic archipelago” exhibited a form of historical amnesia, effectively becoming people without clear pasts.11 Why did they forget their pasts?12 It is likely that the sheer distance from home made maintaining contact with relatives and friends in the countries of origin more difficult. Many months could elapse between the dispatch of letters and the receipt of replies. Inevitably, communications became more erratic as time passed, and until well into the twentieth century it was only a small elite who had either the ability or the inclination to make return visits. Most settlers, of whatever origin, were more preoccupied with making livings in the new country, providing for growing families, and just getting

6

Unpacking the Kists

on, than they were with clinging to memories and the ways of the old world. These sentiments likely strengthened with each generation. Moreover, even before 1900 there were political elements advocating the building of a new nation, one governed in the interests of those prepared to stay and commit. Perhaps most important of all, as migrants from the various parts of Great Britain and Ireland intermingled, intermarried, and their cultures blended, age-old distinctions tended to first diminish, then in many instances to practically disappear. In a sense, by 1900 P ¯akeh ¯a New Zealanders were becoming “British” in a way that the inhabitants of the British Isles never could because, from the second generation on, the reality was that their lands of origin became an idea rather than a memory. Consequently, for much of the twentieth century, except in time of war, New Zealanders showed little interest in their ethnic origins, opting instead for a hybrid “New Zealand–British” identity.13 This is not to suggest that some of the traits migrants brought with them were not still there, just that they were buried beneath the surface. Scholarly interest in the ethnic origins of New Zealand’s P ¯akeh ¯a migrants was not fully rekindled until the 1980s.14 But there had been popular stirrings earlier, an upsurge in interest in family history mirroring similar trends in other new-world migrant destinations. Enjoying greater leisure time, a surprising number of educated New Zealanders embarked on a relentless pursuit of their forbears. Their enthusiasm was ultimately to have unexpected ramifications. This local development paralleled developing international academic interest in migration history, evidenced by the writings of such scholars as Charlotte Erickson, Dudley Baines, David ­Fitzpatrick, and, about the Scots, Eric Richards. If their seniors were slower to stir, it was probably inevitable that some younger New Zealand researchers would note this work and contemplate emulating it. No less significant were concurrent calls within British history for a new approach to the subject. Expatriate New Zealander J.G.A. Pocock was the most instrumental, urging that the diversity of all of the peoples of the “Atlantic archipelago” be recognized. But Pocock went further, advocating for the history of the various nations to be viewed in the contexts of the several “New Worlds” with which they interacted to see the feedback loops. This, in the words of one senior historian, was akin to dropping a depth charge. It is also tempting to speculate that, within New Zealand, rising interest in M ¯aori history and culture, not only among M ¯aori but also in the wider population



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

7

f­ollowing the post-Second World War drift of the M ¯aori to towns, had an impact. The greater exposure of P ¯akeh ¯a to M ¯aori ways of thinking only emphasized the centrality of whakapapa in M aori ¯ society, and it was logical that at least some P ¯akeh ¯a should begin to look more closely at their own antecedents. New Zealand academe was slow to respond to this growing popular interest in origins. A notable exception was Rollo Arnold’s The Farthest Promised Land: English Villagers, New Zealand Immigrants of the 1870s, published in 1981, the first volume of a distinguished settlement history trilogy.15 Based on a PhD thesis by an already mature scholar, this work focused on one group of New Zealandbound migrants in the nineteenth century’s most active recruiting decade. By following the migrants from their home villages to the new land, Arnold threw fresh light on the dynamics of rural emigration from England. The work set a benchmark in qualitative New Zealand migration studies still unmatched. The real breakthrough came nearly ten years later with the publication of visiting Canadian scholar Donald Harman Akenson’s Half the World from Home: Perspectives on the Irish in New Zealand, 1860–1950, which placed one of the country’s major P ¯akeh ¯a ethnic minorities under a microscope for the first time.16 Akenson’s interest in the New Zealand Irish arose from research for an earlier book, the country’s small size and good records making it a useful laboratory. When he started, the sum total of supporting research was “one significant monograph” and “a few fugitive articles.” Akenson’s book provided a striking contrast to Arnold’s deep micro-study, being more of a primer than a monograph. He not only offered new insights, underpinned by his international studies, but also a sophisticated sampler of research techniques and an agenda for future research. His hope was that his preliminary study would soon be “replaced by a rich and new literature on the Irish in New Zealand.” The extent to which Akenson provided an immediate catalyst for new inquiries is open to debate; certainly several works on the New Zealand Irish that appeared soon afterwards owed little to his demonstration of possible future paths. But his influence became more apparent later in the decade, with a steady trickle of new publications. Several were based on doctoral theses, the history of New Zealand’s Irish migrants also attracting growing numbers of masters students. By 2000, the time was deemed right for the first conference devoted entirely to the New Zealand Irish, a taking stock at the beginning of the twenty-

8

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first century. A selection of the papers presented was later published as a companion volume to Half the World from Home, and in the past decade the Irish have continued to attract interest.17 All that time New Zealand’s Scots continued to languish in academic circles. In the absence of a similar catalyst, there was no upsurge in scholarly interest comparable to that stimulated by Akenson’s pioneering work. Several important theses apart, only one of which was ultimately published, for nearly thirty years Tom ­Brooking was almost the only consistent toiler on New Zealand Scots topics, although he too had strong interests in other areas.18 He followed his 1984 biography of the founder of the Otago settlement, William Cargill, with a seminal overview essay in 1985 on the New Zealand Scots, in R.A. Cage’s The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise.19 Ten years later, Brooking published what was then considered his most important book to that point, Lands for the People?: The Highland Clearances and the Colonisation of New Zealand, a biography of John McKenzie, a study of the Ross-shireborn reforming nineteenth-century New Zealand lands minister.20 Other than a clutch of family histories and small ephemeral publications, there was not a great deal more. By dint of boundary stretching, it is possible to include books such as Jim McAloon’s detailed examination of the nineteenth-century South Island wealthy, R.C.J. Stone’s life and times of leading Auckland merchant John Logan Campbell, or Bassett and King’s biography of the twentieth-­century wartime prime minister Peter Fraser, but the “Scottishness” of the subjects, collective or individual, was incidental to the book themes.21 Brooking was thus well placed to make the 2002 conference call for a more deeply researched approach. He reiterated this plea the following year when, with Jennie Coleman, he published an edited volume of essays, The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement, which must be considered the first serious academic publication on the New Zealand Scots as a group.22 This was a considerable achievement, and no disrespect is intended in observing that the book was delayed for several years to allow time to collect enough suitable essays, that one-third of the papers eventually published were by overseas scholars, and that a number of the papers were by researchers then better known for their writings on the New Zealand Irish. As Brooking readily conceded, the collection was no more than a “wee beginning,” and a speculative one at that, often raising questions that could ultimately



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

9

only be addressed through much more intensive investigation. These questions provided the initial framework for debate when a group of New Zealand scholars first came together in 2003 to consider the viability of launching an extended “Scottish Migration to New Zealand” project. How that project came into being is set out in the preface.

“Scottish Migration to New Zealand to 1920, and its Contributions to the Development of New Zealand Society”: The Project Two general goals for the proposed research were stressed. One was to significantly increase knowledge of the Scots as a New Zealand migrant group by demonstrating that past emphases on New Zealand as an homogeneous “British” nation had been misleading, and that the rigidly bicultural approach (P akeh  ¯ a¯ and M aori) ¯ to the deconstruction of New Zealand society favoured by post-colonialists had produced further distortions. It was suggested that Scottish ethnocultural transmissions, though often unrecognized, remained deeply embedded in New Zealand life and landscape. The second goal was to place the New Zealand Scottish experience within the context of ongoing international research on the post-1800 exodus from Scotland and the emergence of a Scottish diaspora. As far as possible, there would be an attempt to link the migrants at both their source and their destination. Fortuitously, just as New Zealand’s interest in its Scots migrants was growing, there was a reawakening of interest in Scottish history in Scotland itself as the national movement for self-determination gathered strength. This spurred an unprecedented curiosity about the legions of Scots who had left their homeland to make their way overseas.23 Within this framework, the objectives were to shed new light on three interconnected, but hitherto cursorily examined, aspects of Scottish migration to New Zealand.24 A demographic profile of the migrant flows to the 1920s was considered an essential underpinning, the only way to obtain accurate answers to such questions as “Who left?,” “When?,” “From where?,” and “Where did they settle?,” all matters of conjecture up to that point. The answers would also help determine where more qualitative research might proceed. The second area of in-depth research would be an assessment of how the migrants adapted to their new environment. This would be

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pursued through a series of community case studies, extending over relatively long timeframes. Particular attention would be paid to the extent to which Scottish identity, Scottish ways and traditions, were preserved in the new settings, for how long, and by what means. The project would also consider the relations of those communities with other migrant groups and with M ¯aori, the respective roles of men and women, and the areas of settler life in which Scots became disproportionately prominent. Despite the Scots being a major component stream shaping the new society, it was recognized that the assimilation of Scots into the wider evolving New Zealand society commenced early, probably in little more than a generation. The third area of research was to consider how the Scotland-born and their descendants became New Zealand Scots, and ultimately British New Zealanders, which cultural elements were preserved, and what traditions they created. Building on evidence revealed in the case studies, but freely drawing from wider sources, the study would investigate – in areas as diverse as the home and family, religion, education, politics, commerce, farming, language and literature, even landscape appearance – the long-term significance of Scottish cultural transfers in the evolution of New Zealand society. To address questions about the demographics of New Zealand’s Scots migrants, a first priority was to gather dispersed statistical information on the pulses between 1840 and the 1920s.25 Information would be collected on the timing and scale of the movements, the identifiable source and destination areas, and the migrants’ measurable characteristics (age, birthplace, gender, marital status, class, occupation, religion). As far as possible, New Zealand data would be linked with what was publicly available in the United Kingdom. There would be two indispensable foundations. The first was earlier intensive research from Scottish statistical sources from 1840 to 1880, undertaken by Rosalind McClean for a 1990 University of Edinburgh PhD thesis. The second was a database prepared for the New Zealand Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s “Peopling of New Zealand” project, which sought to identify broad trends in migration to New Zealand from Great Britain and Ireland to 1945 by sampling from death certificates.26 To facilitate the testing of these findings and bring new dimensions, another database would be built that would be central to this phase of the project. It would be taken from the over 7,000 entries in the “Register of New Zealand Immigrants of Scottish Birth arriving before 1 ­January 1921,”



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

11

c­ ompiled by the Scottish Special Interest Group of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists.27 Six broad hypotheses were formulated for testing. First, it was deemed essential to confirm that the Scots did indeed constitute a distinctive migrant group, and that it was the second largest from the British Isles in the first eighty years of systematic P akeh  ¯ a¯ settlement. Second, the great majority of New Zealand’s Scottish migrants were from Lowlands Scotland, and it was possible to establish the most important migrant source areas. Third, the profiles of the migrants making up the flows were never fixed or one-dimensional, but varied according to time, region or district of origin, class, occupation, and gender. Fourth, New Zealand’s Scottish intake was primarily made up of elective rather than forced migrants, adventurers rather than exiles. Fifth, a distinction had to be made between permanent and temporary migrants, since it was possible that the number of returnees had increased over time. Finally, there were clusters of Scottish settlement elsewhere in New Zealand and a Scottish presence throughout the country, although southern New Zealand (Otago, Southland) needed to be verified as the most favoured Scottish migrant destination in the nineteenth century. The collection of detailed evidence for the projected community case studies was envisaged more as an exercise in qualitative research. Those relating to settlement sites would be layered, extending from surveys at the national and provincial levels to micro-studies of districts, townships, and villages, even single properties. Potentially useful studies that already existed, such as those of Waipu and the Dunedin suburb of Caversham, would be reconsidered.28 In other instances new investigations would be launched. There would also be research into non-spatial “communities of interest,” for instance mercantile networks, groupings of the Presbyterian church, political alliances, voluntary associations, and, at the lowest level, mutual aid arrangements in town and country. The most fruitful sources were likely to be institutional records, private papers, diaries, and settler correspondence, augmented by newspapers, especially local newspapers, although there would be recourse to available and relevant official archives. As with the statistical inquiry, the research was to be structured around a clutch of hypotheses. The first was that the creation of distinctively Scottish communities, networks, and associations helped migrants to cope with, then adapt to, their new environment. The research team suspected that in these ­communities

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Unpacking the Kists

Scottish attitudes derived from kirk, kinship, family life, and community organization helped weld the pioneer settlements together. A further unifying force, at least until late in the nineteenth century, was that continued infusions of people from Scotland, often friends and relatives, helped maintain links with the homeland, although these were attenuating by the century’s end. Although such links existed and migrants maintained communication with those at home and others elsewhere in the Empire, the lingering sense of being part of a Scottish diaspora also ebbed over time. Second, a proposition that Scots were disproportionately prominent in many areas of colonial economic, political, cultural, and scientific life was advanced for examination. Many of the Scots arriving were committed to the capitalist ethos, so it was hypothesized that Scottish business practices came to underpin important sectors of New Zealand economic life. To test the concept of “the successful Scot,” it was therefore proposed to investigate aspects of Scottish involvement in the workforce, the extent of membership of mercantile and farming elites, land ownership patterns, and, most pertinently, the place of Scots as wealth-holders in the new society. The third proposition to be tested stated that the Scots were assimilated into wider settlement society almost from the time they arrived, and more rapidly than other ethnic groups. As a corollary, it was considered likely that with the passage of decades, as migrant Scots adjusted and assimilated, some of the cultural practices and traits that they brought with them would be abandoned, others retained in modified form, and yet others would sometimes be appropriated intact by the wider settler society. These last survivals would constitute legacies, Scottish contributions to the evolving New Zealand identity and way of life. Fourth, it has long been suggested that important Scottish notions about equality and egalitarianism came to be reflected in New Zealand civic life. Hence an attempt would be made to evaluate the supposed Scottish legacies in the New Zealand political system, the democratization of procedures, and the championing of a liberal franchise, including female suffrage. Attention would also be paid to the role of Scots in education, especially at the tertiary level. A fifth area of inquiry examined the idea that Scottish Presbyterianism fostered the spread of conservative social attitudes and beliefs throughout New Zealand society (with the apparent contradiction between the supposed support for puritanical conformity and campaigning for social justice



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

13

being also explored). It was also agreed to test a sixth proposition, that positive Scottish attitudes toward land and the environment helped to sympathetically reshape the New Zealand landscape. Given the recent popularity in international literature of “the green Scot” stereotype, it was deemed essential to subject the New Zealand evidence to closer scrutiny, assessing the extent of influences on landscape modification, the role of Scots as conservationists, and ascertaining if there were unique Scottish spaces. The seventh and final hypothesis was that Scots made distinctive contributions to the development of both high and low culture in New Zealand. Their impacts in such fields as languages, literature, and music would be evaluated, but would perhaps focus even more on folkways, recreation, and the use of non-working time.

Organization of Chapters Chapters 2 and 3 provide the indispensable foundation for the study, summarizing the broad statistical trends of Scottish migration to New Zealand to 1920: the chronological migration pulses; the principal migrant source areas; the demographic characteristics of the migrants over time; and, as far as can be verified, the patterns of Scottish settlement within New Zealand.29 The results pleasingly confirm the viability of using genealogical data as a source of information for migration studies. The patterns extrapolated from the database constructed mostly replicate those of earlier studies based on standard sources, with the added benefit that associated qualitative evidence on individuals enables illustration through the use of case studies. Chapter 2 suggests that New Zealand’s Scots arrived broadly in proportion to their home county’s share of the Scottish population and the great majority were Lowlanders. Although New Zealand received migrants from all parts of Scotland, the research shows that the greatest number hailed from the central Lowlands, the counties adjacent to the country’s two greatest nineteenth-­century cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Even so, as a group they were by no means urban refugees; the most common background was agricultural, and they were young, many coming in family groups with children. Over the full eighty years there was a slight bias toward males, and, unusually, more Scots adults arrived married than single. Chapter 3 qualifies the historical emphasis on Scottish migration to Otago and Southland. Although the collected evidence appears

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to confirm that there was always a heavier concentration of Scots in the south of the South Island, certainly until the 1920s, it seems equally likely that from the 1850s the Scots were never as dominant in the south as has been frequently suggested: in fact their numbers slowly diminished over time. Conversely, there were scattered clusters of dense Scottish settlement in many other parts of the country, including the North Island. The stereotype of “the enterprising Scot,” by extension “the successful Scot,” is closely examined in chapter 4. These labels were commonly affixed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and historians have frequently lauded the role of Scots in underwriting imperial expansion. Building on earlier pioneering work by team members on Scots in the New Zealand economy, the chapter seeks to distinguish between myth and reality and compares Scottish migrant achievements with those of their more numerous English counterparts.30 Three critical questions are posed. Did successful Scots concentrate in particular occupations? Did they maintain close and cohesive networks? Was their entrepreneurial behaviour especially distinctive? To supply plausible answers, the multi-­volume Cyclopedia of New Zealand, a subscription publication issued between 1897 and 1905, has been systematically searched, and databases of leading Scottish and English citizens have been constructed (over 2,500 and 5,000 listings respectively). Though the Cyclopedia has previously been used more by family than by economic historians, it constitutes a unique turn of twentieth century benchmarking of community and self-esteem, in short an index of colonial success. Conceding that for the most part only migrants who finished up in the colonial upper and middle classes are being considered, the occupational classifications provided offer a counterpoint to the occupational categories on arrival listed in chapter 2. The results of the investigation show that the relationship between Scots and conspicuous economic success in New Zealand was a great deal more complex than might at first appear. That Scots were disproportionately represented in farming is supported, whereas there was more than token Scottish involvement in the tertiary (service) sector, especially in finance and shipping services. Scots were also prominent in the metal trades. Networking was significant, and from the beginnings of settlement, but its extent should not be exaggerated. Similarly, examples of Scottish exclusivity in particular enterprises cannot be taken too far.



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

15

Chapter 5 addresses the stereotypes of Scottish contributions to the evolution of civil society in New Zealand. Recently, a common image presented has been that of the New Zealand Scot as reformer, whether in politics, law, education, or religion. Yet, wherever Scots have travelled in any numbers, so has the apparent paradox of the puritanical Scot versus the progressive Scot, the conflicts between conservatism and socialism, authoritarianism and democracy, and refined culture and populism. The chapter argues that all of these lines of thought, and more, were discernible among the migrants, whose backgrounds varied greatly. The result was that the influences on New Zealand’s evolving civil institutions were diverse and, not infrequently, contradictory. Reflecting the ongoing intellectual ferment in early nineteenth-century Scotland, the strands of thought exhibited drew from Enlightenment philosophies and the social upheavals experienced by both Highland and Lowland Scots after “the 45,” and, most immediately, “the Disruption” of 1843. Some of the views expressed mirrored the co-option of both upper- and middle-class Scots into the English establishment, yielding a bureaucratic cadre at home and abroad. Other Scots were cast as the blunt “enforcers of Empire.” Yet immediate problems present; although some within the group pushed enthusiastically for dispossessing M ¯aori of their land, others of near identical background found that policy an anathema. The middling folk who arrived in New Zealand motivated by the agrarian radicalism expressed by Burns the Bard, seeking to build a new – and better – essentially rural world, espoused a wider Scottish view. Their watchwords were independence, egalitarian democracy, and the moral worth of agrarian selfsufficiency. From these roots, the closer settlement movement, which sought to break up the power of New Zealand’s pastoral landlords and place small farmers on more modest properties, flourished. Presbyterianism in New Zealand evinced a certain ambiguity, but for much of the nineteenth century the evangelical wing of the church held sway. Exercising strong discipline over its adherents, the church nevertheless sought to place the theological divisions of the homeland behind. Yet despite its often deserved reputation for extreme social conservatism, the church was also an activist institution in matters of social improvement. The working-class socialism that had been nurtured in Scotland’s towns and factories lay alongside in the later nineteenth century. The chapter seeks, as far as possible, to reconcile these apparent conflicts and ambiguities.

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Since the mid-1990s, the idea of “the green Scot” has enjoyed considerable vogue in scholarly circles. It argues that settler environmentalism grew from strong Caledonian roots, partly as an outcome of the training in Scottish universities, but also as a reaction to the subjugation of the Scottish landscape. Most critically, this awareness was carried to the outposts of Empire, mitigating the worst excesses of development strategies. Understandably, the green Scot idea has been eagerly embraced by New Zealand historians of conservation.31 How closely this proposition equates with New Zealand reality is central to chapter 6. When they arrived, the migrants – Scots and others – were confronted by a near primeval landscape, modified in parts by M ¯aori burning of dry lowland forests. By 1920, much of the landscape had been transformed almost beyond recognition, as British settlers, including Scots, used fire on a far greater scale. The newcomers had to explore, assess the potential of the land, and then apportion it in accord with their developmental goals. Once land was redistributed, they were impelled to make their holdings productive. Scots did not respond in any uniform way to these challenges, but most set about converting the alien landscape into something more familiar, by adopting a range of stratagems: allotting Scottish names to places and properties, and reproducing, as far as possible, Scottish rural landscapes. They felled, burned, drained, then sowed or planted, every bit as keenly as any other migrant group. The credo for most, taking up some of the intellectual strands discussed in the previous chapter, was “improvement.” Inevitably, there were high environmental costs. Scots undoubtedly played active roles in the transformation of the New Zealand landscape and environment, but it is questionable whether the conservation ethic dictated their actions. There is prima facie evidence that Scots were probably overrepresented in the ranks of colonial conservationists, but their contributions were hard to differentiate from those of settlers from other British – and European – backgrounds. How Scots preserved their ethnic identity overseas is a question that is attracting increasing scholarly attention, thus Scottish associational culture in New Zealand is the focus of chapter 7.32 The desire to set up Scottish clubs and societies has been recognized as one of the most defining characteristics of the Scottish diaspora, even if the forms and emphases differed markedly from country to country. The chapter investigates the range of Scottish associations that were formed in New Zealand up to the 1920s, to ascertain what



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

17

they offered to their members and to determine how they related to other elements of New Zealand society. Curiously, it was not until the 1860s that formalized Scottish associations began to appear. Perhaps migrants were so preoccupied until then establishing their households and livelihoods that mutual support remained informal. It is equally possible that, after surviving the founding decades, the first groups of settlers wanted to tangibly mark the Scottish presence in host communities. In New Zealand, the benevolent St Andrew’s societies that had flourished elsewhere failed to take hold. Instead, the ubiquitous Caledonian societies, by the 1890s an accepted, and welcome, part of civic life all over the country, grasped the initiative. In addition to a limited benevolence function and the general promotion of Scottish culture, through their organization of Caledonian Games the Caledonian societies fostered sport and good fellowship in the wider community. It was only as the century drew to its close that other Scottish organizations, notably Burns clubs and Gaelic societies, fully emerged. The difference was that while the Caledonian societies, and, later, Burns clubs, adopted an inclusive approach to membership and participation, others tended to be much more restrictive. Maintaining Scottish identity, of course, was only one of a number of rationales for those choosing to take up association memberships. Just as important for some were the opportunities offered for personal advancement. The organizations also functioned as platforms for the operation of support networks and the exercise of patronage. Extant membership lists not only suggest the strong middle-class character of the leaders, but also the connection between associational activity and colonial success. Chapter 8 switches focus from the more formal worlds of economic and civic activity to the much more private and personal worlds of the family and the home. As in Scotland, the family was the primary unit of social organization, but with greater emphasis on the nuclear family, with new networks of kin and community relationships evolving over time. The high proportion of young migrants already married, noted in chapter 2, together with the popularity of matrimony among those who were not, led to what a prominent demographer has termed “the Caledonian conundrum.” The higher rates of nuptiality and births among New Zealand Scots initially led to much larger families than in Scotland, but by 1900 the situation had reversed. The chapter also explores an apparent tendency by Scots to contract more exogamous marriages, including

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with M ¯aori. Families were the foremost vehicles for the transmission of customary practices and cultural memory. It was within the home that children were first introduced to traditions and ethnic ways of doing things. It was also predominantly in the home that the culture left behind was recalled, nurtured, and reinforced through the interests and faiths of older family members. Two baskets of customs intimately connected to family and home life are closely considered in the chapter, practices linked to the life cycle (birth, courtship and marriage, death) and to the more mundane concerns of everyday living (housing, clothing, food). Transmitted customs were subjected to pressures, to testing in the new environment, right from the point of disembarkation. Although it is likely that in the early settlement years clinging to familiar ways offered emotional security, it took little more than one generation for many traditional domestic practices to be either discarded or substantially modified. By the third generation, many had already been forgotten, migrants exhibiting a ready willingness to compromise and to borrow from other ethnic groups. By the early 1900s only a few Scottish family and household traditions were retained wholly intact. Colonial New Zealand ways had become the dominant domestic ways. Scottish cultural heritage survivals were always more conspicuous in areas such as religion, leisure activities, languages, and literature. Chapter 9 still partly focuses on the New Zealand Scottish home but extends the discussion to ways in which individuals and families occupied their non-working hours. For a large number of Scots Presbyterians, home and kirk provided encompassing twin foci well into the twentieth century. For the devout, it was not simply a question of passively listening to Sunday sermons; religious obligations permeated almost all aspects of their daily life. Though there were different sets of responsibilities for men and women, there was constant kirk-linked activity. Church people played and socialized with the like-minded, commonly drawing marriage partners from the same pool. Moreover, the influence of the church, along with other denominations, indirectly extended to the leisure opportunities for non-churchgoers, because church calendars determined public holidays. Although by the early 1900s Hogmanay (New Year) remained the annual highlight for Scots, forms of Christmas and Easter, previously eschewed, were also being cautiously celebrated, something still unusual in Scotland at that time. Undoubtedly, New Zealand’s Scots took full advantage of the greater leisure time that gradually became



New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants

19

available. Pursuits denied to working men in Scotland, such as hunting and freshwater fishing, were available to all and organized sports came to exert a far greater hold in New Zealand. Apart from golf, few imported Scottish sports enjoyed wide or prolonged support. Migrants and descendants instead opted to participate in sports that were often of English origin. In terms of broader cultural traditions, there were subtly different patterns to those recorded in respect of domestic ways, and by the late nineteenth century something of a cultural renaissance was becoming evident. There was new interest in piping and dancing. Language fared worse, although efforts to salvage Gaelic spurred the formation of special interest associations. Reading tastes became more cosmopolitan, though some still had a taste for traditional Scots writing. By 1920, in the settlements and districts that still retained a Scottish flavour, there was now a mélange of cultures, with Scottish threads running through. Chapter 10, the concluding chapter, draws broad generalizations about the New Zealand Scots’ settlement experiences to 1920, then compares them with findings from other countries where migration from Scotland was significant in the long nineteenth century (Australia, Canada, United States, and South Africa). The intent is to contextualize the New Zealand Scots, both in the Scottish diaspora and the wider British settler world. As might be expected, there are many similarities, but because Scots were such a heterogeneous group there were also subtle, and not so subtle, differences. The patterns of settlement were roughly comparable, if involving smaller numbers, to those in Australia and North America. The “successful Scot” stereotype is found to hold some validity in New Zealand, but wealth accumulation was possibly more tightly tied to land acquisition and use than elsewhere. On the other hand, while support for the “green Scot” concept has been adduced from some parts of Empire, there is only limited evidence for it in New Zealand. A tendency in Australia to regard all Scots as politically and socially conservative is at best questionable in New Zealand, since Scots there have a diversity of political beliefs and philosophies. In the private worlds of home and family, New Zealand’s Scots merged more quickly with migrants from other backgrounds than in any other area. Most starkly, while regret rightly continues to be expressed about the New Zealand Scots relations with the indigenous M ¯aori, at no point did interactions descend to the depths recorded at some other destinations.

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Unpacking the Kists

Three considerations, then, lend strength to elements of James Belich’s contention that New Zealand was “the neo-Scotland.” Foremost was the number of Scots as a percentage of the overseas-born in the New Zealand population. New Zealand’s share of the exodus from Scotland in the century to 1914 was modest (around 6 per cent), but this made up over 20 per cent of the country’s migrant inflows over the same period. Only the English arrived in greater numbers. Second, the fact that Presbyterians made up 25 per cent of all religious adherents by 1901, second only to Anglicans, helped make New Zealand one of the most Protestant countries in the British world. Finally, there was the stamp of the migrants themselves. Few of Scotland’s paupers or dispossessed found their way to New Zealand. Rather, the most distant destination received regular infusions of superior social capital. For these migrants, committed to making new lives in a new land, there was little in the way of resentful motivation to reject their antecedents.

2 Distinguishing Former Worlds: Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

To better understand the New Zealand Scots experience it is essential to first establish who those Scots were. The Scottish immigrants were never a homogenous group; the differences between a Gaelicspeaking Highland shepherd and a Glaswegian power-loom weaver were even more pronounced than those between an “average” Scot and an “average” Englishman (or Englishwoman). After first describing the broad context and trends of Scottish migration to New Zealand to 1920, the chapter considers the Scotland the migrants were leaving behind, paying particular attention to the principal source regions and the homeland factors that impelled migration. Beyond establishing where in Scotland migrants were born, by constructing a demographic profile, the chapter addresses issues of gender, marital status, and age of migrants on arrival in New Zealand. Finally, the chapter assesses the occupations of the migrants, at home and subsequently taken up in New Zealand.

Establishing the Context of Migration The research reported does not seriously challenge earlier studies of the inflows, which have emphasized the significance of the Lowlands in New Zealand’s Scottish population. Rosalind McClean, relying principally on Scottish sources and concluding her study at 1880, found that Scots emigrated to New Zealand roughly in proportion to their home county’s share of the Scottish population (even so, some regional differences were apparent, such as the strong representation of West Lowlands in the early 1840s immigration to Auckland). McClean also made it clear that many emigrant Scots were already mobile within Scotland before leaving the country.1

22

Unpacking the Kists

Phillips and Hearn, in a major study of immigration from all parts of the United Kingdom to New Zealand between 1840 and 1945, relied on random sampling of death certificates. They too found that the regional origins of New Zealand Scots usually matched the distribution of the Scottish population at home, although the Borders counties and the North East were slightly underrepresented. Conversely, the Far North was slightly over-represented, particularly for Shetland Islanders.2 This chapter seeks to amplify those findings, relying on a database constructed from a register of immigrants of Scottish birth arriving in New Zealand before 1 January 1921 compiled by the Scottish Interest Group of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists (NZSG) between 1992 and 2005.3 On most important points the NZSG data corroborates the other available datasets for New Zealand’s Scottish immigrants, but it also, uniquely, includes enough detailed material about particular individuals and families to outline some case studies. Although the Scots had always been a migratory people, the first few decades of the nineteenth century witnessed pulses of migration, internal and external, on a much greater scale than had ever been seen before.4 Migration in this period was stimulated by profound change in both rural and urban Scotland, prompted by industrialization, famine, clearances and the transformation of agricultural practices, upheavals that have received much scholarly scrutiny. The brief, broad summary that follows notes the impact these factors had on the population distribution of Scotland in the early decades of the 1800s, before the beginning of any noteworthy immigration to New Zealand. The agricultural revolution led to an unprecedented increase in productivity, greatly reducing the number of people employed in the agricultural sector by the early nineteenth century. As a result, many thousands of Scots were obliged to move from rural areas to urban centres in search of employment in the burgeoning industrial sector. From the end of the eighteenth century, textile manufacturing was increasingly carried out in factories rather than dispersed households, and the new factories were concentrated in the Western Lowlands, although quality woollen manufacture was characteristic of the Borders. Coal, iron, steel, engineering, and shipbuilding followed textiles in a classic sequence of industrial development. Major internal population shifts thus occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century, from the rural Highlands and Islands, the



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

23

agricultural North East, and the farmlands of Lowland Perthshire, as well as the Border counties, into central Scotland – industrial Lanarkshire in particular, though Renfrew, Ayr, and Edinburgh also received many internal migrants at this time. In the Highlands many landowners increasingly specialized in sheep farming, and the consequent large-scale evictions of tenants have become part of inglorious lore as “the Clearances.”5 In the Lowlands too the number of people living on the land declined dramatically, as more intensive cultivation and the aggregation of holdings meant that many who had combined seasonal labour with the occupation of a few acres were now displaced. In the Highlands and Lowlands alike, the restructuring of the rural economy was a complex process, but the overall consequence was a reduced rural population.6 Though many of those “cleared” from the land emigrated, sometimes assisted by their landlords, to Canada, America, and Australia, many others migrated within Scotland to the urban industrial centres of central Scotland. These population movements were further accelerated by the potato famine in the Highlands of Scotland.7 All these factors ensured that by 1840, when New Zealand formally became part of the British Empire, the majority of the population of Scotland lived in what may be termed Lowland Scotland.8 It should therefore not surprise that the majority of New Zealand’s Scotland-born emigrants arriving before 1920 were from Lowland Scotland. The flows of migrants to New Zealand from Scotland between 1840 and 1920, as with those from other parts of Great Britain and Ireland, occurred in five distinct phases (figure 2.1). Between 1840 and 1852, although New Zealand was a Crown colony, systematic colonization was largely undertaken by the New Zealand Company and associated organizations. Although small groups arrived independently in the early 1840s, the major assisted influx of Scots came in 1848, organized by the Company-backed Otago Association. From 1853 to 1870, immigration, in most instances, was the responsibility of the six (later ten) provinces created as the second tier of a quasi-federal system of government. Assisted immigration schemes were sporadically promoted by these local administrations, but the discovery of gold in the South Island provided the primary surge in this phase, and Scots loomed large among the hopeful miners. Between 1871 and 1886, an ambitious assisted immigration policy initiated by the colonial government to promote closer settlement (what became known as “the Vogel scheme” after ­Julius

6

Provincial/Gold Rush

New Zealand Company

5

"Long Depression"

Vogel

Twentieth Century

%

4 3

Scotland

2

Total*

Year

Figure 2.1  Distribution over time of migrant arrivals 1840–1920

1920

1915

1910

1905

1900

1895

1890

1885

1880

1875

1870

1865

1860

1855

1850

1845

0

1840

1



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

25

Table 2.1 Proportion of New Zealand immigrants from each region of Scotland, with indices of representation based on the Scottish population distribution in 1871 Region Far North Highlands North East Eastern Lowlands Western Lowlands Borders n

Whole period

Index

5.46 13.10 11.43 32.77 27.92 9.32 6,243*

1.79 1.54 0.97 0.98 0.79 1.15

*Figures exclude those in the data whose birth region is unknown. Sources: NZSG data 1840–1920; Return Relating to the Population of Scotland at each Decennial Period, Table II, 1881 Census of Scotland, 2–3.

Vogel, colonial treasurer, then premier) drove arrivals to record highs. There were two peaks, in 1875 and 1880, and once more Scots loomed large among the newcomers. Thereafter, the numbers steadily dropped away. Much of the period between 1887 and 1900 was characterized by depression, with immigration to New Zealand at consistently low levels. Indeed, with unemployment high, in some years the colony recorded net migration losses. Inflows slowly picked up again from the turn of the twentieth century, until the First World War effectively halted all immigration. It was revived at the conclusion of hostilities.9 The data analyzed for the present study indicate that 70.03 per cent of Scots arriving in New Zealand between 1840 and 1920 were born in the Eastern or Western Lowlands or a Borders county (see table 2.1). The indices in table 2.1 represent the difference between the distribution of the migrants’ origins in the NZSG data over the full eighty-year period (as shown in the “whole period” column) and the distribution of the population of Scotland in 1871, the census chosen for this index as the most logical mid-point of comparison with the NZSG data. The closer the index number is to 1, the less difference there is between the NZSG data and the census distribution; an index number greater than 1 means that that group was overrepresented in New Zealand compared with its share of the Scottish population; and an index number less than 1 means that that group was underrepresented. As table 2.1 shows, in 1871 over three-­ quarters of the population of Scotland was living in the Eastern or

26

Unpacking the Kists

Western Lowlands or the Borders region, an increase of approximately 10 per cent on the figures for all these regions combined in 1801.10 When the origins of the migrants are examined by period of arrival in New Zealand, and the six identified regions are ranked by proportion of migrants from each, the order over these periods alters only between the Eastern and Western Lowlands. Until the intense Vogel period of immigration (1871–1886), the Eastern Lowlands sent more migrants to New Zealand than the Western Lowlands; thereafter, their relative rankings were reversed. The six Scottish counties that sent the largest numbers of migrants to New Zealand over the whole period 1840–1920 were Lanarkshire (15.86 per cent), Midlothian (8.04 per cent), Aberdeenshire (7.37 per cent), Perthshire (6.07 per cent), Ayr (6.50 per cent), and Renfrew (5.56 per cent) (map 2.1). These six counties alone supplied 49 per cent of the Scottish migrants arriving in New Zealand between 1840 and 1920, the same proportion as were living in those six counties at the 1841 Census. Whether the six counties also contributed nearly half of all Scottish emigration over the same eighty years is unknown, since county breakdowns of migration to other destinations are not generally available.11 The top source counties also remained largely unchanged over these decades, though their relative rankings varied. Table 2.2 provides indices of representation of the Scottish migrants by county of birth. It compares the percentage of the NZSG total for each period of arrival to the percentage of the Scottish population total for each county, thereby showing whether a county was under- or overrepresented among migrants to New Zealand. Zero values in table 2.2 indicate a county for which no migrants in the NZSG data arrived in that period. A figure below one shows that the county was underrepresented among migrants compared with the population of Scotland. A figure over one shows overrepresentation. For example, the figure for Orkney in the pre1852 period of arrival is 0.95. This means that the NZSG percentage for Orkney for this period of arrival is 0.95 times that of the Scottish census percentage for Orkney for 1851. Thus, migrants to New Zealand from Orkney are (slightly) underrepresented in this period of arrival. For many counties, the figures are almost the same. These indices of representation have been calculated by dividing the percentage of the migrants arriving in New Zealand in each period of arrival according to the NZSG sample by the percentage of



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

27

Map 2.1 Counties of Scotland to 1890

the population of Scotland living in each county at the census dates stated. These census dates were chosen because they were the most representative of the Scottish population for each period of arrival. For example, 1871 was chosen over 1881 because the primary flow of migrants to New Zealand in this period of arrival was in the early 1870s. Importantly, the indices in table 2.1 and table 2.2 reveal that the number of migrants migrating to New Zealand from each region and county of Scotland was approximately the same as the proportions of the total population of Scotland living in these regions and counties.12 McClean first noted this “evenness of distribution” of the

Table 2.2 Indices of representation relating county of birth of NZSG Scottish emigrants to NZ by period of arrival to the population of Scotland in those counties at the relevant censuses Period of Arrival Region

County Census compared to

Far North

Highlands

North East

Eastern Lowlands

Shetland Orkney Caithness Sutherland Ross & Cromarty Inverness Argyll Bute Nairn Moray Banff Aberdeen Kincardine Angus Perth Dumbarton Clackmannan Kinross Fife Stirling West Lothian Midlothian East Lothian

Pre–1852

1853–1870

1871–1886

1887–1900

1901–1920

Whole Period

1841

1861

1871

1891

1911

1871

0 0.95 1.16 0 0.12 0.41 2.56 2.10 7.49 0.51 2.02 0.94 0.43 0.55 2.51 1.10 0.87 1.67 0.97 0.46 0.33 1.51 0.96

0.84 1.07 1.89 0.18 0.55 0.31 2.53 1.42 5.64 2.93 1.51 0.61 1.01 0.49 1.55 0.91 1.13 2.03 0.99 1.49 1.53 0.92 1.45

5.02 1.17 2.59 0 0.60 0.62 2.95 1.56 1.39 5.51 1.11 0.22 0.53 0.46 1.29 1.45 1.03 1.69 1.05 1.12 0.65 0.63 1.56

0 1.69 0.69 1.18 0.99 1.73 9.29 2.80 5.15 7.13 2.41 0.28 0 0.84 1.43 0 0 8.22 1.24 0.21 0.98 0.24 0

3.18 0.34 0.55 1.32 1.26 1.02 6.50 7.80 1.90 2.45 2.60 0.26 0 0.63 1 0.95 0 0 0.76 2.31 0 0.84 1.84

2.15 1.10 2.03 0.24 0.60 0.51 3.27 2.16 4.16 3.52 1.58 0.50 0.78 0.52 1.60 1.11 0.88 2.02 1.06 1.38 1 0.82 1.44

Table 2.2  Continued Western Lowlands

Borders

Renfrew Lanark Ayr Berwick Peebles Selkirk Roxburgh Dumfries Kirkcudbright Wigtown n

2.13 0.67 0.60 0.27 0 0 1.06 0.13 0.46 0.34 581

0.91 0.63 1.15 1.64 1.93 1 1.28 0.98 1.61 0.96 2,645

*Figures exclude those in the data whose birth region is unknown. Sources: NZSG data 1840–1920; Preliminary report, Table II, 1921 Census of Scotland, 2.

0.59 0.86 1.18 0.39 0.49 1.31 1.93 1.77 0.29 0.94 1,653

0.71 0.52 1.37 1.59 3.50 0.94 0.48 1.39 1.94 2.15 156

1.16 0.79 0.86 0.60 2.90 0.36 0.75 0.73 0 1.66 537

0.86 0.70 1.09 1.09 1.44 0.81 1.41 1.16 1.04 1.05 6,243

30

Unpacking the Kists

New Zealand Scots’ origins in her 1990 thesis; the present findings reinforce McClean’s and show that this trend continued after 1880. Though some of the aberrations in table 2.2 are meaningful, others are more likely to be due to small sample numbers. The 2.13 figure for Renfrewshire in the pre-1852 period is significant, reflecting the group of migrants from that county arriving in Auckland in the early 1840s. The figures for Shetland suggest an over-representation of Shetlanders among New Zealand migrants, reflecting the ongoing assisted and chain migration of Shetlanders to New Zealand from the 1870s. In contrast, results such as the 7.49 for Nairn pre-1852 are almost certainly due to a small sample size. The curious figures in the table for the period 1887–1900 are the result of very low immigration to New Zealand in those years. Strictly speaking, New Zealand may not be unusual in its “evenness” of Scots migrants. Although the statistics are often uncertain, Scottish emigration has been noted for the relatively even distribution of migrant origins compared with other European countries that were concurrently dispatching large numbers of migrants.13 That this has not always been appropriately recognized in studies of other Scottish migrant destinations is perhaps partly due to those studies’ emphases on famine and clearance, which are only part of the story of Scottish emigration. In addition, previous agent- or assistance-­driven emigration from specific parts of Scotland to the newly opened lands of Canada, America, and Australia – notably Ontario, North Carolina, and Victoria, respectively – had tended to create chains of migration that persisted long after the demise of the initial assistance schemes. These chains of migration created a pattern of clusters rather than one of dispersion or even distribution of migrant origins. The clusters tended to be from parishes in the Highlands of Scotland – for example, from Skye, Lewis, and ­Harris, eastern Sutherland, western Argyll, and northwest Perthshire – but were not the overriding pattern of emigrant origin distribution within Scotland.14 New Zealand was seen as a potential destination comparatively late, so did not have the benefit of a long migration tradition to attract migrants. Partly as a result of this late start and the absence of tradition, as well as the additional distance it was necessary to travel and the costs entailed, chain migration was possibly less common among Scottish emigrants to New Zealand than to other destinations. This is not to suggest it did not occur, rather that, with the exception of migration from Shetland, it was rare.15



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

31

OKI

SHI

Map 2.2 The regions of Scotland

Scotland: The Migrant Source Regions Although most of New Zealand’s Scots migrants came from the Eastern and Western Lowland counties, where most of the Scottish population lived, it must be remembered that all regions of Scotland were represented, to a greater or lesser extent, in the New Zealand population. A brief outline of some of the structural characteristics of the home populations of the Western Lowlands, the city of Edinburgh, Aberdeenshire, Argyll, Shetland, and the Borders provides some context for the observed migration behaviour (map 2.2). The Western Lowlands are discussed as a whole, recognizing

32

Unpacking the Kists

the ­importance of this region as a destination for internal migration within Scotland and as the birthplace of a large proportion of New Zealand’s Scots. Similarly, Edinburgh, in addition to being the nation’s capital, contained a large proportion of the population and sent a correspondingly large proportion of migrants to New Zealand. Aberdeen and Argyll were chosen as representative of the North East and the Highland regions, and Shetland because they sent migrants to New Zealand well out of proportion to their home population in the 1870s. The Borders region contributed fewer immigrants, but nevertheless accounted for some key transfers of farming skill and manufacturing technology to New Zealand. The Western Lowlands Though the three counties comprising the Western Lowlands – Lanark, Ayr, and Renfrew – differed from each other in many respects, the development of the Western Lowlands as a region and the population patterns that subsequently emerged were quite distinctive. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Western Lowlands, and Glasgow in particular, had already emerged as a major British industrial centre. The tobacco trade with America was flourishing because the crossing from the American South to Glasgow took two weeks less than the voyage to Bristol, Britain’s other major tobacco trading port.16 This shipping advantage also aided the growth of the Scottish textiles industry in the Western Lowlands. Although Angus and Fife continued to produce coarse linen, producers in the Western Lowlands specialized in fine cloth, due to the demand for this product in the American market.17 The cotton industry thus expanded rapidly in the Western Lowlands; by 1839, 91 per cent of Scotland’s cotton mills were in the Western Lowlands, the most significant concentration being within 30 km of Glasgow.18 The expansion of the textile industry drew more migrants to the already-expanding population of the Western Lowlands, and the urbanization that was the natural concomitant of this population expansion led, in turn, to further industrial growth. As with Edinburgh, Glasgow provided a growing market for the products of local industries: textile finishing trades such as bleaching, printing, tambouring, and weaving; soap-making; sugar-refining; papermaking; and brewing.19 Glasgow also provided a ready market for the products of agriculture, often sourced from rural parts of the



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

33

region. Ayrshire, for example, increasingly specialized in cheese and butter production.20 Population growth in Glasgow also stimulated the construction industry in the region as the city grew to accommodate its population.21 In the early to mid-nineteenth century, as the textile industry in the Western Lowlands began to decline, principally due to increased competition in overseas markets, Glasgow mills began to close. One response was to foster greater specialization. For example, Paisley emerged as an important producer of cotton thread, and Glasgow as a producer of carpet.22 Even more important, capitalists rapidly invested in extensive coal-mining and pig-iron production. In 1830, the whole of Scotland produced just 40,000 tons of pig-iron annually. By 1848, Lanarkshire alone was producing 426,000 tons, and Ayrshire 60,000 tons, per annum. The expansion of the iron industry necessitated an increase in coal mining. By 1854, pits in Lanarkshire and Ayr (as well as Stirling and Fife) were producing 7,500,000 tons annually, with the iron industry taking up one-third of this output.23 Given the long-standing dominance of industry in the region, it should come as no surprise that by 1881 65.41 per cent of those employed in Ayr, 71.68 per cent of those in Renfrewshire, and 71.95 per cent in Lanarkshire, were engaged in industry. Though 14.20 per cent of the employed population of Ayr worked in agriculture, just 4.42 per cent of those in Renfrew engaged in this type of work, and even fewer – 2.89 per cent – in Lanark. In 1881, less than 5 per cent of the occupied population in these three counties were professionals.24 Edinburgh (The Eastern Lowlands) Summarizing the Eastern Lowlands, which includes within its boundaries parishes in the Gaidhealtachd as well as Scotland’s capital, is no easy task. The region was predominantly industrial. Of the occupied population, 26.69 per cent was involved in industry in 1881, compared with just 5.36 per cent in agriculture. The textile industry was especially important in Angus, particularly Dundee, where 50.54 per cent of the occupied workforce was employed in textiles in 1841, higher even than in Glasgow where just 37.56 per cent were so employed. Edinburgh dominated the region. Just under one-third of the Eastern Lowlands population lived in Midlothian, and 62.18 per cent of the Midlothian population lived in Edinburgh.

34

Unpacking the Kists

By 1800, Edinburgh was one of the two most urban areas in Scotland.25 From just 2.5 per cent of the population of Scotland in 1755, by 1841 5.35 per cent lived in Edinburgh or its suburbs.26 Much of Edinburgh’s growth was due to the natural advantages the Water of Leith offered the city for transport and manufacturing. As the city grew, through its position as the capital as well as being the ecclesiastical, medical, legal, and banking centre of Scotland, it also became an increasingly important market. As a result, it attracted further industrial growth as manufacturers looked to take advantage of proximity to this market.27 By the mid-nineteenth century Edinburgh was one of the most industrial cities in Scotland.28 Leith had become “an important centre for ship repairs, sugar refining, and soap and glass making” in addition to paper production.29 Yet, despite this core of industrial employment, more of the male work force of Edinburgh was employed as “professionals” than in any other city in Scotland: 13.34 per cent of Edinburgh’s employed males were in such occupations, compared with just 6.46 per cent of Aberdeen’s male work force and even less in the other cities.30 In 1881, 17.52 per cent of Midlothian workers were employed in domestic service – 44 per cent of occupied females in Edinburgh.31 To some degree, this may account for the gender ratios of Midlothian; high demand for domestic servants in the county possibly encouraged more female than male migration to the county. In 1841, Midlothian contained 8.91 per cent of Scotland’s female population. Though just 50.62 per cent of those under twenty were female, the figure rose to 57.46 per cent of those over twenty. Midlothian was, after Lanarkshire, the second most popular receiving county for internal migration within Scotland. Between 1851 and 1861, the county experienced a net increase in its population of approximately 22,000 people, and 19,063 more between 1861 and 1871.32 Aberdeen (The North East) Unlike the other regions of Scotland, which tended to be either predominantly agricultural or industrial by the mid- to late-nineteenth century, the North East was more evenly divided between the two. The 1881 census showed 34.55 per cent of the occupied population of the North East employed in agriculture and 38.89 per cent in industry – 41.93 and 41.76 per cent, respectively, of occupied males in the region. Though Nairn, Banff, Moray, and Kincardine were



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

35

primarily agricultural, urban Aberdeen, containing 64.33 per cent of the North East population in 1881, was primarily industrial. Now a centre of Europe’s offshore oil industry, the growth of Aberdeenshire in the nineteenth century also owed much to its proximity to an abundance of natural resources. Industrial employment opportunities available to Aberdonians in the nineteenth century included granite mining, polishing and other related trades, paper-making, and shipbuilding. Each of those industries used the natural resources and advantages available in the county.33 As was the case with several other Scottish cities, the textile industry also contributed to Aberdeen’s early-nineteenth-century growth and prosperity.34 Despite this long tradition, however, the comparative isolation of the county from the major markets for cotton, linen, and woollen products, as well as the higher costs faced by Aberdeen textile manufacturers to transport coal from the central Lowlands, put these northeastern manufacturers at a disadvantage to their Lowland contemporaries. As a result, the textile industry in Aberdeen failed to expand as quickly as elsewhere in Scotland.35 As the “regional capital” of the North East, Aberdeen, like Edinburgh, had a large professional base, enhanced since the fifteenth century by graduates from the city’s two universities. Yet, while Midlothian also had a high proportion of the population employed in commerce and industry, Aberdeen’s natural advantages for agriculture ensured that over a quarter of the occupied population were still engaged in agriculture in 1881, 28.43 per cent compared with Midlothian’s 4.93 per cent.36 Argyll (The Highlands) The Highlands region remained predominantly rural throughout the nineteenth century, with a significant proportion of the population engaged in agriculture as late as 1881. In the census of that year, 47.51 per cent of the employed population were engaged in farming. Nevertheless, 27.04 per cent of the population were employed in “industrial” (including pre-industrial) occupations. As the nature of farming changed, with small plots being consolidated into larger farms and agriculture generally becoming more mechanized and less labour-intensive, agricultural districts were increasingly unable to retain their populations. Attempts were made to create employment for those displaced by new farming practices. The Duke of Argyll, for example, established a woollen mill in Inverary for this purpose.

36

Unpacking the Kists

Such ventures were seldom successful. Clearances and evictions prompted many to emigrate, but a common response to unemployment was temporary internal migration.37 This experience was often a prompt to permanent migration, because it familiarized migrants with conditions outside of their home county and loosened their bonds with home communities.38 Like many other parts of rural Scotland, Argyll’s population fell into a gradual but steady decline after reaching its peak of 100,973 in 1831. By 1871, just 75,679 people lived in the county.39 Temporary out-migration had been a feature in Argyll for decades, and it has been suggested that few Argyllshire families in the early nineteenth century could have survived without the income from seasonal work in the Lowlands.40 This familiarity with conditions outside the home county, coupled with “push” factors – including eviction – and the prospect of greater opportunities in the central Lowlands and abroad, underlay the decline.41 The county’s already long-standing flow of migrants to nearby Glasgow also increased over this period. By 1851, while Edinburgh was drawing most of its migrants of Highland birth from Inverness and Ross and Cromarty, between 61 and 87 per cent of Highland-born migrants living in Glasgow parishes were from Argyll. Out of a total Glasgow population of approximately 329,495 in 1851, 10,575 were from Argyll, this at a time when the population of Argyll itself was just 89,298. Although Dumbarton (with a population of 45,103) was closer to Argyll, it received far fewer migrants than Glasgow. The scale of the emerging metropolis was too compelling.42 Shetland (The Far North) The Far North is by far the most distinctive region in this study, due primarily to the isolation of Caithness, Orkney, and especially Shetland. The Orkney and Shetland Islands, with a significant Norse population from the eighth century, were among the domains of the King of Norway until 1468, resulting in language and cultural differences in the islands. In addition to this conspicuous Nordic heritage, the character of Shetland Islanders had been significantly shaped by the islands’ unsuitability for farming. Alhough crofts traditionally provided just enough food for individual family needs, there was little scope for profit to be made from the land. The traditional mainstay of many



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

37

Shetland families instead was fishing. Because they depended on the sea for their livelihood, Shetland men were frequently absent from the home for long periods of time, and many of those who earned their living at sea also died there. The high death toll at sea explains, in part, why the Shetland population was disproportionately female in the nineteenth century, and also why there was a high proportion of unmarried and widowed women. Shetland had not been exempt from the widespread evictions throughout the Scottish Highlands in the first half of the nineteenth century, but that process did not accelerate in the islands until the 1870s. This, in conjunction with New Zealand government-assisted immigration schemes that offered not only passage to New Zealand but also the cost of transportation to the port of embarkation, created a surge of migration from Shetland to New Zealand from the early 1870s, which will be elaborated on in chapter 3. Previously, for many Shetland migrants, the costs of transportation to the port of embarkation had been rendered prohibitive by the truck system prevalent in the islands, whereby employees were paid in goods rather than cash.43 The Borders The seven counties of the Borders contributed just 9.32 per cent of Scots migrants to New Zealand, roughly in proportion to their share of the population of Scotland. Although, as with the Eastern and Western Lowlands, industry, textiles in particular, was the major employer of those living in the Border counties throughout this period, the pattern varied greatly within the seven counties. For example, though 31.57 per cent of the population of the Borders were employed in agriculture in 1881, 49.73 per cent of the population of Berwick were engaged in this sector, and just 9.90 per cent of Selkirk. Industry employed 45.38 per cent of the Borders occupied population at that census, with 43.31 per cent of those employed in industry working in “Textile Fabrics” or “Dress.” Dumfries’ proximity to Lanarkshire was particularly advantageous to the development and sustainability of the textile industry in that county. Commerce employed 4.19 per cent of those in the Borders region, whereas professional occupations covered 5.17 per cent of the employed population. The region’s specializations may well have given its people an advantage in New Zealand. Despite their lower numbers, Borders immigrants in New Zealand were prominent in both sheep farming

38

Unpacking the Kists

and the woollen trades. The Rutherfords, for instance, among the richest sheep farmers in North Canterbury’s Amuri region, hailed from Jedburgh. The wealthy Dunedin merchant John Roberts was closely connected to woollen merchants and manufacturers in Galashiels and Selkirk, and many New Zealand woollen mills were managed by Borders men.

Demographic Profile of the Migrants An immigrant population differs in important respects from the population in the country of origin. It is likely to be younger, it may well have an abnormal gender distribution, and it is likely to be occupationally distinctive. In this section, the demographic profile of Scottish immigrants in New Zealand will be compared with Scotland and the general population of New Zealand. In the 1881 Census of Scotland, the ratio of females to males in the population was marginally imbalanced; there were 107.6 females for every 100 males. Emigration was a major reason for this gender imbalance. Men were more likely to emigrate than women, and there were more males than females among Scottish migrants to New Zealand between 1840 and 1920.44 Yet what is most striking about the gender imbalance among Scots emigrants to New Zealand is not that it was a reversal of the situation in Scotland, but that the ratio of males to females among New Zealand’s Scots was greater than among the New Zealand population.45 The ratio of females to males in the whole European population of New Zealand between 1867 and 1911 rose steadily, from just 65.75:100 in 1867 to 89.59:100 in 1911.46 Had male and female Scots come to New Zealand in numbers proportionate to the gender balance in Scotland, at least 105 Scottish females would have arrived for every 100 Scottish males. Instead, the greatest female to male ratio in this period (aside from 1916, which was abnormal due to male participation in the First World War) was the 74.6:100 Scottish females to Scottish males recorded in 1896. New Zealand Scots clearly had a higher proportion of male migrants than the Englishor Irish-born in New Zealand. In 1881, although there were 70.1 Scots females to every 100 Scots males living in New Zealand, the ratio of English migrants was 71.6:100, and the Irish 78.4:100.47 Another common feature of a settler colony is its different age structure. Established societies contain more older people. In 1881,



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

39

24.37 per cent of the population of Scotland was over 40 years old. The comparable figure for the New Zealand population (exclusive of M ¯aori) was just 17.07 per cent. Although 4.97 per cent of Scots were aged 65 plus, only 0.28 per cent of those resident in New Zealand fitted within this age cohort. Those under ten years of age made up 25.47 per cent of the Scottish population at the 1881 Census, but 31.09 per cent of the New Zealand population.48 The proportion of the populations of Scotland and New Zealand aged between 20 and 40 years in 1881, on the other hand, was remarkably similar: 28.94 per cent of the Scots and 29.35 per cent of the New Zealanders. The Scottish immigrant population of New Zealand exhibited clear differences from the population of origin. Those recruiting migrants for New Zealand were seeking people fit for the physically demanding work of settling the country for at least another ten to fifteen years: healthy single migrants aged between sixteen and fortyfive or couples with young families. Age restrictions were applied to those travelling on assisted passages offered by the New Zealand Company, provincial government schemes, and under the Vogel scheme of the 1870s, and there is evidence that some migrants consequently falsified their age to receive an assisted passage. Although self-funded immigrants were not subject to selection criteria, they would have shared many of the characteristics of the assisted immigrants, except, if they had come directly from the United Kingdom, that they were likely to have a little more money than those assisted. The mean age of the NZSG migrants on arrival over the whole period 1840 to 1920 was 23.5 years (see table 2.3). One-quarter of the migrants were under twelve years of age, and one-quarter over thirty-two. “Outliers,” the statistical term for anything that lies too far beyond the “norm,” include all migrants sixty-three years of age or over. What this means is that the age structure of New Zealand’s Scottish immigrants for the eighty years between 1840 and 1920 exhibits a pattern very similar to that of immigrants in general to New Zealand.49 Fifty per cent of the NZSG migrants were between twelve and thirty-two years old. Most of those were from twenty-one to twenty-five years old, the most common age being twenty-four. Although males significantly outnumbered females in the adult New Zealand Scots population, male and female children arrived in approximately equal numbers. At the 1881 Census of Scotland, 50.66 per cent of children – those aged less than fifteen years of age – were male, and the proportion of male children in the New Zealand

40

Unpacking the Kists

Table 2.3 New Zealand Scots immigrant age statistics n* Mean Mode Minimum Lower Quartile Median Upper Quartile Maximum “Outliers”**

5,819 23.49 24 0 12 22 32 80 63+

* 793 migrants having no age-at-arrival information available. ** Upper Quartile + 1.5 x the Inter Quartile Range (20) = 62. Source: NZSG data, 1840–1920.

population as a whole in 1881 was 50.46 per cent. Males constituted 52.27 per cent of Scots migrants who arrived in New Zealand under the age of sixteen between 1840 and 1920. While this nearparity of male and female children migrating appears logical, studies of Dutch emigrants and of British immigrants to the United States in 1841 suggest that “families with young sons, even under the age of ten, were more inclined to emigrate than those with daughters.” As will be demonstrated below, this parity does not continue down to regional and county level analysis of New Zealand’s Scots.50 Figure 2.2 shows the proportions of the adult populations of Scotland and New Zealand, and of NZSG migrants, who were single, married, or widowed. What is immediately obvious is the relatively even distribution of single and married males and females in the Scottish population when compared with the population of New Zealand and the NZSG sample. The slightly higher proportion of married men to married women in Scotland arises from the higher proportion of widowed women to men, because of women’s longer life expectancy. The apparently much higher proportion of married women in relation to all women in New Zealand, and in relation to the comparable ratio for men, is an expected outcome of the high proportion of single men in the colony. There were 72,798 married women and 73,261 married men in New Zealand in 1881.51 However, there were also 37,126 single females in the country and 81,067 single men at this census. It is this group that so distorts the gender ratio from that of the home population. The high proportion of both married men and women in the NZSG data probably reflects



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

41

% of population exluding children

70 60

50

Single female

40

Single male

30

Married female

20

Married male

10

Widowed female

0

Widowed male Scotland, 1881

NZ, 1881

NZSG data, 1840– 1920*

Population

Figure 2.2 Showing the proportion of the adult population of Scotland, of New Zealand and of Scottish emigrants to New Zealand who were single, married, or widowed * The NZSG figures exclude children, those recorded as “either widowed or spouse absent” and those for whom marital status at arrival is unknown = sample of 3,830. Sources: Appendix Tables, Table LX and LXI, 1881 Census of Scotland, xlix and l; Part III, Table III, 1881 Census of New Zealand, p. 90; NZSG data, 1840–1920.

a bias toward married couples, who were more likely to have descendants to fill in the registration forms in the late twentieth century. In summary, New Zealand as a whole was receiving a mix of Scots that was different from the sending population in significant ways, but broadly comparable to the European population of New Zealand. Though the largest Scottish migrant group consisted of single men in their early twenties, a significant number of the migrants were young married couples with children under ten years of age. There were, however, significant regional differences. The gender profile of Scots migrants to New Zealand varies between regions and counties of origin in the NZSG data over the entire period. Comparing the ratio of females to every 100 males in the 1881 Scottish census data and in the NZSG data suggests that the proportion of males and females sent from each region and county was more likely to have been dependent on influences within the sending communities than on the gender ratio of those communities. For example, Angus and Aberdeen are both coastal counties that, in 1881, had similar population sizes, with large rural components and significant urban centres. Nevertheless, the home population gender ratios were markedly different and, though the ratio of females to males in Aberdeen was closer to parity than the ratio in Angus, the reverse was true among migrants from those counties. The comparatively high ratio of females in the population of Angus was likely due to the high

42

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proportion of women employed in the textile industry in Dundee. The comparatively low ratio of female migrants from Aberdeen was likely also due to employment conditions in the home population that encouraged a higher proportion of males to emigrate. Perhaps the most notable feature in the analysis of gender ratios by county of origin is that the counties that sent the closest ratio of females to males were often the large industrial centres: Midlothian (98.42:100); Lanarkshire (94.11:100); and Renfrew (91.71:100). Though the profile of the NZSG migrants by age is, as noted above, not dissimilar to that of Scottish emigrants generally, nor to that of the New Zealand population as a whole, Scottish regional variations are again evident. As with the gender ratio differences, variations in age are almost certainly due to factors in the sending communities. Most notable is the youth of Lanarkshire migrants: with an average age for the NZSG data for the whole period of 19.62, one-quarter of the migrants from Lanarkshire were younger than eight, while no more than a quarter were over twenty-eight. The youth of the Lanarkshire migrants is clarified by an analysis of the migrants’ marital status at arrival. Most of the Lanarkshire migrants were young couples with young children; 43.04 per cent of Lanarkshire migrants were children, compared with an average of just 33.19 per cent children in the whole of Scotland. Moreover, 44.40 per cent of children from Lanarkshire were under five years old at arrival, compared with 40.41 per cent of child migrants from the whole of Scotland in the NZSG data. In light of immigration recruitment policies, the arduous nature of the voyage to New Zealand, and the frailty of the elderly, it is unsurprising that, though 14.77 per cent of the population of Scotland in 1881 and 7.27 per cent of the New Zealand population was over fifty in that year, just 5.47 per cent of the total NZSG sample was over fifty at arrival. Also unsurprising is that this fifty-plus subsample is primarily made up of those aged between fifty-one and fifty-five. What is notable about this fifty-plus immigrant group is that the proportion of migrants from each region in the age bracket was by no means uniform across Scotland. For example, although nearly twice as many migrants aged fifty-plus came from the Eastern Lowlands as from the Highlands, a higher proportion of the Highland migrants were over fifty. A probable reason for this was the tendency of Highlanders to migrate with elderly parents rather than leave a member of the family behind in Scotland to care for them.52



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

43

Table 2.4 Showing the proportion of the Scottish population and of the NZSG migrants married or single  

 

Single

Married

n

1881 Scotland

Far North North East Highlands Eastern Lowlands Western Lowlands Borders

52.25 50.04 55.07 48.53 45.73 51.12

47.75 49.96 44.93 51.47 54.27 48.88

61,626 235,660 173,783 728,430 787,549 165,387

NZSG, 1840–1920

Far North North East Highlands Eastern Lowlands Western Lowlands Borders

51.34 40.63 43.08 35.21 36.79 37.77

48.66 59.37 56.92 64.79 63.21 62.23

187 443 513 1,119 927 368

Source: NZSG data 1840–1920; Appendix Tables, Table LX and LXI, 1881 Census of Scotland, xlix and l.

Although a comprehensive tracing of the travel companions for all the migrants in the NZSG database has not been possible, a limited survey of the available data reveals that many of those over sixty were travelling to New Zealand with their adult children.53 By contrast, many of those in their early fifties had young families; couples often produced children for over twenty years. Table 2.4 compares the proportion of the 1881 population of Scotland to the NZSG sample migrants who were married or single.54 As the table indicates, while the Far North sent single and married migrants in proportions similar to the 1881 regional population, this pattern is not evident among New Zealand Scots from any other region. Though single females and single males were recruited by various assisted immigration schemes, for most counties and regions in Scotland married Scots were considerably more likely than single adults to emigrate to New Zealand. As noted earlier, the whole population of Scots in New Zealand included equal proportions of male and female children, but there were also regional differences in this respect.55 The figures presented in Table 2.5 show that the difference between the female to male ratio of “children” in the home population and among Scots immigrants was significant, possibly indicating a greater tendency of families with male children to emigrate.

44

Unpacking the Kists

Table 2.5 Showing the proportion of children who were male and the ratio of female children to every 100 male children in the home population and the NZSG data, from each region of Scotland % of children that were male

Far North Highlands North East Eastern Lowlands Western Lowlands Borders Total

Ratio (females to 100 males)

Scotland, 1881

1840–1920

Scotland, 1881

50.08 51.25 50.74 50.69 50.49 50.69 50.66

53.41 41.90 52.02 53.50 53.08 53.08 52.04

96.86 95.12 97.07 97.26 98.07 97.26 97.39

nzsg ,

nzsg , 1840–1920

87.23 138.67 92.22 86.92 88.40 88.41 92.16

Sources: NZSG data, 1840–1920; Population, Scotland, Vol. II, Abstracts, 1881 Census of Scotland, 4–5.

This is not as obvious in the analysis of migrants from the whole of Scotland because the migrant ratio figure for the country as a whole is brought closer to the population of Scotland ratio by the anomalous figure for the Highlands region. Although home population figures for the Highlands region show that the proportion of males under fifteen in the region was higher than in any other region of Scotland, NZSG figures suggest that a considerably higher proportion of female children from that region came to New Zealand, a gender imbalance most pronounced among migrants from Inverness. Just 30.56 per cent of child migrants in the NZSG sample are male, compared with 51.38 per cent of children in the home population. There is no readily apparent reason, except that it appears to be consistent with the high propensity of young single women from the Highlands to migrate to towns in search of jobs in domestic service. Given the data available, it may fairly be suggested that families with female children in the Highlands region were more likely than those with male children to emigrate to New Zealand. The ratio of Scotland-born females to males in New Zealand was 74.6:100 at the highest point, in 1896, and 58.68:100 at the lowest, in 1867, so it might be expected that the ratio of Scots females to males in every province and county of New Zealand over the whole period would lie somewhere within this range. In fact, the ratio of Scotland-born females to males varied greatly from ­province



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

45

to ­province within New Zealand. The West Coast was the least gender-balanced province over the eight decades. At the 1871 Census, for every 100 Scotland-born males, just 30.2 Scotland-born females lived in the province. The peak number of Scottish females per 100 Scottish males, reached in 1911, was just 53.58:100. Otago had the most even distribution of male and female Scots throughout the period, at the minimum (in 1871) 66.93 females to every 100 Scots males living in the province, with 85.02 Scots females to every 100 males in 1911. The differences between Otago and the West Coast are predictable, given the nature of the migrations to those two provinces – the Otago flow was relatively family-oriented (despite the gold rushes) and the West Coast attracted large numbers of single men, especially in the gold rush era of the 1860s. Analysis of gender ratios at county level reveals that areas of New Zealand with larger populations and with larger urban centres had a more even male/female distribution of Scottish migrants than counties with smaller populations or little or no urban element. The counties that incorporated the towns of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Invercargill all had a male to female ratio close to or greater than the national average (81.72:100): Eden had 90.93, Hutt 90.64, Selwyn 80.85, Taieri 84.00, and Southland 82.03 Scots females to every 100 Scots males. Whanganui County and Rangitikei County in the southern North Island shared a border, yet Rangitikei County had only 72.09 Scots females per 100 Scots males in the NZSG sample, while Whanganui County, including the town of Whanganui itself, had 88.06 Scots females per 100 Scots males. Marlborough and Waimea Counties, at the top of the South Island, also shared a border, but had, respectively, 67.86 and 108.51 Scots females per 100 Scots males, principally because Waimea incorporated the town of Nelson. Southland and Wallace Counties at the bottom of the South Island shared a border, but Wallace contained only 56.36 Scots females for every 100 Scots men, whereas Southland (containing Invercargill) had 82.03:100.56 The age and sex of Scottish immigrants also varied considerably by region within New Zealand. Just as counties that included larger urban centres received proportionately more female migrants than other more rural areas, urban centres also appear to have received younger female migrants, presumably because those women were more attracted to urban employment opportunities. For example, female migrants in Eden County (Auckland) were, on average, 22.4

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Unpacking the Kists

Table 2.6 Showing the ratio of female to male children and proportion of children who were male in the NZSG data and at the 1878 Census by New Zealand province nzsg

children

1878 Census children

 

Ratio

% male

n

Ratio

% male

n

Auckland Taranaki Hawkes Bay Wellington Nelson Marlborough West Coast Canterbury Otago/Southland

96.77 53.85 105.88 105.83 164.71 100 100 77.11 90.57

50.82 65 48.57 48.58 37.78 50 50 56.46 52.47

366 40 35 212 45 18 8 147 566

96.45 96.84 99.94 100.07 96.99 103.82 101.29 98.24 98.23

50.9 50.8 50.02 49.98 50.77 49.06 49.68 50.44 50.45

35,244 4,242 6,252 21,515 10,064 3,202 6,250 39,791 48,259

Source: NZSG data 1840–1920; Part II, Table XIV, 1878 Census of New Zealand, 61–62.

n = children in the sample/census.

years old at arrival in New Zealand, whereas Scots males in that county averaged 32 years of age. Whanganui also exhibited a large age variance between males and females, the average ages there being 26.71 and 18.98 for males and females respectively, though in this case the age disparity arose from the larger proportion of female children, 24.75 per cent of the total sample, with 71.43 per cent of children in the sample female. Waimea County, including Nelson, also exhibited a difference of 7.02 years between male and female Scots at time of arrival. Scots in Westland County reversed this gender ratio trend; Scots females in the county were, on average, 3.67 years older than Scots males, the average ages being 28.80 and 25.13 years respectively, probably because a larger proportion of single men than women arrived in the county as a result of the gold rushes and the later emphasis in the area on extractive industries such as coal mining and bush felling. The ratio of female to male Scots children in Auckland, Hawkes Bay, Wellington, Marlborough, and West Coast provinces was close to the ratio in the New Zealand population in those provinces. Gender ratios for Scots children settling in Taranaki, Canterbury, and Otago, however, suggest that Scots families settling in these provinces were, as with Erickson’s British migrants to the United States in 1841, more likely to have sons than daughters. It is probable that this was due to the prominence of agriculture in these



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

47

provinces, and the greater opportunities for male children compared with female children in agricultural work. Families with sons were therefore more attracted to areas with potential rural employment, whereas families with daughters were more likely to settle in urban areas where the prospects for domestic employment and marriage were better. Nelson Province inverts this pattern. Children in Nelson constituted 45.9 per cent of all Scots female migrants to the province. Female children were the largest group of Scots migrants in Nelson Province: 23.73 per cent of the total Scots population. On the basis of the NZSG data, in no other province did the proportion of Scots migrants classified as female children approach this level. Why this anomaly arose among Nelson’s Scots female child migrants is unclear. Given that the province of residence was ascertained from the stated place of death, a possible explanation is that female children who came to the province were more likely than other groups to remain there for the rest of their lives. Another might be that even if male and female children arriving in Nelson Province came in equal numbers, male children tended to move away, and/or to die elsewhere. This is plausible, as male migrants in the area would have been more inclined than females to move from Nelson to work in the gold and coal fields further south, or to take up work elsewhere in the colony. James, Joseph, John, and William Brown Allen illustrate this phenomenon. The four brothers from Kilmarnock, Ayr, arrived in Nelson with their family in 1842, aged eighteen, fourteen, eleven, and five years old, respectively. It is unclear when the brothers moved from Nelson, but the next place of residence recorded for John was Dunstan, on the Otago gold fields, and for James, Joseph, and William Brown, Dunedin. All four brothers have “farmer” recorded as their New Zealand occupation. They died in East Taieri in 1891, 1879, 1901, and 1867 respectively.57

Occupations An immigrant population is likely to be occupationally distinctive compared with the population in the country of origin. The occupational characteristics of the immigrant population and the opportunities open to that population are, of course, both strongly influenced by the economic structure of the host society. In colonial New Zealand, as in other settler societies, farming-related occupations predominated among Scottish immigrants, as well as among

48

Unpacking the Kists

immigrants of other ethnicities, and the availability of land had a significant influence on opportunity and success in the colony. Analysis of the NZSG database suggests that 28.51 per cent of all New Zealand’s Scottish migrants who were employed before migration had been employed in agriculture in Scotland, and 25.39 per cent in manufacturing. That the largest proportion of these migrants was employed in agriculture clearly shows a marked difference between the employment of the general population in Scotland and the employment of those who became New Zealand immigrants. In the 1881 Census of Scotland, 58.04 per cent of the occupied population were employed in industry, and just 16.77 per cent in agriculture (see table 2.7). Although one reason a greater proportion of Scottish migrants to New Zealand had an agricultural rather than an industrial background may have been the greater opportunities for industrial workers within Britain and in North America, the accessibility of land and the consequent attractiveness of New Zealand to those with an agricultural background played a more important role.58 The available occupational data by region of birth once more yield unsurprising results, given what is already known about the Scottish regions. Since the Eastern and Western Lowlands were industrial centres, manufacturing was, predictably, the primary former employment of migrants from these regions. Conversely, that sector employed less than 10 per cent of those from the Far North. Agriculture employed more than 20 per cent of migrants from the North East, Borders, and Far North regions, whereas 50.56 per cent of Highlands region migrants had been employed in agriculture. Mining accounted for less than 1.50 per cent of those from the North East, Borders, and Highlands, and 3.74 per cent from the Far North, but 10.72 per cent of those from the industrial Western Lowlands were from a mining background. Table 2.8 is a cross-tabulation of the occupations in Scotland of NZSG migrants with the occupations held by those same migrants in New Zealand.59 Though the overwhelming proportion of migrants who had been engaged in agriculture in Scotland and were also employed on the land in New Zealand (78.30 per cent) was not rivalled in any other occupational field, a clear majority of those in building, dealing, labouring, manufacturing, mining, public service etc., and “other” in Scotland remained in those occupational sectors in New Zealand. Only those who had been domestic servants in Scotland provided a notable exception to the rule, p ­ resumably because

Table 2.7  Proportion of the occupied population of Scotland employed in each sector* Agricultural

Industrial

Commercial

Professional

Domestic

n

Scotland

Male Female Total

19.41 10.90 16.77

60.97 51.53 58.04

11.43 1.06 8.22

5.91 6.14 5.98

2.28 30.37 10.99

1,108,713 498,171 1,606,884

England and Wales

Male Female Total

16.94 1.90 12.36

61.61 46.36 56.97

12.34 0.57 8.76

5.79 5.76 5.78

3.32 45.40 16.12

7,783,646 3,403,918 11,187,564

* These figures are based on totals excluding those enumerated as “unoccupied and non-productive,” who in Scotland at this census numbered 690,762 males and 1,437,827 females and in England/Wales numbered 4,856,256 males and 9,930,619 females. Sources: Appendix Tables, Table LXVIII, 1881 Census of Scotland, lvii–lviii, and Summary Tables, Table 4, 1881 Census of England/Wales, vi.

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many women married in New Zealand shortly after arrival and were subsequently classified as “other.” A majority of the migrants who changed their occupations in New Zealand switched to agricultural employment, again demonstrating the attraction of New Zealand land to immigrants and the widespread recruitment of migrants for work on farm properties. Given that industry was the primary employment sector in Scotland, and agriculture the primary employer in New Zealand, it is noteworthy (if unsurprising) that only 17.65 per cent of those in the NZSG sample engaged in manufacturing in Scotland turned to agriculture in New Zealand. Indeed, just under half of the Scottish manufacturing sector migrants (48.10 per cent) were employed in manufacturing in New Zealand, suggesting that these immigrants were seeking an environmental change, not an occupational one, along with greater opportunities in their chosen occupations.60 Very few of the NZSG migrants employed in manufacturing in Scotland found new lives in labouring, mining, transport, and commerce, or even in domestic service. These occupational groupings represented only between 0.35 and 1.73 per cent of migrants previously in manufacturing jobs. Table 2.9 is a cross-tabulation of the NZSG migrants “New Zealand Occupation 1” with their “New Zealand Occupation 2.” These are the occupations recorded by the contributors of information to the NZSG register; the data are based on the order in which they were recorded. It is likely that in most cases contributors entered occupational information in chronological order, but equally plausible that it was entered in the order in which the information was found in their research notes. These findings should therefore be taken as suggestive only. The data imply a high degree of occupational mobility once migrants landed in New Zealand. Moreover, given how dominant agriculture was among migrants’ occupations in New Zealand, it was logical that agriculture should be the sector in which most migrant “second” occupations were classified. It is likely that a large number of migrants had two occupations: farming a small block of land, for example, as the primary income, supplemented by other, often seasonal, employment was commonplace. Census occupation data bear this out. As Fairburn has noted, the 1881 Census of New Zealand recorded 30,832 land holdings larger than one acre, but only 20,280 individuals enumerated as “farmer,” “market gardener,” “runholder,” or “grazier” at that census. This demonstrates the impor­tance of

Table 2.8  Occupational mobility within individual lifetimes: proportion of migrants in each occupational sector of Scotland by subsequent sector in New Zealand* Scotland Occupation Sector

NZ Occupation Sector 

 

Agricultural Mining Building Labouring Manufacturing Transport and commercial Dealing Public service, etc Domestic service Other n

Agricultural

Mining

Building

78.30 2.20 2.75 2.47 2.20 1.37

19.64 66.07 1.79 3.57 0.00 3.57

15.63 3.13 64.58 2.08 6.25 1.04

29.73 8.11 0.00 29.73 8.11 18.92

17.65 1.38 10.03 1.73 48.10 1.38

3.02 3.02 1.65 3.02 364

3.57 1.79 0.00 0.00 56

2.08 5.21 0.00 0.00 96

0.00 5.41 0.00 0.00 37

6.23 4.15 0.35 9.00 289

* Excludes “unknown,” “indefinable,” and “other” sectors. Source: NZSG Data, 1840–1920.

Labouring

Manufacturing

Transport and commercial

Dealing

Public service, etc.

Domestic service

Other

34.00 4.00 4.00 8.00 10.00 38.00

23.08 0.96 0.00 0.00 2.88 1.92

14.81 0.00 0.00 1.23 2.47 1.23

9.52 0.00 1.59 0.79 3.17 0.00

16.53 2.44 7.59 1.08 8.67 1.63

2.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 50

54.81 6.73 0.96 8.65 104

4.94 66.67 0.00 8.64 81

7.14 6.35 25.40 46.03 126

6.23 8.40 2.71 44.72 369

52

Unpacking the Kists

smallholdings in providing a basic subsistence within the family economy, and also perhaps that the census figures, which require a single occupation to be stated, underestimate the numbers of those engaged in agriculture.61 A significant number of migrants with two occupations were both farmers and retail proprietors. Of the 1,021 migrants with two occupations in the data, 5.78 per cent were “farmers” and “retail proprietors” in either occupation one or two, a high proportion given the large number of occupation combinations possible. Of those with a combination of “farmer” and “retail proprietor” in occupations one and two, eighteen were butchers and farmers, a noteworthy number given that only thirty-two of the migrants with two occupations were butchers. This is perhaps one of the more predictable combinations of occupations, since one directly supports the other. Two out of three market gardeners in the database were also farmers. For others, a second occupation in the agricultural sector showed true occupational mobility, rather than occupational versatility or income supplementation. Moreover, it is clear that this was almost invariably “upward” mobility. Of those whose primary occupation was in agriculture, 37.68 per cent held another agricultural occupation as their secondary employment; 81.32 per cent were “farmers” in occupation two, 46.01 per cent of whom had been employed in an occupation within the “farm workers 1” category (including such occupations as estate/run/station/stable managers, farm overseers, shepherds, and stock inspectors) and 19.26 within “farm workers 2” (including agricultural contractors/labourers, cowherds, dairy maids, farm and station hands, shearers, and stockmen) in occupation one. Upward mobility was not just confined to agriculture: 22.4 per cent of those with a secondary occupation in building, 27.05 per cent of those in dealing, 18.87 per cent in manufacturing, and 37.88 per cent in the public service/professional/independent category were only changing jobs within the same sector as their initial employment. The majority of this in-sector mobility was “upward.” William Dawson Douglas, for example, who had arrived in New Zealand as an infant at the beginning of the First World War, trained and worked initially as an accountant, rising to become the manager of a company.62 Robert McKinlay is another example. Before emigrating in 1870 at age 36, he had worked as a cotton weaver and letter carrier. In New Zealand he worked initially as a leather cutter and in

Table 2.9 Change subsequent to emigration to New Zealand: proportion of New Zealand Occupation 1 sector totals engaged in by migrants in New Zealand Occupation 2*

NZ Occupational Sector 1

nz

Agricultural Building Dealing Domestic service Labouring Manufacturing Mining Public service, etc Transport and commercial Other

Agricultural

Building

Dealing

Domestic service

Labouring

Manufacturing

37.68 32.80 33.61 7.69 62.22 33.33 37.08 31.82 41.54

7.39 22.40 4.10 0.00 11.11 8.81 12.36 1.52 4.62

19.01 9.60 27.05 19.23 2.22 20.13 17.98 16.67 15.38

1.06 0.00 0.82 7.69 0.00 1.26 1.12 0.00 0.00

5.99 1.60 0.82 0.00 0.00 2.52 6.74 3.03 3.08

4.58 13.60 4.10 7.69 11.11 18.87 7.87 4.55 9.23

16.67

0.00

9.26

3.70

0.00

1.85

* Excludes unknown and indefinable sectors. Source: NZSG Data, 1840–1920.

Occupational Sector 2 Public service, etc.

Transport and commercial

Other

n

2.82 3.20 0.82 0.00 2.22 1.26 5.62 0.00 4.62

11.62 15.20 18.85 3.85 2.22 5.66 7.87 37.88 10.77

5.28 1.60 4.10 0.00 8.89 3.77 2.25 0.00 9.23

2.11 0.00 4.10 53.85 0.00 3.14 0.00 4.55 0.00

284 125 122 26 45 159 89 66 65

0.00

9.26

0.00

57.41

54

Mining

54

Unpacking the Kists

1879 he founded a boot and shoe factory.63 This approach to occupational and social mobility, one of gradual accumulation of capital and remaining within one’s area of experience, is not an uncommon story among New Zealand’s business elite and entrepreneurs, as other examples in Chapter 4 will demonstrate.64 Nor was upward mobility restricted to within-occupational sectors. This becomes clear if land ownership is taken as a guide to success, and is shown in the NZSG data primarily by the recording of the migrant’s occupation as “farmer.” Of those who were miners in occupation one, 84.84 per cent were farmers in occupation two, whereas just 15.16 per cent were in “other rural” (a category that includes beekeepers, bushmen, fishermen, hunters, orchardists, and park keepers) in this agricultural category, and none were farm workers. This suggests that accumulated earnings, first on the gold fields but later through other forms of mineral extraction, were often used to purchase land that the migrant then farmed. Most of those whose occupations spanned building, then agriculture, fit within building “operative 1” type (bricklayers, carpenters, masons, plasterers, plumbers, and slaters) in occupation one and were “farmers” in occupation two. No migrants in the data were “farm workers 1” in either occupation one or two and builders in the other occupation, suggesting that building workers moved to land ownership/ farming when it became financially possible. In short, the chance of attaining independence through land ownership was a significant attraction for Scots, and almost certainly others, who immigrated to New Zealand.

Conclusion Although the common stereotype of Scots in New Zealand still tends to be the “traditional” Highland image of bagpipes and Highland flings, tartans, and claymore-wielding clansmen, far more of New Zealand’s Scots immigrants, as this chapter has demonstrated, were from the Lowlands of Scotland. That this was due to an evenness of migrant origin distribution, mirroring the population distribution of Scotland, rather than from Lowland-born migrants having any particular fondness for New Zealand, is the principal finding of this and other recent analysis of migrant origins. The chapter has demonstrated the diversity of origins, age, gender, marital status, and occupations in Scottish immigrant backgrounds. The descriptions of



Who Were New Zealand’s Scottish Migrants?

55

the major source areas in Scotland, though brief, highlight important differences between them, allowing inferences to be drawn as to possible migration motives and pressures. Analysis of migrant occupations makes it clear that New Zealand’s Scots were by no means refugees from the industrial revolution; the majority came from agricultural backgrounds. The brief overview of the demographic characteristics of the migrants suggests that the gender ratio of New Zealand’s Scots was always more disproportionately male than that of the wider Europe-born population of New Zealand; also that migrants tended to be young – in their mid-twenties – with one-third of their children under fifteen. Significantly, more Scots arrived married than single, a factor especially important for transferring culture. As Phillips and Hearn have noted, “families are the vehicles of culture. They teach children traditions, and their members reinforce each others’ accents, religious faith, ways of doing things.”65 It is possible that the large number of Scots migrants arriving in New Zealand married with young families was a primary reason for the successful continuation of many Scottish traditions in New Zealand. Further, as chapter 3 will elaborate, many of New Zealand’s Scots appear to have often chosen business and friendship bonds formed on the basis of shared Scottishness over and above other ethnic groups, perhaps reinforcing these Scottish traditions further within their communities.

3 Diaspora or Dispersion?: Scottish Settlement Patterns in New Zealand

History texts have invariably put the emphasis of New Zealand’s Scots settlement patterns on the South Island provinces of Otago and Southland, as well as the notable Highland pocket in Waipu, in the Far North, with the occasional mention of “two shiploads of Scottish settlers” arriving in Auckland in 1842.1 Given the scant consideration that New Zealand’s other Scottish settlers have been accorded, it is understandable that the perception that New Zealand’s Scots “all went to Dunedin” persists. James Belich, for instance, although he does suggest that the Scots in New Zealand were the “chief lieutenants of settlement,” and also notes the overrepresentation of Scots among emigrants to New Zealand, emphasizes Otago and Southland in his brief discussion, along with a short comment about Scottish mercantile influence in Auckland and Wellington.2 Popular accounts of the Scots in New Zealand resolutely offer the same themes. This chapter will broaden that discussion, examining other major Scottish communities in New Zealand and proposing that the Scottish networks so frequently noted in Otago, both business and personal, are evident wherever Scots clustered. It begins with an overview of Scottish migrant settlement patterns in New Zealand, followed by three case studies of Scots settlement, in the provinces of Otago, Canterbury, and Wellington. A particular strength of the NZSG dataset presented in chapter 2, and associated genealogical material, is that it enables detailed discussion of the selected case studies and individual examples, thus facilitating assessment of the question of whether or not Otago represented the “typical” New Zealand Scots experience.



Scottish Settlement Patterns

57

Map 3.1 The provinces of New Zealand

The Broad Settlement Patterns The available evidence suggests that the province of Otago, the creation of the Otago Association, and established as a distinctively Scottish settlement, continued to attract many Scots through the nineteenth century and after (map 3.1). The extent to which the south retained its Scottish flavour is indicated by the fact that around 40 per cent of the overseas-born in the mid- and late n ­ ineteenth-century census returns consistently recorded Scotland as their place of birth (table 3.1).3

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Table 3.1 Numbers recording Scotland as their place of birth in the mid- and late-nineteenthcentury census returns

Auckland Taranaki Wellington Hawke’s Bay Nelson Marlborough Canterbury Westland (County of) Otago (and Southland 1874 onwards) Southland Chatham Islands General Totals

1871

1874

1878

1881

1886

1891

14.2 8.6 17.3 18.2 12.8 17.5 15.2 14.6 40.6

13.7 9.5 15.6 14.0 13.2 15.4 14.4 12.2 39.2

12.4 8.4 11.9 11.3 13.5 13.2 11.8 13.9 37.5

12.1 9.1 12.3 11.8 13.5 13.4 13.4 11.9 37.5

11.9 10.0 13.1 12.2 14.7 13.5 14.3 12.6 38.0

12.3 11.2 13.7 13.3 14.6 13.9 14.9 12.2 39.0

51.0 14.3 22.6

9.1 21.7

11.3 20.0

12.9 19.8

13.6 19.7

15.5 20.0

Yet despite the popular preoccupation with Otago (and Waipu), as figure 3.1 reveals there were significant pockets of Scottish settlement throughout the colony from the beginning of systematic settlement. The first Scots to settle in New Zealand after 1840 went not to Otago, but to Wellington and Auckland. Auckland was the only one of New Zealand’s six primary settlements not settled by or through the New Zealand Company. However, it received a similar proportion of Scots migrants, despite attracting a much smaller proportion of English and a much higher proportion of Irish immigrants. Between 15 and 18 per cent of the migrants in both the New Zealand Company settlements and in Auckland arriving between 1840 and 1852 were Scots (although this bald statement obscures the relatively few Scots in the Company settlements of Nelson and Canterbury, and the strong Scottish bias of Otago).4 Approximately one-fifth of immigrants to Auckland in this decade were assisted immigrants, sponsored by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, including the influx of 514 Scots arriving in the province in 1842 on the Duchess of Argyle and the Jane Gifford, predominantly urban, working-class folk, including many Paisley weavers.5 As noted in chapter 2, the Western Lowlands, especially Paisley, Greenock, and Glasgow, constituted a centre of commerce and industrial activity in Scotland. This influx from the Western Lowlands in 1842 thus delivered an initial boost to Auckland’s



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e­ mbryonic m ­ anufacturing sector, making the city a logical destination for more Western Lowland migrants in later decades.6 Auckland was a primary site of colonial manufacturing and industrial activity from the first decade of colonization; of the eighty-five “manufactories and works” recorded in the Statistics of New Zealand for the Crown Colony Period 1840–1852 in Auckland, Wellington, and Nelson, thirty-five were in Auckland, including five of the eight sawmills, nine of the sixteen brick kilns, and the only iron foundry recorded.7 Eden County, including urban Auckland, contained 55.27 per cent of the Scots in Auckland Province over the eight decades to 1920.8 Of all Renfrewshire migrants who settled in New Zealand between 1840 and 1920, 23.57 per cent settled in Eden County, as did 16.08 per cent of those from Lanarkshire and 12.01 per cent of Ayr migrants. By 1867, Auckland had more people employed in manufacturing occupations and more capital invested in industrial machinery, land, and buildings than the provinces of Canterbury, Otago, and Southland combined. Auckland’s convenient location, on a narrow isthmus serving harbours on both sides of the North Island, gave it a major advantage in attracting commercial and mercantile business. From 1841 until 1865, Auckland was also New Zealand’s capital, which led naturally to the growth of administrative offices in the city. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s, one in six immigrants to Auckland Province was of Scottish birth, figures boosted by another influx of Scots in the decade after 1853 with the arrival at Waipu of the “Nova Scotian” Scots under the leadership of Rev. Norman McLeod. The saga of the migration of Norman McLeod and his followers from Assynt to Waipu via Nova Scotia and Adelaide is among the most widely-known tales of Scottish migration to New Zealand and internationally, frequently retold as a representative account of New Zealand’s Scots. In fact, the Waipu case is thoroughly atypical, even if it is that atypicality, and the mythology that has surrounded the odyssey, that has made Waipu an alluring and interesting object of study.9 McLeod, born in Sutherland, was an extreme fundamentalist whose dogmatic views led to him being relieved of his position as a lay preacher in the Church of Scotland. In 1817, he emigrated with his wife, family, and a close band of followers to Nova Scotia, and remained there until 1848.10 The first parties were joined ­periodically by more relatives and adherents. Hugh McKenzie, born in Assynt, Sutherlandshire in 1817 to supporters of McLeod, left

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Figure 3.1  Provincial distribution of the Scots-born population of New Zealand between 1871 and 1911

Scotland for Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, at age four on the Perseverance, departing from Loch Inver on 9 July 1821.11 This was the Perseverance’s second voyage taking migrants across the Atlantic. The first, in 1818, had also carried McLeod’s followers.12 After settling in St Ann’s, Cape Breton, where McLeod and his followers had moved after leaving Pictou in 1820, Hugh’s father took up farming, and five more children were born to the family. The community remained at St Ann’s until 1851, when, after seasons of blight and wheat rust, and with fears that the materialistic secular world was encroaching, McLeod acted on glowing reports from his son about the climate and conditions in Australia. New vessels, the Margaret and the Highland Lass, were built and the patriarch, along with 300 of his followers, set out again.13 John ­Fraser, part-owner of the Margaret, and his family were among those accompanying McLeod. Hugh McKenzie, now thirty-three years old and courting Fraser’s daughter Mary, twenty-one, was told by her father that he could marry Mary only on the condition that he emigrate to Australia with them. Fearing the climate of Australia, Hugh refused, and the evening before the ship was to sail, he and Mary eloped.14 It was to be a six more years before Hugh, Mary, and their



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three ­children finally embarked on the Spray for Waipu, some 90 miles north of Auckland, where McLeod and many of those following him had made final landfall. The young couple were subsequently joined by further family members travelling direct from St Ann’s on the ­Margaret, the Gazelle, and the Ellen Lewis. Hugh was the first teacher at the Braigh School in Waipu and the first registrar of the area; he died in September 1896, aged seventy-nine years.15 The Waipu settlement remained largely isolated, restricted principally to the McLeod settlers until about 1875, at which point the first long-term settlers who were not McLeod’s followers began to take up land in the district.16 Even so, by 1882 just two of the 134 freeholders recorded in Waipu were neither McLeod settlers nor married to a McLeod settler.17 Waipu was privately organized, but the New Zealand government also organized special settlements for which migrants were specifically recruited with a particular purpose in mind, and Scots were on the list they set out to recruit during the 1870s. Some of these ventures were on the long, remote, and mountainous western coast of the South Island, where European settlement had only really taken off with the gold rushes of the mid-1860s.18 There were already Scots on the West Coast. In 1864 the West Coast gold fields population was no more than 1,000, but three years later the 1867 Census recorded 25,884 people living along the littoral, though even at the time this was thought to be an underestimate.19 An estimated 19.3 per cent of miners on the West Coast were of Scottish birth.20 The special settlement schemes brought more Scots. Martins Bay on the West Coast was the first of the special settlements, established in 1870. Due to its isolation, it remained very small – it had fifty settlers at its peak in January 1871, with just twenty remaining by 1880.21 Jacksons Bay, proclaimed a “special settlement” only in February 1875, was the most troubled of all because of the mixed origins of the migrants, who hailed from Germany, Italy, Poland, and Scandinavia, as well as England, Ireland, and Scotland. The consequent communication difficulties ensured that the mix never gelled. From a peak population of 402 in 1878, the settlement was reduced to just 160 individuals by 1881. By 1884 only 24 families remained.22 How many were originally from Scotland is unknown, though among them was the Dalziel family, formerly of Shetland.23 In June 1873, a special settlement consisting solely of a contingent of Shetland immigrants was established at Port William, on ­Stewart Island.24 The settlement had been suggested in 1871 by Robert

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Stout, a Shetland migrant himself, and now a Dunedin lawyer, and later minister of lands and immigration and premier.25 As a result of this recommendation, less than a year later the Otago provincial superintendent, James Macandrew, proposed bringing at least 1,000 migrants to Port William.26 But it was always a pipedream. Although the migrants were collected direct from Lerwick Harbour to reduce the cost to the migrants, thereby increasing the likelihood that a greater number would apply for passage, just thirty-one migrants were recruited for the settlement, arriving in Invercargill in 1873.27 The migrants cleared land on the island and within six months of arrival had built several houses at the chosen site, but it was too far from the mainland – and therefore from public works or other sustaining employment. Within fourteen months of arrival, every one of the migrants had departed the settlement for the mainland.28 As can be seen from figure 3.1, Auckland and Wellington became home to an increasingly large proportion of Scots as the settlement of the colony progressed. The numbers increased as the population of New Zealand as a whole began to move north in the later nineteenth century. This move from the South Island to the North, and from rural communities to urban centres, was, of course, not just significant among the Scots-born and their immediate families, but was a phenomenon shared by the general population. It should be emphasized that the drift of the population from the South to the North Island was not only a shift from rural to urban life but also a movement of people within rural New Zealand, after the North Island frontier opened for European settlement and grew increasingly quickly after 1870. Between 1886 and 1906, although urban population growth in the North Island was twice that of the South Island towns, rural population gain in the North Island was four times that of the South Island. The North Island accounted for approximately 80 per cent of New Zealand’s net rural increase over these two decades.29 Between 1840 and 1920 over half of the Scotland-born population of New Zealand consistently lived in the South Island. The North Island Scotland-born population peaked in 1911, with 41.66 per cent of the total. Though Auckland Province received a significant proportion of this population increase, the northward drift was especially pronounced in Wellington. Nevertheless, though 58 per cent of New Zealand’s Scots continued to live in the South Island at the 1911 Census, the proportion of the total population of New Zealand living in the North Island was 56 per cent.



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Figure 3.2  Distribution of the Scottish regional origins of migrants in New Zealand’s five principal provinces

Examining the Scottish population of each province in New Zealand by region of birth in Scotland reveals a pattern that is remarkably similar to the national distribution of Scottish regional origins: New Zealand’s Scottish migrants not only came to the colony in equal numbers from all over Scotland, but each region of New Zealand also received a mix of Scots approximately proportionate to their share of the population of Scotland. This is shown in figure 3.2. Yet there were some exceptions to this “proportionality” principle: the below-average number of Highlanders and Border migrants and the above-average number of Western Lowlanders in Auckland, the above-average number of Highlanders and below-average number of Scots from the Eastern Lowlands in Southland, and the above-­ average number of migrants from the North East in Wellington.30 For the most part, Auckland’s Scots were from the Eastern and (particularly) Western Lowlands, more so than for New Zealand as a whole, and the strong Western Lowland representation persisted from the early 1840s. One consequence was that those from the Highlands and Borders were underrepresented in Auckland. Conversely, Southland had a below-average representation from the Eastern Lowlands and an above-average share of migrants from the Highlands.31 Canterbury also had a disproportionately high share of Highlanders, for much the same reason as Southland: sheep farming was the main economic activity in both provinces and there was ongoing demand

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for migrants with experience in this form of husbandry.32 It was the type of farming most prevalent in Highland Scotland and therefore Southland and Canterbury were logical destinations for Highland agricultural immigrants. Immigrants from other rural areas in Scotland exhibited similar settlement patterns. But distinguishing distributions by province is a broad brush approach. After 1876, distributions could be more finely determined through analysis by counties (see map 3.2). Southland County, containing within its boundaries the town of Invercargill, accounted for 84.15 per cent of the Scots in Southland Province. Though only 5.01 per cent of all migrants to New Zealand from Midlothian lived in Southland County, higher proportions of migrants from the more rural, less populated areas of the Eastern Lowlands settled in Southland. Of all migrants from that arguably “half Highland, half Lowland” county, Perthshire, 7.41 per cent lived in Southland County, as did 7.09 per cent of all those from Fife and 6.50 per cent of migrants to New Zealand from Angus. It was the more isolated areas of the Highlands, too, that provided a higher proportion of migrants to Southland County. Of all migrants to New Zealand from Sutherland, 26.87 per cent lived in Southland County, but conversely the county received only 2.63 per cent of all migrants from the “capital” of the Highlands, Inverness. In all, 17.04 per cent of Southland County’s migrants came from the Highlands region, 4.04 per cent from Sutherland, 5.83 from Ross and Cromarty, 4.71 per cent from Argyll, 1.57 from Bute, and just 0.90 per cent from Inverness.33 Less easily explicable is the above-average number of North East Scots in Wellington Province. With 9.14 per cent of Wellington Province’s Scottish migrants from Aberdeen, this may be the county to focus on for explanations of this apparent “exception” to the “proportionality.” The greatest numbers of Scots in Wellington ¯ and Hutt counties (for Province lived in Whanganui, Manawat u, many years the last included Wellington City). A high proportion of the Scots in Wellington were either professionals or employed in the public sector, because, after 1865, the administrative offices of the central government were there and the North East provided a disproportionately large number of migrants to this sector of work.34 This likely helps account for the high proportion of Scots in Hutt County. Since over 25 per cent of the population of Aberdeenshire was ­agriculturally employed at the 1881 Census and 26.96 per cent of the migrants from Aberdeen had been employed in agricultural



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Map 3.2 The counties of New Zealand at 1876

­ ursuits in Scotland, this may explain the large percentage of Aberp deenshire migrants in Manawat ¯u and Whanganui Counties, districts that remained predominantly rural past the 1920s.35 The cases of several Aberdeenshire families who settled in Wanganui County, elaborated on later in this chapter, suggest that more in-depth investigation of individuals and families arriving in Wellington Province

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from the North East might provide another explanation for this anomaly – chain migration. Map 3.3 presents the distribution of the New Zealand Scots-born population at the 1916 Census. The northward drift of the population is less evident at the county level than at the provincial level, partly due to the division of the North Island data into nearly twenty more counties than were set up in 1876. If the data of some of these North Island counties were aggregated, it would be easier to observe the proportion of the New Zealand Scots-born population living in close proximity. Nevertheless, the map clearly shows Scots’ continued predisposition to live in the lower South Island into the early twentieth century, and equally verifies the continued presence of pockets of Scots elsewhere in New Zealand. Three of these pockets will now be discussed in greater detail to illustrate some key aspects of Scots settlement patterns in New Zealand before 1920: Otago, New Zealand’s Scottish heartland; Canterbury, where Scots, though a minority group, nevertheless exhibited a tendency to associate in groups; and the rural districts of the lower North Island, specifically Eastern Wairarapa and the district just south of Wanganui that included the settlements of Turakina and Fordell.

Otago The influx of Scots migrants to Otago began in 1848, when Dunedin was chosen as the nucleus of a Scottish Free Church settlement. The notion of establishing a distinctly Scottish settlement in New Zealand had first been formulated in 1842 and – with modifications by Rev. Thomas Burns, Captain William Cargill, and John McGlashan following the formation of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843 – the scheme came to fruition with the arrival in Port Chalmers of the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing in early 1848.36 The ideal settlers that the sponsors had in mind for the settlement were emigrants “‘imbued with the principles and habits of Scottish piety,’ preferably – but not necessarily – from the Free Church.”37 In fact, about two-thirds of the early Otago settlers were Free Church Presbyterians.38 Most of those who landed in Otago between 1848 and 1850 were from the Lowlands, the majority from Midlothian, reflecting the strong promotion of the Otago scheme in that county.39 Brooking notes that “married couples with small families predominated at first, reflecting the desire of the settlement’s promoters.” An influx

Map 3.3 Distribution of Scotland-born population of New Zealand at 1916 Census

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of single men came to the province later, especially after 1861.40 This was in line with New Zealand Company regulations, which preferred young, childless, married couples, or couples with young families, to “guard against an excess of males.”41 Company policy also favoured mechanics, craftsmen, agricultural labourers, and domestic servants for the Otago settlement.42 The Philip Laing carried thirty couples, ninety-two children, and just thirty single migrants, and the John Wickliffe thirteen married couples and sixteen single migrants. Occupations recorded for migrants on both ships reveal only a few migrants with agricultural experience. The John Wickliffe’s passengers included five general labourers, four domestic servants, and several other migrants with urban occupations. The Philip Laing carried considerably more agricultural labourers (11.88 per cent of those with an occupation recorded).43 During the 1850s, the settlement struggled. For more than a decade, Dunedin remained a small and rather untidy town, although farming did start to develop in the surrounding districts, particularly once the provincial government pursued a more assertive immigration policy after 1854, seeking more agricultural labour. The discovery of gold in payable quantities in the province in 1861, and the gold rushes that followed, brought about a radical transformation in the settlement, the likes of which had drawn expressions of fear from Cargill and his Free Church companions as early as 1851, when small samples of gold had been discovered. The founding fathers had no desire for the settlement to develop at the “expense of an invasion of … godless adventurers from overseas.”44 Their hopes were soon to be dashed. Between 1860 and 1863 the population of Otago increased over six-fold, from 12,691 to 76,965; moreover, the initial gender imbalance was exacerbated, since the majority of the new arrivals were single men.45 Just over 60 per cent of Otago’s immigrants in the peak gold rush years of 1861 to 1864 appear to have been English-born, with the Scots and Irish each at 19 per cent. Three-quarters were men between the ages of twenty and thirty-four. Eighty per cent of them were single. Many of the newcomers had already been working in the goldfields in Victoria. As the decade wore on, fewer English and more Irish and Scots arrived, so that by 1870 those of English, Irish, and Scottish birth were almost equally represented among the Otago mining population. Otago, therefore, was never a distinctively Scottish goldfield, but, even so, the Scottish character of the province’s population was only



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slightly diluted during the gold rush decade. According to the 1871 Census, 28.51 per cent of those living in Otago or Southland had been born in Scotland, compared with just 16.38 per cent English and 8.95 per cent Irish.46 The New Zealand-born population already comprised 31.84 per cent, and, given the very high proportion of Scots in the province in the preceding twenty-three years, many of the New Zealand-born recorded in the census would have been the sons and daughters of Scottish migrants. The Scottish population of Otago Province was overwhelmingly settled in Taieri County – the county that included Dunedin within its boundaries: 57.28 per cent of the NZSG Otago Province migrants made homes in Taieri County, 10.89 per cent in Waitaki County, and 9.90 per cent in Clutha County. Taieri County received 8.56 per cent of all of New Zealand’s Scots migrants. The top six “sending counties” for Otago Province were similar to those for New Zealand as a whole to 1920: 13.18 per cent of the NZSG migrants in Otago Province had been born in Lanarkshire, 8.97 per cent in Midlothian, 6.78 per cent in Ayr, 6.29 per cent in Perthshire, 5.96 in Aberdeen, and 4.65 per cent in Renfrewshire. The county of origin distribution for Taieri County is broadly similar to that for Otago Province as a whole.47 Otago was still firmly established in its Scottish character by the end of the gold rush decade and remained the primary receiving province of Scots to New Zealand until the 1880s: 27.8 per cent of all Scots arriving in New Zealand between 1871 and 1886 settled in Otago. However, as the North Island increasingly became the focus of settlement, Otago’s share dropped to just 12.4 per cent of those arriving between 1887 and 1900 and 11.2 per cent of those arriving between 1901 and 1920. It is possible that after the initial influx of Scots in the late 1840s, many of the Scots arriving in these later decades were following relatives to the province; that is, they were parts of chains of migration, but Otago’s reputation in Scotland as a Scottish settlement would also have appealed to many emigrants and influenced their choice of destination. Alexander Watson was one of those who took up the offer of an assisted passage to New Zealand on the Philip Laing. Born in 1810 in Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire, just northwest of Glasgow, Alexander, a weaver, married Jane Lang in September 1842 and their son Walter was born thirteen months later. ­Alexander was probably motivated by the same unemployment pressures that impelled many textile workers from Paisley and surrounds to sail for Auckland in

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1842.48 Possibly to secure an assisted passage, ­Alexander stated his occupation as “sawyer” on the Philip Laing passenger list. Once in Otago, he was employed first as a farm worker, then later as farm manager on the Breadalbane estate in Taieri. In 1865 he was able to purchase twenty-five acres of land neighbouring Breadalbane, which he named Langsfield. Alexander, Jane, and Walter remained at Langs­field for the rest of their days. Walter bought a section of the property from his father when he married in 1868. In 1858, ­Alexander was joined in Taieri by his sister and her family who came to New Zealand via Australia.49 Though the flow of Scots to New Zealand via Australia was always considerably smaller than the flow directly from Scotland, there was nevertheless always a consistent influx of Scots migrants to the province from the Australian colonies. The proportion of Otago Scots who came to New Zealand via another country was a little lower than the national figure (just 10.27 per cent, compared with 11.55 for the whole of New Zealand), but the proportion of these who came via Australia was significantly higher. Of the Otago Scots who did not migrate directly from Scotland, 77.55 per cent had arrived via Australia, compared with 70.14 per cent of those to New Zealand as a whole. There is little doubt that a significant factor was the strengthening connection between Otago and Victoria, shaped not only by the gold rushes but also by the developing commercial links between Melbourne and Dunedin. The individual stories of the trans-Tasman travellers varied greatly. One story is Mary Grey’s. Born in the village of Duntiblae in Lanarkshire in September 1841, Mary left Lanarkshire with her parents and siblings in March 1852. Bound for the Australian goldfields, she arrived in Melbourne in July that year. Although just ten years old, Mary shouldered most of the responsibility for running the household after her mother fell from a wagon and broke both wrists shortly after she arrived. In 1858, Mary and her family moved on again, this time to Otago to join Alexander Watson, her maternal uncle, and his family at Taieri. Mary’s father found employment as a farm labourer on Ravenscliffe, the estate of English migrants James ­ ulton. The Grey family lived on the estate, where and Catherine F Mary was employed as a maid for Mrs Fulton. When the discovery of gold at Tuapeka led to a gold rush in 1861, the quiet of Mary’s village was shattered as hundreds of men streamed through on their way to make their fortunes. An encounter with one of these men



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resulted in Mary becoming pregnant, and giving birth to a daughter, Phoebe, whose birth certificate reads “Father Unknown.” The family moved again shortly after Phoebe’s birth, after Mary’s father was finally able to purchase land of his own at nearby Maungatua. In April 1869 Mary married Joseph Cookson, an English migrant who had been employed for some years on the Fulton estate. The couple had nine children over the space of eighteen years, moving to a house built by Joseph at Harvey’s Flat. Mary died of pneumonia in October 1910, aged sixty-nine years.50 Although Hearn has noted that Scots miners in Otago were less likely than their Irish and English counterparts to have come via Australia, 75.74 per cent of the Scots who came to Otago via another country arrived between 1853 and 1870, and 82.03 per cent of them came via Australia. Among those who first took passage to Australia, then moved on to New Zealand, were John and Mary Edie. Both John and Mary came from coal mining backgrounds. Mary’s father had died in a mining accident in Fife, and John recorded his occupation as coal miner on the passenger list of the Anna. Shortly after their marriage in July 1854 the couple succumbed to the lure of the Victorian gold rush, setting sail for Sydney from Liverpool in November that year. They worked to pay their way to the gold fields through 1855, when John started mining in Bendigo in February 1856. The couple remained there until 1862, then left for the Otago goldfields, joining Mary’s sister Margaret in Dunedin, where she had arrived as an assisted migrant in 1861. Having learned from his experience in Bendigo that supplying the diggings was a steadier and more reliable source of income than mining itself, John worked as a carrier between Dunedin and the diggings at Dunstan.51 John and Mary Edie, like Mary Grey and her family, are valuable case studies of Scots arriving in Otago in the founding decades. Their stories exhibit a number of common characteristics with other migrants. The motivation behind their initial emigration from Scotland appears to have been the prospect of success on the gold fields of Australia. Typical of Scots migrants to New Zealand, too, was the decision of both families to move to Otago because other members of their extended families had already established themselves in the settlement. Moreover, both families settled in Taieri County, a county with a high proportion of Scottish migrants. Finally, Mary and her family were born in Lanarkshire, the Scottish county that contributed the largest number of migrants to Taieri County.

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The surviving records of the Edies, the Greys, and the Watsons are rich, but carry no suggestion of involvement in any of the many Scottish societies, clubs, and associations that sprang up in Otago and Southland from an early date. Although (as will be seen in chapter 7), these societies and associations were frequented by Scots from all stations of life and were important vehicles for transferring Scottish identity and promoting ethnic cohesion, it is probable that many Scottish immigrants in New Zealand may not have felt the need to make such a public affirmation of their identity. Since Otago was the largest Scottish settlement in New Zealand, the experience of the Scots there is commonly portrayed as the typical New Zealand Scots experience. This may well be true, in a broad sense, but the patterns of chain migration, intermarriage, and working with and living beside fellow Scots, are also evident in other settlements throughout New Zealand. These patterns were most evident in Otago and its short-lived satellite, the province of Southland, due to the initial and prevailing density of Scots settled there. The patterns are more nuanced in New Zealand’s smaller Scots settlements.

Canterbury Canterbury had a reputation as an archetypal English colonial settlement.52 The initial plan for the province, after all, was conceived in 1848–49 by the Canterbury Association, a group of predominantly Anglican gentry, and the hope was for a thoroughly Anglican settlement. Although, as has been noted, Scots never made up even onesixth of Canterbury’s overseas-born, such a proportion was on a par with all of the other provinces, except, of course, Otago. There is certainly evidence of some regional clusters of Scots in the rural districts within Canterbury, not only in the south of the province but also in the north (the basis for this assertion is the provincial directory, the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, published about 1900, which will be more fully discussed in chapter 4). In South Canterbury, west of the regional centre Timaru, a number of clusters of Highlanders are evident. At Pleasant Point, for instance, there were two men from Sutherland, and in the nearby locality of Sutherlands, there were also, unsurprisingly, two men from Sutherland, James McLeod and the eponymous Alexander Sutherland. There is some suggestion in most of these localities, if not of men and women from the same county marrying each other, at least of



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Highlands men and women marrying each other. Thus, at Sutherland, James McLeod married a Miss McLeod – both were from Sutherlandshire – while Alexander Sutherland from Sutherlandshire married a Miss McKenzie from Tain in Ross-shire, whereas her sister, who had married an Englishman, also settled there. Marriage partners from the same county were likely to have married before leaving Scotland. Equally, when the partners were from different parts of Scotland, or when a Scot married a non-Scot, the marriage was much more likely to have taken place in New Zealand. This was the case in those later-settled districts of Fairlie and Burke’s Pass. At Fairlie, the women who had Scottish surnames had come from Waitaki, Middlemarch, Pleasant Point, Waihao, and other South Island settlements (whether they were Scottish-born or New Zealand-born is not clear).53 South of Timaru and down to the Otago border at the Waitaki river, many Scots were recorded but from diverse origins. In Pareora/St Andrews, nine Scotsmen and two Scotswomen were listed, with nine different counties of birth. At Glenavy there were twelve Scots (ten men and two women with birthplace given) but no county provided more than two. Morven did manage three men from Argyll – Angus McNaughton, John McTaggart, and Neil M ­ enzies. At Hook, there were two Gunns from Caithness, Gordon and David. They were not brothers, and to complicate matters David Gunn had married the daughter of Donald Gunn, also of Hook. Lake Ellesmere, or Te Waihora, to give it one of its M ¯aori names, is a large brackish lake a little south of Christchurch. The farming districts bordering the lake seem to have been characterized by close connections among Scottish immigrants. Of twenty-four Scotsmen and four Scotswomen listed, five men came from Ayrshire, and four of the men and three of the women came from Perthshire. The real networking strength was in the Boag and Cunningham families, which were closely intermarried; the Lochheads, originally from Ayrshire who were connected to the Jamiesons from Renfrewshire by marriage; and the three Marshalls, who, like the Boags were from Perthshire.54 Scottish settlers in these districts often seem to have worked with or for other Scots. Andrew Anderson, a Forfarshireborn farmer at Leeston, had worked in the Christchurch foundry of John Anderson from Midlothian; Robert Webster, the blacksmith at Southbridge, had worked for P. & D. Duncan before buying their Southbridge branch from them. John Suttie from Forfarshire,

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f­arming at Brookside, had worked for William Boag (and his sister married a Boag grandson, William Cunningham). Northwest of Christchurch, around and west of the rural service town of Rangiora, were some further pockets of Scots. At Bennetts, three Scots were listed, all from Lanarkshire, including the eponymous Robert Bennett. In fact, eleven of the thirty-eight Scotsmen listed in these districts are from Lanarkshire, including brothers Gavin and Robert Dalziel at Fernside, just down the road from Bennetts. Two of those Lanarkshire men married women from the same county. Five men were from Perthshire; two of them married Perthshire women. There were four men and one woman from Aberdeenshire and the same number from Ayrshire; again, the two women married men from their own county. In addition, two women from Angus married men from other parts of Scotland and a Miss Mackay from Sutherlandshire went to the other end of Scotland and to New Zealand, marrying John Moffatt from Dumfries-shire, who was the blacksmith at East Eyreton. There is some sense, therefore, of relatively tight networks among the Canterbury rural Scots, given the evidence of marriage both before leaving Scotland and between partners from the same county. From this region, family networks also seem to have extended south to Ellesmere. At Oxford, there were the brothers Alexander and Robert Henderson. Alexander was born in Caithness four years ­ before ­Robert, who was born in New Zealand. They may well have been brothers (or at least close relations) of James Henderson of Dunsandel and William Henderson Jr of Halswell, both of whom married daughters of William Boag – and John Stuart Boag married one of their sisters. These patterns of Canterbury’s rural districts were not greatly different from those in Otago. It was simply a matter of lesser total numbers. As the examples from the lower North Island will show, subtle and local networks were also found in other parts of New Zealand.

Lower North Island The first of the New Zealand Company settlements, Wellington, received an immediate influx of Scots in its first twelve months with the arrival of the Oriental, the Bengal Merchant, and the Blenheim.55 Though noted only infrequently as an area of Scottish settlement in New Zealand, early established clusters of Scottish settlement have



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remained in Wellington Province that, to a large extent, stemmed from the dispersal and settlement of these early migrants. In the preceding provincial case studies, the Otago settlement pattern was principally reconstructed from standard historical sources and information extracted from the NZSG database while Canterbury’s was taken from listings in the contemporary Cyclopedia of New Zealand. Information for the lower North Island leans heavily on wider genealogical records. The detail such material affords demonstrates the rich potential for adding texture to statistically determined broad trends. The Blenheim made landfall at Port Nicholson on 27 December 1840, carrying 197 Scottish immigrants. Known as “the Scots ship,” the Blenheim was not the first New Zealand Company ship, nor was it the first to carry a substantial number of Scots to the colony. The Oriental had brought a small contingent in January 1840, and the Bengal Merchant had arrived in Wellington on 20 February 1840, with 160 Scots on board.56 Whereas many of the Bengal Merchant migrants were from Glasgow and surrounds, a majority of the Blenheim passengers had been recruited at Fort William, Inverness, by Donald MacDonald, who emigrated with the families he had recruited.57 Migrants who had purchased land orders for Wellington and Whanganui from the New Zealand Company arrived to find that not only was the land not the easy open country of Company propaganda, but neither had it been surveyed or divided into sections, and the deeds by which the Company claimed to have purchased it from local tribes were, to say the least, of dubious quality.58 Many of the Blenheim migrants – around 135 – eventually settled on a temporary basis at “Kaiwarra” (Kaiwharawhara, just north of central Wellington) where temporary immigration barracks had been situated and where Donald MacDonald (popularly dubbed the “Laird of Kaiwarra”) had purchased land.59 The wait proved much longer than anticipated. It was not until late in the decade, as land became available in the Wairarapa, at Whanganui, then at Rangitikei, that the settlers began to disperse from the Kaiwharawhara “Scotch settlement” in any great numbers. The death of Donald ­MacDonald in 1849 spelled the end of that settlement, though a handful of the Blenheim passengers who had settled with ­MacDonald at Kaiwharawhara opted to stay on.60 Some of the migrants en route to New Zealand, many of whom had known each other before embarking, made enduring bonds, reinforced by

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the Kaiwharawhara years, bonds that lasted among these Scots and their descendants for many decades after their arrival. Donald (“the weaver”) Cameron, formerly of Ardnamurchan, Argyllshire, arrived in Wellington on the Blenheim with his wife Christine and seven children. Setting up a school of weaving in Wellington, Donald taught his craft by day and ran a public house after school hours, building a house on the hill just north of the Kaiwharawhara stream, along what would become the Hutt Road.61 Donald’s second son, Alexander, worked in Wellington as a book­ keeper for fellow Blenheim passenger Hugh Morrison.62 Alexander 63 later married Hugh’s daughter Mary in July 1855. In 1846, Donald leased a large tract of land from M ¯aori that was part of “Pahaoa” on the Wairarapa coast, to the east of Wellington and on the other side of the Rimutaka ranges. He was joined there by his wife, five sons and two daughters soon after.64 The station was run by D ­ onald’s sons, Donald (“the piper”), John, and Duncan. Another property in the same area later purchased by the brothers, “Blairlogie,” was sold in 1878 to John Morrison, the son of fellow Blenheim passenger Hugh Morrison.65 When the 1878 Census was taken, “Pahaoa” and “Blairlogie” stations were found to be home to more than 5 per cent of Wairarapa East County’s Scotland-born migrants, including John Cameron and his wife Annie, Duncan Cameron and his wife Mary, as well as John Morrison and his wife Janet, and the Scotland-­born labourers employed on the three stations. It is possible, given the incomplete station records, that the number of Scots may have been even greater. Several of the New Zealand-born population counted at that census were first-generation New Zealandborn Scots, including the children of the Cameron brothers and of John Morrison. Linkages between the Cameron family and fellow Scots in Wairarapa East continued to be reinforced through the first generation of the family to be born in New Zealand. John Cameron’s eldest son Donald married Elizabeth (Bessie) Sutherland, whose Scotlandborn grandfather, Alexander Sutherland, had come to Wellington on the Oriental in 1840.66 John Cameron’s youngest son Ernest married Bessie’s cousin, Dona Sutherland.67 Dona’s father, David William, was the youngest of Alexander’s children, and had married his second cousin, Helen Ross.68 Helen came to Wellington from Scotland with her parents and eight siblings on the Douglas in 1873. Her mother Mary had three brothers and one sister already in New Z ­ ealand, as



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well as her uncle, Alexander. Helen’s brother Alexander was seventeen when the family arrived in Wellington and he was immediately employed as a shepherd at “Pahaoa” for £28 per year by his great uncle Alexander.69 Far from being an isolated islet of Scots in a sea of other English and Irish migrants, the Cameron family and their associates are just one example of an identifiable “pocket” of Scots in Wairarapa East, one that flourished through generations due to marriage with fellow Scots and descendants of Scots, chain migration, and patronage. These relationships were often traceable back to early associations in the Wellington settlement. Reconstruction of the settlement by Scottish families of lands to the south of Whanganui, a hundred miles northwest of Wellington, including the pockets of Fordell, Mangamahu, Turakina, and Parewanui, provides an even clearer picture of the settlement of Scots in Wellington Province on a local scale. The interconnectedness of the Scottish families and individuals in the area, extending beyond ties of marriage and kinship, is remarkable. Yet although this area constitutes a significant lower North Island community of Scottish families living in close proximity, working with, assisting, and marrying fellow Scots, it is not readily apparent in statistical returns because it spanned three 1876 counties.70 The majority of the Scots migrants arriving in Wellington on the Oriental, the Bengal Merchant, and the Blenheim remained in Wellington until their allocated hinterland sections in the north were surveyed and made available late in the 1840s. Captain Moses Campbell, born in Perthshire in 1787, arrived in Whanganui in November 1841, having spent nearly a year in Petone, slightly north of the developing Wellington township, with his wife Jessie and their children. The family had travelled to Wellington as cabin passengers on the Blenheim. Unable to take possession of the land allocated to him by the New Zealand Company, Campbell leased land from local M ¯aori just south of Whanganui until, in 1843, he came to an arrangement with them to occupy his allocated sections. As a result, when the land purchase dispute was settled in 1848 he was able to take possession of the sections uncontested.71 Jessie’s cousin, John Cameron, born in Inverness in 1818, was also a passenger on the Blenheim.72 John had preceded the Campbell family to Whanganui, working on survey parties for the New Zealand Company from March 1841, then boarding with his cousin and her family until he took similar possession of his land at Marangai in 1843.73 Arriving

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early and settling disputes over their allocated lands years before the purchase of the lands from M ¯aori was finalized, these two men are cited in histories of the region as prominent and successful early settlers. John was described, stereotypically, as “a fine old Highlander of the best type.”74 Marjory and Duncan Fraser also arrived in Wellington on the Blenheim in December 1840, with their ten children and M ­ arjory’s sister. They first lived in Wellington, where Duncan established the Highlander Inn, a smithy on a town section, and a farm at Kaiwharawhara.75 In 1852 Marjory and Duncan followed their daughter Margaret (married to Ross-shire-born Thomas Urquhart McKenzie in 1843) and her family up the northwestern coast of the island and settled in Parewanui. Marjory and Duncan’s children born in New Zealand – Margery, Hugh, Kate, and Jane – travelled with their parents to “Pukehou,” all of them under nine years of age at the time of the move. Hugh married the granddaughter of D ­ onald (“the weaver”) Cameron, Christina Annie McDonell, forging yet another link between the Camerons and other Scots families in the lower North Island. Christina Annie’s parents, James McDonell and Annie Cameron, owned Inverhoe at Parewanui. James McDonell married Annie Cameron, daughter of Donald (“the weaver”) Cameron, at Donald’s home in Kaiwharawhara on 18 December 1849. Born in Inverness in 1818, James had first emigrated to Australia in 1840, moving on to Whanganui later in that decade. Through an arrangement with local M ¯aori, James took occupancy of the land that would later become Inverhoe when the question of title was finally settled in 1850. He later purchased it from the Crown. Donald (“the weaver”) Cameron’s son Donald (“the piper”) also married a Scots migrant in Turakina, Isabella Glasgow, in 1853, another indication of the ongoing movements between Scottish settlements east and west of the dividing ranges. Though the couple moved to the east coast of the Wairarapa, where they lived on Pahaoa Station, their son Robert married a Turakina woman, Eliza Clark. Donald Cameron (born 1869), the son of John Cameron, the second youngest son of Donald (“the weaver”), was schooled in Turakina, where he stayed with both the Turakina Camerons and his aunt Mary Glasgow.76 Thomas Scott and his wife Mary arrived in New Zealand in 1841 on the Olympus, part of a much smaller group of migrant Scots. Around November 1849 the couple and their children settled at



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the Rangitikei river mouth, establishing Scott’s Ferry and later a store and accommodation house. All but one of Thomas and Mary Scott’s children married the children of fellow Scots. Their daughter Anne and son David both married the children of Thomas and Mary ­Higgie, formerly of Fife, who had also been passengers to New Zealand on the Olympus in 1841.77 Marriage connections between the Higgie and Scott families and other Scots in the area continued through the next two generations.78 That the families were known to each other from the Kaiwharawhara settlement, and that they continued to intermarry through to the early twentieth century is further evidence of the interconnectedness of the early contingents of Scots. Thomas and Mary Higgie’s daughter Mary and her husband John Hair bought the old Okirae homestead block from the C ­ ampion family in 1913.79 This section of Okirae was bought in 1916 by recently arrived Scots, the Melville family. Shortly after brothers Andrew and Alexander Melville made the decision to migrate to New Zealand in 1913, Alexander died. His widow ­Christine and their two sons came with Andrew and his wife in 1914. In 1917 Alexander Sutherland Jr, one of Archibald ­Sutherland’s four sons, exchanged his share of Craigie Lea (a property acquired by ­Archibald and his brother Nathaniel Sutherland Jr) for three separate sections of Okirae. Marjory and Duncan Fraser’s second daughter Catherine’s seventh child, also named Catherine, married Nathaniel Sutherland Jr in January 1874. Nathaniel, born in Wellington in 1847, was the son of Nathaniel Sutherland Sr, born in Edinburgh in 1806.80 Entries in Nathaniel Jr’s diary, kept between 1868 and 1870, demonstrate that the close ties that bound Scots in this area were not simply those of marriage and kinship, nor were they the result of enforced proximity en route to New Zealand or in the early settlement years. Rather they also came to include mutual aid and friendship, relationships that appear, in this instance, to have primarily been formed on the basis of a shared Scottish background. Although he had sought to acquire land in Wellington and Whanganui through the New Zealand Company before departing for New Zealand, Nathaniel Sutherland Sr found employment in Wellington shortly after arrival, and never personally farmed his Whanganui land.81 As soon as they were old enough, Nathaniel Jr and ­Archibald took charge of their father’s affairs in Whanganui. In his first full diary entry (23 December 1868), Nathaniel Jr provides evidence of

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his ongoing association with Scots and Scottish descendants in the district: “Shearers arrived sheep not dry enough they Had a sort of hurdle race Geo. Campbell on his own mare. Dick Campbell on his Thurston on Charlie and Mike Mar on Madge. Madge won it in 1st rate style to the surprise of the shearers who thought theirs would win.”82 A few days later, on 1 January 1869, Nathaniel writes: “[d]ined with Andrew [Campbell] and Archie [Sutherland.] Went to join Cameron’s with them at night where they [were] singing gaelic Songs & of the which I could make naught.”83 Throughout the diary, interactions with local Scots are regularly recorded: Nathaniel working with Andrew Campbell, attending ­William Reid’s muster, dining with Gregor McGregor, buying grass seed from Sandy McGregor, and meeting Duncan McGregor on his way to meet his sweetheart. He travelled with Robert McIntosh, borrowed equipment from William McWilliam, aided Jack Johnston with his shearing, was visited by Alex Higgie and Dick Campbell, sold a horse to Stewart McGlashan, and bought fencing material from Archibald McDowell.84 So common were interactions with Scots and their descendants in the life of Nathaniel Sutherland that one of the most notable entries in the diary relates an encounter with two non-Scots. On 8 July 1869 Nathaniel records: Very wet. Went to work when after clearing the fern the rain came down so fast that I was forced to take shelter in a maori whare, at the redoubt close by, where two men – 1 an Irishman, the other a Dane – have taken up their abode, employed by W. Reid to erect this part of boundary fence. Had a cup of tea with them. The Dane gives a comical accent to his words. He told me that he saw some sheep sold for six and one pence each. The whare was full of smoke which he said he hated more than de debble.85 The following day Nathaniel notes: “The Dane Bill and Irishman Pat have commenced clearing the fern &c for the fence which they expect to finish tomorrow and then on Monday start the fence.”86 At no other point in the diary is reference made to the ethnicity of those with whom Nathaniel associated. One Scots family with whom Nathaniel Sutherland Jr appears to have been in especially regular contact was the Howies. Many of



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the families living in this locality were of Highland origin, and had formed connections through passage on early ships to Wellington or Wellington domicile during the first decade of settlement. The ­Howies were one of at least three families who arrived in the area from New Deer, Aberdeenshire, in the mid-1850s.87 Though the entries referring to this family do not suggest any familial connections, or involvement with business and land transactions, their frequency suggests a strong bond of friendship between this first generation New Zealand Scot and the Aberdeenshire-born family, perhaps indicating ties not only of kin but of “Scottishness” at work. Entries include “W. Howie was here” on 14 January 1869; “went to Mrs Howie’s” (probably Mrs Sandy Howie, née Anne Aiken) on 4 March 1869; “Called at S Howie’s” on 30 April 1869; “Dined at S. Howie’s” on 23 May 1869; and “Called at Mrs. Howie’s and took some letters from her intending to post them but not reaching town left them at Planpin’s” on 13 October 1869.88 Following their 1854 arrival in New Zealand, Alexander (Sandy) Howie Jr and his wife Anne had purchased property at Fordell. Alexander’s parents, siblings, and the daughters of his sister Jane, followed the couple to New Zealand between 1855 and 1857.89 Anne Aiken’s brother George also married a Howie, Sandy’s sister Helen. George and Anne Aiken’s sister Catherine was the first of their family to arrive in New Zealand, and it appears that her migration with her husband Thomas McWilliam to Fordell, via South Africa and Australia, encouraged their siblings, and consequently also the Howie family, to emigrate to the area.90 ­Catherine and Thomas’s son William (recorded by Nathaniel Sutherland as having lent him equipment) and his wife were farming Netherdale by 1869. Netherdale was directly adjacent to Fernilea, occupied by the Young family, who were related to the Howie family via Jane Young’s marriage to John Howie in 1864, and opposite Learney, the property occupied by the Howie family.91 Catherine and Thomas were joined by her siblings William and Alexander in 1852–3, followed next by Ann and George. Alexander Aiken married his first cousin, Ann McIntosh, and Ann’s brother Robert McIntosh (who is recorded by Nathaniel Sutherland as having travelled with him) was also living in the area by 1867.92 Both the Aiken and the McIntosh families also had links with New Deer, Aberdeenshire. The immigration of Catherine Aiken and Thomas McWilliam initiated a chain of migration from New Deer,

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Aberdeenshire, to Fordell, Whanganui, over the subsequent decade. It is likely that there were similar chains among families migrating from other parts of Aberdeenshire to Manawat ¯u, Whanganui, and Hutt Counties, which may go some way to explaining the disproportionate number of migrants from North East Scotland settling in Wellington Province. The Scottish character of the area south of Whanganui, extending into Rangitikei County and even further south, was primarily established by those who settled there in the late 1840s and early 1850s. As the McWilliam/Aiken/Howie chain of migration would suggest, however, the predominantly Highland-born influx from the early ships is by no means the beginning and end of the story. It is notable that first generation New Zealanders and later-arriving Scots continued to be drawn to the district. Scots were not, of course, the only settlers in this area. There were potentially as many opportunities to interact with English and Irish settlers as with fellow Scots. By 1878 the population of Manawat ¯u County was 34.23 per cent Englandborn, 6.10 per cent Ireland-born, and just 5.51 per cent Scotlandborn. In Rangitikei County the proportions were 27.40, 6.37 and 9.65 per cent respectively, and in Whanganui, 23.42, 9.56, and 9.94 per cent. Scots comprised a distinct minority. It seems, then, that this persistence of Scots in the area, marrying one another, engaging in joint land transactions, employing fellow Scots, helping one another out, was a deliberate seeking out of Scots by Scots over and above other ethnic groups. To what extent this was due to earlier formed relationships, to connections based upon their shared Presbyterian faith (the first Presbyterian service in the Rangitikei was held on 15 December 1852), or simply to migrants choosing to live with and by like-minded people who happened on many occasions to be Scots, is a matter that cannot, at present, be conclusively determined. It is, perhaps, indicative of the extent of the Scottish community in this area that the Turakina Highland Games, reportedly first held in 1864, are New Zealand’s longest running Highland games. Since the Scots-born population was a minority in this area, it seems that the desire to maintain ties with fellow Scots was more deliberate than in Otago, where Scots were the majority and the threat of losing their Scottish identity was therefore diffused.93



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Conclusion It has been suggested in this chapter that there is far more to Scottish settlement in New Zealand than the experiences of Otago and the oft-cited Waipu. Otago was certainly the major focus of Scottish settlement in New Zealand and that reputation proved self-­ reinforcing, yet Otago’s immigrant population became less Scottish during the 1860s and the 1870s. The English were a presence from the outset, and both the 1860s gold rushes and the state-funded immigration scheme of the 1870s increased the Irish population in the province. In Otago, networking between Scots was evident and to be expected. What becomes clear is that such behaviour was found wherever Scots clustered in New Zealand. In the provinces of Canterbury and Wellington, very similar patterns of Scots living near each other, marrying each other, and working with and for each other, were frequently repeated. The form and strength of the networks differed from place to place; sometimes close and longstanding, sometimes a little more spread out. Always, alongside the cohesiveness of Scottish communities, there was the diversity of colonial society, not undermining but complementing and shaping Scottish identity. These were all characteristics that facilitated Scottish success in New Zealand, as will be discussed further in the next chapter.

4 Success in a Settler Society: The Scots in New Zealand Economic Life

Anthony Trollope observed that “in the colonies those who make money are generally Scotchmen.”1 Such stereotypes were common through the late nineteenth century and afterwards and the role Scots played in British imperial expansion is frequently emphasized by modern historians. Andrew Porter, for instance, has referred to “the Scottish blend of commerce, shipping and Presbyterianism” as an essential element in the economy of the British Empire and has also suggested that in offering an expanding field for commercial and military distinction, as well as emigrant destinations, the Empire did much to reconcile Scots to the Union during the eighteenth century.2 T.M. Devine has noted the advantages that Scottish migrants enjoyed in coming from “one of the world’s most advanced economies. Scottish agriculture had a global reputation for excellence and efficiency, while the nation had a leading position in areas as diverse as banking, insurance, engineering, applied science, shipbuilding, coalmining, and iron and steel manufacture. The Scots who emigrated had experience of working within this system of advanced capitalism and had acquired a range of skills that few other emigrants from Europe could match.”3 There was also “a loyalty to other Scots which endured at least for the first and possibly second generations. In all the countries of settlement, ethnic identity among the immigrant elite was consolidated by the masons, Presbyterian churches, St Andrew’s societies, and Burns clubs, which all flourished in the nineteenth century and were as much networks for promoting mutual business success as key religious and social institutions.”4 As well as the rich magnates, “of even greater significance were the countless numbers of unknown Scots who helped to transform ‘the New World:’ the ­generations of



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Scots sheep farmers who left their mark … the bankers, merchants and small storekeepers of Scottish origin who were found in large numbers across the expanding frontier; the warehousemen who had learnt the drapery trade in Edinburgh and Glasgow and became pioneers of the department store business.”5 Previous studies have identified some broad outlines of Scottish occupational distribution in New Zealand, at least for the middle and upper classes. In 1985, Brooking demonstrated significant Scottish involvement in pastoralism as well as smaller-scale farming, in finance, manufacturing (especially in metals and textiles), and shipping.6 McAloon, in 2002, reinforced these findings, and pointed out that these were generally the areas where Scotland’s own economy was strongest.7 Both these studies were as systematic as circumstances then allowed, but neither made any rigorous comparison of Scots with other New Zealand settlers. Both scholars thus risked finding what they were looking for. If an investigation starts with a suspicion that Scots were prominent in certain fields, then finds Scots in those fields, it may look like the hypothesis is being confirmed. However, if Scots are compared with other groups, more robust findings should result. And indeed, a systematic analysis of wealth in New Zealand done by Margaret Galt in the early 1980s, showed that being Scottish was of some advantage, “with the Scottish born having £552 more than the identical English born person” at death.8 But subtleties abound, and the life stories of wealthy settlers in the South Island of New Zealand appear to show little difference between Scots and others. The so-called Presbyterian values of thrift, deferred gratification, and careful accumulation and investment were common ground regardless of birthplace.9 Although the Scottish contribution to the New World was “immense … the story has been so mythologized and exaggerated that it becomes remarkably difficult to separate realities from ethnic conceit.”10 Hoping to avoid this trap, the following issues will be examined in this chapter: did successful Scots concentrate in particular occupations, did they maintain close and cohesive networks, and were they distinctive in this?

Background and Occupational Profile It is not easy, in New Zealand, to deal with these key questions systematically. In many countries, census records would be used, but these

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have been systematically destroyed in New Zealand. An alternative source is the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, published in six provincial volumes between 1897 and 1908.11 It consists of descriptions of towns and villages, and the surrounding rural districts, with over fifteen thousand biographies of residents. These biographies usually give place of birth, early training, emigration history, places of residence, previous career, involvement in churches, lodges, local government, marital details, and numbers of children born. The Cyclopedia is frequently used as a genealogical source, but few scholarly works have made much use of it because it is in no way representative. It might best be described as a self-portrait of the colonial middle class, and, because it was a subscription volume, most biographies are self-selected. It would, however, require inordinate labour to build a randomly-selected database of similar size in anything like the detail that the Cyclopedia biographies provide. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of biographies are of men, and although in many cases some modest information may be discerned about women, even census records would be unlikely to properly record women’s economic activity, if only because women were almost invariably described by their marital status.12 From the Cyclopedia, therefore, a database consisting of the biographies of 2,503 New Zealand settlers who were born in ­Scotland has been constructed. Birth in Scotland is the only criterion for inclusion: births in England or elsewhere to Scottish parents, or at sea, have not been counted. Nor has any distinction been drawn between those who left Scotland as adults and those who left as young children.13 For comparative purposes, a second E ­ nglish-born database of 5,105 biographies has been constructed on the same basis as the Scottish database. A database of 7,600 individuals should permit some reasonable conclusions to be drawn and there is some reassurance in the fact that in the distribution of regional origins, the Cyclopedia Scots database broadly reflects the overall Scottish emigrant population in New Zealand to 1914. As seen in chapter 2, the origins of New Zealand Scots were widespread across Scotland. Even though six of Scotland’s thirty-three counties provided almost half of the Scottish immigrants to New Zealand between 1840 and 1920, only Lanarkshire (15.86 per cent) provided more than 9 per cent. The other five were Midlothian (8.04 per cent), Aberdeenshire (7.37 per cent), Perthshire (6.07 per cent),



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Ayr (6.50 per cent), and Renfrew (5.56 per cent). These origins are reflected in the Cyclopedia database, where, again, only Lanarkshire accounted for more than 8 per cent of the total. This does not mean that New Zealand Scots were atomized, or isolated, from each other, but it does suggest that the networks linking New Zealand Scots to each other were often looser rather than tighter. Some regional differences in distribution were also noted within New Zealand. These are also reflected in the Cyclopedia database. Lanarkshire accounted for over 20 per cent of all Auckland Cyclopedia Scots. In Canterbury, Ayrshire and Perthshire together accounted for 21.2 per cent of all Cyclopedia Scots, against a national figure of 12.57 per cent, and only in Canterbury did Ayrshire, rather than Lanarkshire, contribute the largest tally among Scottish counties. Immigrants from Aberdeenshire accounted for 11.1 per cent of Wellington Cyclopedia Scots. Highlanders were slightly over-represented in the pastoral provinces of Wellington and Canterbury. As is known, New Zealand Scots were heavily concentrated in Otago, and this accounts for much of their over-representation in New Zealand, as well as being particularly noticeable in the Cyclopedia database. Of the 2,503 Scots in the Cyclopedia, 1,057, or 42 per cent, were in the Otago volume; in contrast, only 12 per cent of the English were in Otago. The large number of Scots in Otago, however, is the only sense in which that province is distinctive; in terms of the distribution of Scots across occupations, Otago was little different from the rest of New Zealand, and the occupational distribution of New Zealand Scots is much the same whether or not Otago is included.14 Many of the immigrants in the Cyclopedia  – almost certainly a majority – were self-funded. Some had come to New Zealand from another British colony, or, more rarely, from the United States. The most common intermediate step was from one of the Australian colonies. As discussed in chapter 2, many of those who spent time in Australia were attracted by the gold rushes of the 1850s, and of course the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s also featured in the experience of many immigrants. The Scots individuals listed in the Cyclopedia ranged across upperand middle-class occupations. Many were farmers. Manufacturers, financiers, merchants, and bankers were present in considerable numbers, as were lawyers, doctors, and ministers and those from newer professions like engineering and dentistry. There were fewer salaried white-collar workers, but many schoolteachers, independent

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teachers of music, public servants, and local government officials. Many of the migrants were smaller traders and master artisans in occupations like storekeeping, hotelkeeping, blacksmithing, butchery, baking, tailoring, and building and construction. Very few were wage-earners in manual occupations when their biographies were written, although many may well have been earlier. Occupational categorization is invariably complex in both rural and urban contexts, with the terminology, as well as being sometimes subjective, changing over the decades.15 A number of the allocation decisions that have been made may be debatable. All farmers, for instance, have been included in the one category. Although the scale and wealth of farming enterprise varied enormously, from bush farms on the North Island frontier to the large estates of lowland Canterbury, which sometimes extended to many thousands of freehold acres, the adopted approach is justified by the fact that almost all New Zealand farming, whether local or overseas, was marketoriented. Few, if any, farmers were predominantly subsistence cultivators. Distinctions have also been drawn for trade occupations. Although butchers and bakers had usually served an apprenticeship – the crucial factor in defining skilled trades – they have been categorized as “wholesale/retail.” Not all butchers or bakers had served an apprenticeship, but the classifications adopted also distinguish between sellers of food and drink on the one hand, and skilled tradesmen and women engaged in the manufacture of durable goods on the other, like blacksmiths, carpenters, and tailors. Virtually all those in the skilled trades in the constructed database were self-employed. Schoolteachers are categorized as professionals, reflecting the fact that the occupation was regulated, but self-employed teachers of music are counted as semi-professionals because, while their stock in trade was a non-material skill, they were unregulated.16 In some cases, each individual biography had to be closely inspected: did engineer mean “civil engineer” – a profession – or “manufacturer in metal” – thus manufacturing? Was an accountant in private practice (a professional) or employed in an importing firm (a white-collar worker)? Sometimes terminology reflected the scale of operations, but the point at which a storekeeper becomes a merchant can be arbitrary. There are a few “supervisory” workers such as caretakers, a few “rural wage earners” (shepherds or farm managers), and a few rural service providers, for instance threshing contractors. Almost all



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of the few unskilled workers to appear in the listings worked for the state-owned railways. A small number could, in the absence of any other information, only be categorized by a public position, such as member of Parliament or county councillor. For reference, tables 4.1 through 4.7 (see end of chapter for all tables) set out the complete categorization for the whole colony for Scots and English in the Cyclopedia database, and then the larger groups for each province.17 One point is strikingly evident in these figures: proportionately, Scots were much more inclined toward farming than the English. This finding reinforces that of Margaret Galt, who observed that in New Zealand, Scots had the highest average value landholdings, and the highest proportion of their probated estates consisted of land.18 Over 38 per cent of Cyclopedia Scots were farmers, but less than 25 per cent of the English. Most striking of all, in Canterbury a majority of the listed Scots were farmers, at 56 per cent, compared with 42 per cent of English. In Otago, Scots were more than twice as likely as the English to be farmers. Clearly, the history of rural Scotland had profound significance for colonial New Zealand.

Scots and New Zealand Farming In Scotland after 1700 a growing and increasingly urban population, no longer self-sufficient in food, prompted extensive and ongoing agricultural change.19 In the Lowlands these changes consisted of enclosure, the aggregation and consolidation of holdings, a change to money rents, and increased specialization, often for more distant markets. Not all these characteristics applied in all places, but change was rapid in the century to 1850.20 If in England the process was led by tenants, in Scotland landlords increasingly directed the process, usually adopting leases (tacks, as they were called in Scotland) that were “lengthy, very detailed and prescriptive,” covering cropping, sowing grass, rotation, and fallowing.21 The rhetoric of improvement became very widespread. Alongside landowners, “tenant farmers were important. After all, they and not the proprietors actually worked the land.”22 At least, they and their labourers did. It should not be imagined, however, that all tenants approved of the new order. Smaller tenants sometimes lost out, while larger and better resourced tenants were already well on their way to becoming a rural bourgeoisie.23

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By 1800, cottars, insecure tenants who occupied very small plots of land on leases terminable at will, and who worked as casual labourers at busy times, were greatly diminished. More intensive cultivation changed labour requirements, so fewer seasonal and more year-round workers were needed. Although married servants got a house and plot and some grazing, as cottars had, “they were fulltime workers, entirely under the master’s control.”24 Further, seasonal workers from Ireland and the Highlands became available to supplant the cottars.25 The accumulated processes have been called the Lowland Clearances and were “fundamental to the emergence of a predominantly landless labour force, the migration process within the countryside and the dissolution of the older settlement pattern.”26 Overall, “commercial criteria became supreme and the fashioning of the economic and social fabric to maximise returns from the market developed as a central feature of land administration.”27 The Scottish Enlightenment “fed through into the sphere of agrarian reform. The rationalism of the Enlightenment helped to change man’s relationship to his environment. No longer was nature accepted as given and preordained; instead it could be altered for the better by rational, systematic, and planned intervention” so that there was “a new intellectual legitimacy” in agrarian reform.28 Improvement of the soil, liming and manuring, rotating and cultivating, was common across southern Scotland and northern England. Draining was extensive in Yorkshire, Lancashire, “Dumfriesshire and Ayrshire, Fife and Berwickshire, and the lands along the Moray Firth,” to say nothing of East Anglia and Perthshire.29 The invention of horseshoe pipes, then cylindrical clay pipemaking from 1845, were essential to this environmental transformation.30 “There was remarkable unanimity about what was bad and had to be changed. Lands in a ‘state of nature’ were no longer acceptable. They had to be enclosed and brought into regular cultivation … the emphatic condemnation of the [old] agrarian regime as archaic, wasteful and ruinous helped to give the improvers an extraordinary moral and intellectual confidence” as they went about both increasing profit and “a more broadly ideological mission to ‘improve’ and modernise Scottish society.”31 Echoes of this improving ethic in New Zealand debates about land tenure have been well documented, but the very real increases in agricultural productivity that had resulted in Scotland, particularly in the Lowlands, meant that many rural



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Scottish immigrants to New Zealand could draw on a considerable reservoir of experience.32 Canterbury was New Zealand’s leading agricultural and pastoral province in 1900. Not only were 56 per cent of Scots in the Canterbury Cyclopedia farmers, but one-quarter of these Scots came from either Ayrshire or Perthshire. In both counties agriculture had been transformed after 1750. The New Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1845, shows that both the practice and the ideology of improvement were of continuing importance at that time. The minister of Ayr informed readers that “Ayrshire stands eminently distinguished among the other counties of Scotland for agricultural improvements.”33 His colleague in Riccarton noted “Very great improvements are every year making … from tile-draining, ditching, liming, enclosing, &c.”34 The minister of Newton-upon-Ayr discerned capitalist agriculture supplanting “principles of equality and independence” to general benefit.35 On some estates, landlords paid a considerable share of the cost of draining, recovering their expenditure in increased rent; on others, tenants carried almost all of the responsibility. In many parishes, but by no means all, landlords had also invested considerable sums in afforestation. West Kilbride – where most landlords were absentee – was an exception, and one resident proprietor thought that “assuredly nothing could equally contribute to its improvement, as the liberal and judicious introduction of sylvan embellishments.”36 Many Ayrshire farmers specialized in growing wheat and oats, and in dairying, particularly cheesemaking. Cheesemaking was usually women’s work, and these skills were sought after in the New World. Some of the very early Ayrshire settlers in Canterbury were quickly supplying cheese to other New Zealand settlements.37 Perthshire is usually counted as being in the Lowlands, although in fact a substantial part of the county lies in the Highlands; the county is large and topographically diverse, with considerable variation in farming potential and practice. In much of the county, improvement had been as extensive as in Ayrshire. The minister of Methven recorded that a thousand acres of common had been divided among landowners and tenants “and is now in a comparatively high state of cultivation … several farm-steadings are erected, and many families decently and respectably supported, and wealth is now derived from, and comfort enjoyed upon, this extensive tract of ground, which was formerly a perfect waste. So much for the

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spirit of enterprise and the hand of industry.”38 As in Ayrshire, the distribution of the costs and benefits of draining varied from place to place. In many cases, improvement meant displacement. In the parish of Moneydie, small plots of land, between them giving subsistence to 100 or 150 people, had been merged into one farm “not giving food to above twelve or fifteen persons” but much higher productivity for a cash market.39 Improvement was far from uncontroversial. While the drainers described the marshes as “wastes,” and the value of drained land was high, this is to “obscure the worth of the place under water to those who lived there, for the marshes were, in their own terms, incredibly productive, and attempts to drain them might be met … by active and violent resistance by the inhabitants.”40 When New Zealand wetlands were similarly drained, the fish and birdlife upon which many M aori ¯ communities had relied were severely diminished. James Wilson, the minister of Abernyte, in eastern Perthshire, was particularly sceptical about improvement, at least given the existing class structure of rural Perthshire. Increased rents and taxes, he thought, meant tenants were no better off, and that the “lower orders are much at a loss for want of the usual employments of females.” Home spinning and knitting were disappearing, and there was little other work except at harvest.41 In Wilson’s opinion, there was still too much unimproved land. He advocated smallholdings for labourers, and punitive taxes on unimproved land, to encourage “a race of hardy, healthy, and industrious peasantry, of peaceable and virtuous habits” rather than unchecked urbanization.42 Similarly, the minister of Watten, in Caithness, looked to enlightened landlords to lease moderate-sized improved holdings with comfortable houses to encourage “the substantial peasantry of Scotland, the trustiest bulwark of the aristocracy, and the best defence under Providence of the altar, the throne, and the constitution; a class of men among whom religion, morality, and good order have flourished more than among any other.”43 These views of the desirable rural order were echoed in the early debates on land policy in Canterbury. The first superintendent of the province, James Edward Fitzgerald (an Anglo-Irishman born in Bath), hoped that land legislation would create, possibly with great rapidity, “a very large class of peasant Proprietors and small Farmers throughout the Province … such a class will constitute the surest basis for the durable prosperity of a Colony and the happiness of its Inhabitants.”44



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James Paterson is one of many who might be described as making a better Ayrshire for himself on the other side of the world. With a background in farming, he and his wife emigrated to New Zealand in 1874 and within three years had 200 acres, which they later doubled. By the end of the century they were concentrating on sheep, and also rotated wheat, oats, turnips, and rape to renew the pasture. In Ayrshire they might have been tenants on a smaller farm; in Canterbury they were freeholders.45 Not all Ayrshire immigrants achieved independence so rapidly. Robert Sloss spent twenty years working as a shepherd, leasing cropping land and contracting in North Canterbury, before taking up part of the Cheviot estate when the government repurchased and divided it in 1893.46 Among the Perthshire-born farmers, too, there were some individuals who clearly applied Scottish expertise. William Boag had worked on the Braco estate in the parish of Muthill, where the proprietor had drained extensively. Boag applied this experience to land on the outskirts of Christchurch, investing the proceeds of stockdealing. He landed with little money in 1851. When he died in 1904 he left £100,000. John Cunningham, from Auchterarder, drained land on the edge of the estuarine Lake Ellesmere, south of Christchurch, profited thereby, and married William Boag’s sister.47 David Marshall, who also settled near Ellesmere, had grown up in the parish of Fordengeny and spent twenty years as a tenant in Kinross, draining and liming cold wet land, before emigrating to New Zealand in 1865. With at least one son he did much the same thing once more.48 Although other Perthshire farmers settled on drier lands in other parts of Canterbury, and though Perthshire was by no means the only part of Scotland in which draining had been consistently undertaken, there does appear to have been a link between drained Perthshire lands and the swampy areas of Canterbury. The careers of Ayrshire and Perthshire farming immigrants in Canterbury did not, of course, all follow similar paths. The diversity of farming in which they engaged suggested that the broad agricultural background with which they were equipped was more important than specializing in one type of farming. This is suggested by the career of George Rutherford, born in Jedburgh in 1819. ­Rutherford’s father was a tenant farmer, and the young man became a ploughman, an “aristocrat of farm labour.”49 He spent two decades in eastern Australia as a stockman and overseer on pastoral properties before acquiring his own sheep and land. In 1856, with his

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family, Rutherford crossed to New Zealand and quickly established himself as a leading North Canterbury pastoralist. He and his sons would leave large fortunes.50 Farmers born in Highlands counties such as Caithness, where sheep farming had often displaced agriculture, seem in New Zealand to have been as diverse in the type of farming they undertook as anyone else. Parts of Caithness, indeed, were “wretchedly cultivated,” rents were very high, and tenants were often blatantly exploited. Yet in other parts of Caithness, considerable improvements had been undertaken (although consolidation of holdings often displaced smaller tenants), so again it is very hard to generalize about whether experience translated directly from Scotland to New Zealand.51 Moreover, for every example of a Scottish farmer in New Zealand who applied the lessons of improvement from the old country, an English farmer from a similar background can be cited who did much the same thing. George Rutherford was far from unique in his part of North Canterbury; two other prominent pastoralists set up there at roughly the same time, both with Australian experience and both rapidly freeholding many thousands of acres. William ­Robinson was from Lancashire and George Moore from the Isle of Man. James Coombes had been born on a farm in Devon and had some experience in farm work before leaving for New Zealand in 1857. He spent five years working on a station in Rangitikei, 80 miles north of Wellington, and then bought 800 acres, which he cleared and grassed. In time he bought another thousand acres and on both properties he concentrated on sheep.52 In the same part of New Zealand, ­William Morton, a Yorkshire farmer’s son, had emigrated in 1870, and worked until 1882 on various farms. He then managed to buy 150 acres, and a decade later added 220 more. Like many farmers, and indeed many urban entrepreneurs, M ­ orton adopted a strategy of incremental expansion.53 In the century to 1850 in English farming, regional specialization had become increasingly evident. There were “a multitude of local changes occasioned by innovations in farming practice, reorganization of farm holdings, and reclamation of waste land.”54 After a slow beginning, “the frontier of improvement spread rapidly to all parts of the country in the first quarter of the nineteenth century” including “reclamation of lowland heaths and sandy wastes.” But “draining contributed vastly more to increasing agricultural output than enclosing moorlands [and] most progress was achieved after 1800.”55 Many trees were



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also planted across many parts of England, to make up for earlier deforestation.56 Nevertheless, the place of Scots in New Zealand farming should not be overestimated. It is too easy to ignore comparisons and ascribe to a distinctively Scottish experience what was common across Britain. If the basic argument is modest – that Scots were significantly overrepresented in New Zealand farming and particularly so in the South Island – that is in itself important.

Scots in Urban Occupations It is a simple matter to identify prominent Scottish manufacturers or merchants, and from those examples to generalize about Scottish background and economic success in the New World. Yet, without some measure of comparison, this approach is of limited use. It is sometimes difficult, too, to judge whether Scottish business networks abroad reflected a Scottish preference for dealing with other Scots or were a result of Scottish economic specialization. If Scottish woollen manufacturers engaged senior mill employees from Galashiels, was that clannishness or simply a reasonable decision to go where the expertise was? The Dunedin-based clothing importers and manufacturers, Ross and Glendining, relied heavily on Scottish expertise and connections. The firm was established in Dunedin in the early 1860s by two young Scottish drapers, John Ross from Caithness (1834–1927) and ­Robert Glendining from Dumfries (1840–1917). Neither partner came from well-off backgrounds, but both had a good Scottish elementary education and both had been trained as drapers at home. They met when Ross arrived in Dunedin in 1861. Early in the partnership’s history, Ross had a lucky break when he found that the London office of the Bank of New South Wales was staffed by Caithness men; he had little difficulty in arranging credit with them. Certainly Ross and Glendining preferred to hire “Scotchmen.” George Hercus, like Ross from Caithness, served the firm as chief financial officer (in today’s parlance) for fifty years. Hercus’s voluminous correspondence reveals a stern and meticulous man, almost inflexible, but of the utmost probity. When the partners invested in high-country sheep farming, their managing partner was another Scotsman, James Elliott (by his surname likely of Borders background). When they began manufacturing in 1878 they engaged

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a consulting e­ngineer from Glasgow to set up their new Roslyn mill and a few years later hired James Lillico from Galashiels to run it. Yet when they expanded the mill to manufacture worsted cloth alongside woollen, Ross recruited spinners from Yorkshire, the home of worsted manufacture. A preference for dealing with “Scotchmen” probably had something to do with the advantages of a shared culture, but in the end, if the required expertise was not available among Scots, Ross and Glendining acquired it elsewhere.57 The Dunedin-based wool merchants and stock and station agency Murray, Roberts and Co. relied on a different sort of network. The principal was John Roberts, son of a prosperous woollen manufacturer in Selkirk. Murray, Roberts and Co. was the New Zealand branch of a collection of enterprises in pastoralism, wool buying, finance, and woollen manufacturing centred on the Galashiels woollen merchants Sanderson, Murray and Co. and George Roberts’s manufacturing business. The activities of these Borders entrepreneurs ranged from Australia and New Zealand to Argentina. By 1890 John Roberts was a major figure in New Zealand pastoralism, with interests in a number of big properties, and for many decades a director of a large woollen mill near Dunedin and a major meat freezing company. The wealth and power of this network of Borders entrepreneurs was firmly based in the region’s centuries of expertise in sheep farming and woollen manufacture. Clearly, the Borders origins were fundamental to Roberts’s success – he may well have been the richest man in Dunedin – but there is a sense in which the Empire was merely the opportunity to run Borders business on a grand scale.58 Murray, Roberts and Co. and Ross and Glendining were for many years simple partnerships, with a strong family element (Ross and Glendining married sisters, Margaret and Mary Cassells, from Melbourne) whereas other leading colonial firms, particularly in banking and financial services, were joint-stock companies from the start. The National Mortgage and Agency Company, a mercantile firm incorporated in London, relied on its general manager in Dunedin. Much of the company’s capital came from genteel investors in southern England and central Scotland, although New Zealand shareholders were increasingly involved. The career of its general manager, John Macfarlane Ritchie, began with Scottish connections. Ritchie, a Glaswegian, had emigrated to Dunedin in 1865 as a twenty-two-year-old recruit for the mercantile business of Perthshire-­ born George Gray Russell; the recommendation came from Russell’s



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business associates in Glasgow.59 In 1878 the new National Mortgage established its business by buying out Russell, Ritchie and Co. (Russell had taken Ritchie into partnership in 1870). Russell, Ritchie and Co. only became established as a significant firm by securing, in 1865, the lucrative agency contract for the Canterbury and Otago Association, a landholding syndicate that included a number of leading figures in the City of Glasgow Bank (in Glasgow, Ritchie had worked for a merchant who was part of this network). Russell and Ritchie were lucky to escape being caught in the fallout of the bank’s collapse in 1878.60 Among its other activities, National Mortgage was a leading shipping agent and Scottish interests were prominent in the colonial shipping trade. Russell had held an agency for the Glasgow-based Albion line. Albion merged with the London-based Shaw Savill in 1882, which had also been servicing the New Zealand route, and National Mortgage had the sole New Zealand agency for Shaw Savill and Albion for years. Albion’s parent company, P. Henderson & Co., had been involved in Otago shipping almost since 1848. In 1874, two key shareholders in Henderson & Co., James ­Galbraith and Peter Denny, invested in the new Dunedin-based Union Steamship Company in return for shipbuilding orders with Denny’s yard at Dumbarton. Denny became the Union’s “principal overseas shareholder,” and his yard built ships for most of the lines trading with New Zealand.61 It bears noting that the Union’s founder, James Mills, was New Zealand-born with an English father. Denny’s membership in the Free Church influenced his long-standing connection with Otago; the fact that Ritchie’s father had been one of the seceding ministers in the Disruption probably did Ritchie no harm, although Ritchie, like Denny’s son William, became less attached to Calvinism.62 For the rest of his career, Ritchie would facilitate cartelization and rate-fixing between the various shipping companies, usually to ensure orderly and swift freight dispatch at ever-falling rates. Ritchie was also closely associated with the pioneers of the New Zealand frozen meat industry, William Soltau Davidson and Thomas Brydone, general manager and superintendent of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company respectively, both Scots. That company had formed in 1877 when several pastoral land syndicates – most with some Scottish investors – merged.63 In Glasgow, the Land Company was closely connected to the Albion line, which carried the first frozen cargo to London. Galbraith and Denny, and

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after them Davidson, were Ritchie’s major allies on the NMA board in London. Ritchie was privately critical of some London directors’ “gentlemanly imbecility,” and at times the Scots had to impress upon the City gentlemen the realities of colonial commerce.64 These cases of men at the pinnacle of the New Zealand business world are an important Scottish dimension of the colonial economy. The great wealth that Roberts, Ritchie, Ross, and Glendining achieved does support, on one level, some of the commonly-held views about Scottish business acumen. Also noteworthy is the fact that these families continued to be highly involved in all three firms into the second and third generations, although Ross and Glendining Ltd (as it became) was a textbook example of what could go wrong in a tightly-held family business. In contrast to the cautious, or at least pragmatic, strategies adopted by the founders of these firms and others like them, some Scottish colonial businessmen enthusiastically espoused the boom and bust mentality, which was based on “an intellectually drunken conception of the ‘illimitable’ resources of the ... colonies.”65 James Belich has argued at some length that this rabid optimism was a key driver of growth in the settler economies. As new lands were perceived to offer ideal locations for the creation of new societies, so growth was then “powered more by a boom mentality than rational choice, industrialization, growth-friendly institutions, or the pre-meditated long-range export of staples.”66 Such explosive colonization required its evangelists, whose belief in the inevitability of progress was sometimes accompanied by an attitude to accounting and accountability that was, at best, lax. One of the more notorious New Zealand examples of this view, James Macandrew, from Aberdeen, dominated Otago politics for thirty years, from the mid 1850s. “Slippery Jim,” as he was sometimes known to contemporaries, invested in shipping, importing, and land speculation, occasionally with money he didn’t have, and saw the local state as a key instrument of economic growth. He was certainly not the only colonial figure who confused public policy with his private interests, and perhaps not even the only one who may have “borrowed” public funds to cover a shortfall in his private accounts. But Macandrew was unique in being adjudged bankrupt while head of the provincial government. His creditors caught up with him, and when the court jailed Macandrew as a debtor, he promptly issued a proclamation declaring his own house to be a jail. Remarkably, Macandrew recovered from all these e­ mbarrassments



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and enjoyed a long and distinguished parliamentary career.67 Without the same spectacular legal difficulties, John Logan Campbell experienced similarly wild swings in his commercial fortunes as a leading Auckland merchant over many decades after 1840.68 No less important to consider are the modest and the upright, who operated on a smaller scale, who were comfortable rather than rich, and who were, in many cases, key figures in their local communities. It is necessary, therefore, to return to the occupational distributions. Just as the most striking feature of farming was that a considerably higher proportion of Scots than of English was to be found in that occupation, so the English were, conversely, more likely to have been engaged in urban occupations. The major non-farming occupational categories – wholesale and retail, skilled trades, professions, mercantile, and manufacturing – accounted for 45.8 per cent of the English in the Cyclopedia, but only 34.9 per cent of the Scots. In all categories except manufacturing, in which the proportions were even, the English were ahead (table 4.8). Even in Otago, where Scots in the database outnumbered the English by almost two to one, the English were far more likely to have been officials or public servants, or in the large lower-middle-class range of wholesale and retail business. There was very little difference between Otago English and Otago Scots in manufacturing or the professions, but the Scots were more likely than the English to have been in the skilled trades (table 4.9). Broad categories, however, are only one way of telling the story. If the numbers are broken down, they indicate some noticeable differences between English and Scots. Across New Zealand, manufacturing occupations generally accounted for the same proportion of Scots as of English, but of the 101 Scots counted as manufacturers, 26.7 per cent were in the metal trades, compared with only 6.6 per cent of the English. In flourmilling, 15.8 per cent of Scottish manufacturers were engaged, and only 8.1 per cent of the English. Conversely, sawmilling occupied 10.9 per cent of the Scottish manufacturers and 17.5 per cent of the English. Other areas where the English were proportionately more involved included footwear manufacture (11.8 per cent compared with 5.9 per cent) and brewing (10.4 per cent, against 5.9 per cent of the Scots). Beyond this, the numbers are so small that comparisons are not particularly meaningful, but there do seem to have been certain Scottish specializations (table 4.10).

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In some occupations there was little apparent difference between the Scots and the English. In medicine, despite the stereotype of the Scottish doctor, there were thirty-seven Scots and sixty-four English practitioners, so the Scots were only very slightly overrepresented in medicine. Building and contracting, counted as skilled trades, exhibited a similar pattern, with eighty-seven Scots and 156 English. Drapers and storekeepers were also similar: twenty-eight Scots and forty-eight English, and sixty-three Scots and 125 English, respectively. However, the storekeeper figure is skewed by Otago because outside Otago, storekeepers were disproportionately English, especially in the North Island, where there were ninety-one English storekeepers and only twenty-seven Scots. In many ways, the North Island frontier was a very English one.69 Scottish manufacturers were more likely to be found in the typical areas of Scottish expertise, woollen manufacturing and the metal trades, whereas English manufacturers were more likely to be associated with foodstuffs. New Zealand Scots working as builders, blacksmiths, and in other metal trades were generally as dispersed in their origins as all New Zealand Scots, with the exception of Forfarshire (now Angus), which accounted for 8.4 per cent of Scots in these trades but just over 4 per cent of the whole database. In the rural Lowland counties like Forfarshire, there was a thriving small business sector, consisting mostly of solo masters; their apprentices received a good training, but had few opportunities for work as journeymen, which made emigration attractive.70 Many skilled tradesmen in the rural Lowlands had to supplement their income with a small shop or farm, a flexibility that was also important in New Zealand. With the mechanization of Scottish agriculture after 1850, rural smithies developed into highly skilled agricultural implement manufacturing businesses, dominating the trade. This specialization had obvious parallels to New Zealand engineering firms started by Scotsmen, such as P. & D. Duncan in Christchurch and Reid & Gray in Dunedin. David Horne, a blacksmith in the small Hawkes Bay town of Wood­ville, may be considered typical.71 Horne had served his apprenticeship at home in Forfarshire, and later worked for himself, emigrating (presumably married, since he brought at least one son with him) to New Zealand in 1878. He spent four years as a journeyman at Waipukurau and then settled further inland at Woodville. Like so many other skilled tradesmen, he was a member at various times of



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the borough council, the school committee, the lodges, and a local building and investment society, and held office in the Presbyterian Church. In due course, his son Henry managed the coach-building part of the business and took it over when his father retired.72 Some English blacksmiths followed similar career paths, but two points must be made. The first is that blacksmithing was dominated by the Scots: there were forty-five Scottish blacksmiths listed, and only thirty-five English. The second is that two-thirds of the Scots had been apprenticed at home, and one-third had been so young on emigration that they served their apprenticeship in New Zealand. Just over half of the English had been apprenticed before emigrating. Another influential stereotype emphasizes the Scottish financier. In banking, as colonial or branch managers or senior officials, the database includes twenty-two Scots and twenty-eight English, which means that Scots were well overrepresented. Whereas English-born bankers almost without exception had come to New Zealand as children, joined a bank in New Zealand as young men, and then worked their way up the company hierarchy, Scots were noticeably more mobile. Their careers tended to start with banks in Britain, often involving a move from Scotland to London or another major English town, and in some cases overseas, before being recruited for New Zealand. Henry Mackenzie, born in Edinburgh in 1846, had started with the Bank of Mona on the Isle of Man at fifteen. He moved to the Manchester and Liverpool District Bank in 1864, and to the Oriental Bank in London in 1867, which sent him to Japan. He was then inspector for that bank in, successively, Mauritius, India, and Hong Kong. In 1884 he moved to New Zealand to become inspector for the Colonial Bank of New Zealand and quickly became general manager. When the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) took the Colonial over in 1893 he became general manager of the BNZ.73 The strong Scottish involvement in shipbuilding and shipowning has already been noted. Scots were also disproportionately captains and ships’ officers, or in the terminology, master mariners and mariners, and also harbourmasters and stevedores (who owned firms that organized the loading and unloading). There were eighty-five Scots so employed, and 105 English. There were clear regional concentrations. Of the eighty-five maritime Scots, twenty-eight were in the city of Wellington and thirteen in Greymouth. Of all those, fourteen were from Aberdeenshire, and ten from Lanarkshire.

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Men in the maritime trades tended to have had international experience in their younger days. Especially in Auckland, the Union Steamship Company appears to have had a pattern of picking Scots as engineers, masters, and mates. Given the significant Scottish investment in that company, this pattern of hiring is hardly surprising.74 Not all New Zealand’s Scottish mariners stayed with the Union Company. Some became independent shipowners on a small scale, and some joined the Northern Steamship Company in Auckland, a company established in 1881 by a syndicate formed to extend the small shipping operation of Alexander McGregor. McGregor had built his first schooner at Coromandel in 1847; he was master and part-owner of other ships, both sail and eventually steam. Key promoters of the Northern line were Thomas Morrin, a Montreal-born Scot; James McCosh Clark, whose father had set up a warehouse in Auckland in 1850; two of Clark’s brothers; a Clark associate, C.B. Macmillan; D.B. Cruikshank, an Auckland merchant, and Donald McKenzie, another mariner and ship’s chandler.75 In Wellington the mariners were mostly associated with Shaw, Savill and Albion (which, like the Union company, had a significant Scottish shareholding). Regardless of where they came from in Scotland, a Glasgow apprenticeship was common. In Greymouth, seven of the thirteen mariners came from Aberdeen and again there was a strong Shaw, Savill representation, but the Shire Line, which named its ships for Scottish counties and was owned by Turnbull Martin and Co. of Glasgow, was also well represented. Last, what were the occupations of the few women who were the subject of independent biographies? As table 4.11 shows, there were thirty-six Scotswomen and sixty-seven Englishwomen listed. Small datasets should not inspire large conclusions, and it should be noted that the Cyclopedia under-represents women in the formal workforce. However, for both Scots and English, teaching was the most common female occupation. Music and nursing together accounted for twice the proportion of Englishwomen as of Scotswomen. Hotel and hospitality trades accounted for 14 per cent of each, but farming accounted for seven Scotswomen and only two Englishwomen. This is not to deny that most farm women contributed significant labour to the family enterprise, but to recognize that independent status was very much rarer and worth noting. Most schoolteachers, music teachers, nurses, and hospital matrons were unmarried, but a greater number of the hotelkeepers and farmers



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were, or had been, married and had begun their business career in partnership with their husbands. Too much should not be made of the wider range of occupations pursued by Scotswomen, given the small numbers involved. There were even fewer differences between Scotswomen and Englishwomen than between Scotsmen and Englishmen, yet there are some compelling individual stories. Christina Callaghan was born in Dumbartonshire in 1837, came to New Zealand with her parents, and lived with them until she was seventeen. With her first husband, Robert McDowell, a schoolteacher, she settled in Orepuki in Southland. At thirty-seven, she married John Callaghan and had four sons and six daughters with him, to add to the two of each from her first marriage. She built a hotel at Riverton, and after six years built another at Gummie’s Bush. By 1905 she was a great-grandmother, an enthusiastic cyclist, and driving her own motor car.76 Redoubtable is scarcely the word. Less striking, but no less independent, was Miss (Margaret?) King, a dressmaker in Wellington, who came with her parents from Paisley to Hokitika, learned the trade there and in Melbourne, then returned to Hokitika and ran her own business for ten years. In 1892 she moved to Wellington, and by 1900 was employing at least ten staff and teaching dressmaking as well.77

Networking Although some examples of Scots networking with other Scots in the colony have already been advanced, this can be an elusive topic. Cases where Scots were in partnership with brothers or sons should not be included since this was standard practice for entrepreneurs from all parts of the British Isles and beyond. Cyclopedia biographies frequently refer to Scots having been employed by or in partnership with other Scots, or at least employers or partners with Scottish names. The merchants W. & G. Turnbull seem to have preferred Scottish employees.78 Scots mining engineers in Coromandel worked for mining companies that had significant investment from Scotland. The Wellington builders James Barry and William McDowall, from Morayshire and Kirkcudbrightshire respectively, met on the Victorian goldfields, established one of the leading building firms in Wellington, and seem to have liked to hire other Scots.79 Scottish networking was, unsurprisingly, particularly significant in Otago, which had no trouble attracting Scottish investment, for

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example, William Denny and Sons, and P. Henderson & Co., in shipping. The New Zealand and Australian Land Company certainly preferred Scots: in Otago, twenty-two Scottish biographies  – and no English  – were of men who worked for that company before becoming independent; and in Canterbury, there were fifteen Scots and only three English. Similar influences were evident in other Otago pastoral concerns. Robert Campbell and Sons, at Otekaike in north Otago, are mentioned in the biographies of several Scots who began as shepherds with that firm and later, like John M ­ urchison, became significant pastoralists in their own right. (The Murchisons were associated with Lake Coleridge, a large alpine property in Canterbury, for many decades.) Robert Stewart, later a farmer at Te Akatarawa, began his New Zealand career in 1880 by swagging (walking) his way to Otekaike, where a relation was working. No English settler’s biography refers to Otekaike. Clearly, Scottish networking was significant, but, again, its extent should not be exaggerated. Otago Englishmen, like the merchant W.H. Reynolds or the lawyer William Hodgkins, also hired Scots. Outside Otago, there are many examples of English settlers who had worked for or been in partnership with other English settlers; as with the Scots in Otago, this is, to some extent, a result of sheer numbers. On the other hand, Scottish networks do seem to have been tighter than those of the English. Outside Otago, the biographies of Scots refer to relationships with other Scots more consistently than biographies of English-born settlers, but it is an elusive quality. Many Scottish pastoralists and pastoral companies engaged Scottish shepherds and managers, but so did English pastoralists. Canterbury pastoralist C.G. Tripp, for instance, preferred Highland shepherds at Orari Gorge. The Rhodes brothers, from Yorkshire, hired Scotsmen and Englishmen, apparently without preferring one or the other. The Deans family, from Ayrshire, did likewise. There were some enduring partnerships between Scots and Englishmen, like the Wellington foundrymen Mills and Cable (William Cable and Sons, as the firm became, would be a major engineering firm through much of the twentieth century, most recently as Cable Price Downer).80 Kirkcaldie and Stains, the Wellington drapers, were likewise cross-border. John Kirkcaldie of Fife stayed in New Zealand, but Robert Stains retired home to Kent.81 One form of partnership is, however, susceptible to a more firmlybased analysis: that is, marriage. Marian Banantyne, the wife of



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Duncan McNicholl, was, along with her photograph, accorded the rare distinction of a note in the Cyclopedia, which described her as “a worthy and devoted wife ... [who] helped her husband so effectively in the early hard work of pioneering that she contributed substantially to his material prosperity.”82 The couple had farmed at Clevedon, south of Auckland, since 1853; Marian’s partnership in the family enterprise (and her lack of legal or customary recognition as an economic partner) were, without question, entirely typical of settlers from all parts of the British Isles and beyond. Likewise, and again entirely typically, Joseph Ainge, an Edinburgh-born Dunedin hotelkeeper, relied on the fact that “Mrs Ainge superintend[ed] the domestic portion of the establishment.”83 Of course, marriage was never only an economic arrangement, but some suggestions can be made about whether marital connections reinforced Scottish economic networks. If Scottish-born settlers were likely to marry a partner from the same county in Scotland, then it might be suspected that their networks were relatively intense. But the Cyclopedia database suggests that there was very little difference between Scots and English on this point and that networks were not particularly intense nor was same-county marriage particularly frequent. There are 1,040 Scotsmen in the database for whom both the county of birth and the origin of their wives is known (the latter information was frequently not provided in the Cyclopedia). Of those, 416 (40 per cent) certainly married a Scotswoman and 186 (18 per cent) married a woman from the same county. The county of origin of 469 Scotswomen (including fifty-three who were married to Englishmen) can be identified. Of these Scotswomen, 186 (39.6 per cent) married a man from the same county. Above all, though, as many as 624 Scotsmen (60 per cent, although perhaps fewer, for some brides described as of New Zealand origin may have been Scots-born) married a non-Scottish bride and it is certain that 108 of the 1,040 (10.4 per cent) married English or Irish women. There are also 1,858 Englishmen for whom both the county of birth and the origin of their wives is known. Of those, 611 (32.8 per cent) certainly married an Englishwoman, and 246 (13.2 per cent) married a woman from the same county. The county of origin is also known for 661 Englishwomen (including fifty who were married to Scotsmen), 246 (37.2 per cent) of whom married a man from the same county. But as many as 1,247 Englishmen (67.2 per

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cent, although perhaps fewer, for some brides described as of New Zealand origin may have been English-born) married a non-English bride. Certainly, 107 of the 1,040 (10.3 per cent) married Scottish or Irish women (table 4.12). These figures are not particularly robust, given the Cyclopedia’s weakness in recording women, but perhaps they reinforce the argument in this chapter that the fluidity of colonial society often worked against tight ethnic networks. As outlined in chapter 2, marital behaviour differed between emigrants from different Scottish counties. Emigrants from some counties were distinctly more likely to marry within the county (a circumstance very likely to be related to the timing of emigration relative to marriage). Tables 4.13 and 4.14 show figures for the twelve counties in England and Scotland with the largest numbers of men and women with identified marital partners (bold figures are above the average). Obviously enough, Scotswomen were more likely to emigrate with spouses than Scotsmen were. But since three-fifths of Scotswomen in the database did not marry men from the same county, some Scotswomen who moved to New Zealand had already moved from home within Scotland (or perhaps to England). Whether it is possible to form any impression of who did the moving that resulted in twocounty marriages – husband, wife, or both – remains to be seen but Scotland was an increasingly mobile society after 1800. In 1851 “a third of the [Scottish] population had crossed a county boundary or moved from a rural to an urban environment.”84 If, as seems likely, the significant contribution of Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire, and Lanarkshire to New Zealand migration reflects a disposition on the part of young adults in those counties to consider migration actively and at length, then some fairly deliberate choices about marriage and migration may have been made. It is equally significant, however, that some counties were well below the average. Why, for instance, did only one of forty-three men from the Highland county of Inverness-shire marry a woman from that county? To fully resolve these questions, more needs to be known about the migration impulse at a county level in Scotland. Although this chapter has been largely concerned with the English as a comparator, similar regional differences can be observed. Cornish emigrants seem likely to have married other Cornish emigrants, whereas the men from Essex and Surrey do not. Conclusions about marital behaviour among successful Scottish migrants must be tentative, but there is little evidence that marriage



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reinforced tight Scottish communities in New Zealand. Scots and English do not seem to have differed greatly. It may well be that even though migrants were linked by their Scottishness, that ethnic solidarity was moderated by the diversity of the colonial population and the fluidity of colonial circumstances.

Conclusion The relationships between Scottish origin and economic success in New Zealand were subtle and various. If the chapter has reinforced some stereotypes and weakened others, it has also provided a more solid foundation for what has often been unquantifiably asserted. The most important finding is Scots’ disproportionate involvement in farming. There is also good evidence for stereotypes linking Scots to the metal trades and finance. None of these fields were monopolized by Scottish immigrants in New Zealand, but there is a distinctive Scottish dimension to them. Alongside notions of Scottish identity, there is a need to be open to the question of a developing “colonial” identity, not to mention the more familiar identification with “the Empire.” Identities were complex and multi-layered. In J.M. Ritchie’s correspondence with, and about, the London board that nominally governed his National Mortgage and Agency Company, a certain independent Calvinist spirit (even though Ritchie became a convinced Anglican) can be discerned. Complaining that the London board never took any initiative, Ritchie observed that “it always has been and always will be I suppose Londoners for London – Colonials for the Colony.”85 Yet Ritchie also believed that “the uniting of the Empire is the greatest feat in history.”86 Nor, of course, was there a single “empire.” Unlike Scots in India, most Scots who went to New Zealand probably did not expect to return to Scotland.87 This chapter has also cast the New Zealand part of the Scottish diaspora in class as well as ethnic terms. This is not to suggest that Scottish backgrounds were immaterial; there were subtle, but real, differences between middle-class English and Scottish immigrants. On the other hand, though there is some evidence that the Scots were good networkers and that Scots were clustered regionally and occupationally, it was nowhere near the scale that characterized Scottish involvement in the East India Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company, or the tobacco districts of the American colonies before

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1776.88 There were always countervailing forces to Scottish clannishness in New Zealand. The histories of Scots in the settler world are parts of a very diverse and complex story.

TABLES Table 4.1  Occupational categories, New Zealand: Scots and English nz

Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional Official Mercantile White-collar Manufacturer Maritime Clergy Mining Rural wage Not stated Printing/publishing Supervisory Semi-prof Transport Local politics Politics Military Unskilled Semi-skilled Rural services Miscellaneous Total

Scots

nz

Number

%

965 265 215 158 134 128 110 107 86 67 66 41 33 25 23 22 20 15 7 5 5 3 2 1 2,503

38.50 10.60 8.60 6.30 5.40 5.10 4.40 4.30 3.40 2.70 2.60 1.60 1.30 1.00 0.90 0.90 0.80 0.60 0.30 0.20 0.20 0.10 0.10 0.00 100

English

Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional Official Mercantile Manufacturer Clergy White-collar Maritime mining Transport Semi-professional Supervisory Printing/publishing not stated Politics Local politics Military Rural wage-earner Semi-skilled Unskilled Rural services Retired Total

Number

%

1255 795 535 441 397 348 219 202 202 105 102 92 91 74 63 37 35 32 28 27 9 8 7 1 5,105

24.60 15.60 10.50 8.60 7.80 6.80 4.30 4.00 4.00 2.10 2.00 1.80 1.80 1.40 1.20 0.70 0.70 0.60 0.50 0.50 0.20 0.20 0.10 0.00 100



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Table 4.2  Major occupational categories, Auckland: Scots and English Auckland Scots  

Number

Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Public official Professional Mining Mercantile White-collar Clergy Manufacturer Maritime Other Total

64 37 27 21 18 17 15 15 14 14 13 17 272

Auckland English  % 23.50 13.60 9.90 7.70 6.60 6.30 5.50 5.50 5.10 5.10 4.80 6.30

 

 Number

Wholesale/retail Farmer Professional Skilled trades Public official White-collar Mining Mercantile Clergy Manufacturer Other Total

168 165 97 83 77 61 55 54 43 34 92 929

 % 18.10 17.80 10.40 8.90 8.30 6.60 5.90 5.80 4.60 3.70 9.90

Table 4.3 Major occupational categories, Taranaki-Hawke’s Bay: Scots and English Taranaki-Hawke’s Bay Scots Number Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional White-collar Mercantile Other Total

39 39 21 10 9 6 14 138

Taranaki-Hawke’s Bay English % 28.30 28.30 15.20 7.20 6.50 4.30 10.10

Number Wholesale/retail Farmer Skilled trades Professional Mercantile Public official White collar Manufacturer Clergy Other Total

126 118 106 50 48 40 37 24 19 39 607

% 20.80 19.40 17.50 8.20 7.90 6.60 6.10 4.00 3.10 6.40

Table 4.4  Major occupational categories, Wellington: Scots and English Wellington Scots Number Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Maritime Professional

91 50 32 29 26

Wellington English % 27.30 15.00 9.60 8.70 7.80

Number Wholesale/retail Farmer Skilled trades Professional Public official

197 162 149 120 120

% 17.10 14.10 12.90 10.40 10.40

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Table 4.4  Continued Mercantile Public official Clergy Manufacturer Other Total

24 19 11 9 42 333

7.20 5.70 3.30 2.70 12.60

Mercantile Manufacturer White-collar Clergy Maritime Transport Other Total

109 57 48 47 39 37 67 1,152

9.50 4.90 4.20 4.10 3.40 3.20 5.80

Table 4.5  Major occupational categories, Nelson-Marlborough-West Coast: Scots and English Nelson-Marlborough/West Coast Scots Number Farmer Wholesale/retail Maritime Professional Public official Manufacturer Skilled trades Mercantile Mining Other total

54 20 18 14 12 10 8 7 7 17 167

Nelson-Marlborough/West Coast English

% 32.30 12.00 10.80 8.40 7.20 6.00 4.80 4.20 4.20 10.20

Number Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Maritime Public official Professional Mercantile Manufacturer White-collar Mining Other total

139 70 51 42 28 26 25 24 21 15 60 501

% 27.70 14.00 10.20 8.40 5.60 5.20 5.00 4.80 4.20 3.00 12.00

Table 4.6  Major occupational categories, Canterbury: Scots and English Canterbury Scots Number Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional Mercantile Rural wage-earner Manufacturer White-collar Public official Clergy Other Total

304 47 38 24 22 19 17 16 14 12 24 537

Canterbury English % 56.60 8.80 7.10 4.50 4.10 3.50 3.20 3.00 2.60 2.20 4.50

Farmer Wholesale/retail Professional Skilled trades Public official White-collar Clergy Mercantile Manufacturer Other Total

Number

%

564 142 103 99 78 68 64 62 47 96 1323

42.60 10.70 7.80 7.50 5.90 5.10 4.80 4.70 3.60 7.30



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Table 4.7  Major occupational categories, Otago: Scots and English Otago Scots

Otago English

Number

%

413 111 109 75 59 55 47 41 38 25 84 1,057

39.10 10.50 10.30 7.10 5.60 5.20 4.50 3.90 3.60 2.40 7.90

Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional Mercantile Manufacturer Public official Mining White-collar Clergy Other Total

Number Farmer Wholesale/retail Public official Mercantile Skilled trade Professional White-collar Manufacturer Mining Clergy Other Total

%

107 92 54 50 47 45 41 33 29 20 75 593

18.00 15.50 9.10 8.40 7.90 7.60 6.90 5.60 4.90 3.40 12.60

Number

%

Table 4.8  Major urban occupational groups, New Zealand: Scots and English Scots

English

Number Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional Mercantile Manufacturer

265 215 158 128 107

% 10.6 8.6 6.3 5.1 4.3

Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional Mercantile Manufacturer

795 535 441 348 219

15.6 10.5 8.6 6.8 4.3

Table 4.9  Major urban occupational groups, Otago: Scots and English Otago Scots

Farmer Wholesale/retail Skilled trades Professional Mercantile Manufacturer Public official Mining White-collar Clergy Other Total

Otago English

Number

%

413 111 109 75 59 55 47 41 38 25 84 1,057

39.1 10.5 10.3 7.1 5.6 5.2 4.4 3.9 3.6 2.4 7.9

Number Farmer Wholesale/retail Public official Mercantile Skilled trades Professional White-collar Manufacturer Mining Clergy Other Total

107 92 54 50 47 45 41 33 29 20 75 593

% 18.0 15.5 9.1 8.4 7.9 7.6 6.9 5.6 4.9 3.4 12.6

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Table 4.10  Manufacturers, New Zealand: Scots and English Scots

English Number

Total Metal trades Flour mill Sawmill proprietor Boot & shoe  manufacturer Brewer Flax miller Fellmonger, tanner Food (various) Manufacturer not  stated Woollen  manufacture Aerated water Brush  manufacturer Papermaker Dairy factory  owner Blind  manufacturer Brick, tile  manufacturer Candle  manufacturer Cement  manufacturer Patent medicine  manufacturer Quarry owner Saw maker

%

101 27 16 11 6

26.7 15.8 10.9 5.9

6 4 4 4 4

5.9 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0

3

3.0

3 2

3.0 2.0

2 2

2.0 2.0

1

1.0

1

1.0

1

1.0

1 1 1 1 1 1

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0

Number Total Sawmill proprietor Boot & shoe  manufacturer Brewer Aerated water Fellmonger, tanner Flour mill Metal trades Food (various) Brick & drainpipe Flax-dresser Dairy factory  owner Maltster Manufacturer not stated Freezing company  prop Clothing  manufacturer Quarry proprietor Rope & twine Furniture maker Bag maker Basket maker Brush  manufacturer Gas works  proprietor Manure/tallow manufacturer Mattress  manufacturer Oil & skin  manufacturer Pumice-insulation  industry Sand soap factory Tent manufacturer Umbrella  manufacturer Varnish  manufacturer Wine  manufacturer

%

211 37 25

17.5 11.8

22 16 16 17 14 12 8 7 5

10.4 7.6 7.6 8.1 6.6 5.4 3.8 3.3 2.4

5 3

2.4 1.4

3

1.4

2

0.9

2 2 2 1 1 1

0.9 0.9 0.9 0.5 0.5 0.5

1 1

0.5 0.5

1

0.5

1

0.5

1

0.5

1 1 1

0.5 0.5 0.5

1

0.5

1

0.5



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Table 4.11  Occupations of women listed in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Scots and English Scots

English

Number

%

Number

%

 9  7  5  4  4  2  1  1  1  1  1

25 19 14 11 11  6  3  3  3  3  3

19  2  9 13  2 11  1

28  3 13 19  3 16  1  0  7  3  3  1

Teaching Farming Hotel Music Not stated Nursing Public official Mine owner Shopkeeping Dressmaking Artist Religion

 5  2  2  1 67

36 Table 4.12 Marital connections, Scots and English Scots

Wife same county Husband same county Wife Scottish Wife English or Irish

English Number

%

186 186

18 39.6

416 108

40 10.4

Wife same county Husband same county Wife English Wife Scottish or Irish

Number

%

246 246

13.2 37.2

611 107

32.8 5.7

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Table 4.13 Men and women from Scottish counties most likely to marry within same county Women from Aberdeenshire Ayrshire Lanarkshire Ross-shire Perthshire Fifeshire Forfarshire Midlothian Renfrewshire Caithness-shire Argyleshire Inverness-shire Men from Aberdeenshire Ayrshire Lanarkshire Fifeshire Ross-shire Midlothian Argyleshire Forfarshire Perthshire Dumfries-shire Stirlingshire Inverness-shire

Number

Marrying man from same county

%

 39  41  84  14  27  23  21  39  11  16  21  17

20 20 38  6 10  8  6 11  3  4  4  1

51.3 48.8 45.2 42.9 37.0 34.8 28.6 28.2 27.3 25.0 19.0  5.9

Number

Marrying woman from same county

%

 82  90 172  43  36  81  30  53  89  32  35  43

20 20 38  8  6 11  4  6 10  3  2  1

24.4 22.2 22.1 18.6 16.7 13.6 13.3 11.3 11.2  9.4  5.7  2.3



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115

Table 4.14  Men and women from English counties most likely to marry within same county Women from Cornwall Lancashire Yorkshire Warwickshire Lincolnshire Hampshire Somersetshire Devonshire London Kent Suffolk Surrey Essex Gloucestershire Northumberland Men from Cornwall Somersetshire Yorkshire Hampshire Lancashire Warwickshire Kent Lincolnshire Durham Sussex Devonshire London Gloucestershire Surrey Essex

Number

Marrying man from same county

%

 54  28  50  18  16  15  28  34  73  39  15  17  18  23  17

33 16 26  9  8  7 13 15 29 13  5  4  4  4  1

61.1 57.1 52.0 50.0 50.0 46.7 46.4 44.1 39.7 33.3 33.3 23.5 22.2 17.4  5.9

Number

Marrying woman from same county

%

109  59 133  44 101  61  95  60  38  39 122 273  44  46  50

33 13 26  7 16  9 13  8  5  5 15 29  4  4  4

30.3 22.0 19.5 15.9 15.8 14.8 13.7 13.3 13.2 12.8 12.3 10.6  9.1  8.7  8.0

5 Building New Worlds: Scottish Contributions to New Zealand Civil Society

Scots are widely believed to have had an influence on the development of the societies into which they emigrated that was much in excess of what might have been predicted on the basis of their numbers. As James Belich has put it, “New Zealand was twice as Scottish as the British Isles, and this was to have its effect on Pakeha culture.”1 However, what came to be emphasized was not the stereotypical Highlandism, but “mild New Zealand Lowland Scottishness: archetypally egalitarian, competent, undemonstrative and somewhat dour.” This mildness amounted to a lot, in Belich’s view. “Outside Scotland itself, there probably is no other country in the world in which Scots had more influence.”2 Belich may have been overstating his case for effect, but, in New Zealand as elsewhere, there are powerful stereotypes of both puritanical and progressive Scots, of proletarian and Presbyterian activism. Progressives, such as feminist Margaret Sievwright, Liberal land reformer John McKenzie, and former Labour prime minister Peter Fraser, have attracted most of the attention in New Zealand. In this chapter, a broader range of themes will be examined in an attempt to assess Scottish influence on law and politics, religion, and reform. These topics are all rather diffuse, so for the purposes of illustration and argument much of the chapter will rely on selected individuals whose careers, it is suggested, exemplify the points to be made. It should be noted at the outset that Scottish culture was never hermetically sealed, and that its influences in New Zealand were always moderated by colonial circumstances and the influences of other British ways. For the sake of argument, seven strands of Scottish influence are identified: the Enforcers of Empire; Anglicized Edinburgh; Robert ­ resbyterianism Burns’s Agrarian Patriotism and Artisan Democracy; P



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117

and the Godly Commonwealth; the State as Kirk Session; Civic Engagement and Liberal Reform; and Populism and Socialism. Of course, such diversity is unsurprising in light of the complexity and deep fissures that characterized Scottish society from the later eighteenth century. As Scotland experienced rapid economic and social transformation, traditional rural ways of life changed and, if many farmers prospered, many others, including many farm workers, did not. The process of incorporating Scotland into the new British state after 1707 took decades, and it has been persuasively argued that Edinburgh elites increasingly identified progress and culture with Anglicized ways.3 During these years, too, British imperial expansion offered many opportunities for economic and social advancement for Scots and Scotland. Thus did the Empire reconcile Scots to the Union.4 Rapid change provoked much reflection on the right ordering of society; the increasing strength of the evangelical tendency within Presbyterianism resulted in intense theological debate, culminating in the Disruption of 1843. In more secular terms, the political philosophies of civic improvement, reformist liberalism, and ethical or Marxist socialism advocated their claims for influence in Scotland as elsewhere with increasing vigour as the nineteenth century wore on. All these dimensions of Scottish experience and thought were to be influential in New Zealand.

Enforcers of Empire It has long been suggested that Scots, particularly Highlanders, felt some affinity and empathy for M aori, ¯ and for other indigenous peoples in the New World, on the common ground of clan-based societies.5 In New Zealand this idea comes from Peter Fraser, who, as prime minister in the 1940s, maintained that this was so, paying attention to land grievances and (sometimes to the frustration of his officials) always being available to M ¯aori who wished to speak with him.6 Earlier records, however, give little support to the idea of any inherent Celtic affinity with M ¯aori. An example bears this out. The single most influential person in colonial land purchase policy, until his death in 1877, was Donald McLean. Born on Tiree in the Inner Hebrides in 1820, McLean came from the rural middle class, his father John a tacksman of the Duke of Argyll. When Argyll subdivided his estate and John McLean was thrown off his land, the family’s

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fortunes declined and young Donald, who had been educated for the ministry, emigrated to Sydney in 1838. He crossed to New Zealand in 1840. Personal experience of Highland dispossession did not endow McLean with much insight into another clan-based society struggling to hold onto its lands, the reverse in fact. In 1844 the Colonial Secretary, Andrew Sinclair, Paisley-born, organized McLean’s appointment to the Protectorate of Aborigines. McLean, already fluent in M ¯aori, rapidly became influential, even more so after 1846 when the Protectorate was abolished and its personnel redirected into land purchasing as New Zealand policy moved toward the wholesale acquisition of land for British settlement.7 Having first acquired extensive North Island blocks at Whanganui and Rang­ itikei, McLean was then instrumental in securing the open grasslands of Wairarapa and Hawkes Bay for the state, when his political masters forced the Ng ¯ati Kahungunu tribe to cease their profitable leasing to pastoralists, making selling the only way for them to raise development capital. Like many settlers, McLean believed that communal M ¯aori society would inevitably be displaced by the “superior” British civilization, a belief reinforced in McLean’s case, perhaps instilled by his upbringing, that he was “called by God to a high purpose and … that he was guided by Divine Providence. It was one further step to convince himself that he could not be wrong.”8 Land purchasing was nothing less than a divine mission, and like many other officials he convinced himself that the alienation of land was in the best interests of M ¯aori themselves. In southern Hawkes Bay in December 1851, McLean wrote “let me humbly in his name, the great author of the universe, proceed to the very important duties that lay before me. Without his aid how poor and insignificant could be my best efforts ... May heaven prosper [Ng ¯ati Kahungunu] and those of my own country who may come to live among them.”9 It followed that evidence contradicting his beliefs would be ignored; consequently, the clear evidence that Wairarapa tribes were prospering and even enjoying European comforts such as wheat bread, not from Heaven but from pastoral rents, counted for nothing against the agenda of facilitating European ownership.10 From 1850 until 1870 McLean did whatever it took to secure land, cultivating malleable individual chiefs to pick off.11 In 1859–60 he inflamed an increasingly tense situation in Taranaki by advising



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119

the governor, Thomas Gore Browne, to force a purchase at Waitara against the expressed view of the senior chief Wiremu Kingi te Rang­ itake and most of his people. This marked the beginning of the New Zealand wars (the Land Wars). War and land confiscation became increasingly expensive and embarrassing. After 1870 McLean, elected to Parliament in 1866 and appointed Native minister three years later, was an influential voice for a more pragmatic or, some might say, stealthier approach to settlers acquiring land and assimilating M ¯aori. By the 1870s, or so his biographer suggests, McLean was edging toward “a show of justice towards M ¯aori and a search for a kind of peace that was based on his personal influence.”12 McLean’s long domination of land purchasing and his highly personalized approach meant that other ambitious Highlanders sought careers under his leadership. In 1857 the Nelson settler, James Mackay Sr, wrote to McLean asking for a position for his son James.13 James Mackay Jr would be an eager apprentice, relieving the South Island’s Ng ai ¯ Tahu of the Kaikoura block and the West Coast in 1859 and 1860. He would go on to be an efficient, if dictatorial, goldfields commissioner in Coromandel. His cousin Alexander (they were brought up together and referred to each other as brothers) was less abrasive, and altogether more sympathetic to M aori. ¯ Alexander Mackay would become a Native Land Court judge and prove to be a tireless, though unsuccessful, advocate for restitution for Ng ¯ai Tahu from the 1880s until 1906.14 It would be as wrong to impute to Scots a general willingness to relieve M ¯aori of their lands as it would be to impute a general sympathy, yet much of McLean’s worldview, that New Zealand was “destined by nature to be a great field for British enterprise and industry,” where “instead of a waste wilderness, cottages with their smiling cheerful inhabitants” would spring up, was a view common to many settlers from all parts of the British Isles.15 John McKenzie, as minister of Lands in the 1890s, would have expressed himself in similar terms if he had been emphasizing the interests of small farmers; he was as unsympathetic to M aori ¯ retaining their customary tenure as McLean had been even though, like McLean, he had witnessed the destruction of customary tenures in the Highlands. Poets like Jessie Mackay later chose to emphasize a cultural affinity between Scots and M ¯aori, but there was little evidence of such affinity in land policy and the process of colonization.

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Anglicized Edinburgh The control McLean was permitted in respect of land purchase policy went alongside strictly conservative political views. In 1856 he complained that with the granting of responsible government “people are now for having all the power in the hands of political demagogues of their own choosing.”16 He was far from the only Scot to express such views. The New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852, which established a House of Representatives and Provincial Councils elected by male voters who held a modest amount of property, reflected the democratic possibilities of a new land; the suffrage would gradually be expanded to include all men in 1879, the abolition of plural voting for property owners in 1889, and universal suffrage in 1893. Even in 1856 the voters of Nelson installed as provincial superintendent a former wood-turner from Birmingham, John Perry Robinson, who defeated the wealthy Edinburgh-born doctor and sheep farmer, David Monro, by a narrow margin. Incensed, Monro complained that “a very large proportion of the electors are ... most ignorant men, and with them one of the dominant ideas is that they will be best served by putting in a man of their own class.” As Monro saw it, the question in establishing self-government in New Zealand was whether the colony was to “take American or British Institutions as [its] model. Are we to say with the Yankees that the people are the sole source and fountain of power: or are we to follow the English plan which recognises the existence of another source of power, and in its practical working gives weight to intelligence and property, and does not only count heads.”17 The polite Anglicized culture of Edinburgh was, through figures like Monro, John Logan Campbell in Auckland, and Edward S­ tafford in Nelson, a significant influence in colonial society. Its world-view emphasized the glories of the British constitution, the benefits of the union, and by implication the Empire, and loyal autonomy for the settler colonies. Perhaps they believed about their own country what the English did. There is little doubt as to “the depth of English assumptions of constitutional superiority over Scotland. There was an unshakeable English conviction that liberty was unique to their constitution and that it was an unknown concept in Scotland. In that sense the English really did believe that the Union of 1707 extended the benefits of Englishness to a less fortunate people.”18 It was a view that the Scottish urban elite increasingly adopted after “the ’45,”19



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and it was reinforced by economic circumstances. With rapid population growth after 1800, the “Empire came as a godsend for the genteel but often impoverished landed gentry of Scotland … Growing awareness of the material benefits of Union was paralleled by a developing consensus among the nation’s intellectual leaders that progress and unionism were closely associated.”20 Donald McLean’s conviction that M ¯aori were best served by abandoning a communal social order in favour of an idealized, economically rational individualism reflected this perspective. Anglicized Edinburgh was the culture of only a small number of settlers from the upper middle class. Monro and Campbell were both sons of medical families; Campbell’s was linked to the gentry, but Monro’s was a dynasty of professors. Both took medical degrees at the University of Edinburgh. Both hoped to make fortunes in New Zealand and to then return home; neither was at ease in colonial society. Campbell, a merchant in New Zealand, disliked the rawness of Auckland, and even in more genteel Nelson, Monro complained, “I miss the intellectual luxuries of the old country. I hate the Yankeeism of the atmosphere in which I live ... the independence and cheek of the labouring class, particularly of female domestic servants, is beyond all endurance.”21 Monro had a fixation with the United States. He opposed the quasi-federal arrangements of 1852, under which New Zealand had been divided into six provinces, each with its own legislature, in addition to a colonial parliament, on grounds of cost, but also because federalism represented “Americanism, very much to the disgust of those who believe that under the British form of Govt a much higher degree of liberty and order is preserved.”22 Campbell insisted on his daughters finishing their education in Europe so that they could “receive the stamp & bearing of true ladies & not have their young natures ingrained with things colonial,” as he put it in 1875.23 Elitist language of this stamp had to be softened for public consumption, however, and the anglicized Edinburgh strand became grafted onto a more broadly-defined colonial upper class, in which the hardships of pioneering were increasingly emphasized as they receded in time. By the 1870s, with a knighthood and a decade as Speaker of the colonial House of Representatives behind him, Monro became a tribal elder, a visible link with the pioneering days of the early 1840s. Similarly, the also-knighted Campbell’s manufactured role as “Father of Auckland” after the 1890 jubilee fitted the increasingly common complacent rhetoric of progress.24

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Burns, Agrarian Patriotism, and Artisan Democracy Anglicized Edinburgh gentility characterized only a minority of New Zealand Scots. More numerous by far was the broad middle class of independent farmers, shopkeepers, and master artisans, shading down into the ranks of skilled wage-earners. This strand, in all its complexity, reflected the Scotland of Robert Burns more than that of Edinburgh’s New Town. In this section some dimensions of Burns’s influence in New Zealand will be explored. Burns’s worldview was that of the agrarian and artisan democrat, but it is as important not to overstate Burns’s radicalism as it is to refrain from understating it. It is important to remember, as Liam McIlvanney notes, that “Burns is writing poetry, not political philosophy, and as such is not aiming for strict consistency or logical coherence.”25 Yet there are some consistent themes in Burns’s writing: independence, egalitarian democracy, and the moral worth of agrarian self-sufficiency. Burns, a tenant farmer himself, supported agricultural improvement, and his “consciousness of belonging to the ‘middling sort’ shores up the Whig rhetoric of ‘independence’ which saturates Burns’s writing. In the political climate of the 1790s, it converged with a radical politics.”26 Agrarian patriotism was also an ideology of the ruling class, or at least reformist elements within it; it “represented a species of moral rearmament against the luxury and effeminacy that seemed responsible for the humiliating defeat of British forces by American farmers and backwoodsmen, inspired by patriotic zeal and republican virtue.” Edinburgh society took to Burns, projecting these desires onto him – a genuine rustic. Agricultural improvement was not only economically but also morally attractive, “an ideological obsession with the British ruling classes, as well as the professional classes and ‘middling sort’.” Indeed “the ideology of improvement … shaped the administrative and economic policies of the new overseas empire.”27 The idea of rural virtue as an antidote to the allegedly harmful consequences of burgeoning urban life would persist into the twentieth century in both Britain and New Zealand, as “land reform emerged as a way of bolstering the health and efficiency of the English race.”28 Agrarian patriotism, like much else in Burns’s thought, was politically adaptable. In the 1845 New Statistical Account of Scotland, as shown in chapter 4, it was often appealed to by lairds and m ­ inisters,



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who advocated a judicious liberalization of access to land to reinforce a loyal, conservative, and god-fearing peasantry. Colonial conservatives like the Anglo-Irish gentleman J.E. Fitzgerald expressed similar views, frequently idealizing the English yeoman, an idealization that “lay at the heart of idyllic images of landscapes of pastoral harmony and plenty, imbued with apparently timeless qualities.”29 Perthshireborn Donald Reid, as minister of lands in 1877, oversaw the codification of New Zealand land law and emphasized deferred payment as a means of facilitating access to land for “the better class of settlers, the yeomanry class.”30 English radicals in New Zealand and England implicitly drew on ideas of the Norman Yoke supplanting an egalitarian Anglo-Saxon peasant society, and argued that land reform would increase production and the national wealth. Scottish radicals like John McKenzie relied on folk-memory of the Highland Clearances to justify the state repurchase of large estates and the provision of state leasehold tenures enacted during the 1890s. Land reform was an enduring theme in Scottish liberal and radical politics and McKenzie’s policies commanded substantial support among settlers from all parts of the United Kingdom, as well as among the New Zealand-born. All, however, shared a belief in the moral and patriotic value of independent rural producers. In no way did Scots create a consensus around the land question in New Zealand, but the language of Burns, as well as that of Richard Cobden and of Henry George, was a significant force in expressing what consensus there was.31 Burns almost certainly read Tom Paine, and some of Burns’s verse – “A Man’s a Man” – is clearly Paineite in its sentiments.32 A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that; But an honest man’s abon his might, Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that! For a’ that, an’ a’ that, Their dignities an’ a’ that; The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth, Are higher rank than a’ that. Yet the radical edge in much of Burns’s writing was understated by a Scottish, and colonial, bourgeoisie all too willing to co-opt him in the service of cosy mythologies of Scottish and imperial virtue.

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“Burns came to symbolise the vanished certainties of an increasingly mythologised rural past. Throughout the nineteenth century, the key text for Burns Night orators and literary sermonisers was not ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ that’ but – inevitably – ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ … The radical bard of the democratic revolution … had been transformed into the earnest hymner of peasant virtue, the poet laureate of family values.”33 The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face, They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace, The big ha’bible, ance his father’s pride: His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care; And “Let us worship God!” he says with solemn air. “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” is not itself without ambiguity. As well as providing fodder for conservative sentimentalizers of rural virtue, it repeats Burns’s familiar dislike of hereditary status: “Princes and lords are but the breath of kings / An honest man’s the noblest work of God.” One modern authority argues that Burns played up the kailyard flavour – the Cotter – to get the social acceptance from polite society that would protect him from the consequences of writing his more seditious verse. He may have done that too well.34 It has also been suggested that, as Lowland Scots became increasingly urbanized, the memory of rural life “quickly became deflected into the mawkish sentimentality of the kailyard and Burns nights.”35 Burns was a Presbyterian, and since Scottish Presbyterianism is often regarded as a democratic form of church order, it influenced democratic thinking in the colonies. Burns’s political thinking reflected “the values of participatory citizenship as practiced in the republics of classical antiquity … the ideal society is an association of free and equal citizens, each of whom actively contributes to the welfare of the political association.” 36 It has some affinity with stereotypical Calvinism, with its “ideal of the active Christian – reading the scriptures for himself, vindicating his own position, rejecting priestly authority, and relating to other Christians on terms of equality.”37 Burns was affiliated with the Moderate or



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New Light wing of the Church of Scotland. Moderate theology put less emphasis on doctrinal declarations like the Westminster Confession and more on the notion “that religion was amenable to reason, that the law of God was discoverable in the order of the universe as well as in revealed religion. Morality was not to be derived from doctrine but established empirically,” in the language of pure utilitarianism. In fact, it was the Ulster-born Moderate Francis Hutcheson, not Jeremy Bentham, who coined the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number.”38 Politically, Moderates and Freemasons, and Burns was both, were influenced by the Real Whigs, reformists who favoured a broader rather than a narrow property franchise and for whom the “concept of the balanced constitution [was] perhaps the key motif of eighteenth-century Whiggism. Liberty is to be maintained by a constitution properly balanced among its constituent parts … Particularly in England, Real Whigs tended to identify the governmental contract with the actual English constitution.”39 As suggested earlier, the Nelson conservative David Monro often expressed himself in these terms. If Burns was further to the left, liberal thought in Britain and the settler colonies alike was a broad church. The popularity of Burns’s works in New Zealand was, no doubt, in part due to the variety of ways in which they could be read. Even Monro and his nemesis, John Perry Robinson, could both appeal to Real Whig thought: Monro in celebrating the perfection of the balanced British constitution, Robinson in looking back to a mythologized Anglo-Saxon democracy.40

Presbyterianism and the Godly Commonwealth Presbyterianism in New Zealand was, of course, closely although not exclusively associated with Scottish settlers. Presbyterian worship was, for many Scots, also an expression of culture: “the simple forms of worship to which they had been accustomed and loved.”41 Scottish and British identities merged in nineteenth-century Presbyterianism, “the ancient Church of your forefathers … the Church which has taught you to be loyal to your Queen, faithful to your country, and indulgent towards every denomination of professing Christians.”42 New Zealand Presbyterianism was strongly influenced by the evangelical wing of the Scottish church. By the 1830s, the

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evangelicals were increasingly setting the agenda in the Church of Scotland, culminating in the Disruption of 1843 when 450 ministers seceded from the established church. One key issue was the seceders’ belief that parish sessions, not patrons, should appoint the minister, but more generally the Disruption was about evangelical rather than liberal religion. The seceders formed the Free Church of Scotland, with Thomas Chalmers as first Moderator. Chalmers’s vision was of the parish as a godly commonwealth, in which “elders were to fulfil their traditional responsibilities of moral and spiritual supervision, now by taking an aggressive line, visiting homes, seeking out cases of immorality and irreligion, serving as spiritual advisers, and bringing persistent offenders before the kirk session for discipline.”43 ­Chalmers was a mentor for Thomas Burns, Robert’s nephew, who would sail to Otago in 1848 as the new colony’s first minister, and be the dominant figure in Otago Presbyterianism until the late 1860s. It seems likely that uncle and nephew shared little common theological ground, although Thomas did support the Otago labourers’ claim for an eight-hour day in 1848.44 Until 1901 New Zealand Presbyterianism was divided between the Synod of Otago and Southland and the “Northern Church,” although almost all Presbyterian congregations in New Zealand reflected non-established varieties of Presbyterianism.45 Colonial Presbyterians could not really afford to indulge Scottish differences, despite the efforts of some to resurrect them. Even Thomas Burns advised his co-religionists in Canterbury, who had approached the Free Church in Scotland for assistance in finding a minister, that they should not align themselves too closely with that church, as it was undesirable to perpetuate Old Country divisions.46 At least one colonial congregation was “far less anxious about the particular determination … [than to have a] heavenly-minded, experienced, able and godly minister.”47 The commissioner for a Christchurch parish observed in 1870 that “in Canterbury the Episcopal Church was powerful and the Presbyterian minister who would succeed there must be a man of enlarged views and liberal sympathies. Nothing would have pained him more than to find one sent who was tremendously Scottish and awfully Free Church. He was a member of the Free Church and loved her dearly, but he had learned that the world was larger than Scotland and the Church of Christ included more than the Free Church of Scotland.”48



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This did not mean that Calvinist rigour was abandoned. In the 1850s, Thomas Burns openly boasted that Chalmers’s vision of the self-surveilling society had been realized: “Every man’s eye is upon his neighbour; and should anyone exhibit selfishness, deceit, violence, intemperance or lewdness, he instantly becomes the object of suspicion and dislike.”49 Fifteen years later, with Otago’s population and economy booming under the impact of the gold rushes, Burns asked, rhetorically, “Who is to take the responsibility of organizing these hosts into a well regulated society – a community of well-­ conditioned citizens, submissive to the authority of law, and respecting the rules of morality and good order? ... Under God, we must look to the ministers and office-bearers in the Church as the agents in prosecuting this great and most indispensable work.”50 Presbyterian ministers and elders frequently espoused such views, particularly a long-standing and unrealistically strict sabbatarianism, even enjoining dairy farmers to refrain from milking on Sundays.51

The State as Kirk Session From the early 1870s the ideologies of Chalmers’s godly commonwealth would become a secularized, but no less potent, view of civil society in which the state was virtually the kirk session writ large.52 The key vehicle was the University of Otago, particularly Duncan MacGregor, the infant university’s inaugural professor of mental and moral philosophy.53 MacGregor, a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, was to exercise great influence over social policy, not only in his later career as inspector of lunatic asylums, hospitals, and charitable institutions, but also through some of his students, particularly the lawyers Robert Stout, John Salmond, and John Findlay. MacGregor was an extreme social Darwinist, fond of referring to the “battle of life.” In 1876 he favoured a short-lived Dunedin periodical, the New Zealand Magazine, with a long and prolix show of erudition on the question of poverty. “The fundamental fact in human as in all organic life,” he informed his readers, “is a struggle, first of all, for bare life and its necessities, thereafter for fullness of life or well-being.”54 Obsessed with the “vicious,” MacGregor asserted that “the drunkard, the criminal, and the pauper, after a certain point, are not fit for liberty, which they can only abuse, to the general injury of society. We must therefore take it away ... the law must extend its definition of insanity, so as to include hopeless

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drunkards, hopeless criminals, and hopeless paupers ... They must be made to work for their support, and deprived of liberty until they die, in order to prevent their injuring society either by their crimes or by having children to inherit their curse.”55 MacGregor believed that the rapid immigration of the 1870s saw a great influx of a low class of navvies … and … vicious and degenerate people of whom so many were introduced at this time, the average of our population in point of quality was considerably deteriorated … [The immigrants were] a fruitful source of those idle and useless persons who bring discredit on the cause of that portion of our people who cannot find employment. They fill our gaols, our hospitals, and our asylums, and, like a swarm of low parasitical organisms, they have, to an extent that is almost incredible, absorbed the outdoor relief that was meant for the self-respecting and the struggling poor … the evil caused by the introduction of this class is never finished. The impaired health, low morality, and insanity descend to the offspring, and are a continual drain on the community.56 MacGregor’s most influential student was undoubtedly Robert Stout.57 Stout’s career is well-known and often cited as a colonial exemplar of the “lad o’ pairts.” Shetland-born, Stout in fact came from the islands’ middle class; his father was a merchant, owned land, and was an elder in the Free Church. There was no shortage of books and periodicals on Shetland, and the young Stout took full advantage of the opportunities to educate himself. He qualified both in teaching and in surveying while still at home, and when he arrived in Otago in 1864 he took up the former profession, though he soon trained for the law.58 Like many lawyers of the time, Stout earned his qualification not at university but through articles to an established practitioner, although he enrolled in arts courses at the new University of Otago in 1871, the same year in which he was called to the bar. Until his death nearly sixty years later, Stout would construct and indefatigably maintain an image as New Zealand’s leading public intellectual, successively serving as attorney general, minister of education, premier, and chief justice. MacGregor’s influence on Stout was particularly evident in Stout’s unbending advocacy of the prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition was seen as a progressive cause at the time, and Stout generally ­maintained



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a reputation as a liberal, his commitment to female suffrage motivated by his calculation that women would block-vote for prohibition.59 Stout’s liberalism was strictly orthodox bourgeois liberalism, and it was only in the later 1880s that he began to deviate from laissez-faire nostrums. The unifying theme in Stout’s thought was that middle-class opportunity must be preserved. Thus he opposed both land monopoly and a militant working class, although social mobility for ambitious and respectable workers fitted his view of the ideal society.60 He supported married women’s property legislation, not least because it made women individualistic economic citizens.61 An indication of his shift toward a social liberalism, whereby state action may be justified to secure opportunity for individuals, was in his support for eight-hours legislation. As Stout explained, “I do not wish to see the functions of the State so increased as to overshadow the individual, but ... the State must protect those that require protection. If you have strife between labour and capital, which is the stronger of the two? Of course capital is the stronger, and the State must come in and assist labour wherever it can.”62 Stout served as chief justice from 1899 until 1926.63 As a judge, Stout’s influence on the development of New Zealand law came from sheer longevity. Though he had some progressive ideas on probation and rehabilitation, he was no great legal scholar. He was regarded as having “great confidence in the correctness of his [own] opinions” but seldom engaging in deep reflection.64 Stout’s younger contemporary John Salmond, however, has been called “New Zealand’s most eminent jurist.”65 Salmond, of Scottish ancestry, was born in Northumberland, and came with his family to New Zealand as a child when his father, William Salmond, was appointed to the Presbyterian theological college in Dunedin. John Salmond took degrees in arts at the University of Otago in the early 1880s, where he was one of MacGregor’s students, and then studied law at the University of London. He returned to New Zealand in 1887 and was in private practice for some years before becoming, in turn, a professor of law, parliamentary draftsman, solicitor general, then Supreme Court judge. Salmond’s approach to the law was distinctively authoritarian, reminiscent of Hobbes. Law was not the stuff of philosophical speculation, it was “the commands of a ‘sovereign’ with unlimited theoretical power.”66 More, the state “is not in itself subject to its own laws.” Salmond’s biographer has described this approach as

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­ elegant, simple, and potentially totalitarian.”67 In the 1890s, at “ least, Salmond balanced these views with the classic utilitarianism of ­Jeremy Bentham and the Real Whigs. Although Salmond studied law in London, not Scotland, one of his academic mentors at London was Alexander Falconer Murison, the professor of Roman law, and an Aberdeenshire crofter’s son.68 The legacy of Roman law, which relied on codification rather than precedent, was still evident in Scots law, although to an extent that is debated.69 The attraction of Roman law was precisely that it was codified and systematic, whereas the basis of common law, relying on “the accumulation of judicial decisions, militated against any systematization … Roman law … provided the perfect inspiration for common law systematizers.”70 Salmond was an enthusiastic systematizer, and his approach suggested that although New Zealand, like other common law jurisdictions, relied on the judiciary to interpret the law, that judiciary had to take a very conservative approach to statute and to precedent.71 Salmond’s influence was at its peak from 1907, when the new attorney general in Sir Joseph Ward’s Liberal government, John Findlay, asked him to join the drafting office in Parliament. Salmond and Findlay were friends, the same age, both former students of MacGregor, and of similar views. Findlay, the Dunedin-born son of a prosperous South Island sawmiller of Ayrshire background, had qualified in law at Otago and gained a doctorate in the subject. Like Stout, with whom he had been in partnership, he favoured an intellectual approach to politics, and although a convinced Liberal he had been at odds with Premier Seddon, who bestrode turn of the century New Zealand politics until his death in 1906. In 1897 Findlay published, anonymously, a criticism called “The Degeneration of Liberalism in New Zealand.” True Liberalism, Findlay maintained, had prevailed until John Ballance’s death in 1893, no doubt, in Findlay’s mind, reinforced by the fact that Ballance depended heavily on Stout as the grey eminence. Ballance had had the support of “thousands of the most earnest and thoughtful men in the community – many of them Scotsmen ... like ... those who constituted the van of the Liberal army that carried Mr Gladstone from victory to victory.”72 Under the populist Lancastrian Seddon, Liberalism had now become “the mere instrument of the autocratic will of one man,” and, what was worse, professed “to seek the interests of one particular class, the working class, regardless of the interests of large landowners and other Tories.”73 The text was liberally spiced with references to “Charlatans



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and demagogues and sham Liberals.”74 For all that, Findlay stayed in with the party.75 When the Irish-Australian Ward became prime minister in 1906, he appointed Findlay to Parliament’s upper house, the Legislative Council, and to the Cabinet, and also gave ministerial positions to Robert McNab and George Fowlds, all three of Scottish birth or heritage, all friends of Salmond, and all espousing a certain kind of elitist intellectual liberalism.76 Perhaps it was called liberalism by courtesy. Findlay had written extensively on the individual and the state, and he was, to say the least, ambivalent about the desire of citizens to be left alone, about the “impatience of State interference which has always been one of our conspicuous national traits.”77 Findlay’s state, like Salmond’s, was absolutist. A person enjoyed rights, liberties and freedoms only “on sufferance. I am left alone, not because I have natural and inviolable right not to be interfered with by the State so long as I am not injuring someone else, but because ... the State ‘is content to leave me alone’.” Two millennia of Western political philosophy, in Findlay’s view, taught that “in Government properly so called ... there must be supreme and unlimited power over its people.”78 Whereas John Stuart Mill had espoused a truly liberal position, that the sole justification for interfering with individual liberty was to prevent harm to others, and that coercing a person for their own good or that of “society” was illegitimate, Findlay thought that proscription was “simply to forbid progress.” He argued that although it was legitimate to coerce children in their own interests, many adults had no more self-control or perception. The “enormous mass of bad and indifferent people ... selfish, sensual, frivolous, wicked, idle, absolutely commonplace and wrapped up in the smallest of petty routines” required “compulsion or restraint” as “free discussion” was ineffective.79 Findlay had an overriding conception of “the interests of Society,” arguing that “all conduct of an anti-social character, such as wasteful extravagance and gross intemperance, might be restrained and the strictest social control justified.” Findlay’s state paternalism amounted to “a closer control of each for the gain of all.”80 Against Mill, and with Aristotle, Findlay argued that it is the State’s “duty to make good citizens” and thus “the State is changed from policeman to parent.”81 Some might have seen little distinction; Findlay’s views were little different from the godly commonwealth of Chalmers and Thomas Burns. This approach found little favour with more orthodox liberals like the Otago sheep-farmer politician Scobie Mackenzie, who in

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the later 1870s published a libertarian defence of moderate drinking against Stout’s prohibitionist advocacy.82 Sir Joseph Ward, a less commanding presence than Seddon, is often regarded as leading a government that just marked time from 1906 until its defeat in 1912 but in fact Ward oversaw many initiatives. A range of legislation established reformatories for “habitual inebriates and … fallen women,” imposed tougher penalty clauses in the industrial arbitration law, proscribed indecent publications, and imposed compulsory military training in peacetime.83 In 1910 ­Salmond was appointed solicitor general, no doubt on Findlay’s recommendation. At the Crown Law Office, Salmond’s authoritarian views and “suave ruthlessness” had free rein in a climate of industrial tension and world war.84 In 1913 a major strike broke out across the country, with thousands of workers on the waterfront, in the mines, and elsewhere asserting a militant view of trade union solidarity and more or less revolutionary socialist rhetoric. Salmond was a key supporter of the government and employers, advising ministers that the state had the right to do anything to preserve order, whether otherwise illegal or not. In the end, in Salmond’s view, the state was not subject to the law.85 Stout, as chief justice, also played his part, issuing a judgment that the law did not permit unions to distribute funds to strikers’ families and imposing a twelve-month sentence for sedition on the radical socialist leader, Harry Holland. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Salmond gave as his opinion that “enemy aliens” (as those of German or Austrian birth were known) had “no legal rights as against the Crown or the Executive Government of this country. The Government can therefore do with such persons as it pleases, and they have no recourse in the courts of law.”86 Increasingly repressive war regulations cause Salmond’s recent biographer to wonder “whether the wartime Crown Law Office under Salmond did not progressively lose sight of basic conceptions of legality.”87

Liberal Reformism and Civic Engagement The authoritarian social engineering of MacGregor, Stout, ­Salmond, and Findlay was a secular version of evangelical Presbyterianism’s godly commonwealth. Paradoxically, as these irreligious men became more authoritarian, Presbyterianism became less so. In 1867 the Otago-Southland Synod emphasized the importance of tolerance and “the rights of conscience” in matters other than the basics



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of Christian belief. This was a “basis … for … the liberal tradition in Presbyterianism.”88 Yet what that meant was contested. John ­Salmond’s father William, the University of Otago’s professor of philosophy, published The Reign of Grace in 1886. In it he criticized classic Calvinist predestination, the idea that God had from all eternity destined some for salvation and others for eternal damnation, as “arbitrary, fraught with difficulties of every kind, oppressive to reason, deadly to wholesome ethical feeling, destructive of religious joy and elevation of heart, beclouding faith, and wrapping all things in intolerable gloom.”89 Salmond instead emphasized humans’ free will and God’s abiding mercy and love. One prominent Dunedin minister, usually himself regarded as rather liberal, complained that “the leaven of heresy is somewhat widely diffused in the community and even within our borders.”90 The Dunedin Presbytery judged ­Salmond’s views heretical, but well-placed allies in Synod ensured that no action was taken against him. Four years later, one of Salmond’s allies, James Gibb, the minister of Dunedin’s First Church, was likewise charged with heresy at the instance of a conservative layman, again for challenging the Calvinist notion of predestination. Gibb, indeed, “was well aware that a growing number of Otago and Southland Presbyterians longed to be freed from the cold grasp of the Westminster Confession.”91 He was acquitted by Presbytery, but on appeal the Synod, in a dubious process, convicted him without imposing any penalty. It was a pyrrhic victory for the rural reactionaries. When the Free Church of Scotland revoked its espousal of predestination in 1893, allowing the possibility that doctrine might develop, the Otago-Southland Synod followed suit, emphasizing conscience and the gospels rather than conformity and the Westminster Confession.92 Gibb later moved to Wellington’s leading Presbyterian church and came to be regarded as something of a wowser, campaigning against gambling and Sabbath laxity.93 Meanwhile, William Salmond continued to express toleration in social affairs. In 1911 he wrote a best-selling pamphlet, Prohibition: A Blunder, challenging Findlay’s notions about the rights of the state to control an individual’s conduct. “We seem,” the old man wrote in an implicit rebuke of his son, “obsessed with the notion that the shortest way to the millennium lies through the Crown Law Office.”94 Whatever the disputations about theology, the Free Church and the evangelical tradition from which it originated had emphasized a lay activism for religious and social improvement, in common with

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other evangelical protestant denominations. In Scotland at least, with endless fundraising and lengthy hours in church, the church had assumed more of a middle-class ethos and had little to offer the workers. In New Zealand, where much of the church leadership was lay and there was an “emphasis on personal piety and education and morality rather than on doctrine or the sacraments,” religious commitment easily translated into civic engagement, particularly when a more liberal Presbyterianism emerged toward the end of the century.95 Civic engagement was particularly evident in education. In the Scottish context it is “important to disentangle myth and reality and to understand a situation in which a widespread belief in educational and religious equality clouded an essentially hierarchical society, in which the mobility offered by the educational system was limited to the few.”96 Thomas Burns, therefore, had had little time for education as a means of individual advancement, seeing it rather as a means of inculcating social discipline.97 If the Presbyterian tradition in Scotland had been to provide parish schools to maintain the godly commonwealth, the consequence was nevertheless a relatively literate population, and widespread literacy also characterized New Zealand. Nor should the Scottish university system be too overly idealized. There were some deservedly eminent professors, but there were also many who viewed their chair as a sinecure. Alexander Bannerman, professor of medicine at King’s College, Aberdeen, from 1792, “was to give one lecture in the next twenty-two years. His son inherited the chair and continued the same tradition.”98 In 1824 the university senate “recommended that those concerned with the provision of lectures in divinity, law, and medicine should perform their duties, but not one of those concerned bothered to comply.”99 For all that, “it remains true that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland had an unusually high ratio of universities places to population, that access was comparatively easy in terms of finance and preliminary qualifications, and that what the universities offered was flexible and utilitarian,” but this meant lectures rather than a tutorial system, and non-residential universities.100 The New Zealand university, like the Scottish one, was mainly concerned with producing teachers and a limited number of ­professionals, and it too encouraged god-professors. The Ayrshireborn John Macmillan Brown, professor of classics and English at Canterbury University College, was perhaps the outstanding New



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Zealand example, in his commitment to education as a means of developing worthy citizens.101 The utilitarian dimension was exemplified in academics like James Gow Black, professor of chemistry at the University of Otago, who claimed that one of the aims of a scientific education was to enable a person “to produce a pound of corn, or wool, or iron, or gold, at half the expenditure which it previously cost” and that meant communication, extension work as it would now be called, and the promotion of schools of mines.102 New Zealand Presbyterian ministers often closely associated themselves with education. Charles Fraser, the first minister in Christchurch, promoted secondary and university education. The congregation had asked for “none but a really clever minister … one who is not only fluent in speech and a good extempore preacher, but capable, if it should seem desirable, of giving an occasional weekevening lecture on astronomy, geology, natural history, or other secular subject of popular, and instructive interest.”103 Fraser was a classic nineteenth-century polymath, interested and competent in many areas of literature, history, and science, and lecturing frequently. But after he annoyed some conservatives in his congregation by championing Darwin’s theory of evolution, they found another minister more to their liking. The unfortunate Fraser was eventually deposed over debatable charges of undue familiarity with a female servant.104 Ministers by no means monopolized good works. The public service of John Aitken, a Wellington merchant and company director, included terms as the city’s mayor and in both houses of Parliament. Aitken was active in both the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, in organizations dedicated to the welfare of the aged and of women and children, and taught both public and Presbyterian education at the secondary and university levels.105 A contemporary of Aitken’s in Wellington, John Blair, a bibliophile and publisher, was also a Christian but less committed to the Presbyterian faith, and also did much to encourage both university and technical education. Blair’s interests in civic progress were influenced by his extensive business interests, particularly his investments in suburban land development. As the capital’s mayor, he promoted the city’s now iconic cable-car, no doubt mindful that his own extensive landholdings near the track would increase in value.106 In a later generation, two department store entrepreneurs of Scottish heritage exemplified Christian philanthropy along with

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distinctive salesmanship. Robert Laidlaw’s Auckland mail-order business merged into the Farmers’ Trading Company in 1918 and he became general manager. Laidlaw was an enthusiast for evangelism, a member of the Open Brethren and, though a theological conservative and Biblical literalist, was tolerant of different views.107 James Hay had worked for a more traditional, high-class department store in Christchurch, but preferred a populist approach, appealing to customers of more modest means and eventually running a store under his own name. As well as being deeply involved in the Presbyterian Church, Hay was active in local government and musical organizations.108 The pragmatic and unpartisan civic engagement espoused by such figures also motivated some moderate conservatives in the following decades. Perhaps the best example was Dunedin’s William Downie Stewart. Downie Stewart, whose namesake father had also been a lawyer and politician, was of a distinctly independent cast of mind. Though he deprecated extremism, whether of the right or the left, he regarded parliamentary and ministerial office as a civic duty, and was more an administrator than an innovator. He appears to have believed that nineteenth-century individualism was a declining force and that collectivist impulses would inevitably become stronger. Yet as finance minister during the worst of the Great Depression, he appeared the guardian of fiscal orthodoxy, and in 1933 resigned from cabinet rather than support devaluation, which he regarded as a breach of contract. Downie Stewart’s Presbyterian rectitude and scholarly demeanour provided a template for some later conservative lawyer-politicians, notably John Marshall, who enjoyed a long and distinguished ministerial career between 1949 and 1972.109 A Presbyterian background often motivated middle-class women to become fervent advocates of education and temperance. Learmonth Dalrymple, whose father was a well-off ironmongery merchant, agitated for a public high school for girls in Dunedin throughout the 1860s. She lobbied politicians and had the support of the Englishborn provincial superintendent J.L.C. Richardson, and that of his predecessor and successor, the Aberdonian James Macandrew. She did much to persuade the provincial government that the curriculum should be as close as possible to that of the boys’ high school, and when it opened in 1871 Otago Girls’ High School was the first such establishment in the southern hemisphere. Later advocating for women’s admission to university, and for kindergarten ­education,



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Dalrymple was invariably, and perhaps of necessity, respectable, working through well-placed men. Her disapproval of women seeking “an impossible equality with men” reflected the limits of wellto-do middle-class feminism, but her biographer correctly notes that Dalrymple’s work facilitated just that equality.110 The first principal of Otago Girls’ High, Edinburgh-born Margaret Burn, was recruited from Geelong Ladies’ College in Victoria. In Dunedin she implemented Dalrymple’s vision of a broad academic curriculum and ensured that the school’s respectability was unquestioned by maintaining strict Presbyterianism.111 If evangelical Presbyterianism was often narrow and conservative, it could also inspire democratic activism. For many women, temperance politics necessitated female suffrage. In the campaign for women’s suffrage, which became law in 1893, two of the most prominent figures, Kate Sheppard and Margaret Sievwright, were of Scottish birth or heritage. Kate Sheppard, born Catherine Wilson in Liverpool to Scottish parents, was strongly influenced by a Free Church minister uncle. Margaret Richardson, born in North Berwick, married Shetlander William Sievwright and thus had access to the networks of her husband’s law partner, Robert Stout. Anna Paterson, more conservative than many feminists, exercised significant influence in her own right and as Robert Stout’s wife. Margaret Sievwright, however, along with Kate Sheppard, increasingly became a firm advocate of economic citizenship for women, and Sievwright in particular later became a prominent voice in feminist campaigning for disarmament and peace. On those issues she worked closely with Jessie Mackay and Christina Henderson, both New Zealandborn Scots.112

Socialists and Populists In working-class politics, the artisan radicalism of Burns and Paine was clearly apparent in the labour contribution to the Liberal victory of 1890. Middle-class liberalism had enjoyed varying influence in the colony’s Parliament since the 1870s; by 1890 a growing trade union movement hoped to reinforce liberalism with some labour parliamentarians. The colony’s first election under one man, one vote facilitated their success. Labour’s role was, of course, not uncontested; middle-class liberals like Ballance and Stout had hoped for a broad progressive coalition in which labour would take a

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s­ ubordinate role, but their polite liberalism was challenged by more assertive, yet still respectable, artisans and by maverick populists. The Scottish dimensions of artisan democracy were familiar enough: independence, self-improvement, and belief in the dignity of labour. By no means did this reflect a uniquely Scottish view of the world, but it was profoundly indebted to Burns as well as to Ruskin. David Pinkerton, much influenced by his Edinburgh upbringing, came out of the Otago Bootmakers’ Union and into the House of Representatives in 1890, and did as much as anyone to shape the labour movement in Dunedin in the following decade.113 Pinkerton believed that the interests of labourers, small farmers, and small traders were identical. Organized labour sought “a fair share of the wealth of the world, and a little more leisure and time for improvement.”114 The Liberal government would enact significant labour reform during the 1890s, and its compulsory arbitration law of 1894 would contribute powerfully to the growth of trade union membership. Yet by 1910 the days of artisan radicalism were waning. The connections with Burns were explicit for David McLaren, whose politics were scarcely distinguishable from Pinkerton’s and the world of 1890, but were superseded by a newly militant, and explicitly socialist, labour movement. McLaren, living in Wellington, and, like Pinkerton, a bootmaker to trade, held the Wellington East parliamentary seat for the fledgling Political Labour League from 1908 to 1911. Perhaps embittered by faction-fighting between reformist and revolutionary socialists in the labour movement, he later became increasingly right-wing and broke with the labour movement during the First World War.115 McLaren’s Burns disliked “hypocrisy and cant” and espoused the virtues of hard work and religious devotion, along with a democracy that was not a “mechanised democracy” but an intimate democracy of republican virtue.116 The maverick populists, too, reflected another side of Burns, the scathing and ribald mocker of aristocratic pretensions, the nearrevolutionary outlook. Samuel Lister, the Edinburgh-born publisher of the Otago Workman, did scathing like no one else. During 1890 seamen, miners, and waterside workers on both sides of the Tasman struck to enforce their demands for the recognition of trade union power. In this heated industrial climate, Lister accused employers, in their “over bearing tyranny and arrogance,” of seeking to “force [the working man] back again on his knees in the old wretched and helpless attitude of degradation and despair.”117 Militantly r­epublican,



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Lister was also militantly opposed to prohibitionists and, consequently, to women’s suffrage. This latter must have qualified his political appeal, even if he frequently deployed the rhetoric of Christian Socialism. A direct successor of Lister’s Otago Workman was Truth, edited from 1913 to 1922 by Robert Hogg. Hogg had briefly been editor of the radical socialist Maoriland Worker. Like Lister he opposed wowsers, capitalists, and monarchists, and when he spoke of Jesus Christ, he did so in terms of Jesus the artisan.118 Lister and Hogg also maintained a populist dislike of civil servants, especially well-paid ones. To Truth Hogg added what would become a longstanding prurient interest in reporting divorce cases, but also cast sceptical eyes over the balance sheets of large companies. Well-read in Burns and other Scottish literature, he claimed descent from the Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg.119 Robert Hogg’s namesake Alexander, also a journalist, expounded radical democratic politics, but as member of Parliament for ­Masterton between 1890 and 1911 he particularly championed the small farmer. He also devoted much effort to education, not only country primary schools, but also the creation of Victoria University College. Alexander Hogg idealized rural virtue, but his radical views ensured that his brief tenure as minister of Labour, Customs, and Roads and Bridges in the Ward administration was not a success. The suave lace-curtain Irish-Australian prime minister found them inconvenient and sacked him. In the speech that earned his dismissal, Hogg complained that too much money was being invested in finance companies, rather than in developing productive industry. There was a need to again place greater emphasis on land reform as monopolists were once more becoming powerful. The possession of land, for Hogg, meant independence and self-reliance: a fair distribution of land would prevent servility; reconcile all class interests; and twenty acres, vegetables, and a few cows and sheep would provide a good living for everyone.120 Hogg was unrepentant after his demise. “I had committed the unpardonable sin ... I had maligned the fat man, the monopolist.” It was “quite true I have always been untameable. I have always prided myself on being candid as well as fearless ... I spoke out my convictions and it operated like salt on some of the political slugs that we have even in this Assembly.”121 Hogg’s views on land distribution had been bypassed and his romantic view of smallholding marginalized by that other more hard-headed Scot, John McKenzie, nearly two decades before, when

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McKenzie sought to reinforce the export-oriented family farm, usually on holdings of between 200 and 600 acres.122 Scottish Liberalism was becoming more established and more bourgeois, yet at home the land question could still provide a radical edge. But it was a reformist radicalism: most land reformers, including the 1885 crofter MPs, became “orthodox Gladstonians” once they had what they wanted, which was reform for security and viability.123 Most New Zealand land reformers also became more orthodox after 1900. Alexander Hogg’s radicalism was agrarian, but the new Scottish political wave was industrial. Scottish immigrants who became involved in New Zealand socialist politics from this time often had a background in the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The ILP was founded in Bradford in 1893, had close connections with the trade unions, particularly the new mass unions, and was notably strong in Scotland. Indeed, the Scottish miner Keir Hardie was one of the founders. Whatever the reality, the myth of Covenanters as democratic and nationalist rebels was entrenched in Scottish culture. The Scottish ILP readily “claimed the Covenanters and Burns as anticipators of socialism” and the party was also shaped by “the earnestness of the kirk … strong on self-improvement … [and the party’s] images of moral behaviour for socialists owed much to conventional Presbyterian stereotypes of ‘decency.’ They reacted harshly against the hedonism of much working-class life. In the perpetual conflict between two images of Scottishness, they stood severely on the side of abstinence.”124 The ILP dealt, essentially, in a moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing Carlyle, Ruskin, Dickens, Bunyan, M ­ orris, and Burns rather than Marx and Engels.125 But the ILP ethical and moral critique and emphasis on creating a mass movement of socialists by propaganda also countered the Webbs’ Fabian Society technocratic elitism, which “did not require the positive involvement of the masses.”126 The ILP milieu influenced a number of important figures in New Zealand socialism, and not only Scots. Peter Fraser, who would be prime minister between 1940 and 1949, was one of the more notable. He began as a left-wing Scottish Liberal, but fell in with the ILP before leaving for New Zealand in 1911. Janet Munro, who had left Glasgow for New Zealand a few years before, was also influenced by ILP thinking. In New Zealand she became particularly interested in health and child welfare, to which she devoted much unpaid time, as well as no doubt influencing Peter Fraser, whom she married in



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1919.127 Jessie Aitken, born Jessie Fraser in Linlithgow and a generation older than Janet Fraser, came out of New Zealand’s Buller coalfields into decades of work in peace and disarmament movements, particularly the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Like Janet Fraser, she also worked for the welfare of women and children, as well as in Labour Party organizations. A radical Presbyterian conscience can be perceived even among the formally irreligious, particularly among socialist feminists, but also in the case of New Zealand’s best-known militant pacifist, Archibald Baxter, whose steadfast refusal to accept conscription during the First World War earned him the notorious “No. 1 Field Punishment.” In Baxter’s moral witness there are strong echoes of the Covenanting myth.128 As one of the Henderson sisters from Christchurch (Christina, Stella, and Elizabeth, suffragists, socialists, and feminists) is said to have put it, an upbringing on porridge and the Shorter Catechism did have its impact.129 Coalfields on both sides of the world were another formative influence for New Zealand socialism, and a network of Scottish miners – many of them influenced by the ILP – was significant in New Zealand mining unionism after 1900. The ILP also shaped the views of the coalfields poet Edward Hunter, who spent the years from 1906 to 1920 in New Zealand. Influenced by Keir Hardie and the Scottish Miners’ Federation leader Bob Smillie, Hunter combined activism, lecturing on socialist and mining politics, with writing verse that provided “recognisable images of specific grievances.”130 ­Robert Hogg saw parallels with Robert Burns in Hunter’s verse, appropriately enough, for Bob Smillie had been particularly fond of the work of the Scottish Bard. John Dowgray was a little older than Hunter, but had been shaped by the same experiences. Dowgray famously disembarked at Westport in 1907 with “15s. in his pocket and … two tons of books.” As well as mining issues, these socialists consistently opposed the militaristic turn in New Zealand life after 1910. Janet McTaggart, Scots-born like her husband William, quickly established her reputation opposing peacetime conscription in 1911.131 Hunter and Dowgray alike were vocal advocates of political as well as industrial organization, especially after 1912, this reflecting their imbibing of ILP principles as well as their meditation on the lessons of New Zealand experience. More radical strands of Scottish socialism also had their influence in New Zealand. One example was the career of Angus McLagan,

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born in Midlothian, who emigrated to New Zealand before 1914, and became a key figure in the Communist Party during the 1920s. He later enforced industrial discipline as minister of Labour in the wartime government of the 1940s.132 “The great” John MacLean, a key figure in Red Clydeside, had begun, not in the ILP, but in the more explicitly Marxist Social Democratic Federation. C ­ atherine Stewart, daughter of a respectable working-class Presbyterian household, attended MacLean’s Sunday tutorials in economics in the years after 1900, became involved in the militant Women’s Social and ­Political Union, then migrated to New Zealand with her railwayman husband in 1921, where she joined the Labour Party. Active in the Co-operative movement, she became (after Elizabeth McCombs, born Henderson) the second woman to be elected to Parliament, holding Wellington West for Labour from 1938 to 1943. She consistently pressed for women’s social and economic advancement, but her tactless (if not entirely unjustified) description of the conservative National Party as a tool of vested interests eventually contributed to her electoral defeat.133

Conclusion Many studies of Scots, as of other major immigrant groups in settler societies, emphasize dimensions of ethnic solidarity and the transmission and maintenance of culture, as well as the quantitative analyses of origins and destinations, families, and fortunes. Some noteworthy studies along these lines have been written about the New Zealand Scots.134 More elusive perhaps are the issues with which this chapter has been concerned. How does one measure the contribution, or (put another way) the impact, of a substantial immigrant group on a developing society like New Zealand after 1840? One important point, which potentially makes things more difficult, is that New Zealand was, until the late 1880s, a country in which immigration was of great significance in population growth – so much so that immigrants did not so much join an established population as take part in shaping it. Thus, Scots did not add a new dimension to an existing New Zealand civil society; they were part of its making. Some cherished myths fail to stand up, but what is unarguable is the diversity of the Scottish influence. There was, to paraphrase one Christchurch Presbyterian, more to Scotland than Presbyterianism, yet the



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i­nfluence of that faith on New Zealand civil society is striking, even if sometimes mediated through those who had disavowed that, or any other, religious profession. Nor was Scottish influence isolated from other strands in shaping the New Zealand nation. There are Scottish dimensions of conservatism and socialism, democracy and authoritarianism, education and religion, populism and refined culture. None of them stand alone. There were English wowsers and English socialists, Irish radicals and Irish Tories, reformist Ulster Presbyterians and reformist Midlands Anglicans, and from 1900 the New Zealand-born were increasingly influential. Nor did Scots, or other immigrants, seem to seek to replicate the homeland, at least not so much after 1860. The whole point of emigration was to find or to make something that could not be found at home, and the new world was a stage for the reshaping, and the mixing, of old world custom and old world perspective.

6 Transforming the Landscape: Scots and the New Zealand Environment

Since the 1990s, through the writings of scholars such as Richard Grove and John MacKenzie, the stereotype of “the green Scot” has caught the academic imagination.1 How accurately this applies to the New Zealand situation remains a matter of debate, but enough is known to permit some observations. From the evidence advanced in earlier chapters, the Scots, at least those deemed moderately successful, tended to be practical men and women. Most had made the long journey to New Zealand to “get on.” Once arrived, they sought to establish themselves and to make livings in ways with which they were familiar. After a period of coming to terms with the new and quite different environment, they made concerted attempts to banish the alien and recreate the landscapes, spatial layouts, and economic systems of “home,” this being especially evident in, but not confined to, the rural districts. It now seems undeniable that Scots were at the forefront in transforming the greater part of New Zealand, in little more than half a century, from a pastiche of rainforest, swamp, and tussock expanses into a land covered by a sward of English grasses, divided into neat pastures, and dominated by the “productionist” landscapes of British-style stock farming. This was not surprising, given the numbers of Scots farmers and the speed of agricultural change in Scotland’s Lowlands in the half century before the beginning of systematic settlement in New Zealand. A significant, possibly disproportionate, number of the Scots-born – whether politicians, scientists, naturalists, or even the community concerned – were also prominent in early efforts to conserve and preserve indigenous fauna, flora, and natural landscape features. To argue from this, however, as New Zealand conservation historian David Young has done, that “green Scots” were a major force in the



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colony, appreciably slowing the pace of development, would almost certainly be going too far.2 Some undoubtedly were a major force, but many of those individuals were more concerned with ensuring what later became known as sustainable development than preservation in any pure sense. As a group, the Scots tended to pragmatism. What is apparent is that they did not respond in any uniform way to the environmental conditions they encountered. They struggled to adapt to the new land in the same manner, and with at least equal enthusiasm as the English or Irish, or for that matter Germans, Scandinavians, or Dalmatians.

Coming to Terms Perceiving the old in the new was a mechanism for coming to terms with the fundamentally alien. Sailing up the Otago harbour in April 1848, Rev. Thomas Burns compared the scenery with that of a Scottish loch. Such a comment helped make both him and his flock feel more familiar with this strange land. Another colonist thought the hills looked more like the Trossachs.3 Many other Scottish migrants to the new settlement remarked on how much it reminded them of home. Yet, as the thoughtful Australian ecologist George Seddon has suggested, this understanding constituted a misreading of a very old land as “new.”4 Many migrants rationalized what they saw according to what they already knew. Early paintings of the forest cover depict it as open rather than dense, with the trees and shrubs portrayed bearing little resemblance to indigenous species, suggesting more the oaks, pines, and birches of home.5 This effort to make the new and strange familiar was most clearly evident in migrant letters and diaries. Even the reputedly cold and calculating Donald McLean frequently harked back to his Scottish origins. For McLean, the steep hills between Waikanae and Wellington, at the foot of the North Island, exhibited “a diversity of mountain scenery similar to what is sometimes met with in the Highlands, particularly about the wild valleys of lovely Glencoe.”6 Yet there was a limited spectrum to McLean’s analogies. In the valley of the Rangitikei River, Glencoe was reborn. It also came to mind inland of the coastal settlement of Whanganui and in the eastern coastal hills of the southern North Island. A natural next step in retaining old associations was to impose new place-names redolent of the original homeland, a r­ecasting

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undertaken with especial enthusiasm in Otago. Dunedin was the old Gaelic name for Edinburgh, and settlers inscribed other familiar names on the new urban landscape they were creating: George and Princes Streets, Moray Place, and St Andrew and St David Streets. Border names like Roxburgh were attached to locations further inland. Rev. Burns named his new farm Grants Braes after the family farm in Ayrshire, while about 14 per cent of the settlement’s remote high-country sheep farms acquired Gaelic or Highland names, for instance Ben Lomond, Glen Falloch, Glenarie, and Laidmore, after Ledmore. Smaller farmers did likewise; future politician John McKenzie attached Ross-shire names to his farms  – Ardross, Oykell, and Heathfield.7 Similar naming patterns were imposed on farms and runs in other South Island sheep farming districts. They are no less identifiable in those southern North Island districts where Scots clustered, with a mix of Highland and Lowland names. To the west of the dividing ranges, in the Manawat ˉu and Rangitikei districts, village settlements such as Fordell, Bonny Glen, and Linton remain as enduring monuments, as do farms such as Tullochgorum and Ardachie, still operated by Highland settler descendants. East of the ranges, in the Wairarapa, around a dozen large grazing properties attracted names such as Blairlogie, Bannockburn, Glendhu, and Glenmorven. Further north, in Hawke’s Bay, there were Braeburn, Clyde Bank, and Glenross. There was nothing exceptional in this behaviour. It was similar to that of most migrants in most places at most times, an endeavour to re-establish identity. The settlers soon moved well beyond attaching old names to new places. As in any territory undergoing colonization, an essential first step was establishing rights to the land, followed by surveys to determine the dividing lines for the parcels of land consistent with those rights.8 The first attempts to give spatial form to land rights tended to be enduring. Where landscapes were long settled the surveyor just recorded what existed, but when it was the prelude to intensive settlement by a newly introduced body of settlers, it was far more. The colonial land surveyor’s primary responsibility was to impose spatial order on apparently blank landscape drawing boards. Once settlement sites were decided on, the surveyor was required to lay them out according to the dominant value systems of the settler groups, embodying the embraced settlement ideals, developmental strategies, and spatial goals.



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At Otago, Scottish-born surveyors laid down grid-like divisional lines on the uneven topography of Otago, much of which seemed so wild and rough that surveyors and explorers condemned it as “waste howling wilderness.” 9 In the case of the Otago Peninsula, jutting out into the Pacific Ocean from Dunedin, in the early settlement years the English-born surveyor Charles Kettle employed a crude form of trigonometrical survey to enable subdivision of the land in the most appropriate form to be taken up.10 Predictably, most of the settlers who attempted to develop these small, rough parcels of land as farms were Scottish. They tried to impose order on the broken topography of the peninsula by erecting stone walls and wooden fences and planting gorse hedges.11 Initially, the Otago Provincial Council tried to bring the inland waste lands into production by drawing notional lines over mountain ranges, paying little attention to light and shade, or access to water, as they divided large tracts of formerly “useless” land into sheep runs. Scots then addressed the problem of how best to use difficult mountainous country much as they had back home in Scotland. Further north, the English-dominated Provincial Council of Canterbury adopted a similar approach, but Otago provincial legislators, led by Perthshire farmer Donald Reid, distinguished themselves by regulating runholding much more tightly, using licences and lease-holding. In the process Otago avoided some of the deeply resented practices that later plagued Canterbury, such as “spotting,” or buying out land that provided access to water. Even so, stricter regulation was relative in the kinds of regulations imposed. It was still inequitable, only more so in Canterbury.12 Only as the momentum of settlement increased were more sophisticated survey methods adopted. Otago became a laboratory of colonial survey technique with the appointment of John Turnbull Thomson as the province’s chief surveyor in 1856. After 1876, the meridional circuit system of survey devised there became the blueprint for New Zealand’s national system of survey.13 Thomson, though born on the wrong side of the Tweed in Northumberland, may be considered at least an honorary Scot. He was of Lowland Scottish extraction, had been educated in the Borders, and trained for his profession in Aberdeen. Critically, before his arrival in Dunedin he had spent eighteen years in the Straits Settlements and thus fully understood the complications of colonial survey in an even more difficult environment.14 Under Thomson’s supervision, Otago became a nursery for skilled surveyors, many of whom subsequently

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moved on to take up senior positions in other parts of New Zealand. Lawn’s index of pioneer New Zealand surveyors suggests that the majority of Otago recruits to 1876 were either already Scotlandtrained, or young migrants and New Zealand-born taking up the profession.15 Thomson’s influence colony-wide was pervasive, and following his appointment as colonial surveyor-general in 1876, surveyors such as James McKerrow from Kilmarnock and Alexander Barron of Craigroy followed their chief into the national service, and ultimately succeeded him. Whereas almost the whole of the sparsely populated South Island had been acquired from M aori by 1853, in the North the dispos¯ session dragged out into the twentieth century. This, combined with the difficulties of further precipitous country, heavily forested downlands, and often swampy plains, resulted in even more surveying. Blocks purchased had to be defined and reserves for M ¯aori distinguished before apportionment for sale or occupancy could begin. Individual Scots were scattered through the early surveying offices, but the heaviest concentration outside southern New Zealand was in the lower North Island.16 The connection with Wellington started with the first New Zealand Company survey party. Glaswegian Robert Park was one of Surveyor-General William Mein Smith’s principal lieutenants. Later the Company’s principal surveyor, also chief surveyor of Wellington Province, Park was well versed in most aspects of his calling and, before migrating, had worked on railway surveys for Isambard Brunel.17 Not only was his land surveying to be influential in the laying out of town and farming lands in the southern North Island, in the mid-1840s he was also a major participant in the Otago pre-settlement purchase surveys. Later he assisted Commissioner McLean in land purchase surveys. In 1860 he moved to Canterbury, taking up land on his own account, but also surveying previously ill-defined pastoral property boundaries. Park’s departure from Wellington, however, in no way lessened the Scottish presence. Officers such as Alexander Dundas and Edmund ­Anderson, who had served under Thomson, took up senior appointments under the equally visionary (but English-born) Henry J­ackson. When Major Henry Spencer Palmer of the Ordnance Survey reviewed the state of the New Zealand surveys in 1874, his praise, in a generally damning report, was reserved for the Otago and Wellington surveys. It was on Palmer’s recommendation that the colony-wide agency under ­Thomson was formed.



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Scots also played their part in the opening up of new country as explorers who prepared the way for surveyors. The most wellknown was almost certainly the former Edinburgh bank clerk Charles Edward Douglas, whose epic journeys between 1868 and 1903 greatly increased settler knowledge of the remote and wild southwestern corner of New Zealand’s South Island. This eccentric loner campaigned for the preservation of native birds such as the weka, and through his arduous journeys alerted surveyors, as well as scientists, tourists, and trampers, to the scenic glories and ecological peculiarities of this uninhabited wild land.18 Thomas Mackenzie, also born in Edinburgh, followed Douglas’s example by exploring parts of Fiordland unknown to Europeans. Mackenzie’s ongoing acquaintance with such a special remnant of the original landscape, which he nicknamed the “wild west,” persuaded him to advocate as early as 1894 that the area be declared a national park, even though the prospect of the development of hydroelectric power resources delayed this until 1954, long after his death in 1930.19

Constructing Farming Landscapes The Cyclopedia of New Zealand, discussed in depth in chapter 4, incorporated page after page of portraits of Scots staring contentedly at the camera. Heavily over-represented among the successful were farmers, the occupational group engaged most directly in the great transformation of the New Zealand landscape. Scottish farmers had a particularly significant impact in Otago and Southland, in Canterbury, the Rangitikei district in the southwest of the North Island, and in Hawke’s Bay further east, although Scandinavians – mainly Danes – and English agricultural labourers also played a key role in removing the so-called “Great” or “Seventy Mile” Bush of southern Hawke’s Bay.20 These industrious Scottish farmers behaved more as “transformers in trousers” than “kilted conservationists.” That was consistent with the example set in the development of early Otago by Rev. Thomas Burns. Burns wanted more rapid development so that workers could earn a living wage. Hence he acted as a dynamic and progressive farmer, set upon transforming the heavily forested hills around Dunedin into farms typical of lowland Scotland. His enthusiasm for such development brought many clashes with the more conservation minded Captain Cargill;

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t­ension between the two set in motion a dialectic that still lies at the heart of Otago history. Burns’s typically nineteenth-century commitment to improvement reflected the vision of “Improving God’s Creation” and was partly driven by the notion that thriving, bucolic agricultural settlements would prevent the emergence of large, heavily industrialized cities.21 As James Barr, the celebratory historian of early Otago put it, the early settlers believed that “Let but the preparatory and preliminary labour of settlement be once accomplished, our toils would vanish, and the Eden of perfect restive peace into which we believed we had dropped, yield richly the fruits of this new earth, all but spontaneously to our hands. Free of all those hard inevitable requirements, which Nature and Providence impose everywhere else.”22 In reality, establishing mixed crop and stock farms on tracts such as the Otago Peninsula proved rather more difficult. Indeed it is hard to imagine a much more difficult place to carry out cropping, or any other kind of farming. Farmers had to contend with poor soil, steep hillsides, and exposure to strong winds, wild storms, and intermittent droughts. As Barr conceded, “we worked hard for a time with axe, grab-hoe, and spade, felling trees and uprooting flax and fern.”23 Yet, as a result of that hard work, and constantly burning the “bush,” by the 1870s the Scottish settlers had transformed the steep and broken country of the peninsula into an extensive dairy farm. The only distinctive Scottish features of this farming project that can still be easily discerned are the presence of dry stone walls on top of the ridges and the breeding of Ayrshire cattle. Apparently “Scottish” weeds, such as gorse and thistle, while profuse, could be found across the whole colony, just as they spread across large swaths of Canada and the United States.24 Otherwise, these settlers were hard to distinguish from English or Irish elsewhere in New Zealand. The difficult environment and lack of access to lucrative markets prolonged economic marginality, but the settlers’ determination and readiness to engage in trial and error enabled many to eventually realize the ideal of becoming yeoman farmers. With the years taken to learn to read the new environment, and with prosperity ultimately founded on the dispossession of M ¯aori (despite some intermarriage), the Otago story is little different from that told by Rollo Arnold about English agricultural labourers in Taranaki and the “Great Bush” areas of the North Island. In both instances modest settlers converted themselves into yeomen farmers, transforming



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their environment first into mixed farms comparable to those in their homelands, and later into intensive stock farms, whether fat lamb units or dairy farms.25 Scottish owners of large estates, as well as settlers of more modest means, also improved their properties, sometimes on quite a spectacular scale. An outstanding example is Sir James Glenny Wilson, born in Hawick, Roxburghshire, and equally celebrated as a conservationist. Even though his wife, Annie, came to “hate the very name of improvements,”26 James wrought a multitude of changes on his rough 2,857 hectare (6,210 acres) property at Bulls in the Rang­ itikei. When he purchased Ngaio Station in 1874 it had no fences of any description, while grass in the form of native danthonia covered only one-eighth of the property. Native manuka scrub, fern, and toetoe, a hardy cutty grass with long, feathery plumes, hid the rest from view. Significant areas of the station needed draining. Wilson, assisted by teams of labourers, burned the scrub in late summer and ploughed in the spring before sowing down crops of turnips, followed by oats. The tilled ground was then planted in English grasses. The Wilsons began in 1875 with fewer than 4,000 sheep of mixed lineage. By 1886, in the midst of New Zealand’s so-called “Long Depression,” the flock had increased to 9,000 Lincoln-Merino half-breeds, and 700 head of cattle and sixty horses. Stock grazed twenty-eight paddocks, contained by forty miles of fencing, mostly ditch and bank with gorse or seven-wire with one barbed wire. In 1891 half the station lay under English grasses or crops, and most of the balance had been burned and surface sown.27 Annie, echoing Thomas Burns, described this process of improvement as taking the land “from a state of nature to a state of grace,” noting her husband’s heartfelt observation: “I must improve; if I don’t kill the scrub it will kill me.”28 On the surface, this kind of labour- and capital-intensive improvement appears little different from that carried out by wealthy English-born “high farmers,” such as John Grigg at Longbeach in Mid-Canterbury.29 Like Grigg, Wilson tried to educate the farming community by passing on his experiences with pasture formation and stock breeding via membership of colony-wide organizations such as the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. As foundation president of the Farmers’ Union in 1902, he promoted his experiments at conferences, also using rural periodicals such as the New Zealand Farmer to report his results. Earlier he used the annual gatherings of the

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Agricultural and Pastoral Societies to disseminate advice. Unusually for someone so committed to productivist ideals, however, in the best tradition of those British squires committed to environmental guardianship, he also planted many exotic trees for the enjoyment of future generations.30 Large land-owning companies backed by Scottish capital, such as the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, improved on an even grander scale than individual landowners. At their peak in the 1870s, the company’s sixteen estates covered 87,083 hectares (209,000 acres) of freehold land and 141,560 hectares (339,745 acres) of leasehold across Canterbury, Otago, and Southland.31 The company ran 339,000 sheep and 8,967 cattle, and grew 2,500 hectares (6,000 acres) of wheat and 5,605 hectares (13,454 acres) of turnips. Some 4,863 hectares (11,672 acres) had also been sown down in grass. Altogether, over 16,666 hectares (40,000 acres) had been ploughed by the late 1870s.32 The Totara estate, near Oamaru, is the best known of these properties because of its association with the beginnings of the frozen meat industry, an enterprise in which Scots-born entrepreneurs Thomas Brydone and William Davidson played such key roles.33 Thomas Burns’s son Arthur also contributed to this groundbreaking industry, as well as promoting woollen milling through investment by establishing a large factory at Mosgiel near Dunedin.34 Even more spectacular improvement occurred at the 50,000 hectare (120,000 acres) Edendale estate in Southland, where the dairy industry, as well as fat lamb farming, became much more securely established. The huge Edendale property stretched from Gore in the north to within ten miles of the town of Invercargill in the south. The Mataura valley around Edendale, to the west of the river, seemed better suited to yeoman husbandry than to the extensive pastoral farming for which the Land Company had been established. Encouraged by their Dunedin-based agent, John Macfarlane Ritchie, the company set about converting the expanses of red tussock, New Zealand flax, and spear grass to English-style pastures, using steam ploughs to work the land over twice, then planting a crop of turnips, rape or oats and repeating the whole process before sowing English grasses. As part of its program to subdivide Edendale for sale to private purchasers, the company opened a new dairy factory in 1882, the first to attempt cheese making on a scale large enough for export to the British market. Edendale is consequently often credited with



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being the birthplace of commercial dairying in New Zealand.35 Some of the estate was subdivided on the private market, but the bulk of it was sold to the government for closer settlement in 1904, and it has been suggested that the company laid the foundations for “not only successful Government settlement after 1904, but the region’s continued prosperity … They bequeathed to the Government an estate that was largely improved, had an advanced dairy factory, and an existing community of prosperous dairy farmers that could offer important advice and assistance to new settlers.”36

Sheep Farming Improvement, as research by Robert Peden has recently shown, was not confined to clearing forest and draining swamps for intensive farming on the plains and downlands. Sheep farmers also brought the tussock lands of the high country into production through carefully calculated burning schedules, followed by over-sowing with English-style grasses, especially rye grasses, cocksfoot, white and red clover, and timothy. Even though the contributions of prominent English-born families with gentry connections – such as the Aclands, Tripps, Welds, Vavasours, Riddifords, and Ormonds – are best known because of their high profile in colonial politics, and the Romney, Cheviot, and Lincolnshire breeds of sheep may have been as English as the grasses imported, many of the shepherds and managers were Scots. Scots, moreover, were overrepresented among the runholders, even if they lacked the high profile of their English contemporaries. In Otago and Southland, of the 176 runholders whose birthplace can be confirmed, seventy-five, or 54 per cent, were Scots, against forty-four, or 27 per cent, of English origin. Significantly, over half the runholders with Scottish origins came from the Highlands. Even in “English” Canterbury, thirty-two of the 176, or 18 per cent of runholders whose place of birth can be identified, were born in Scotland.37 Some came with capital accumulated from their involvement in Australian whaling or pastoralism, such as the Campbell family who, unlike most landowners of Scottish descent, had connections with the lower end of the Scottish gentry. The Campbells went on to develop several large and successful properties, most notably at Otekaike in North Otago, where the patriarch, Robert Campbell, built a grand mansion.38 Although the three McLean brothers, Allan,

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John, and Robertson, were the sons of an impecunious tacksman from the Isle of Coll, they made enough money in Australia to jointly operate New Zealand’s biggest run, covering over half a million acres from the Lindis Pass down to the Cromwell Gorge and up to Lake Wanaka.39 Later Allan and John came to independently secure large freehold estates: Waikakahi in South Canterbury and Redcastle near Oamaru, 19,400 and 11,000 hectares (48,000 and 20,700 acres) respectively. John also ran another 7,300 hectare (18,370 acres) estate near Ashburton in Canterbury. After being bought out by the Liberal government in 1899, Allan died unmarried, leaving an estate valued at £615,000 in 1913, making him the second wealthiest man in New Zealand at the time of his death.40 His brother, also unmarried, died bequeathing the considerable sum of £213,000 to his nephew, who also happened to be his manager.41 Other Scots, especially retired officers from the Indian army such as Colonel W. Grant of Dalvey run near Queenstown, medical men such as Andrew Buchanan of Bellfield run in the upper Taieri, and the prominent Southland politician J.A.R. Menzies of Dunalister run, took up pastoral properties on a more modest scale.42 Some shepherds, especially those from the Highlands or Borders, whose skill in judging mountain weather made them very popular in more elevated areas, rose to become managers by the late nineteenth century. Several went on to become runholders in their own right when many runs were broken into smaller parcels between 1900 and 1920.43 Andrew Lambie, for example, who took up the Mount Arum Station in the Wakatipu basin near Queenstown in 1901, had formerly been a shepherd at Ben Ohau Station further north in the Mackenzie country. Similarly, Donald McLeod took up the Cairnard run in 1888, after shepherding for many years. Alexander Elliot took up the new Elfin Bay run in 1895 after managing Mavora Station. Sometimes these canny stockmen sold up, and became shepherds again before rejoining the ranks of runholders. Hugh Mackenzie did this when he sold Coronet Peak Station in 1878 to act as a shepherd at the foot of Walter Peak, later purchasing the leasehold of that property and adding the Mt Nicholas and Fernhill runs.44 These men joined their English peers in improving this tough country as best they could. It is clear that they were far more than the environmental wreckers and pyromaniacs of ecologists’ polemic and popular imagination.45 Certainly a few damaged their properties by excessive burning and overstocking, but careless farmers did



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not usually last long on marginal grazing lands afflicted by drought in the summer, snowstorms at unpredictable times of the year, and flash floods, compounded by rabbit infestation in the drier areas.46 Although the early arrival of some successful runholders from Australia, such as the McLeans and Campbells, might suggest that Australian sheep-farming methods dominated, it was soon all too apparent that Australian practice was ill-suited to New Zealand’s wetter and colder environments.47 Folding flocks together to protect them from dingo attack, a necessity in the Australian colonies, had to be abandoned in New Zealand because huddling sheep close together in the damper conditions only encouraged foot rot. Similarly, the merino that thrived in arid Australia soon had to be crossbred in New Zealand with heavier English breeds developed to cope with the damper conditions. Indeed, Peden detects the dominance of north British and Scots practice in every aspect of sheep farming, from careful use of fire to the methods employed for lambing, breeding, fencing, and pasture improvement.48 A complementary study of runholding in the more alpine Wakatipu basin generally supports these conclusions.49 Scots also succeeded as runholders in the extensive pastoral districts of the North Island, especially in the Wairarapa and Hawke’s Bay. The Wairarapa was in fact the cultural hearth of pastoralism in New Zealand, the first proving ground for extensive grazing, and Scots settlers were in the vanguard in the 1844 drive to occupy the tussock grasslands and scrubby hills of Wellington’s eastern hinterland.50 Over one-third of the new proprietors before 1853 were Scots, a distinct overrepresentation, and so were most of their employees, especially the shepherds. In the central valley were the properties of modest but ambitious migrants: Angus McMaster’s Tuhitarata; Archibald Gillies’s Otaraia; and Hugh Morrison’s Hakeke. On the southern coast was Kawakawa, occupied by the more socially privileged Russell brothers – T.P. and H.R. – from Kinross. On the eastern coast was Richard Barton’s White Rock and the Cameron brothers Pahaoa. At first, in contrast to the South Island, all of these properties were held on leaseholds from the M ¯aori owners. It was not until the early and mid-1850s that the leased lands were acquired from M ¯aori by the Crown, before being passed back to the original settler occupiers or to eager emulators, by sale or rental, ushering in a period of strategic freeholding in which Scots were again prominent. Later arrivals, including relatives of the original leaseholders, also all

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sought shares.51 Among the eager acquirers was Land Commissioner McLean, who purchased remote coastal Akitio as a speculation. The same pattern was apparent further north in Hawke’s Bay, the North Island’s second major extensive grazing district.52 In addition to once more orchestrating the transfer of the greater part of the land from M ¯aori hands, McLean again took advantage of his opportunity. His Maraekakaho run, ultimately over 50,000 acres, was a Celtic island in the pastoral sea, the employees almost invariably Scottish and the management drawn from McLean’s home island of Tiree.53 They scarcely wanted for company. Research by M.D.N. Campbell shows that Scots were also heavily overrepresented among the Hawke’s Bay pastoralists.54 Some who had earlier been active in the Wairarapa moved or extended their pastoral operations north, while there was a steady trickle of new entrants, some settlers of long standing, others fresh from “home.” Yet until the 1870s the pastoralism practised was very crude. It has been labelled elsewhere as “robber pastoralism” and amounted to little more than cramming every available sheep onto every free range acre of indigenous vegetation, to the point of diminishing returns. Not until tenure was fully assured through the piece by piece purchase of runs, thus safeguarding the value of capital improvements, did attention seriously turn to improvements through better stock and property management. In later decades there was greater scope for the promotion of more intensive and sophisticated sheep farming.

Facilitating Improvement Scots also had a major impact on the landscapes of New Zealand as seed merchants. By importing grass seed and supplying it to farmers to sow in the warm ash of the smoldering toppled trees, these merchants played a direct role in the transformation of the rainforest into a giant, grassland farm. The seeds may have been English, but the seed merchants undoubtedly came from a variety of backgrounds: Arthur Yates in Auckland, for example, was English, whereas Adolf Moritzon in Dunedin was Danish. Nevertheless, Glaswegian-born Robert Nimmo and John Blair, “Seed Merchants of Dunedin,” acted as part of this imperial web of plant exchange, importing grass seeds from England and re-exporting them to Britain, Australia, and the rest of the South Island. So too did David Hay from Perthshire and his son David Alexander, who established in Auckland the important



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Montpellier nursery that introduced many exotic plants, including pinus radiata.55 These seed merchants thereby made a very significant contribution to converting the forests, swamps, and tussocks of Otago, Canterbury, Nelson, and Auckland into British-style pasture lands broken up by wind belts of Monterey pine.56 Reflecting their prominent place in the metal trades, Scots were also over-represented among the agricultural machinery manufacturers, who developed heavier and tougher ploughs to turn over the rough soils and matted vegetation of Otago, Southland, and Canterbury for wheat and oat growing. Manufacturers like Reid and Gray of Dunedin also developed horse-drawn labour-saving machinery to open up the plains and downland for stock farming.57 This company made double-furrow ploughs, especially adapted and strengthened for New Zealand conditions, as well as harrows; seed, turnip, and manure drills; chaffers and baggers; wool presses; and windmills. At first the company also modified reapers and binders from the American midwest and traction engines from Britain, but later it became the agent for American and British manufacturers of this equipment. By 1912 the firm had sold 20,000 of its tough and reliable ploughs, building on the specialist, intergenerational plough-making skills of founders James Gray and Robert Reid.58 Its machinery was also used in bush districts in the North Island, according to advertisements appearing in long forgotten newspapers such as the Bush Advocate, published in Dannevirke in Hawke’s Bay.59 Further, while the impact on the immediate landscape was unquestionably deleterious, Scottish-trained engineers played a key role in the development of one of New Zealand’s few indigenous inventions (strictly speaking an adaption of an overseas prototype that was re-exported in a new form), the gold dredge. Firms such as Kincaid, McQueen and Company and A&T Burt used skills developed on the Clydeside to build many of these pontoons with a chain of mechanized buckets mounted on the deck.60 Although much of the damage they inflicted on the landscape ultimately disappeared under regenerating bush and scrub, potential farmland was chewed up and messy tailings deposited beside rivers that had already been fouled.61 Yet another notable Scottish contribution to the great transformation, one often unrecognized, was an outcome of their skills in developing both suburban and botanical gardens. George Matthews and his son Henry, from Aberdeenshire, became Dunedin’s most successful nurserymen, along with William Martin from Lanarkshire

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and James Gebbie. The son of a farmer, George Matthews spent nine years in County Dublin as the head gardener at Knockmaroon Lodge – the home of Rev. Thomas Burns’s younger brother Gilbert – before migrating to New Zealand in 1850 and establishing what was to become Dunedin’s leading nursery.62 Following a similar path, William Martin served his apprenticeship in the Edinburgh Horticultural and Botanical Gardens before sailing for Otago in 1847. James Gebbie, who trained in modern Scottish nurseries such as Dickson and Sons before arriving in Dunedin in 1849, began to lay out the city’s botanical gardens in the 1860s. Following in his father’s footsteps, James Gebbie Jr embarked on the creation of the Oamaru Public Gardens in 1889. Andrew Duncan, who had been born in the west of Scotland, played an equally important part in the development of Christchurch’s fine examples of both private suburban gardens and civic botanical gardens, while his son James headed north to Taranaki to form Duncan and Davies, which became one of New Zealand’s largest nursery operations.63 In Dunedin, Alexander Campbell Begg from Edinburgh and David Tannock, the son of an Ayrshire ploughman who had trained at Kew Gardens in London, built upon the earlier work of Martin and Gebbie, together with leading scientist James Hector of Edinburgh, in developing Dunedin’s gardens in similar fashion to many other botanical gardens around the British Empire, featuring all kinds of exotics mixed with indigenous plants. Tannock also became an influential gardening writer and promoter of gardening fashion.64 All these busy makers of gardens were influenced by John Claudius Loudon, the great Scots advocate of the “democratic gardenesque” in both domestic gardening at home and public gardens in cities.65 Suburban home gardeners, from English and Irish backgrounds, as well as Scottish, took up many of Loudon’s ideas as they converted areas formerly covered in forest or scrub into manicured, hybrid gardens incorporating a vast array of exotic plants, with only an occasional nod toward native shrubs and trees.66 A more ambitious, and bizarre, example was a determined effort between 1912 and the early 1920s to turn the central North Island’s Tongariro National Park into a heather-clad grouse moor. Although the key figure in this effort, sometime-police commissioner John Cullen, was an Ulsterman, he enjoyed considerable Scottish support. Over five tons of Scottish pink heather seed (calluna vulgaris) was imported and sown



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over the western sections of the park. The grouse failed to establish completely, but the heather flourished and became a noxious weed.67 An inescapable conclusion is that Scots burned, drained, and sowed pasture, or planted crops and gardens, as enthusiastically as anyone else, playing critical roles in the transformation of the New Zealand landscape, whether in the high mountainous country of the South Island, in the more heavily forested areas in both islands, along river banks, or in the cities and suburbs. By the 1930s, under the combined onslaught of Scots, Irish, and English settlers, with some assistance from Scandinavians, Dalmatians, and M ¯aori, forests covered only half the area they had at the beginning of European settlement. Even more spectacularly, by the 1970s over 85 per cent of swamps – highly prized by M ¯aori for their rich food sources – had been drained, probably the highest rate of drainage on earth. The grassland farms and fields covered in oats and wheat that replaced forests and wetlands looked little different from those of Lowland Scotland or England.68 The predominance of wood as a building material and urban sprawl because of abundant land meant that the cities looked somewhat different, but public and private gardens and lawns had much in common with their British equivalents.

Confronting the Forests Some Scots were strong advocates of forest conservation. As a soldier in India Captain William Cargill, civilian leader of the Otago settlement in 1848, had seen the consequences of rapid deforestation and insisted on timber preservation in Dunedin. The town belt, which still curls through the hill suburbs, resulted from this concern.69 As Superintendent of Otago, Cargill also clashed with the Anglo-centric settlement of Canterbury to the north over boundaries, fearing the loss of vital timber resources in the western corner of his large province. As a result, he established timber reserves in the forested parts of Otago that remained after the boundary adjustment.70 Others followed his lead. The Deans family settled in Canterbury before the organized English settlement began in 1850. John Deans, especially his wife Jane McIlraith, both from Ayrshire, ensured, with their descendants, the survival of Riccarton Bush, a forest remnant, in the face of ongoing rural and suburban development. Thomas ­Mackenzie, advocate of a national park in Fiordland, also helped to establish the Native Bird Protection Society after the

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First World War, the forerunner of the Forest and Bird Protection Society, which emerged in 1933.71 James Wilson, an advocate of farming development, founded the New Zealand Forestry League in 1916, urging the replanting of native forests and their long-term preservation. Wilson did not see intensive farming as in any way contradictory to conservation and preservation.72 A contemporary parliamentarian, Kelso-born Robert Bruce, left a bequest to establish a native bird sanctuary near his southern Wairarapa farm, which became famous for helping save the rare kokako, or blue wattled crow.73 Peebles-born Alexander Bathgate, a utopian figure who instituted Arbor Day in New Zealand in 1892, also founded the Dunedin Amenities Society (based on an Edinburgh model) to protect areas of forest and vegetation for the enjoyment of walkers by creating reserves. He too endeavoured to impart a conservation message to save remnants of ancient New Zealand for the enjoyment of later generations. Like some other conservationists of the day, he advocated the aggressive management of pests, unhelpfully suggesting in 1903 that the magpie, tawny owl, and shrike should be introduced to destroy the eggs and young of grain-eating introduced birds, even at the risk of losing native birds.74 The individuals noted were essentially committed laymen. In the mid-1870s the New Zealand government brought Captain Inches Campbell Walker to the colony from India to advise on forest conservation. Walker insisted that if New Zealand wanted to avoid the disaster of deforestation that had occurred in the Himalayas, all future milling should be carefully planned. He also urged the development of plantations of native rather than exotic trees, and advocated establishing large reserves. In all these respects he epitomized the conservationist Scot lauded by Richard Grove.75 A decade later, in 1886, Thomas Kirk was appointed Conservator of Forests. Kirk, who came from Scottish antecedents although he was Englishborn, tried hard to plan for the future timber harvest. He also established mountain reserves to protect rivers, streams, and climate. Like many other contemporaries influenced by the work of the American polymath George Perkins Marsh, Kirk feared that rapid deforestation would lead to desertification, because it was believed that trees attracted moisture. Kirk went on to have a distinguished career as a botanist and government scientist who almost overturned Darwin’s notion of displacement, and developed an ecological sensibility long before most of his contemporaries.76



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Dumbartonshire-born surveyor, botanist, and painter John Buchanan expressed the same concern at the loss of native tussock from the mid-1860s. He recognized the adverse environmental impacts of extensive pastoralism, and argued that previous stands of podocarp forest had been fragmented and diminished by fire, impoverishing the underlying soils. Buchanan further pointed out that the complex and fragile understorey of smaller plants and fungus beneath the tussock had been disrupted by fire and overgrazing, and warned that burning would prove difficult to manage in drier areas, even though it could open up “luxuriant growth in wetter districts.”77 Later, in 1873, as government botanist, he reported on the flora of Wellington Province. Like Kirk, he challenged the idea of displacement in relation to native grasses, observing, “The indigenous grasses … generally disappear before British grasses, not from possessing a lesser vitality, but from being unduly handicapped in the struggle. There is probably no instance of the native grassseeds being collected and sown, while this is frequently done with the British species, some of which would, no doubt, disappear also but for being re-sown.”78 Unlike most early colonists, Buchanan also believed in the superior fattening qualities of native grasses for stock and advocated their use in his manual The Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand, published in 1880.79 Buchanan’s views paralleled those of visiting Scots botanist W. Lauder Lindsay, who arrived in Otago in 1861, just as the gold rushes began. Apart from lamenting the lack of proper botanical investigation before sheep and miners altered the natural vegetation cover beyond recognition, Lindsay commented on the hardiness of many New Zealand plants growing in Britain, thereby challenging the notion of “displacement” emerging from Darwin’s writings, especially the misleading notion that new world flora was less vigorous. He also noted the vigour with which exotic plants grew in New Zealand.80 In 1868, after returning to Scotland, Lindsay strongly advocated the need to conserve forests as a timber source for the future. He stressed the importance of “preserving to the utmost the old or primitive forests, and of … forestalling their inevitable disappearance.”81 All of the examples cited fit with the Scottish conservationist stereotype, but their concern and long-sightedness must be compared with the desire for immediate returns displayed by Scottish entrepreneurs and provincial politicians like James Macandrew of

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Aberdeen and Dunedin. The long-serving superintendent of Otago, land speculator, steamship promoter, and parliamentarian believed that the preservation and extension of forest resources should be the concern of private enterprise rather than the state. Like others who advocated unchecked laissez-faire-type development, he also argued that the forest was “inexhaustible” and would supply New Zealand’s needs for “centuries to come; and [be] not only sufficient to supply our necessities, but to afford an article of export.”82 Similar views were expressed in the North Island by Edinburgh-born John Logan Campbell, the most prominent of Auckland’s early businessmen and also an occasional politician. Though later better known as an endower of public parks, Campbell made the milling of native timbers an integral part of his investment portfolio.83 Having earlier dabbled in the trade, in 1878, at the height of the export timber boom, he purchased the large Te Koporu mill on the Kaipara harbour north of Auckland, intending to exploit the majestic kauri forests. Ten years later he sold his interests to the Melbourne-based Kauri Timber Company. The tension inherent in wanting to develop the colony as quickly as possible while at the same time avoiding large-scale environmental degradation is caught in the career of Richard John S­ eddon, New Zealand’s most prominent northern Briton (his mother Jane ­Lindsay was a schoolteacher from Annan in Dumfries-shire) and serving prime minister. On the one hand, this masterful longest-­ politician claimed that “every tree felled meant the improvement of the public estate of the country.”84 On the other, he lamented to the 1896 Timber Conference, held to overhaul the organization and profitability of the industry, that the timber lands of the colony were “getting smaller day by day,” complaining that their exploitation had brought little benefit to the colony or its people. By simply felling and burning bush, settlers had destroyed millions of feet of timber “more valuable than the land,” even when fenced and sown in grass. Seddon went on to stress the need to preserve forests against fire. Yet, when asked why then he assisted settlers in developing such areas, he replied, “If we did not encourage settlers, there would be no sawmills, and there would be very few of you here today.”85 In 1903 he surprised his contemporaries and bamboozled later historians by passing a Scenery Preservation Act that set out to protect highly scenic areas of old New Zealand that were fast disappearing before fire and axe. This action certainly had a utilitarian



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impulse. It aimed to promote tourism in areas that could not be farmed profitably or used in other ways, including the wild southern part of Seddon’s Westland electorate, but very little potential farmland was actually reserved for preservation. Even so, this legislation constituted an example of what the American historian of national parks, Al Runte, calls “monumentalism”; helping to establish a more distinctive national identity for a young self-governing colony that lacked ancient buildings and ruins.86 Perhaps the act’s appearance on the statute books came from Seddon’s boyhood wanderings around the estates of the Earls of Derby, providing a powerful counterpoint to the stench and squalour of nearby St Helens. Seddon’s engagement with the poetry of Robert Burns – instilled in him by his mother – also influenced his thinking about the preservation of scenic areas. He was impressed by the bard’s compelling portrayal of humans as “a destructive force on earth”87 and Burns’s powerful call for people, whatever their social rank, to engage in a more organic relationship with the natural world.88 Seddon’s apparently contradictory attitude and the blatant flouting of any kind of conservationist impulse by politicians like ­Macandrew illustrate very clearly the problem with overweighting the importance of Scots in early efforts at conservation. Even if the likes of Cargill, Walker, and Kirk, and government servants operating at a lower level in the bureaucracy such as McArthur, are included, some important early conservationists, including Liberal politicians Harry Ell and William Pember Reeves, were locally born. Others, such as T.H. Potts, were English naturalists deeply imbued with the need to maintain Vicar of Selborne-type traditions.89 The English-born pioneer ecologist Leonard Cockayne, who won an international reputation for his work on the importance of habitat, shared many ideals with Potts. It is arbitrary, therefore, to separate these men and the New Zealand-born activists from Scots involved in early efforts at conservation.90 It might be argued that Scots made several little-noticed contributions to a more conservationist approach to land use by noting M ¯aori environmental learning, and adapting their agricultural practices accordingly. Scottish settlers seemed to fare slightly better than their English peers in this respect. A few early Dunedin settlers, for example, copied the local K ai ˉ Tahu people in planting their potatoes M ¯aori-style, atop little raised mounds above ground.91 Around ­Clutha, fifty miles south of Dunedin, Scots settlers noted that land

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covered in fern was not sour as in Scotland because M ¯aori used it after burning and digging out the fern roots.92 English settlers elsewhere in New Zealand tended to reject fern land as sour.93 One possible reason Scots followed M ¯aori practices was that because Scots came from a harsher environment they paid more attention to which practices worked and which should be jettisoned.

Settler Ambiguities As the preceding discussion has suggested, nineteenth-century Scottish migrants to New Zealand expressed a wide range of reactions to the landscape and environment of their new world. Some delighted in its pristine glories. Others recoiled with disgust, horror, and disappointment at its undeveloped rawness. Attitudes to the whole process of pioneering were expressed in a host of ways and did not fit easily into simple binaries such as conservationists or improvers. This ambiguity characterizes the environmental attitudes of many Scottish settlers. Nineteenth-century letters suggest that Scottish settlers in Otago paid more attention to the environment on a day-to-day basis than to anything else, concentrating on the most immediate parts of their encounter with a new land: the weather; the mud; the search for warm and comfortable housing materials; sorting out which land was best suited to British-style farming. James Blackie, the first schoolteacher in the settlement, wrote at length about the steepness of Dunedin and the need to drain the Taieri Plain before farming could begin. He noted that green crops did well and that stock seemed to thrive. Like many settlers, he was convinced that the native tussocks should be burned and the land sown with European grasses. On the other hand, he too warned of the dangers of indiscriminate burning, given the shortage of timber immediately south of Dunedin. He liked the fine days and clear skies compared with the grey of Scotland, but complained of the frosts and the large diurnal range of temperature. Blackie therefore recommended to new settlers warm and durable clothing, as well as stout boots to cope with the ever present mud. He was also struck by the “fewness” of creatures other than birds, and believed that British game would flourish if introduced.94 Weaver John Buchanan described to his family in Kirkintilloch his efforts to become a small farmer, how he constructed a house of daub and wattle and planted a garden of potatoes, cabbages, and



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peas.95 “A Settler’s Wive” wrote rather more enthusiastically to her brother of the “‘excellent’ soil, healthy climate and ‘very beautiful’” woods.96 Anne Black Fraser, whose family came from Aberdeen, described a bountiful world of birds and bush in her reminiscences. She also reminded her readers of the many dangers involved in pioneering, including crossing rivers in flood, the poisonous native plant called “tutu,” attacks from charging cattle, and blood poisoning resulting from cuts. She remembered the experience of building a house from ferns so vividly that she described its construction in detail, along with her father’s creation of a strong stone dwelling like those of Aberdeen.97 Yet, as another settler wrote to his parents, the wet climate, which turned the roads to “channels of liquid mud” in winter, ensured that Otago was no “Garden of Eden.”98 As late as 1869, failed gold miner Arch Henderson complained to his “neace” that he became very “cold and hungry” climbing over mountains to reach the West Coast gold rushes.99 Perhaps the most extravagant complaint of all came from Thomas Adam, who complained to his brother in 1857 that he had encountered the “highest mountains in the world” behind Dunedin. New Zealand seemed extraordinarily rough and hilly compared with East Lothian.100 Nevertheless, the great majority of extant letters and reminiscences seem to support environmental historian James Beattie’s contention that many early settlers in the Dunedin area appreciated, even liked, the landscape they found on the other side of the world, even if they did not overly romanticize it.101 This finding runs counter to the suggestion of some earlier historians that British settlers hated “the bush” (colonial shorthand for any kind of trees or woods, much New Zealand bush being dense rain forest – “very thick,” as George Hepburn complained102). Many settlers viewed it as dank, dark, and damp and a terrible barrier to progress.103 But Otago’s Scots, though they accepted that much of the limited forest cover had to be removed for farming purposes, lamented its removal, as well as the loss of native song birds. Both Edmund Smith and Ann Black Fraser regretted the disappearance of plump wood pigeons and noisy tui and weka.104 Even immigration agent James Adam, who described the bush as “dark and dank” and hard to walk through, judged the fern and young rimu trees to be “beautiful.”105 James Barr concurred, arguing that the Dunedin harbour looked much more beautiful before settlers cleared the bush.106 Subtle gender differences also appear in these responses. Women, who had less direct contact with

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the bush, tended to most regret its passing, seemingly because they found the forested hills more aesthetically appealing than burnedover paddocks or underdeveloped farms.107 By 1870 some Scottish-born settlers were forming local conservation organizations. Peter Thomson, who wrote a regular column, “Rambles Around Dunedin,” between 1865 and 1872 for the Otago Witness, regularly lamented the obliteration of the natural environment. In 1871 he called for the establishment of a Field Naturalists’ Club, noting that: “There is one thing in connection with the bush which not only the botanist but every lover of nature must regret, and that is the rapid rate at which it is disappearing. A few short years and the only forest left will be patches here and there in inaccessible places.”108 The club was duly established in 1872, admitted women into membership, and lasted until 1882.109 Members expressed much environmental anxiety about “the spread of acclimatized weeds … either the dock, cape weed, thistles, or chickweed being found everywhere over the district.” In contrast, “some of the native plants are becoming scarce, and will soon be extinct – clearing the land, the grazing of cattle, and the ravages of fire, are the main cause of this. The larger native birds too, are gradually dying out; there are very few in the bush near town, while cats and rats are common.”110

The Ambiguities of Three Informed Assessors New Zealand’s colonial scientist, Sir James Hector, and two prominent naturalists, George Malcolm Thomson and Herbert Guthrie-­ Smith, were three Scots-born men who had more to say, and write, about the New Zealand environment than most. All have been hailed as “green Scots,” yet at first glance they seem to have been more committed to rapid improvement than to the need to conserve key resources and to maintain some kind of aesthetically pleasing landscape. Nevertheless, carefully considering their sometimes apparently contradictory attitudes suggests that they were fumbling toward something akin to the modern notion of “sustainable development.” “Sustainability” remains a concept fraught with difficulty and certainly had little currency before the 1970s, yet it describes the desire of most nineteenth-century colonists to grow and develop their young country while preserving some of its more distinctive and “useful” natural features.



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The word “useful” holds a key to understanding their perspective, because, like the majority of colonists, they hoped to improve the material lot of immigrants by raising their standard of living via growing an economy. Unless they generated wealth, loftier and even utopian hopes of increasing social equality and building a “better Britain” could not be realized. On balance, it seems that ­Hector was the most pragmatic. Thomson inched toward becoming a pioneer ecologist and paid much more attention to the problems of unintended environmental degradation because of thoughtless attempts at acclimatization, but he still supported rapid and large-scale development. As he grew older, the sheep farmer-turned-­ naturalist Guthrie-Smith became the most determined preservationist and the most critical of unthinking development. In the process of casting doubt on the developmentalist ethos, and writing about those doubts more eloquently and persuasively than anyone else, he became better known internationally than any other New Zealand environmentalist. Hector probably best fit the notion of the “environmental Scot.” Educated in Edinburgh as a medical doctor, he won enough of a reputation as an explorer in Canada to become a respected member of the Royal Geographical Society, worked as a geologist and botanist, helped establish the Wellington botanical gardens, set up the Colonial Museum, and ran the premier intellectual institution of the time, the New Zealand Institute (renamed the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1903). Hector dominated nineteenth-century New Zealand science more than any other individual. This powerful polymath corresponded with Joseph Dalton Hooker at Kew Gardens and tried to classify as many dimensions of the natural world of New Zealand as could be fitted in the classic mould.111 Furthermore, Hector led an investigation into the state of New Zealand’s forests and always cautioned against the dangers of rashly exploiting forest resources.112 He sent photographer Joseph Perry to capture the glories of Otago’s scenery on film in 1865113 and supported the publication of Walter Buller’s internationally celebrated book on New Zealand birds in 1867.114 Yet he was much more interested in development than conservation. In most of his reports Hector tended to view his new world as a prospector rather than an environmentalist. After all, he was undertaking “geological expeditions” aimed at discovering deposits of valuable minerals. Although it was acknowledged that “fine” and “grand”

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scenery might attract tourists, Hector did not express much appreciation of its beauty. Indeed, he condemned Fiordland as “gloomy and forbidding in the extreme,” and did not seem to share Seddon’s enthusiasm for the beauties of South Westland.115 For him, much of the problem was that such areas appeared unsuited for settlement and lacked any obvious use.116 Even his support for granting £500 to publish Buller’s book Birds of New Zealand was utilitarian: the Native birds are becoming rapidly extinct. The proposed work would further have a practical utility, as the accurate information which Mr. Buller’s experience will afford, respecting the habits, food, and distribution of the birds indigenous to the colony, will be a valuable guide in the acclimatisation of imported species, on the judicious performance of which the success of the this colony as an agricultural and pastoral country will in some degree, though indirectly, depend, from its being so situated that natural agencies, unassisted by artificial means, are unable to maintain the balance between the insect pests introduced with seeds and their destructive enemies among birds.117 This was an extraordinary statement. Hector not only supported Darwin’s notion of displacement even before the publication of The Descent of Man (1871), he also obviously believed that the function of native birds could be taken over by introduced species. By the 1860s settlers had begun to realize that nectar-eating native birds did not threaten grain farming or grass sowing as much as introduced sparrows and other seed eaters. Hector’s concern was not with the plight of native birds, but with the need to bring in species suited to farming activities. From an early date, he seemed committed to the idea of New Zealand as a giant pastoral farm, and had clearly rejected alternatives that still had some currency in the 1860s, including controlled forestry, fishing, horticulture, viticulture, and even sericulture.118 In sum, Hector seems little different from other “scientists of Empire” such as Sir Roderick Murchison, who had recommended him for the post of government geologist. Such scientists, according to Murchison’s biographer, were employed “to engage and transform the physical world in the interests of perceived social need.”119 George Malcolm Thomson, born in India and Edinburgh-­ educated, earned his livelihood as a high school science teacher, but



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is remembered as a “proto-ecologist” because he provided damning criticism of Darwin’s “displacement” theory by carefully observing the natural world over many years. He showed that British flora and fauna were no more vigorous than their indigenous counterparts, but this reality did not become clear until the speed of transformation slowed, allowing native bush, scrub, and birds to fight back against the ravages of deforestation and artificial pasture.120 Thomson retains a special place in the history of New Zealand ecology for his classic study The Naturalisation of Plants and Animals in New Zealand (1922). This timely book forced a dramatic change to acclimatization practices, which until then had been predicated on a naïve attempt to remake New Zealand as a kind of newer Britain. Certainly Thomson violently opposed Alexander Bathgate’s suggestion that predators such as the magpie, tawny owl, and shrike should be introduced to control grain-eating birds.121 Thomson’s failure to complete his BSc is held up by his biographer as a key to his ability to think outside the box, and implies that Thomson’s environmental sensibility is connected to his committed Presbyterianism.122 Yet this very same critic of raw Darwinism and careless acclimatization also advocated the intensive manufacture of chemical fertilizers in New Zealand. Thomson believed that New Zealand’s abundant hydroelectric resources should be put to use to ensure an increase in agricultural productivity, notwithstanding the declining natural fertility of New Zealand’s hard-worked soils. He seemed little concerned that such manufacture produced considerable pollution and required large inputs of energy. According to Thomson, the sustained application of science to agriculture would further help increase productivity and reverse the declining soil fertility and the stagnation of sheep numbers in the South Island.123 In his view, fertilizer manufacture could convert the country back into the New Zealand Unlimited imagined by earlier settlers. He thereby aligned himself to champions of growth such as John McKenzie, Richard John Seddon, and Joseph Ward, instead of left-leaning utopians such as John Ballance and William Pember Reeves, who wished to improve the lot of New Zealanders by dividing the cake more evenly rather than by baking a larger cake.124 Categorizing Herbert Guthrie-Smith presents particular problems. His classic study of environmental change, Tutira: The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station (1921), has won accolades from several

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leading American environmental historians, who acknowledge that this book more than any other persuaded them to practise environment history.125 Yet Guthrie-Smith was a hybrid – half Scots, with Irish and English antecedents. He expressed this sense of multiple heritage and identity by comparing his Irish side to the little lady on a Victorian “barometrical device” who appears from her “Swiss rustic home” when the sun shines, and contrasting it with his Scottish ancestry, represented by the heavily-coated man who comes out when it rains. In the masterful preface to the 1953 edition of Tutira, Herbert Guthrie-Smith attempted to put his conflict into words: A grandmother from South Ireland has been invaluable to me. A resilience that could only emanate from County Cork especially crops up in dealing with solemn, almost holy things – balance sheets, banks and station accounts … Overdrafts have ever seemed natural to the dear lady. Her bright spirit has never quailed at impecuniosity, never been dashed by lack of credit … To such Celtic levity do the author’s Lowland Scots ancestors listen with dour distrust. Sad, grim in grain from age long struggle with unpropitious soils and weeping skies, far otherwise breathe forth the voices of his Stirlingshire progenitors … Heed not the Irishwoman’s call. A man’s first duty is to the soil, the station must be first and foremost, consideration of its flocks and herds; there is bracken to be destroyed, undergrowth to be cleared, pastures to be renovated, weed growth to be eradicated.126 Such delectable ambiguity not only challenges stereotypes but renders the hypothesis of the “green Scot” even more problematic, especially given the fact that Guthrie-Smith received a classical education at a leading English public school. Guthrie-Smith’s classic text Tutira describes his first-hand experience with his rough Hawke’s Bay sheep farm. Tutira, published in three editions, is rather equivocal and can be read in a variety of ways.127 Yet there is no doubt that the man who worked hard to convert a struggling 8,333 hectare (20,000 acres) scrub-clad property into a flourishing 25,000 hectare (60,000 acres) farm carrying 32,000 sheep became increasingly disillusioned with the entire transformative project. The first two editions can be read as a celebration of the triumph of hard work over the vagaries of the market and the ravages of weeds, animal pests, and erosion. By the third



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edition, that optimism gives way to doubts, despite Guthrie-Smith’s mighty efforts in helping to found the Forest and Bird Protection Society in 1933. Most famously, he wrote in the preface to the third edition, “Have I then for sixty years desecrated God’s earth and dubbed it Improvement?”128 In 1936, in a less well-known confessional moment, he wrote in Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist, of “the ruin of a Fauna and Flora unique in the world – a sad, bad, mad, incomprehensible business.”129 In 1940 Guthrie-Smith passed on his doubts to the next generation by writing a very critical and pessimistic essay for the Labour government’s new illustrated centennial history for schools, Making New Zealand. “The Changing Land” provided a stark contrast to the generally celebratory accounts of the achievements of the progressive New Zealand state. Instead of praising increased productivity, Guthrie-Smith lamented that the soil had deteriorated so badly that grasses, which “used to flourish with enthusiasm grow now with philosophic calm, almost with the senility of age.”130 He went on to conclude that grass could not hold the land, and that erosion, particularly evident in his corner of the country, had become an “inevitable, uncontrollable process,” and would continue if there were not a massive attempt at reforestation.131 This was a voice from the wilderness when most other New Zealanders were intent on taking fuller advantage of the country’s role as the specialist stock farm of the British Empire.132 The sheep farmer had developed into a full-blown environmentalist, someone to be compared with such American figures as Aldo Leopold, and there can be no denying that Guthrie-Smith changed because of his encounter with the New Zealand environment. His long-term and detailed observation of the damage caused to a fragile and different environment and landscape by large-scale and rapid transformation into something recognizably British troubled him. Attitudes imbibed and acquired from his Scottish background may account for some of his growing sensibility, but arguably it had more to do with his long residence in a particular place far from Scotland.

Conclusion Scots played key roles in the transformation of the New Zealand environment and landscape. Sometimes their contributions were distinctive, as in the making of botanical gardens, particular cadastral

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layouts, or the erection of stone walls atop the Otago Peninsula. More often the contribution was hard to differentiate from that of other Britons, although Scots were probably overrepresented among those who benefited from the transformation. Scots were also probably overrepresented among the ranks of early environmentalists, although, given their widespread commitment to modernity, it is important to qualify that term. Even so, a significant number always wanted to avoid wanton destruction and untrammelled development, to maintain some kind of balance between the binaries of “improvement or ruination.” Scots made a disproportionate contribution to changing the environment and landscape, but they also made attempts to temper the worst excesses of that transformation. The well-known Edward Immyns Abbot painting of early Dunedin, “Little Paisley,” with its bucolic representation of an orderly and improved version of Lowland Scotland, suggests that the early Scots settlers strove to achieve some kind of harmonious relationship with their new world, even if the painter removed forest from the scene two decades before it actually happened.133 On balance, Scots who migrated to New Zealand were more often “improvers in trousers,” but sometimes their education, Presbyterian sensibility, and powers of observation tempered their commitment to modernity in a range of differing ways, reflecting their class background and experiences in Scotland and/or other parts of the British Empire. That Scottish background would also influence the kind of associational life they created and practised in New Zealand.

7 “Brither Scots Shoulder tae Shoulder”: Scottish Associational Culture in New Zealand New Zealand’s Scots exhibited a natural tendency to come together for common cause. In both rural districts and the emerging towns, they frequently lived near each other, married each other, and worked with and for each other. They were also adept at occupational networking as shown in chapter 4. However, these were essentially private arrangements. More public by far were the gatherings and activities of the diverse Scottish clubs and societies formed primarily to express and reinforce the ethnicity of the migrants. As in other parts of the world, such organizations came in many forms and served many purposes.1 On appropriate occasions the memory of leading historical figures, such as Wallace and Bruce, was invoked. The birth of Burns, the Scottish Bard, was enthusiastically celebrated. Ongoing interest in the languages, literature, and cultural expressions of home was encouraged. New World forms of what were regarded as traditional festivities, including St Andrew’s Day and Highland Games, were organized. In this guise, the clubs and societies formed provided a welcome public social focus for the expression of Scottishness. Yet many of the societies and clubs were far more than simply providers of entertainment, or sites of memory offering durable platforms for continuous engagement with homeland culture. Further, while some associations operated within exclusive ethnic boundaries, others, much more flexible and open, welcomed the involvement of other ethnicities. Operating at the interstices between the public and private spheres, Caledonian societies in particular were well placed to generate social capital by promoting activities that were of wider community relevance.2 They facilitated the operation

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of networks and patronage systems, thereby maximizing opportunities for advancement. By investigating the diverse types of Scottish clubs and societies that developed in New Zealand, the chapter will demonstrate that, although associations were vital in enabling Scots to express and maintain their ethnicity, an investigation of their inner workings and activities also suggests that Scottish ethnicity more broadly influenced New Zealand life. Seeking to dispel some of the nostalgic sentimentalism that has surrounded overseas Scottish identity, three key questions will be posed: why did the New Zealand Scots choose to organize along ethnic lines; what forms did their associations take; and what activities did they pursue once the associations were formed?

The Emergence of Scottish Associations While associations were to be found throughout both the major islands, traditionally New Zealand studies of Scottish immigrant community life have tended to confine their examinations to Dunedin and Waipu. Of course, both these locations merit consideration, Dunedin as the first and foremost centre of Scottish settlement and Waipu for its distinctive group of settlers, the followers of the Rev. Norman McLeod.3 However, Waipu’s atypicality and a concentration of research in Dunedin, contributes little to deeper understanding of the wider patterns of Scottish associational culture and identity. Hence this chapter surveys the developments in a range of locations outside those two, and situates the findings within a New Zealand-wide context.4 To start, it is useful to briefly chart the emergence of the associations and the ways in which they developed. With the surviving documentary record broken, the contemporary press provides a valuable alternative information source. A search of Papers Past, New Zealand’s digitized newspaper repository yielded 42,466 hits for “Caledonian Society;” 4,577 results for “Burns club”; 2,601 hits for “Gaelic Society”; and 410 findings for “Andrew’s Society”.5 Such a superficial search of a digital newspaper archive is problematic, since there is no immediate way to exclude repetitions or references from abroad. Yet, though it makes no claim for being comprehensive, the search nevertheless suggests several key characteristics of Scottish associational culture in New Zealand, all of which the available manuscript evidence substantiates.



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The first characteristic is the dominance of Caledonian societies. By the late nineteenth century, these had become a common part of civic life all over New Zealand, an enduring feature of the ethnic culture that had developed in the country following the arrival of the first contingents of permanent European settlers after 1840. Second, and by contrast to other major places of Scottish settlement, in particular North America, St Andrew’s societies were virtually non-existent in the early settlement period. A small number, many fragile and short-lived, emerged only from the early 1900s. Finally, the search suggests a clustering of Caledonian society activities in the 1870s and 1880s. This may well be because those decades are the years for which the most digitized newspaper pages are available. However, considerable manuscript evidence, combined with information gleaned from such sources as the Cyclopedia of New Zealand and Scottish periodicals published in New Zealand, appears to confirm that this period was indeed the heyday of New Zealand “Caledonian activity.” 6 Moreover, drawing from the same sources, foundation patterns of Caledonian societies can be established that strongly suggest that the great majority developed between the late 1860s and 1885. Not only is this period short, it also highlights the importance of the rapid proliferation of Caledonian societies in the development of Scottish associational culture in New Zealand. Unusually, other clubs, including Burns clubs and localized societies such as the Gaelic Society of New Zealand, only formed as the nineteenth century drew to a close (figure 7.1). The evidence suggests that up to 1930 there were at least 154 Scottish associations in New Zealand, and the majority, 101 associations, were Caledonian societies.7 Because not all of them were active throughout the whole eighty years covered in this study, only those that could be traced for more than five years, and for which details about membership and activities could be located, have been included. Figure 7.1 sets out the broad establishment patterns for the different types of Scottish ethnic associations, including the Caledonian societies, to help shed some light on their development. The foundation graph does not reflect the durability of the societies, but it is in line with the recorded “Caledonian activity,” such as the holding of Caledonian Games or the hosting of Burns nights. This activity decreased significantly after the beginning of the twentieth century. Previous chapters have established the country-wide distribution of New Zealand’s Scots, but it was logical that Dunedin should be

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Figure 7.1  Phases of the Scottish associational culture and foundation patterns of Caledonian societies

the place where formally organized Caledonianism first emerged. In early 1862 a number of solid citizens of the “Edinburgh of the south” convened to discuss the formation of a Caledonian society in the city. With many a meeting held throughout the year, it took the initiators no more than a few months to formalize proceedings. By the end of the year the Caledonian Society of Otago was well established: rules had been written and adopted and the Society’s first executive, with A. M’Leod, Esq. as president and A. M’Landress, Esq. as vice-president, had been voted into office.8 The decision to form the society in Dunedin in the early 1860s was, it seems, not accidental; it coincided with a major flood of new immigrants. In the vanguard were those who had arrived in the hope of making fortunes from gold mining in the interior of the province of Otago. Within a very short time Dunedin increased significantly in size and, with many of the gold seekers quickly making their way further inland, Otago became a much less homogeneous settlement, and one significantly less Scottish than its founders had envisaged. Strong evidence suggests that ethnic associationalism, as promoted by the Scots who were involved in setting up the Otago Caledonian Society, was a direct response to the new social order that was emerging. It was a strategy that helped some of the socalled “old identity” to maintain their position in the new world, clearly separating them from the “new identity.”9 This important



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initial ­incentive for the development of a Caledonian society aside, the almost instant success of the Dunedin Society set in motion a wider trend that witnessed societies mushrooming in many other New Zealand settlements, large and small, wherever Scots had settled in significant numbers. At first, societies were started in the larger population centres. The Invercargill Caledonian Society was established in 1863, and smaller settlements quickly followed suit, a prime example being Turakina in the lower North Island.10 In terms of regional spread, the Scottish heartlands of Otago and Southland were predictably where the Caledonian societies proliferated, but strong clustered concentrations elsewhere are also discernible, for example in the lower North Island and Thames districts. This suggests that the wider development of Scottish ethnic associationalism was not primarily the result of a desire to club together in areas with only small numbers of fellow countrymen, whether for the sake of maintaining distinctiveness or through fear of marginalization. Rather, while associational culture was an important feature in Scottish settlement throughout New Zealand, it developed more quickly and with more lasting impact in the existing centres of Scottish settlement. Members of New Zealand’s Caledonian societies, like those of other associations, came together voluntarily to pursue a set of shared aims that were not necessarily uniform.11 Some associations promoted broad objectives, thereby appealing to as wide a range of potential members as possible, often including non-Scots as well as Scots. Others set out more specific and exclusive objectives. These formal objectives framed the associations’ activities and memberships, helping to organize and reinforce their structures, but the objectives also showed which components of Scottish ethnic expression members were most intent on preserving. In the case of the majority of New Zealand’s Caledonian societies, there tended to be three broadly defined objectives: benevolence, the promotion of Scottish literature, and “customs and accomplishments.”12 This last included the promotion of Caledonian Games, which were intrinsically connected to the development of Caledonian societies in New Zealand. Caledonian Games were to have a community impact far beyond their immediate ethnic footing: although born out of an enduring Scottish tradition, the Games ensured the survival and wide permeation of Scottish culture throughout New Zealand society. Caledonian societies promoted sport and good fellowship within and beyond

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the Scottish community. This is what differentiated them from the St Andrew’s societies elsewhere, which were chiefly concerned with providing immigrant relief, mutualism, and benevolence. In contrast, members of clubs like the later emerging New Zealand Gaelic societies were primarily seeking to promote the culture of their specific homeland region, in this case the Scottish Highlands. Regional societies first emerged in the late nineteenth century, the most significant being the Gaelic Society of New Zealand. Set up in Dunedin in 1881, the Society was determinedly exclusive from the outset, putting in place stringent membership policies that excluded non-Scots, indeed restricting membership to those born in the Highlands.13 In line with this somewhat insular outlook, the Gaelic Society followed even more specialized objectives, narrowly defining its cultural pursuits in conformity with the desired Highland focus. Though also specialized in their objectives, offering a platform for the celebration of Scotland’s National Bard, the Burns clubs remained inclusive. Burns, as an icon of humanity and culture, brought Scots and non-Scots together in many communities.14 This openness set the Burns clubs apart from both the regional societies and the Scottish societies that developed in the early twentieth century (see figure 7.1), which also pursued policies of exclusion. The emergence of Burns clubs coincided with the steady decline of the Caledonian societies, the twentieth-century Scottish societies heralding a new, repopularized phase of Scottish associational culture, one quite distinct from its earlier mid- and late-nineteenth-century forms. The new Scottish societies devoted their attention to perpetuating a seemingly more genuine Scottishness, one that emphasized outward symbols, iconography, and emblematic displays of identity.15 With these diverse aims being pursued by an equally varied range of Scottish associations, the discussion will now turn to the role of the associations as sites of memory, before exploring the promotion of Caledonian Games as the key activity of Caledonian societies.

The Role of Associations as Sites of Memory St Andrew’s Day was, or so newspaper evidence suggests, the first Scottish celebration promoted in New Zealand. As early as 1850 a gathering was held in the saint’s name in Auckland.16 The ballroom of the Masonic Hotel had been decorated for the occasion, displaying Scotland’s arms at the head of the room. St Andrew was



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equally visible, occupying a “prominent position, the venerable tutelary seeming as if he smiled benignant welcome upon his sons and their guests.” Despite this early example, it was the celebration of Robbie Burns’s birth that served as the most common and most effective site of memory for Scots in New Zealand, to the extent that it quickly became a proxy national day. Designated Burns clubs were latecomers in the overall development of New Zealand’s Scottish associations, emerging only in the late nineteenth century, though anniversaries of the poet’s birth had been widely and devotedly observed from the mid-1850s. The first celebration to be traced took place in Dunedin in 1855, and four years later local hotelier Daniel Munn of Napier was offering a “Real Scotch Haggis and Genuine Mountain Dew” in celebration of the Burns centenary.17 In both instances it was individuals, rather than an organized group of Scotsmen, who promoted the celebrations. When Scottish associations took root and grew in the 1860s, the commemoration of the poet’s birth was planned from within the associations and developed as a common and enduring feature of the annual festival calendar that was followed by Scottish clubs and societies throughout New Zealand. “Homage was paid to him [Burns],” observed a speaker at a Timaru dinner, “wherever Scotia’s sons and daughters have gone, and the further they have gone the more intense is their devotion.”18 New Zealand was no exception in this respect, for a number of reasons. Burns was more than simply a national symbol: he epitomized Scotland itself. As much was stated by the president of the Thames Burns Club in a toast to the poet’s immortal memory in 1889. Commonly delivered as the main toast of the evening at Burns anniversaries throughout the Scottish diaspora, the president noted that the poet’s birthday was “observed with strong and steady enthusiasm.” “Nationality,” he went on, was “a virtue. For what else is the ‘Memory of Burns’ but the memory of all that dignifies and adorns the land that gave him birth?”19 Burns was a truly national poet and, as was shown in chapter 5, something more. Though, observed the Thames Star in 1890, the English were admirers of Shakespeare, they did not read him. Yet “the Scotchman places Burns next to his Bible,” treating both with the utmost reverence. Consequently, the Scots’ love for Scotland ever remains, “finding vent in annual gatherings ... of Burns’ birth.”20 The immortal memory of Burns aside, the speeches and toasts delivered in his honour have several recurring themes, all based on

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familiar historical events and shared stories about Burns’ work and life. These themes, framed by toasts to the Queen and royal family, other Scottish poets, and the new home, New Zealand, hence became memory narratives.21 It was their annual repetition at Burns’s anniversary celebrations that served to connect the Scots attending not only with the poet, but also with their native land. Invoking Burns’s memory established a sense of continuity with the past, drawing on familiar, shared, and enduring historical stories that could be used and understood around the world. These commonly included references to Burns’s humble background, stressing his rise from being “a simple Scottish peasant,”22 which, in turn, allowed one of the central Scottish narratives to be promoted, that of “the lad o’ pairts.”23 The poet’s apparent failures were also frequently part of the repertoire, vividly capturing that Burns indeed represented every facet of the Scottish character, that he “was flesh and blood like the rest of them.”24 Such narratives were supported by the use of symbols representative of Burns and Scotland, as well as the traditional food served at the celebrations.25 At a gathering in Timaru, the walls of the rooms were “tastefully decorated with flags and evergreens,” and “several pots containing real and genuine specimens of the ‘touch-me-not’ – the Scotch thistle – procured from a gentleman who guaranteed their nationality,” could be found on the tables.26 Similarly, a gathering in Gisborne presented each guest with a sprig of heather from Scotland, while the “noble haggis maintain[ed] its pride of place” elsewhere.27 Though such tokens may at first seem trivial, they served an important purpose, offering a more physical reminder of the old home while at the same time also chanelling and concentrating meaning in line with the memory narratives drawn upon from the toasts and speeches.28 Yet, while these examples highlight Burns’s Scottishness, the poet further served as a powerful representative of mankind generally: the poet’s universality strengthened his greatness. As a result of Burns’s wide appeal, anniveraries in his name saw a cosmopolitan group of settlers from all backgrounds partaking of haggis and whisky. Comprising Englishmen, Irishmen, “and representatives of other nationalities, all [were] united in one common cause – to do honor to the memory of the great poet.”29 This underscores not only the inclusiveness of Burns’s anniversaries, but also of the Burns clubs who organized them. Starting in Auckland in 1886, associations solely devoted to Burns were institutionalized,30 placing the Burns’s celebrations on a



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broader footing. Clubs sought to promote, and keep alive, the poet’s works by more diverse means. Although anniversaries remained the key annual events, other activities were introduced to complement them throughout the year. The Thames Burns Club, for instance, held fortnightly meetings, which chiefly consisted of a musical program, while members also performed the occasional play.31 The Club celebrated Halloween, held a Scotch concert in 1889, and actively sought to encourage the study of Burns’s poetry by awarding prizes for essays and recitations. 32 The first competition for prizes, including one for an essay on “A Man’s a Man for a’ That,” was organized in 1893.33 Further south, the Dunedin Burns Club met once a month, and set up a choir that successfully performed at functions, on several occasions combining with the choir of the Dunedin Gaelic Society.34 The joint performance of the two choirs raises a crucial difference between Burns clubs and other Scottish clubs with more specific aims, such as the New Zealand Gaelic societies, but also highlights a key similarity. The point of difference was clear. While the two choirs practised and performed jointly in a co-operative spirit, the Burns Club followed a very open and inclusive outward-oriented agenda, drawing on Burns as a universal icon of humanity. By contrast, the Gaelic Society defined its objects more exclusively, and was inward-oriented, not simply toward the Scottish immigrant community, but toward a specific section of that community. This orientation is evident from the published objectives. The Gaelic Society sought to “foster and perpetuate the Gaelic language, to encourage the cultivation of Gaelic literature and music, to establish branch societies throughout the Colony of New Zealand, and generally to take cognisance of all matters which may be considered of special interest to Highlanders.”35 What was common to both the Burns clubs and the regional societies was that the events they promoted tended to be organized on a much more modest scale than Caledonian Games, and conducted in much more intimate environments. Whether in club rooms or small halls, the social get-togethers of Burns clubs and the other associations were often more like family gatherings, particularly when held outside the larger Scottish settlements.36 Ultimately, the more intimate venues were one reason why these events provided a much more effective platform for the maintenance of Scottish identity than the large-scale Caledonian Games mounted annually by the ­Caledonian

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societies. While the piper clad in Highland attire and playing a Scottish tune surely delighted “those spectators hailing from the Land o’ Cakes” at Caledonian Games,37 the very scale of the Games prevented the coherent invocation of memory. Instead, the Games, and the associations supporting them, are a prime example of how associational culture, though established on principles of ethnicity, could connect with the new place of settlement, linking directly into both civic and community life. It is this interstice between ethnic and civic that must now be explored. When a public meeting was held in the Dannevirke town hall in early October 1892 to discuss the formation of a Caledonian society, benevolence was proposed as one of the society’s key objectives.38 This was fully in line with other Caledonian societies, who almost invariably listed benevolence in their written rules. Benevolent activities took a number of forms: contributions to the funds of charitable organizations; giving advice to newly arrived immigrants; and, on occasion, offering relief in “special cases of destitution.”39 In practical terms, however, the benevolent component of the Caledonian societies’ activities in New Zealand was of little real significance. It paled in comparison to the benevolent and mutual dimension of the ethnic associational cultures of Scots, Irish, and English in North America.40 Modest relief was occasionally provided for those in urgent need, for instance members’ widows or their children; association members sometimes visited incoming migrant vessels to seek out Scottish countrymen, to provide information; and some societies offered scholarships to support gifted students, but Scottish benevolence did not extend further. It was the organization and promotion of Caledonian Games that was the objective most vigorously pursued by Caledonian societies throughout New Zealand. As much was proposed by a Mr W. Bierre who, at the Dannevirke meeting, suggested that the encouragement of athletic sports should be the primary object of the proposed society, because it was “a means to an end.”41

The Role of Caledonian Games Although it remains unclear just what end Mr Bierre had in mind, examples from other centres in which Caledonian societies had been established confirm the central role of Caledonian Games in the activities. With a constitution in place “similar to that of Otago,” it



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was certainly the holding of Games that in 1875 was the main interest in Timaru, supplying, as the local newspaper observed, “a muchfelt want.”42 A simple calculation of attendance estimates offered in newspapers for Caledonian Games held over the New Year holidays in 1878–9 illustrates the high esteem in which the events were held. An estimated 33,000 spectators attended the Games organized in Invercargill, Dunedin, Oamaru, Timaru, and Wellington. Even though not all attendees would have been Scots, or even of Scottish descent, and though the estimates may not be wholly reliable, the suggested number provides a strong indication of the popularity of the event in centres spread throughout New Zealand. That they held almost universal appeal is emphasized by the fact that Games took place not only on the sports grounds of major centres but also on village greens or paddocks in many smaller North and South Island towns and villages. Indeed, it is likely that the overall number of sports enthusiasts and spectators involved in 1878–9 may have been very much higher. Intrinsically bound to the development of Caledonian societies, Caledonian Games quickly became a household occasion in communities throughout New Zealand, attracting large numbers of both sportsmen and spectators. Normally held between June and September in Scotland (and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere), in New Zealand the calendar placement was reversed and the Games occurred primarily over the New Year holidays, with a few at either Christmas or Easter, occasionally with another holiday such as a provincial anniversary. This contributed to making New Year, rather than Christmas, the foremost public holiday in New Zealand, which will be explored in chapter 9.43 Sports gatherings achieved new importance as a popular community pastime in late-nineteenth-century New Zealand. Timaru, where such gatherings were scheduled in connection with festivals, holidays, or celebrations, as was common elsewhere, provides a striking example. In 1872 sports in celebration of the Queen’s birthday in May were held at Saltwater Creek, “on a piece of ground closely adjoining the Sportsman’s Arms.” The games included various types of races and pole-jumping – events that were to become common features of the Timaru Caledonian Games held annually from 1876.44 William John Fulton, the proprietor of the Sportsmans’ Arms, became one of the founding members of the Timaru Caledonian Society in 1875.45 Details of his involvement remain scanty, but it may well have been his pecuniary interest in promoting sporting

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events that contributed to his support of the group seeking to form a Caledonian society. Other founding members included Andrew Joseph Bower, a Timaru watchmaker, and Donald Maclean, a local stock and station agent. Among the earliest members were the ­Pringle brothers, William and Alexander Campbell Pringle, and their brother Thomas Pringle after his arrival in Timaru in 1878. Given the date and circumstances of the founding of its Caledonian society, Timaru offers a valuable case study for a more in-depth assessment of the development and purpose of Caledonian Games. The first Games in Timaru under the auspices of the Caledonian society were held on the Agricultural and Pastoral Society’s grounds on New Year’s Day in 1876. In the view of a reporter on the Timaru Herald, the gathering was one of the most successful events that has ever taken place in the district. From an early hour in the morning crowds of people might have been seen wending their way to the place of amusement. Not only were the sports patronised by almost every individual on and around their immediate vicinity, but the trains running between Timaru and the Point and Temuka, on their arrival in town, discharged hundreds of country visitors on to the platform, who at once rushed away to the scene of the festivities … All who could possibly do so had evidently made up their minds to spend a thorough holiday and to enter into the day’s amusements with heart and soul.46 Over a decade later, the enthusiasm was still evident as the morning trains – arriving from Ashburton, Oamaru, and Fairlie Creek – brought “good crowds of pleasure seekers, aggregating at least 1000.” So large was the group of visitors from Fairlie Creek that the train coaches “had to be supplemented by trucks.” With the main roads also “lively with horsemen and vehicles of all kinds,” it is wholly credible that an estimated 5,000 visitors attended the Games,47 this at a time when the population of the borough was no more than 750. Although the overall attendance was somewhat lower five years later, it was claimed the streets in Timaru had “seldom worn a more cheerful holiday-making appearance,” there being “so large a proportion of females among the crowd, clad in light colours … bent on enjoyment.”48 Figure 7.2 documents the attendance trends at Timaru from 1876 to 1900.49



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Figure 7.2  Attendance estimates for Timaru Caledonian Games, 1876–1900

Analysis of the recorded figures, which far exceeded those in some larger centres, highlights several important features of Caledonian Games in New Zealand. As seen in the newspaper reports cited, the Games served as magnets for holidaymakers, drawing in visitors not only from the town or city where they were hosted, but also from surrounding areas. Attracted by the prospect of a fun-filled day, spectators and athletes happily covered substantial distances to attend. For many this was made easier by the specially-timed excursion trains that were usually provided, scheduled by the Railways Department to suit the needs of those living in the rural hinterlands and at greater distances. Offering special fares, the trains often ran to fit with the order of the Games’ programs, allowing country visitors to spend the whole day on the sports grounds.50 For visitors to the Oamaru Games, travelling north from Dunedin, there was also the option of a ship excursion up the coast. Plans for a similar vessel from Dunedin to Timaru were mooted.51 This reinforces the view that the Caledonian Games were much more than a Scottish tradition that had no other purpose than to allow expatriates to wallow in memories. Some events, such as Highland dancing, may have produced “the keenest enthusiasm in the hearts of Scotchmen,” but the Games “arouse[d] the interest of people of every nationality.”52 Although deemed less important than the annual Timaru cattle show,

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­ aledonian Games were “of immediate interest to a much larger C number of people, who are able to enjoy and appreciate them more than they can the exhibition of live and dead farm stock and so forth.”53 Herein lies a key to understanding the role of Caledonian Games in colonial New Zealand: although born out of an enduring Scottish, hence intrinsically ethnic, cultural tradition, they developed as community events of wide appeal, providing entertainment for people of all ages and backgrounds by offering a broad range of contests, auxiliary activities, and attractions. In Timaru, dancing platforms were erected for the competitions, there were posts and cross-bars for high jumping and vaulting, and a course for foot races was marked off. During the Games, the Timaru Brass Band “enlivened the scene by discoursing sweet music,” and other attractions, such as Aunt Sally and Doodle-em-Bucks, offered enjoyable pastimes for the entertainment-seekers present.54 Attending to the “wants of the thirsty … and those of the hungry,”55 booths staffed by local hoteliers providing beverages and food were very popular. They contributed to a merry fair-like atmosphere, one “[o]wing, also, to the bright and varied colours which the herbage, the marquees, the bunting, the gay dresses of those who had ‘come out’ in Highland costume, and the holiday attire generally of the people presented.”56 The festival-like atmosphere was replicated all over New Zealand, at Games large and small.57 The actual competitions presented at Caledonian Games tended to be similar throughout the country, with prize and result lists published in newspapers. Annual reports from the Caledonian societies provide evidence for which contests were the most popular.58 From the emergence of the Games in Dunedin to their gradual decline in the early twentieth century, broadly appealing events such as foot races, jumping and vaulting, quoiting, hammer-throwing, and wrestling were the most enduring of the athletic contests. From the late 1870s, special youth competitions for younger sportsmen were also included. More traditional Scottish events were also pursued, usually including competitions in bagpipe music, Highland reels and flings in costume, and, inevitably, caber tossing. These traditional competitions, however, were often the least contested. Caber tossing in particular caused problems on more than one occasion, whether from lack of competitors or a suitable caber. At the first Timaru Games the caber “proved too heavy for no less than six individuals out of eight,” and the contest was “kept up without success



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for nearly an hour”59 before one competitor finally tossed it over. A caber in Wellington had to be cut by two feet before the same result could be achieved.60 From the outset small cash prizes were offered by the majority of the Caledonian societies, but prize medals were the most popular. In Timaru, these were specially produced by local jeweller and silversmith Mr O.E. Partridge, and were themed to fit the contests for which they were awarded. Hence the “medal for best bagpipe musician [had] a centrepiece on which a Highland piper is depicted in all the pride of the by-gone days of old Scotland.”61 As a result of the Games’ increasing popularity, particularly because of the bicycle races that were introduced as a core feature of many gatherings from the late 1880s, the cash prizes steadily became more substantial. They were needed to attract the increasing numbers of professional and semi-professional sportsmen that spectators were hoping to see. The bigger Caledonian societies prided themselves on the prize money they could offer. A total of £155 15s was offered in cash prizes in Timaru in 1882. Two years later, this had risen to well over £200.62 It was the substantial sums on offer that contributed to the development of extensive Caledonian Games circuits, attracting well-known athletes from New Zealand and abroad.63 Caledonian societies were keen to secure their presence, since those who were champions in their events increasingly became a major factor in attracting spectators. And of course, if there were circuits for competitors, there were also circuits for excursionists. Planners of Caledonian Games close to one another commonly staggered the dates. When Timaru held its Games on New Year’s Day, the smaller adjacent centres of Waimate and Temuka focused instead on the Christmas holidays. Caledonian enthusiasts could also opt to attend the Games in Fairlie, Ashburton, or perhaps even Christchurch – all reasonably easily reachable, with attendance the largest in Christchurch (though the Games developed there late), Oamaru, and Timaru (map 7.1). The consolidation of circuits further underscores the popularity of Caledonian gatherings, as well as highlighting that the events were also business ventures requiring careful stewardship to maintain their popularity with visitors. The prize money offered, together with the additional costs societies without permanent track facilities and grandstands had to spend on grounds preparation and maintenance, was substantial. But so too could be the profit made if gate-

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Map 7.1  Caledonian Games locations in South Canterbury and North Otago

takings were high – although unforeseen developments, such as poor weather, could have a detrimental impact on society finances. That is what happened in the case of Timaru, where the annual reports from 1888, 1889, and 1890 document the impact of a range of adverse factors on the level of overdraft reduction. The overdraft, a result of the Society leasing its grounds, was reduced significantly in 1888, by £148 13s 4d to £151 1s 4d, because of the very large attendance at the Games in that year. However, the potential for reduction was less than expected in the following year, £94 10s 11d, because of lower privilege sales and several counter-attractions that kept visitors away. The reduction in 1890 because of exceptionally small attendance due to poor weather was even more disappointing.64 Yet, with the Timaru Caledonian Society generally well-positioned and successful, the less than hoped for results had no significant effect other than to slow the clearance of the overdraft. However, for smaller societies, those whose finances were always shaky or who had been



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in a dire financial situation for a longer time, such misfortunes could prove fatal.65 Another key factor contributing to the success of Caledonian Games was the sale of stall and booth privileges. These were sold at a premium by many Caledonian societies to increase their annual revenue, and were particularly important for the majority of societies that did not own grounds and therefore required grandstands to be temporarily erected and other equipment to be secured. Many Caledonian societies rented grounds from local Agricultural and Pastoral Associations or from the town authorities. Some smaller societies resorted to nearby fields and even beaches. Setting up grandstands, in particular, could be a costly affair. Timaru, like many larger societies, was soon keen to put more permanent facilities in place, especially because the first local grounds used were no longer deemed suitable, being “very badly adapted for such sports.”66 Hence it was with great enthusiasm that the society’s president announced that he had secured a lease for the Patiti Point reserve, a site “which could hardly be surpassed, for it overlooks the ocean to the east, is close to the Domain to the west, and gives visitors from the country or townspeople the choice for a ramble on the beach or a picnic under the shelter of the Park trees, not five minutes stroll … the high Southern Alps forming the background.”67 Having secured a twentyone-year lease, the Society was more than willing to invest money to improve the grounds, fencing them, and building a store shed and an office for the ticket seller.68 Moreover, the society’s proposal to the Levels Road Board, asking for a continuation of the existing road toward Patiti Point, leading to the reserve gate, was favourably received.69 This was presumably in recognition of the high community standing of the annually-hosted Games, and in full awareness that they were popular and attracted large numbers of people to Timaru. Such considerations may also help explain the Railways Department’s later construction of a footbridge over the railway to improve access to the grounds.70 The emergence and evolution of Caledonian Games in New Zealand highlights that these were, in essence, or soon became, a colonial product, a celebration shaped by the desire of many Scots to integrate into their new home rather than to maintain exclusive cultural enclaves.71 To be sure, the Games were promoted within the bounds of a particular ethnic group and organization, but it would be misleading to identify them purely in terms of the elements of

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S­ cottishness that they publicly displayed. In the several locations studied, the Scots, who through their engagement in Caledonian societies ­ promoted Caledonian Games, successfully linked these societies with other aspects of civic life. In so doing, they connected their ethnically initiated pursuits to the wider public, that is, the communities in which they had settled, with Caledonian Games becoming a central component in the annual events calendars of most New Zealand towns and districts. Because of the Games’ importance in wider civic and community life, an increasing emphasis came to be placed on promoting standard athletic and cycling contests; these events were more popular with the general public, and hence better placed to attract large crowds. The focus on athletics was not without its critics among the traditionalists in Caledonian societies. In the majority of cases, however, only a minority expressed concerns. The only located example of an association deliberately setting out to confine itself to more traditional events is that of the Christchurch-based Scottish Society. Yet this approach was criticized by many, including the president of the Wanganui Caledonian Society, who noted that the Christchurch Society had “made the mistake of trying too stringently to confine their bill of fare to Scottish events. What the Wanganui Society wanted was to get the public through the gates, and to do that they must give the public variety.”72 This serves to re-emphasize an earlier point: that Caledonian Games were less effective as sites of memory, not only because of their size, but also because of the activities they promoted.

The Utility of Scottish Ethnic Associationalism What can be drawn from these examples is that of the many reasons for Scots to choose to be involved in Scottish associations, maintaining their Scottish identity was only one of them. It was evident from the outset, for instance, that many of the Scots deeply engaged in Caledonian societies were keen on using the societies for their personal advancement, or as risk minimizers, in the places in which they settled. Although, in principle, membership in any Scottish club or society had the potential to offer a variety of benefits, the standing and role of Caledonian societies in New Zealand society made them particularly potent generators of social capital.73 Within this wider context, Caledonian Games’ role in effectively promoting



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l­eisure and athletics reflects a much deeper Scottish contribution to the development of New Zealand society than may at first appear. It is evident, for instance, in the central role Caledonian societies played in the organization and professionalization of some forms of sport. A large number of Caledonian societies were affiliated with the New Zealand Athletic Union at an early date.74 The professionalization of Caledonian Games and their connection with the development of athletics in New Zealand brings us back to a consideration of the deep roots of Caledonian societies in New Zealand civil society. First, these roots explain the wide permeation of Scottish culture, which was in no way isolated from the host society. Second, the Caledonian societies helped to successfully shape civil society by binding middle-class immigrants together through sports and other activities. Because the same types and broad range of public and civic institutions were not as available in the colony’s infant years as they were in the old world, to confer authority, power, and respectability, Scottish associational culture assumed a key role in civic life for its members in some settlements. This certainly held true for many of the executives of Caledonian societies, those members being able to develop a standing in their communities through their “Caledonianism.” Such attributed status offers an important reason why the more hidden roles of associational culture in New Zealand’s Scottish immigrant community merit further scrutiny. Therefore the remainder of this chapter focuses on the membership of the associations, seeking to shed more light on how members benefitted from Scottish ethnic associationalism. As previously mentioned, the Pringle brothers were early members of the Timaru Caledonian Society. William, Alexander ­Campbell, and Thomas Pringle were all born in Newstead, Roxburghshire, to Thomas Pringle and his wife Mina. Educated in Melrose, and apprenticed to a stonemason in that city, William Pringle was the first of the brothers to arrive in New Zealand – aged twenty-eight, married to Christina Dinnel, and with two children, Janet, three, and baby Thomas in tow. After leaving Gravesend on the Eastern Empire at the end of August 1864, the family arrived in Lyttleton on 4 January 1865. They spent a few months in Christchurch, then relocated to Timaru, taking up a farm close to the town. In early 1866 William was joined by his brother Alexander ­Campbell, who came out from London as a government-sponsored immigrant on the Mermaid. Listed as single and a mason, Alexander

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was twenty-three when he arrived in New Zealand. He entered into a partnership with his brother William shortly after and took up a property near Timaru. The brothers then acquired 100 acres of the large Rosebrook estate; their partnership continued for a number of years, both brothers then purchasing their own separate farms to continue their pastoral pursuits. William and Alexander ­Campbell were joined in the mid-1870s by their brother Thomas, who had left Scotland in 1869. Rather than following his two brothers to New Zealand, Thomas had first gone to the United States and spent approximately six years there before reuniting with his brothers in New Zealand.75 Although neither his reasons for choosing the United States nor his decision to then move on to New Zealand are known, Thomas’s arrival history once more raises the possibility that family connections were a key factor in migration choices, as touched on in chapter 3.76 The Pringle brothers’ awareness of the benefits entailed in kinship ties and connections perhaps also helps explain why all three were keen on extending their contact zone in the same manner, drawing on ethnic community bonds by joining the Timaru Caledonian Society. In fact, the Pringle brothers’ involvement in that Society serves to frame the following analysis, which offers in microcosm a view on the experiences of many of the Scots active in associations throughout New Zealand, discerning just why they opted to “join in.” Several general observations may be made about association membership policies. What is fundamentally important is that Caledonian societies did not normally implement restrictive membership policies. Acceptance of members was based on paying the relevant membership fees rather than other exclusionary criteria.77 Some societies did put member proposal procedures in place,78 but the evidence from throughout New Zealand suggests that these procedures were not used to exclude particular people from membership. By and large, Caledonian societies, as has been already stressed in other contexts, happily accepted non-Scots as members. This emphasizes the societies’ civic-mindedness, as well as their orientation toward the new world rather than the old. This stands in stark contrast to the exclusive membership rules in place for some of the regional associations, for instance the Gaelic Society of New Zealand.79 It should come as no surprise then that the ethnic backgrounds of the membership of the Timaru Caledonian Society were mixed, including English, Danish, and Irish members. Knowledge of ­ethnic



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background alone, however, is not as useful as members’ socio-­ economic background in helping establish the motivations for joining. While sequential membership rolls have not survived for many associations, including the Timaru Caledonian Society, members’ names can be extracted from newspaper reports of annual meetings and events. Ranged with other sources, the Cyclopedia of New Zealand proving especially useful, member profiles of the Timaru Caledonian Society show an intrinsic link between associational activity and social standing in local community life. The Cyclopedia, with its bias toward the successful, lists fifty-three Scots for Timaru. Drawing on information extracted from business directories, business notices, and street directories, 121 Caledonian Society members have been identified for the period 1875 to 1910. A little over 38 per cent of this group appear in the Cyclopedia. Notably, all of them were, at some point, members of the Caledonian Society’s executive, acting on committees, as secretary, and even as president. What is more, the majority (33.7 per cent) either owned farms or extensive pastoral properties, or were prominent Timaru businessmen.80 This distribution does not necessarily fully represent the Society as a whole, nor is the sample particularly large, but the emerging socio-economic profile appears to be one common throughout New Zealand. That much is suggested from the deep profiles established for society membership in Oamaru, Wellington, Masterton, and Dunedin.81 The strong middle-class character of the societies’ leading members is certainly noteworthy. The Pringle brothers were but one example from Timaru. All the evidence points to a strong connection between success in the colony and associational activity. Engagement in associations could serve as a driver for success, providing access to networks and patronage not available through other means – or at least not as easily. Once more, this is borne out in Timaru, where a careful investigation of Society members’ business interests, as well as their engagement in civic life, reveals a net of relationships that rested on friendship as much as business opportunities and patronage. Many who were deeply involved in the Timaru Caledonian Society were also spearheading commercial and civic life in the town and district. The Pringle brothers’ wider network suggests the kinds of connections that existed between Caledonian Society members in Timaru (figure 7.3)82 and reveals that multiple memberships of associations were common. The Timaru Agricultural and Pastoral

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Association was a prime example, while the Timaru Flour Milling Company highlights the business character of some connections. Floated by James Bruce to take over the business hitherto known as James Bruce and Co., a prospectus for the Flour Milling Company issued in 1883 advertised a capital of £40,000 in 4,000 shares, with the twenty-one provisional directors listed. More than a third of these were members of the Caledonian Society, and comprised the most prominent local landowners and merchants.83 In this case then, the business end was certainly at least part of the agenda. The members of Caledonian societies were thus conspicuously successful in maximizing the ethnic capital on which the societies were originally established. The examples drawn upon in this chapter demonstrate that the possibilities just for being Scottish in New Zealand were ample. For those who chose to join associations, their own needs, as well as developments in their local communities, determined the kind of Scottishness they could draw on or seek to develop. Membership in an association had the potential to generate diverse advantages, depending on level of involvement and the type of association chosen. In either case, Caledonian societies provided the nucleus. The benefits moved beyond the more straightforward supply of entertainment to the practical assistance that networks could generate. Scots engaged in associations with a clear outward orientation were able to achieve the maximum returns. Without doubt, these outward-oriented organizations enabled Scots to claim respectability in local communities. Access to networks and the social capital generated in this way did not automatically lead to business opportunities, wealth, or preferment, but there was an undeniably strong link between associational activity and success.

Conclusion Ethnic associational culture has come to be regarded as a defining characteristic of the Scottish diaspora, with Caledonian societies, Burns clubs, and Highland associations proliferating worldwide from the nineteenth century. New Zealand shared fully in these developments as Scots gathered together with fellow Scots soon after they first arrived. Yet there are features specific to New Zealand that provide important evidence to explain why the Scots managed, so successfully, to contribute to the making of New Zealand society. Caledonian societies were the main associational form in

Figure 7.3 Pringle brothers’ network

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New Z ­ ealand, setting the country apart from the rest of the Scottish diaspora. Elsewhere St Andrew’s societies were generally to the forefront, at least in the early settlement years, offering aid to Scottish migrants. 84 The key to understanding this associational diversity is that the Caledonian societies were not only open to all, but also appealed to a wide audience. The Caledonian Games became a community-wide pursuit linking Scottish ethnicity directly with local society and civic life. This underlines that Scottish associations, although generally joint in their pursuit of the maintenance of links with the Scottish homeland, nevertheless served diverse functions within and outside their particular Scottish immigrant communities. The examples from New Zealand suggest that although ethnic associations, like other voluntary clubs and societies, were located at the interstices between public and private spheres, the associations establishing exclusive ethnic boundaries were not as directly linked into New Zealand civic life as the country’s Caledonian societies.85 Ethnicity was therefore also functional. It served as a key adaptive strategy in the new world, “a means of control, a tool for self-­ promotion and a mode of entry to a collective in which other benefits could be cultivated.”86 This type of ethnic identity, however, neither mitigated against, nor extinguished, the cultural fabric that underpinned Scottishness. This fabric was shaped instead by the needs of the Scottish community and changed over time. From the early twentieth century, Scottish associations operated primarily in the cultural sphere. With this in mind, one final point must be made about the significance of Scottish ethnic associational culture, as well as the networks and connections it facilitated, namely that it offers an important corrective to Miles Fairburn’s often cited atomization thesis. His work has usefully challenged the enduring and powerful utopian narratives pervading New Zealand historiography, however the vibrant associational culture of Scots in New Zealand strongly suggests that Fairburn overstates transience, individualism, and the absence of community ties.87 A Scot always stood, as was noted by a speaker at a Waitaki Gaelic Society gathering, “shoulder to shoulder with his brither Scots.”88

8 Hearth and Home: Cultural Traditions, Old World Customs, and New World Habits

The emphasis now shifts to the migrants’ private spaces. Despite the vigorous late-nineteenth-century public promotional activities of Scottish associations, most notably the Caledonian societies but also the Burns clubs, many Scots were increasingly concerned about the loss of customs and cultural markers. From the 1870s on, older migrants expounded in letters and newspapers on the extent to which social habits and customs were at odds with those of their forefathers and there were regular calls for strenuous efforts to retain or revive the rich Scottish traditions in daily life and in the home that had been handed down through generations.1 This chapter uses a modified form of David Hackett Fischer’s folkways model to identify examples of cultural obsolescence, persistence, and adaptability in the domestic environment.2 The contexts are family, neighbourhood, and community; the nature of the associations informal and casual. Three specific bundles of customs and traditions have been selected for closer attention: family, kin, and community; life-cycle customs; and everyday living (including architecture, clothing, and diet). The investigations are essentially exploratory, but the evidence suggests that a number of transported folkways probably survived no more than one or two generations. Some, with modifications, continued on well into the twentieth century; others were appropriated and absorbed into the rapidly evolving New Zealand P ¯akeh ¯a culture. Any study of the transmission of customs and traditions from nineteenth-century Scotland must take into account two modifying issues. From the late eighteenth century Scotland was in a state of social flux, rapid industrialization and urbanization fostering unprecedented dislocation and upheavals.3 Almost literally, Scotland

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was a nation on the move. In the process many traditional ways were abandoned or altered before the emigrants even boarded ship. What might be deemed traditional in the new world could be of comparatively recent origin in the old. Equally, there was not one, but many, sets of Scottish traditions and customs according to location and social background: Highland/Lowland; Presbyterian/ Catholic; middle/working class. What remains striking is how readily in New Zealand a predominantly Lowland Scottish population adopted Highland Scottish identifiers.

Family, Kin, and Community In New Zealand, as in Scotland, the family was the primary unit of social organization. By 1840, the most common form of family was the single-family household established by monogamous marriage.4 Such families were at the core of networks of relationships extending to wider kin and community groupings. Their significance in terms of migrating groups lies in the fact that they were the foremost vehicles for transmitting customary practices and cultural memory. It was within the family environment that children were first introduced to traditions and ways of doing things. The culture left behind was recalled and reinforced through the faiths, interests, and actions of other family members. The strength of family bonds could thus powerfully influence the extent to which memories were perpetuated. As outlined in chapter 2, there was a pronounced tendency, certainly in the early settlement decades, for New Zealand’s Scottish migrants to emigrate in family groups. In part this reflected the recruitment policies of New Zealand’s colonizing agencies.5 According to systematic-colonization ideologue Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the ideal migrants would be young married couples or those with family members approaching marrying age, so the colony would become, in effect, “an immense nursery,” which could not fail to have a stabilizing influence. Hence the New Zealand Company concentrated its initial recruiting efforts in Scotland on those with the capacity not only to enter but also speedily augment the colonial workforce, an outlook enthusiastically adopted by the Otago Association when it began serious recruitment for its Free Church settlement in 1847. This policy was adopted by New Zealand’s provincial governments, and by the general government in its major i­mmigration initiative



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of the 1870s, but from the 1860s there was also a steady stream of young single Scots, male and female, introduced through assisted immigration schemes. In many cases entry was facilitated through kin links to families already in New Zealand.6 A strong case has been made that the initial decisions to migrate were fundamentally family decisions. In her extended study of the motives, means, and backgrounds of Scottish emigrants to New Zealand between 1840 and 1880, based on a careful examination of Scottish sources, Rosalind McClean argues that three-quarters of the emigrants she traced were living with extended family groups at the census preceding departure, and that the decisions to leave were rarely made without wider family input. McClean calculates that the majority of Scots leaving for New Zealand in these decades were under thirty years of age at date of embarkation, whereas over twothirds of all those listed on ships’ manifests as travelling in family groups left Scotland before the eldest child was ten years old.7 On the basis of a detailed analysis of New Zealand death certificates, Phillips and Hearn suggest that with the exception of the substantial influx of single males during the 1860s gold rushes, between 40 and 50 per cent of incoming Scottish males over twenty years of age were married before they arrived. The figure for females was even higher, consistently over 60 per cent and at some points over 70 per cent.8 For a surprisingly large number of couples, the decision to emigrate went hand in hand with the decision to marry. Given the relative youth of the Scottish migrant inflows, and a consequent trend to contract marriages in the colony at a much earlier age, larger families than the mid-nineteenth-century Scottish norm were almost inevitable. Since the 1970s some scholars have posited that the nineteenth-century New Zealand European demographic experience closely resembled that of classic frontier communities, a view vigorously contested by historian David Thomson.9 Helpfully, then, demographer Ian Pool has recently turned his attention to what he terms “a Caledonian conundrum,” the differing reproductive regimes of Scots who remained at home and those choosing to make their homes in New Zealand.10 While his findings are drawn principally from 1870s data, he argues convincingly that the trends he discerns were likely to be even more pronounced in the earlier colonizing decades. Using indirect estimation techniques, Pool suggests that the differences between New Zealand and Scotland in nuptiality, birth rates, and family size were extreme. In S­ cotland

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in 1881 just over 27 per cent of females aged between twenty to twenty-four years were married. For New Zealand Scots the comparable figure in 1875 was 51 per cent, a difference of twenty-four percentage points.11 At home, economic necessity frequently dictated later marriage, but overseas early marriage could be a distinct economic and social asset. With New Zealand’s Scots marrying earlier, women’s childbearing years spanned ages at which levels of fecundity were higher. In Scotland the General Fertility Rate (GFR), the number of births to all women of reproductive age, in 1881 was 132/1000. Ten years earlier the Marital General Fertility Rate (MGFR), the number of births to married women of reproductive age, was 247/1000.12 The comparable New Zealand Scots figures were 219/1000 and 331/1000. These rates, Pool further suggests, imply between nine and ten live nuptial births per married woman, and that one-third of all married women at reproductive ages were bearing a child annually. Such estimates bear out the earlier impressionistic accounts of a reproductively very active population that have been questioned by critics such as Thomson. Few had as many as the seventeen children delivered to Mary Ann Cargill, wife of the Otago settlement leader, but nine, ten, and eleven children were not uncommon.13 (In truth, and possibly paradoxically, Cargill’s children were Scotland-born, and only nine survived to adulthood.) In New Zealand the infants’ and young persons’ survival rate was 80 per cent higher than in almost all parts of Scotland. Perhaps reflecting the wider incidence of marriage, exnuptial child-bearing in New Zealand was very much lower than in Scotland. In 1870 over 10 per cent of all births in Scotland were illegitimate, more than twice the English rate. The rate among New Zealand Scots in the same decade was 2.7 per cent and it remained low until the early twentieth century.14 Pool detects another conundrum at the turn of the century. By this point the locally-born comfortably exceeded the Scotland-born in New Zealand’s nominally Scottish families, and they were by no means as ready or eager as their mothers and grandmothers to marry early and start families. Whereas in 1901 just under 30 per cent of Scotland’s twenty to twenty-four-year-old female cohort had married, only 11 per cent of the corresponding New Zealand cohort had married.15 Scottish women were now marrying considerably earlier in their life cycles than their New Zealand cousins. In both countries the GFRs and MGFRs had plummeted, but the New Zealand rates



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were far below those of the home country. There had been, in Pool’s words, a transformation from “hyperfertility to restrained reproduction.” The reasons for the transformation are still being debated. Notwithstanding the predisposition of New Zealand’s Scots migrants to embark in nuclear family groups, links with kin and former acquaintances remained strong, often dictating choices of New Zealand location and facilitating new migrations, as demonstrated in chapter 3. Surviving correspondence between migrants within New Zealand with kin who had chosen other overseas destinations, and most pertinently with those who had remained at home, attests to that strength.16 There were thus two-way, sometimes three-way, information flows. Accurate intelligence could be of practical assistance to intending later migrants, but the periodic refreshment of settler communities by extended family members, friends, and former neighbours helped keep the ways of the homeland alive and in mind. This is evident in the post-1840 experiences of the Blenheim settlers to Wellington.17 Because almost all of the migrating group had been recruited in Fort William, it is highly likely that most of the families already knew each other. Those ties were further strengthened on board ship. Though during the 1840s and 1850s families dispersed to both the eastern and western districts of the southern North Island, there was ongoing communication between the families, and offspring regularly intermarried. Family histories show that for at least thirty years there were regular additions to the community, both families and individuals from the original Scottish home districts.18 There was a mutually reinforcing inclination in the early years for the migrant families to socialize, worship, and work together, but what stands out is that at no stage was there any attempt at exclusivity. Families constantly interacted with other ethnic groups, settler and indigenous, with exogamous marriages steadily increasing. Scottish Free Church exclusivity, on the other hand, was the somewhat utopian objective of the Otago settlement. In reality, the ideal began eroding on the voyage out. Splits were soon evident in the infant settlement, especially with the minority English migrants, who could not be kept out. Even so, at least a third of the emigrants arriving in Dunedin in the 1850s had close connections with those who had arrived under the aegis of the Otago Association in 1848.19 Any prospect of perpetuating the rigid Free Church ethos was completely dispelled with the cosmopolitan gold-rush inflows of the 1860s. Though Dunedin and Otago continued to be viewed

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as the core New Zealand Scottish heartland, a more hybrid persona was forced on them. But there were New Zealand Scottish settlements that maintained their exclusivity for many years. The most notable was Waipu, which maintained its traditional ways until at least the 1890s.20 The Waipu settlers had originally been drawn in 1817 from the same Highland clan. Their three-decade stopover in Nova Scotia further strengthened already dense kin networks, and under the patriarchal eye of the Rev. Norman McLeod and his successors, endogamous marriage was the rule, with regular instances of cousin and sibling marriages. Waipu was, for all intents and purposes, a closed community. There was a natural colonial tendency, as with other ethnic groups from the British Isles, for Scots to marry Scots, but there is at least a priori evidence that New Zealand Scots contracted more exogamous marriages.21 In part, this may have been a matter of necessity rather than preference. As outlined in chapter 2, for most of the nineteenth century, and for most New Zealand districts, consecutive New Zealand censuses reported more Scottish-born males than females, although the differential was less acute in Otago and Southland. Understandably, then, Scots migrants and descendants acquired marriage partners from across the colonial population, the most delicate form of exogamous marriage being with indigenous M ¯aori.22 For the most part, the interracial unions were classic “colonial marriages.” By the late nineteenth century there were occasional cases of P akeh  ¯ a¯ (European) women marrying M aori ¯ or mixed-race men, and these increased after 1900, but by far the greater number of such marital partnerships were between P ¯akeh ¯a men and M ¯aori or mixed-race women.23 Unlike some other colonial territories, there was never a legal barrier to such unions in New Zealand. If there were any obstacles they were essentially social ones. Indeed, following the commencement of systematic colonization there was strong pressure from both churches and state to legitimize informal liaisons, because they and the resulting illegitimate children were regarded with greater disapproval than intermarriage. The Half-Caste Disability Removal Act 1860, the sole nineteenth-century New Zealand statute relating to intermarriage, sought to reinforce the goal by legitimizing all children of mixed descent born out of wedlock whose parents had subsequently legally married.24 Yet, despite the fact that such marriages were far from uncommon, it is difficult to reliably establish their full



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extent with respect to the Scots, or for that matter the settler body as a whole. Initially, few statistics relating to intermarriage were kept, and it was not until 1886 that the official census seriously sought to discover the percentage of the colonial population of mixed-race, a crude index of the extent of past mixed marriages.25 What the flawed results of the 1886 Census suggested was that while those identifying as mixed-race (“half-caste”) were considerably greater in numbers in the North Island, where the tribes were most heavily concentrated, those in the South Island, viewed as a percentage of the local non-P akeh  ¯ a¯ population, constituted a majority in the migrant Scot heartlands. The first phase of M  aori–P  ¯ akeh  ¯ a¯ intermarriage was focused around the New Zealand coasts. There had been transient contacts from the 1790s, but the establishment of trading and shore whaling stations lent greater stability to interracial relations. Marriage following customary practices was encouraged by tribal leaders for economic advantage. P ¯akeh ¯a men were considered a useful resource, so were integrated into the traditional structures.26 Such marriages and families were not necessarily the primary social units of European society, but in many instances they were more than simply arrangements of convenience. It has been estimated that in the lower half of the South Island at least 140 non-M ¯aori men married Ng ¯ai Tahu women, fathering nearly 600 mixed-race children.27 Though the precise number of Scots among them remains uncertain, it is likely they were second only to the English in number, and that their progeny were to drastically alter Ng ¯ai Tahu kinship patterns. George Newton, born in Kirkcaldy in 1803, might be considered representative.28 Arriving in Foveaux Strait as a sealer in 1827, within twelve months he had set up a home with Wharetutu, a high-born Ng ¯ai Tahu woman. Exchanging sealing for timber milling, Newton and Wharetutu, with other mixed families, ultimately established a community on the north coast of Stewart Island. Together they had thirteen children, most of whom married others of mixed race, and their marriage was formalized in a European ceremony in 1844. Further north, at Moeraki, Argyllshire farmer Richard Burns formed a relationship with Pukio Iwa, also of Ng ¯ai Tahu, possibly in the early 1840s.29 They were to have four children before Burns’s premature death, one of whom (Tini) was to marry future tribal leader H.K. Taiaroa. Their marriage, too, was sanctioned retrospectively by the church.

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Elsewhere around the New Zealand coasts there was a pre-1840 sprinkling of expatriate Scots. In the Cook Strait area, for instance, the whalers of the 1830s included “Scotch Jock” Nicoll, from Dundee via New South Wales, and Hector McDonald from Tiree (a maternal uncle of Land Commissioner Donald McLean). They were joined late in the decade by itinerant trader Captain Jock McGregor, from Perthshire.30 All three took M ¯aori wives. Nicoll’s marriage to Kahe te Rau o te Rangi of Ng ¯ati Toa was to be of long standing. They were formally married in 1841 by Rev. John Macfarlane, ­Wellington’s first Presbyterian minister, after cohabiting for ten years. Only three of their eighteen children lived to full adulthood. Both McDonald’s and McGregor’s first marriages were of sadly short duration, after their spouses died in childbirth. Both subsequently married female Scottish migrants from the echelons of the 1840s. This too was not unusual. After the onset of systematic colonization the social dynamics of interracial relationships changed and the advantage no longer lay with the tribes. In a number of documented cases this led to customary wives, and sometimes whole families, being abandoned, in favour of more orthodox nuptial arrangements.31 After 1840, in the south of the South Island, variants of the existing pattern of interracial marriage were maintained. The influx of young single males after 1848, most Scottish, then the more cosmopolitan flows of single men occasioned by gold discoveries, ensured a burgeoning interracial marriage market. And in the south it was not simply a question of marriage between the migrants and M ¯aori; perhaps even more enticing to the newcomers was the already sizeable pool of mixed-race daughters of the former whalers and traders. These young women almost invariably married P ¯akeh ¯a men.32 Sometime-whaler William Palmer’s mixed-race daughters all married settlers. Hannah for instance married Peter Campbell, the Scotlandborn son of her father’s partner in a Taieri Mouth shipbuilding business. Ten years later her cousin Eliza, who had worked as a domestic for the Gibbs, a Scottish farming family, married Walter, the eldest son. Eliza’s sister Martha married into another settler farming family. Until late in the nineteenth century, however, mixed-race men tended to marry either mixed-race women or women still clearly identified as M ¯aori.33 The cumulative impact of this interracial mixing was that by the 1890s over two-thirds of the individuals making up the Ng ¯ai Tahu population were actually of mixed descent, to the extent they were



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flippantly tagged “the white tribe.”34 Elsewhere in New Zealand, and especially in the North Island, the pattern was different. In the North Island the M ¯aori population was denser and the relations between the tribes and settlers consequently more turbulent. The armed conflicts that sporadically broke out fostered suspicions on both sides. This did not mean there were not regular liaisons, but what it did make certain was that even formal marriages could attract strong community disapproval, and that in contrast to the South Island, many mixed-race offspring instead opted to primarily embrace their M ¯aori kin.35 It has been argued that this was likely an outcome of a disproportionate number of the P ¯akeh ¯a fathers themselves choosing to live with and as M ¯aori, but in many of the unsettled districts Europeans of some status (including Scots), settlers on the make, surveyors, and officials, entered transient arrangements little different to those common before 1840. Not all were so cavalier. Captain H.C. Balneavis, the son of a lieutenant-­general, arrived in New Zealand in 1845 with the 58th Regiment, taking his discharge when it re-embarked in 1858.36 A senior officer in the colonial forces during the New Zealand Wars, and later sheriff of Auckland, in 1859 he wed Meri Makarina H ­ ineahua of the North Island’s East Coast. Their son and four daughters were brought up and educated in the P akeh  ¯ a¯ world. The daughters all married P ¯akeh ¯a, but the son, a surveyor, also chose an East Coast tribal partner. Conversely, leading surveyor Robert Park, following the death in childbirth of his Scottish wife, apparently clandestinely ¯ Awa.37 No record of started a second family with Terenui of Te  Ati a marriage can be found, despite later claims. When Terenui also died in childbirth the children were spirited away by M ¯aori relatives and brought up in an exclusively M ¯aori environment. They had no further contact with their father. A number of New Zealand’s most respected North Island Scottish settlers are reputed to have fathered mixed-race children they did not acknowledge.38 In North Island districts where the Scottish migrant population was increasing, relations with the local tribes could vary widely. In the Far North, at Waipu, there was minimal contact between followers of the Rev. Norman McLeod and local Ng ¯apuhi.39 Yet at Turakina, in the southern North Island, there was appreciable harmony between the Highland settlers and Ng ¯ati Apa, and by the 1870s a remarkable level of integration in economic activity, schooling, and leisure activities.40 In the troubled 1860s Scots

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and M ¯aori stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of the community. The extent to which these amicable relations were reinforced by intermarriage remains unclear, although it has been suggested that few of the early settler families did not have a Ng ¯ati Apa connection, whether through marriage or more informal congress. Whether deliberately or involuntarily, over time the antecedents of many mixed-race descendants of Scots and M ¯aori became obscured, and this was accentuated post-1900 as distinctions became less important. The forgetting, nevertheless, was always more a P ¯akeh ¯a trait; M ¯aori whakapapa (genealogies) included all forbears, regardless of origin, and tales abound of M ¯aori homes with portraits of ancestors in Highland costume.41 In New Zealand the roles family members assumed within individual households underwent significant changes.42 Marriages became genuine partnerships far more than in Scotland. Yet at the beginning partners, especially those with already established families, frequently embarked with contrasting attitudes to the life decision to migrate. The decision might well have been made in the family context, but almost invariably it was at the husband’s initiative. The long-established migration tradition among Scottish males intensified in the uneasy mid-nineteenth-century conditions.43 Many sought opportunities to better themselves, to provide more adequately for present or future families. A powerful incentive was the chance to secure land, whether large pastoral property, small farm, or modest residential section. Therefore, once arrived, male energies tended to be immediately concentrated on seizing available opportunities. It was no coincidence that the Scottish cultural associations outlined in the previous chapter, invariably male-led in their formative years, did not flourish until the 1860s and later, when sufficient time had elapsed for the first echelons to put down sustaining roots. Often, migrants took on additional employment, whether labouring by the smallholder or the compiling of a portfolio of interests by the elite. The importance of a supportive wife in what has been labelled a “family (wage) economy” was immense.44 Beyond managing the home, the married woman’s recognized domain, the extent of direct female involvement in household enterprise varied according to class, but even “better folk” offered unpaid labour. James Belich has characterized colonial women’s lives as “eternal drudgery and eternal pregnancy,” and this also describes the lives of many Scotswomen.45 Ironically, in light of the pivotal domestic roles of Scottish



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female migrants, a large number had been reluctant leavers, whether from fear of the voyage, nervousness about the destination, or the sheer heartache of departure.46 This was perhaps why married Scottish women clung more strongly to traditional ways, especially in the home, than their menfolk. Children, too, were expected to contribute to household or property work, even though they generally enjoyed greater freedom than in the home country. It was not until late in the nineteenth century, and then principally in the nascent New Zealand towns, that the “male provider economy,” whereby households depended almost solely on the husband/father’s earnings, became a widely encountered arrangement.47 In rural districts, where subdivision and the advent of refrigeration enabled closer settlement, domestic arrangements were relatively unchanged well into the twentieth century.

Life-Cycle Customs At any stage in life, from birth to death, there are bundles of traditions and practices that mark important milestones.48 Whether long-standing or recent, all are interwoven into ethnic, family, religious, and community contexts. In nineteenth-century Scotland such customs varied greatly in detail between parts of the country, but some common features tended to be replicated, and it was these that migrants carried with them to New Zealand. Such transported traditions could help make the unknown and unsettling more familiar and comfortable. However, the new environment and new demands could encourage old ways to be modified and new approaches to be adopted. Childbirth in Scotland, especially rural Scotland, was a major community occasion, one surrounded by a multiplicity of regional customs.49 From the outset of confinement the mother-to-be was offered continuous support from older local women, and as birth approached, there was a gathering of friends and relations, who ushered in the baby with the assistance of a midwife or “howdie.” The midwife’s expertise was based on experience, usually personal, of parturition, a process regarded as a natural function rather than a medical procedure. Given the risks to mother and child, however, the delivery was surrounded by superstitious rituals to ward off ill-intentioned fairies or the evil eye. Following a successful birth there were further celebratory customs, such as “wetting the baby’s

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head.” The baby was baptized as early as possible to safeguard its soul. In New Zealand, childbirth, although a time of anxiety, became, of necessity, very much more of an everyday occurrence. With the migrant population initially sparse, rural families often many miles apart, and often in the absence of the attending mature female kin networks left behind, childbirth was frequently a case of trusting to fate and calling for the assistance of whoever was available. In the Otago settlement this tended to come from neighbours with families of their own who had proved of assistance to one woman, so were prevailed upon to render similar service to others.50 Calls could come late at night and involve travel over considerable distances. Tragedies were inevitable. In emergencies husbands or even children might be required to assist, something unthinkable in Scotland. At Kaiapoi in 1860, for instance, Grace McIntosh gave birth to her first child with the assistance of a local M ¯aori woman, and seven years later her first-born was compelled to aid her mother in the birth of a fourth child.51 In such circumstances there was little scope for the perpetuation of many traditional customs, although celebrations such as wetting the baby’s head continued to be recorded. It is little wonder then that pregnancy and birth were not matters of unreserved joy in migrant correspondence. Jessie Campbell, wife of Whanganui’s Captain Moses Campbell, already the mother of six children, confessed herself “heartily sick of the business.”52 Unlike her less well-off Scottish sisters, however, Mrs Campbell was able to secure specialist aid. Following the birth of another son in June 1843, she told her mother, “I have suffered nothing in comparison with what I have suffered at home … Dr Wilson was my medical attendant (midwives are not known here). My kind friend Mrs Wilson did everything for me you could have done.”53 Yet despite the dangers hanging over prospective mothers, few were inclined to involve doctors in maternity matters because it was widely believed that they could not successfully intervene in difficult labours. Thus home birthing continued to be almost universal. Although as early as 1862 a lying-in ward with a midwife in charge was opened in Dunedin’s public hospital, no more than seven women were confined in that year (out of 546 in the city) and three years later thirtyeight out of a city total of 1,132.54 There was a feeling well into the late-nineteenth-century that “decent” women were delivered in their homes, perhaps ­reflecting



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the sometimes grudging care provided to unmarried mothers in hospitals. The Dunedin hospital records suggest that after the gold rush decade of the 1860s such women constituted a minority, but the stigma associated with illegitimacy appears to have been much stronger in New Zealand than Scotland, hence the transfer of responsibility for the “unfortunates” to the Benevolent Institution in 1888.55 By the 1890s there was a steady movement to provide better obstetrical care, both through hospitals and the provision of suitably trained professional midwives. Aptly, from 1895 the push was led by Edinburgh-born nurse Grace Neill, New Zealand’s highest ranking female public servant in 1900, who masterminded the registration of caregivers through the Midwives Act 1904.56 Neill was also responsible for securing approval to establish a network of St Helen’s maternity hospitals for use by the respectable wives of working men, her aim being a “State hospital for others, managed by women and doctored by women.” Significantly, the unmarried and destitute were at first excluded from these hospitals. Even so, as late as 1926 the prevailing view was that “Everybody who is anybody has their babies at home.”57 By the 1840s in Scotland marriage was the norm for all classes and the expectation of most families, even though, once more, there were distinctively different rituals according to region.58 Although marriage according to religious ceremony was most common, there were still pockets in which men and women contracted irregular marriages by cohabiting, residual forms of “handfasting” or trial marriage. Unmarried Scots arriving in New Zealand and those reaching adulthood in the colony were eager to seek a life partner. For the former, marriage was a step toward recreating the companionship of family life. For the latter, it represented admission to full adult status. The rituals of courtship soon changed. In Scotland, the Ashburton Guardian noted in 1921, courtship “was by no manner or means the comparatively easy affair which we now know by that name.”59 Courtship at home, certainly for the middle classes, had been hedged round by many impediments and restrictions, whereas in New Zealand young, and not so young, people had much greater freedom to associate and make their choice of prospective spouses. Among ordinary working-class Scots formal betrothal and marriage traditions could proceed hastily, sometimes haphazardly, in the absence of parental or community sanctions. Charlotte Macdonald rightly cautions against simply regarding the

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young single women arriving in New Zealand in the mid and latenineteenth-century decades, Scots and other, as imported marriage candidates, but many soon traded in their single status.60 It was not uncommon, for example, for young women taken into domestic service to wed fellow employees, or indeed their employers, without too much concern for courtship niceties. In higher social circles, however, colonial courtship could stretch over years and involve frequent separations. Sometime land commissioner Donald McLean wooed young Wellington migrant Susan Strang over three years from 1849. Their face-to-face meetings were confined to but a few days on five occasions, a demonstration of the nuances of a courtship by correspondence.61 What was significant about this betrothal and ultimate marriage was that it arose from mutual attraction, without any hint of family arrangement. Yet as the colony flourished and towns were built, parents of means made greater efforts to ensure that their offspring married within their own class, even to much older family acquaintances or business partners. This was scarcely a new practice. In 1843, Georgina, daughter of the impecunious Gilfillan family, was engaged to be married to Whanganui’s Dr James Allison upon reaching her fifteenth birthday.62 Similarly, when Wellington merchant Kenneth Bethune returned to Scotland to seek a bride in 1855, he settled on fifteenyear-old Martha Goldie.63 There were also changes in the ceremonies surrounding marriage. In rural Scotland most nineteenth-century weddings were modest affairs, generally held in winter, in the evenings, most frequently in the bride’s house, with formal wedding breakfasts unknown, the most common alternative being dances in homes and barns.64 Such nuptials were religious, but community occasions nonetheless, accompanied by traditional customs of ancient lineage. In the Scottish towns such practices were already breaking down and, although church marriage remained the norm, the old practice of “irregular marriage,” commitment by “keeping company,” continued and in fact grew in popularity. Most early New Zealand marriages involving Scottish migrants conformed to the mores of the districts and regions from which they came, but limited resources ensured that ceremonies remained modest, with Presbyterian influence ensuring religious endorsement. In Dunedin, for example, the Rev. Thomas Burns regularly invigilated families of all denominations.



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By the 1860s, however, weddings were becoming much more elaborate occasions, a trend that only accelerated. In November 1888 the Southland Times observed that the “simple and humdrum ceremonial” that characterized Presbyterianism was going by the board, suggesting that this could be attributed to the “conspicuous examples” of Scots not Presbyterians who when they “entered the holy estate … took care to make the function as elaborately ornate as their ingenuity and their means can suggest.”65 In the journal’s view, Episcopalianism and Catholicism had much to answer for. In the same year the newspaper reported the marriage of Miss Edith Turnbull of Invercargill, daughter of the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency manager, to Mr T. Scott-Smith, solicitor, of Queenstown.66 After an “interesting and impressive” Presbyterian service, marked by appropriate organ selections, the guests repaired to the bride’s home to view presents and partake of the wedding breakfast. Three years later the marriage of a young farming couple from adjacent Wrights Bush proceeded along similar lines. The post-ceremony celebrations took place in a “well arranged” barn where tables “groaned under the many good things provided.”67 The festivities concluded with a dance, “a necessary wind-up to a Scottish wedding,” with little hint of other than a vestige of traditional marriage customs. By 1900 such festivities had become standard, as had church weddings, with the merry-making more frequently in halls or hotels than private homes. For an unknown number of Scots migrants and their New Zealand-born children, however, neither engagements nor wedding ceremonies counted for much. Long-term de facto relationships are likely to have been much more common in New Zealand than historians have noted.68 Divorce was virtually unknown, but desertion rates were high and there are numerous recorded instances of women forming new relationships in the absence of their husbands. Death, the inevitable climax of life, was still surrounded by ritual and custom in nineteenth-century Scotland.69 Despite a certain distancing of itself from death practices by the kirk, if not by other denominations, a spiritual distinction was made between “good” and “bad” deaths, and superstition remained strong. Funerals, with the usual variations between rural and urban, rich and poor, were invariably organized from the home of the deceased. Because women held sway in the home, the job of preparing corpses for burial fell to howdies, or, in more remote areas, to female relatives. Women were also responsible for organizing hospitality for the long-­ standing

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tradition of sitting with and viewing the bodies. On the day of the funeral, after simple prayers in the home, responsibility passed to male members of the household, who, without further ceremony, carried the coffin to the kirkyard for burial. The women remained behind preparing for the wake, which sometimes went on for days. Reports suggest that in some rural areas, notably in the Highlands, wakes could be more boisterous than weddings, but by the 1840s proceedings in the rural Lowlands were much more sedate, marked more by religious fervour.70 There is every likelihood that Scottish migrants’ attitudes to traditional death practices were eroded soon after embarkation. Shipboard diaries indicate that there were frequent deaths, especially of infants and children, on the outward voyages, and the conditions allowed little scope for traditional rites in sea burials.71 Once migrants landed, there was no reason why the old ways could not be re-embraced, but as with other life customs, divorce from home communities meant that there were modifications. This is demonstrated by Anglican minister Rev. Richard Taylor’s account of the 1863 burial of nine-year-old Barbara McGregor, at Matarawa, near Whanganui.72 Arriving at the McGregors’ home, Taylor describes a scene which in many respects could have taken place in the Scottish Lowlands, but with subtle differences. Men and women were in different rooms, and the Presbyterian minister delivered a prayer in a room set up with whisky and food. After another prayer outside, delivered by Taylor at the family’s invitation, the coffin was loaded onto a cart and conveyed to a corner of a distant field, where it was let down and buried without further solemnization (“the father noted he hated all popish ceremonies”).73 But the move to greater simplicity did not occur in all instances. The 1871 funeral of the Rev. Thomas Burns was “the largest funeral procession ever witnessed in Dunedin.”74 After assembling at First Church for extended devotions, the entire congregation then proceeded to the late residence of the deceased where, after further prayers, the coffin was conveyed to the hearse by six of the oldest members of session. The cortege, headed by church and civic dignitaries, some on horseback, then wound its way through the streets of Dunedin to the city cemetery where a further tribute was offered, but “no religious service was held at the grave … out of respect to the views and practice of the deceased, which was also the practice of the old Scottish church.” The funeral of Mrs Burns, seven years



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later, was an altogether more modest affair.75 A service was conducted in the home, and again at the gravesite, the chief mourners being relatives of the deceased. The well-attended Wyndham funeral in 1888 of Dr J.A.R. Menzies, first superintendent of the short-lived province of Southland, also incorporated services at the home and gravesite and, while “the procession consisted of men only … there was a considerable sprinkling of women in the cemetery.”76 Attendance by women at burials had, in fact, become more commonplace. Wellington’s Evening Post noted in January 1880 a number of “lady mourners” waiting at the graveside while a Presbyterian minister was sought to read the service over Edward Game.77 This was but one of many changes to traditional Scottish funeral practices. Though the custom of visiting and viewing the corpse in the home remained widespread, with some families still responsible for preparing the body, undertakers had begun to assume wider roles in funeral organization.78 With only occasional exceptions, the riotous extended wake had become a thing of memory. The adoption of mourning dress for long periods waned. As an editorialist noted in 1908, “much of what one might describe as the Scottish familiarity with death has disappeared, and a good deal of restraint in the presence of it is now shown both in speech and manner. This may be attributed to the spread of English ideas and customs.”79 Even the landscapes of final resting places changed. Kirkyard burials were always rare in New Zealand. Although in the early settlement decades plots on private properties, such as that of Barbara McGregor, were commonplace, there was an early move to municipal and district public cemeteries, mirroring developments in urban Scotland.80 In Dunedin alone, three burial grounds were opened between 1852 and 1858, with an initial determination to maintain separate denominational sections. Traditional forms of memorialization were translated using available local materials. Picket fences and carved wooden markers replaced the ironwork and stone or concrete monuments of home.81 Over time much more elaborate headstones and monuments materialized, in both imported and local quarried stone. Many of these, through their inscriptions, sought to emphasize ties to the homeland and a desire to assert ethnic identity.82 Burial in family plots was most closely associated with Presbyterians, but by the early 1900s there were even more emphatic ways to identify with the land left behind. Following the death in Wellington of John Jack in 1909, the first part of the ceremony, in a­ ccordance with Scottish

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custom, was held at the home of the deceased.83 On Mr Jack’s wishes the body was then conveyed to Karori for cremation and his ashes sent home to Dundee to be interred in a family grave.

Everyday Living By no means did all of the customs and traditions brought to New Zealand by Scots have philosophical or religious bases. Many were much more mundane, concerned with the minutiae of everyday living. As outlined in chapter 6, the Scots sought to amend and recast landscapes they encountered, sometimes to replicate what had been left behind. Equally, in business and public life they sought to transfer what they considered to be the best of Scottish structures and experiences to New Zealand situations. Rarely, however, were such efforts completely successful. What evolved instead were composites, blending aspects of old world custom with new world conditions and opportunities. Similar trends are discernible in aspects of domestic life. How people housed themselves, furnished their homes, clothed themselves, what they ate, all carried sets of ingrained preferences and practices. The provision of housing was an imperative, both for new migrants and expanding colonial families. Migrants left behind an immense variety of vernacular architecture, ranging from the cramped oldfashioned Highland cottages and large country houses of the rural districts to the townhouses and tenements of the burgeoning cities.84 Necessity at first imposed more uniformity and greater simplicity. There is evidence both in the southern North Island and at Otago that the first primitive habitations erected by Scottish migrants employed traditional methods, although this was not always recognized by commentators. Wattle and daub (known as “stake and rice” in Scotland) was of similar construction to many crofters’ huts. Cob cottages had been common in the Borders and rough low structures of stone and sod bore a resemblance to the “black houses” of the Hebrides.85 Yet, though a number of these structures lasted a long time, most were viewed as no more than temporary accommodation, and were replaced within a few years. These new dwellings also tended to be utilitarian rather than ornamental, although few opted for American-­style log cabins. Instead, tradesmen in Dunedin, who were accustomed to pulling together bricks, stone, and mortar, but were



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now required to work in wood, sought to create crude copies of domestic buildings in urban Scotland.86 The major differences were that the structures tended to be single-storied and strung out rather than in compact blocks. Architectural historian Jeremy Salmond has argued that by 1860 the small wooden house, with weatherboard walls and a corrugated iron roof, and with up to four rooms, was already established as the New Zealand vernacular domestic dwelling.87 This judgment is supported by the census of 1861. At that point 93 per cent of all inhabited domestic dwellings in New Zealand were of wood construction, a mere 2.9 per cent in stone, brick or concrete, with 95.4 per cent in wood in the province of Otago.88 This was a major deviation from Scottish domestic building; but there were good reasons why timber was the favoured material in New Zealand. The most significant were supply and expense. Although suitable millable stands were scarce in parts of inland Otago, there was a seemingly endless store elsewhere in New Zealand.89 Accordingly, until good sources of clay and building stone were located, timber had a major cost advantage. Further, in some parts of New Zealand the destruction wrought by earthquakes on early masonry construction inclined settlers toward a more flexible material. At home, however, stone and brick had been the most favoured building material for the comfortable and more affluent and it was natural that those enjoying similar success in the colony should eventually seek to tangibly advertise their status. This trend was most obvious in the thriving city of Dunedin. By 1891 over 20 per cent of all residences were built from traditional materials.90 While the term “of Scottish baronial appearance” might most appropriately be applied to several quixotic attempts to create colonial castles, it also encompassed the ranks of more substantial two-storied residences in the more fashionable parts of the city, usually also slate-roofed and ornamented with iron lacework.91 But it was not just the better off who favoured forms of traditional housing. From the 1890s streets of brick terrace housing began to appear, blocks that would not have been out of place in Edinburgh or Glasgow.92 The urge to recreate some approximation of homes either left behind, or aspired to, in Scotland, once roots had been put down, however, was not just confined to Dunedin. At the Taieri, the most densely settled adjacent rural district, solid wooden form houses built in the 1850s gave way to more elaborate structures in later decades, the better off setting “a high standard of design in their

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buildings … even the labourers’ cottages had taste.”93 Salisbury, a rambling mansion built of local bricks for entrepreneur Donald Reid in several phases, resembled a Highlands estate. Duddingston, also of brick, built by David Oughton in the mid-1860s, was described as “a Scottish type … house with gables and dormer windows,” and Francis McDiarmid’s The Poplars, built later in the decade, looked as if it had “just been dropped … straight from Scotland.” However, such residences were the exception, not the rule. While elsewhere in Otago and Southland more modest houses build of local schist were not uncommon, the majority of the Scottish migrants and their families continued to live in wooden houses. At 1891 nearly 80 per cent of Dunedin’s houses were of timber and the percentage was even higher in the Otago rural districts.94 Elsewhere, the adoption of Scottish styles was even less pronounced. Although Sir John Logan Campbell chose plastered brick for his Auckland seat Kilbryde, it was in Italianate style, and Sir David Monro at Nelson opted for construction of Newstead in timber.95 In 1915 Sir James Wilson of Bulls also built his second “Lethenty” in timber, favouring Georgian revival style.96 By this point, for most ordinary New Zealand citizens, including those from Scotland, the Californian bungalow model had become the preferred style of family residence, at least until the 1930s. As in Scotland, there were major differences in the extent and quantity of furnishings between the New Zealand houses of working class migrants and those established as leaders.97 Even in 1840 the furnishings in the modest cottages of rural Scotland tended to be basic: box beds, a number of chairs and forms, sometimes a table, sundry kists, cupboards, and presses.98 The items were mainly locally made, either by the householder or village craftsmen, the style and value increasing with incomes. In the burgeoning towns the household accoutrements could be even more basic. Furnishings in the homes of the more affluent, on the other hand, were more elaborate and cosmopolitan, reflecting wider “British” fashion. When preparing for embarkation, Scottish working-class settlers could not carry much furniture with them. They were thus advised to dispose of their chattels and carry little but small household equipment in their kists, and to re-outfit in New Zealand.99 Conversely, the better off were strongly urged to assemble and arrange to ship an extensive range of the best quality household goods for their new-world homes, a badge of class being the packing of a piano. Regardless



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of social gradation, however, once in the New Zealand settlements there was considerable “make do” until what was deemed suitable housing became available. Toward the bottom half of the scale this would involve the construction of crude furniture from local materials and the sometimes ingenious conversion of boxes and containers into other uses. But even at higher levels resourcefulness was necessary, as instanced by attempts to turn the kitchen of the Rev. Thomas Burns’s first humble Dunedin dwelling into some approximation of the parlour of the Ayrshire manse he had vacated.100 A long dresser the family brought with them was arranged along one side of the room, a good-sized table placed under the window, and some chairs from the ship added. Once the morning’s domestic chores had been completed, a piece of carpet would be produced, a nice cloth placed on the table, and the chairs drawn up to the hearth. The room was then considered appropriate to receive visitors. For those with funds, the heavy importations of furniture in the 1840s and 1850s evidenced in auction advertisements enabled the ready augmentation of household stocks.101 Little of this furniture was distinctively Scottish in style, but for those seeking replicas of items they had relinquished, there were skilled craftsmen who could reproduce popular styles from local woods and disguise the origin by heavy staining.102 But such commissions were restricted. Until the 1860s the strongest demand was for plain, utilitarian furniture. Yet, as ordinary settlers began to make their way, demand for more tasteful, but still affordable, furniture grew. The introduction of woodworking machinery to colonial workshops in the 1860s, together with the apparently inexhaustible supply of quality native timbers, provided the opportunity to meet the demand. Large furniture warehouses supplying both town and country became a feature of the New Zealand retail trade.103 Even so, improvisation continued to be a fact of life for the continuing migrant inflows and many young couples. The mid-1870s furnishings in newly married carpenter turned schoolteacher Peter McGregor’s central Otago cottage, beyond a bed, table and forms, included a stretcher/sofa fashioned from canvas attached to a wooden frame and a dressing table of calico-draped stacked boxes.104 Yet there was a strong inclination, even among those of limited means, to set their sights higher and aspire to local copies of items previously largely confined to the middle and upper

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classes. By the 1880s there was a discernible move from the strictly utilitarian to more ample and comfortable household furnishings. The extent to which this was exhibited in the Scottish settlement centres was emphasized by Peebles-born Alexander Bathgate at the opening of the 1881 Dunedin Industrial Exhibition.105 Stressing the great variety by then available in items of local production, Bathgate noted that citizens could now “rise in the morning from beneath soft Kaikorai blankets on a handsome bedstead made of New Zealand wood.” The most modern toilet bowls were now being manufactured at a pottery in Milton, and good standard breakfast ware was now also of colonial make. Parlour furniture was being produced locally, whether by bespoke cabinet makers or in factories, and it was possible to be “gratified by sweet airs played on a New Zealand piano.” What was significant was that few of these items, though manufactured in New Zealand’s Scottish heartland by predominantly Scottish migrants and their descendants, owed much to Scottish antecedents.106 Once the initial pioneering period was over, the preference was to eschew Scottish folk furnishings; box beds, for instance, were rare in New Zealand. Instead the taste was for more fashionable appointments, most commonly of English or American style. Indeed, the only Scottish folk furnishings to achieve much currency beyond 1900 were carver-type chairs common to the northern counties and so-called “Scotch chests,” by this point probably more commonly encountered in North America than in Scotland itself.107 These items were mostly left in their natural tones and polished or otherwise finished with varnish. A number of myths surround the clothing traditions Scottish migrants brought with them. Romantic depictions notwithstanding, few migrants are likely to have set foot in the new land clad in either kilt or plaid. In the early nineteenth century the dress of the Scottish working class tended to be plain and coarse. Looking back in 1878, the Otago Witness reflected that “the men wore hodden grey, and the women linsey-woolsey, or wincey, on work days.”108 On Sundays the “gudeman” appeared at the kirk in “the same ‘gude coat o’ blue’ with which he was arrayed on his wedding day,” while the “gudewife” would wear “the same stuff dress and scarlet scarf” in which she had been wed. These garments had for the most part been cut from fabric spun and dyed in the home, although by 1840 apparel made in the new factories of the industrial lowlands and north-eastern coast was more widely distributed.



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In contrast, individuals and families of higher station drew their attire from a range of sources. Their clothing style was almost indistinguishable from that of their English counterparts. What was considered appropriate outfitting in the 1840s is suggested by the items proposed in a Handbook for Intending Emigrants to the Southern Settlements of New Zealand, published in 1849.109 A labouring man was enjoined to procure, among other things, eighteen coloured shirts, two Guernsey shirts, one pair of strong fustian trousers, three pairs of strong canvas trousers, one fustian jacket and waistcoat, one pea jacket, and one cloth coat, waistcoat, and trousers. His wife should include three cotton dresses, twelve calico chemises, four petticoats, four flannel waistcoats, eighteen pairs of cotton stockings, and two bonnets. The well-dressed gentleman migrant’s needs were greater. Among the items on a list occupying several pages were seventy-two calico shirts with dress fronts, eighteen fine flannel waistcoats, six pairs of strong canvas trousers, twelve pairs of fine white cotton gloves, twelve pairs of dress kid gloves and eighteen night caps. The proposed outfitting for ladies was even more extensive. Packing plaids and kilts for utilitarian purposes was, apparently, deemed optional. In fact the kilt in its modern form (the Breachen Philibeg) was scarcely traditional at all. The plaid had been standard Highland dress, for both sexes, but following the 1745 rebellion wearing the tartan had been outlawed, except for Highland regiments loyal to the Crown.110 Yet in the early nineteenth century men adopting the kilt had been central to the movement to transmute Highland traditions into national traditions. Originally a wilderness costume, worn for protection from the elements, the kilt was appropriated by the elite as an identity symbol. Even though few of the true Scottish elite settled in New Zealand, the kilt nevertheless became associated with leadership in the settlements, and was brought out for ceremonial or special occasions.111 Reports of the earliest Caledonian Games, for example, show that while pipers and officials may have been traditionally clad, this was far from the case for most competitors and spectators, few of whom would have owned the garment. Yet, there was nevertheless a taste for tartan fabric and other good woollen clothes. In 1853 the ubiquitous John Barr advised fellow Otago-ites that he was about to “commence the weaving of Shepherd Tartan, Blankets, Plaiding etc.”112 Although the Otago Witness was supportive, and the first fabrics were for sale by the middle of

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the year, the time was not right. It was still cheaper to buy from home. It was to be two more decades before local demand was at least partially met through the production of enterprises such as the Mosgiel Woollen Factory Company (Ltd) and Ross and Glendining’s Roslyn Mill.113 It would be too much to suggest that plaiding was a mainstay of these factories, but by the 1890s there was a modest New Zealand kilt making industry. This had been stimulated by at least three developments. With the proliferation of Caledonian Games and other ethnic associational events from the 1870s, wearing what had become regarded as the national dress became much more fashionable, regardless of the Scottish origins of the wearers. The kilt had also been embraced by a number of the volunteer military units first formed in the course of the Land Wars. Ladanyi has estimated that at least thirteen Scottish units were enlisted in the south of the South Island between 1863 and 1906, with others in Canterbury and the major North Island settlement centres.114 In 1911 all of the units were absorbed into the New Zealand Territorial Force, and their distinctive titles and uniforms were abandoned. However, the pipe bands formed in association with the volunteers frequently morphed into civilian bands, which became a fixture at Caledonian Games and other community events by the late nineteenth century and well beyond.115 After 1900, the greatest impetus came from appropriation of the kilt by women.116 Women swept away the earlier male dominance of Scottish dancing. Later the kilt, and its variants, became integral parts of the uniform in many girls’ schools. In the 1930s marching in uniforms adapted from Scottish military dress became a popular sport for girls, although the pastime was largely confined to New Zealand and Australia.117 Customary practices also surrounded what Scots migrants ate and how they prepared their food.118 Traditionally, the common diet of the poorer classes had been oatmeal-based, either as oatcakes or brose (an uncooked form of porridge), often with milk. Vegetables were scarce, except for kale, and fruit was virtually non-existent, except in the Borders. Few but the rich ate fresh meat, although along the coasts fish augmented otherwise spartan diets. There were changes, however, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the most far-reaching being the more widespread cultivation of potatoes and turnips.119 Yet, overall, the diet in rural Scotland, if monotonous, was surprisingly nutritious. Paradoxically, as the rural



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diet improved, that in urban Scotland, marked by poor, often adulterated, foodstuffs, declined. In the absence of fresh fruit and vegetables, a taste for cheap filling stodge developed, especially items heavily sweetened. By the 1840s coal ranges had begun to appear in a few Scottish homes, but for the most part hearth cookery prevailed, with a strong preference for the frying pan in towns. The ready availability of a much greater range of fresh foodstuffs was perhaps the greatest change settlers encountered, in particular the abundance of fresh meat, something regularly commented on in correspondence.120 Once the first herds and flocks had been established, even working people could afford good cuts of beef and mutton, and wild pigs ensured an ample supply of pork from the outset. Equally, commodities such as butter, cheese, and eggs, if not home produced, could also be purchased relatively cheaply. There was thus an early switch from a predominantly grain-based diet to a highprotein diet, and it was not uncommon for three meat meals a day to be eaten.121 Foods rarely consumed on other than festive occasions at home became everyday fare. Fish, conversely, at least in the early settlement years, was considered “poor men’s” or “M ¯aori” sustenance, and tended to be eschewed, although by the 1870s smoked and otherwise cured fish was regaining popularity in the southern settlements. A further change was from oaten flour to wheat-based flour, although the cultivation of oats was soon under way in the south.122 At first it was a matter of availability, but for many migrants fresh wheat bread soon became a matter of taste. As Whanganui’s Jessie Campbell enthusiastically wrote home to her sister in 1845: “Every Friday I bake a whole week’s bread … and all are thundering loaves. Some of them weigh 7lbs. I have got so into the way of baking … that my bread never fails and gives no more trouble than a batch of oaten cakes used to at home.”123 Almost certainly Mrs Campbell used a camp oven for bread making. A study of kitchen technology in Dunedin between 1848 and 1860 demonstrates that hearth cookery, using cauldrons and camp ovens, was standard until the late 1860s, imported ranges deemed a luxury.124 It was not until coal and wood burning ranges began to be locally manufactured in the 1870s that they became standard household appliances.125 There were other additions to the common foodstocks. Climatic conditions had impeded the cultivation of all but a limited range of vegetables and fruit in Scotland, but they could be grown in most

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parts of New Zealand, and the greater availability of land enabled what has been termed “the quarter acre harvest.”126 The degree to which additional foodstuffs affected long-embraced culinary practices is harder to ascertain, but it is clear that traditional occasions required traditional food. Seed-cakes, buns, and shortbread continued to be served at Hogmanay; haggis, neaps and tatties and good whisky remained the staples of Burns dinners.127 Everyday eating habits, however, were inevitably modified; the enthusiasms for meat and wheat bread were only some examples. Because so much of their food, especially meat and vegetables, was unfamiliar, women knew little about how to prepare it and turned to the advice provided through the columns of some colonial newspapers and to imported cooking guides, usually English or Australian. By the late nineteenth century traditions were already intermingling, as is evident in the over 100 pages devoted to “cottage cookery” in Brett’s Colonists’ Guide (1883) a compendium produced to provide all prospective migrants with essential information.128 Among the recipes, drawn from all parts of the British Isles and beyond, are such Scottish staples as oatcakes, kippered fish, porridge, stirabout, and brose. It is nevertheless more likely that distinctively Scottish foodways were transmitted to New Zealand lodged in migrant minds or in the handwritten family cookbooks that stood alongside the family Bible. An example of the latter was the property of Jeannie Burr, a migrant from Aberdeen to Whanganui in the early 1880s.129 What stands out about the volume is that it incorporates the culinary wisdom of three generations: Jeannie, her mother, and her New Zealandborn daughter. Perhaps characteristically, there are sixty-nine recipes for cakes and biscuits, thirty-two for puddings, but only twelve for meat, and none whatsoever for vegetables, except when included in meat dishes. Realizing the limitations of cookbooks brought from home may have eventually motivated the compilation of alternatives by local groups. The St Andrew’s Cookery Book, produced in Dunedin in 1905, shows the extent to which Scottish cooking traditions had been maintained.130 Most of the contributors of recipes were from the monied classes, but women from the working suburbs also participated. Over fifty meat dishes, and twenty-seven for fish, underlined the new popularity of fresh foods, but well over half of the 550 recipes were for baked goods, puddings, and desserts. The volume hardly amounted to a catalogue of the daily bill of fare, but it does lend credence to the proposition that the major long-term



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Scottish contributions to New Zealand cuisine were an overdeveloped fondness for sweet things and baked goods of all kinds.

Conclusion For everyday living, the Scots migrants arrived with a basket of inherited traditions and folkways. Some were the product of centuries; others were surprisingly recent. Combined, they offered a platform for maintaining ways of life, but from the point of disembarkation the imported customs and practices were constantly subjected to pressures, and tested in the new physical, economic, and social environments migrants encountered. Migrants were also confronted with the reality that, while there were settlement nodes predominantly Scottish in composition, New Zealand was a British, not a Scottish, colony. English settlers were the majority, with a sizeable cadre of Irish alongside, as well as the presence of the indigenous M ¯aori. The testing process involved three phases. The first was the establishment phase, which could occupy a decade or more. The familiar ways or near substitutes were clung to, offering emotional security while migrants experienced the trauma of translocation. There were hard lessons in those years, and migrants had to discard or substantially change particular practices. Only as a level of comfort was attained did it become possible to move to the second phase of accommodation, what might be labelled “coming to terms.” During these years, despite ongoing sentimental attachments, traditional ways were closely evaluated to assess their practicality in the milieu of the evolving colonial society. Migrants were more willing to compromise and adjust, to appropriate the apposite from other settler groups. The third phase, cultural assimilation, was largely a post1900 phenomenon in New Zealand. By then the locally-born generations substantially outnumbered the overseas-born, and a composite New Zealand–British identity had emerged that borrowed freely from all of the major ethnic groups, including the Scots. This is not to suggest that all aspects of Scottish cultural heritage, especially the folkways, were completely lost from view, rather that they were most conspicuous in areas such as religion, language, and the arts, elements that will be considered in the following chapter.

9 Occupying the Non-Working Hours: Piety, Leisure, and Discourse

One stereotype about migrant Scots stated that leisure was a concept largely unknown to them. When not building commercial enterprises, breaking in farms, or otherwise industriously pursuing their worldly well-being, they were just as assiduously ensuring their spiritual salvation by attending church and living abstemious lives. As with most stereotypes, this was never entirely the case. Certainly in Scotland leisure time had been strictly limited for all but the better off before 1840, but this began to change during the nineteenth century because of the more ordered work patterns arising from industrialization and urbanization.1 In New Zealand too, there were new opportunities for leisure after the first establishment phase was past, for example the promotion of the associational activities outlined in chapter 7.2 For a substantial number of New Zealand Scots, life did revolve around work, kirk, and church-related activities. But there was another side to the Scottish character. Many commented on the fondness of Scots for their liquor. Even some churchmen were partial to a tipple. In between these two extremes were many other activities: some found fulfillment in the great outdoors, some enthusiastically embraced organized sports, and others chose more cultural recreations. In all instances, however, introduced models and modes of behaviour were tested, then discarded or adopted, often in modified form.

Calendar Customs How and when activities were pursued tended to be dictated by calendar customs, closely associated with particular dates or times in the year, sometimes on the basis of folklore but most frequently



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with a religious foundation. Despite contentions that the nineteenth century witnessed widespread secularization, religious practices pervaded New Zealand migrant life, and for Scots Presbyterian influences were omnipresent.3 Not all Scots were Presbyterians of course, but they made up a preponderance of the Scottish migrants to New Zealand and their influence was to be long-lasting. By the 1901 Census, when over 66 per cent of the total population was New Zealand-born, and no more than 6.2 per cent was Scotland-born, Presbyterians (24.9 per cent) were second only to Anglicans (40.7 per cent) among those stating denominational affiliations.4 While the Scots Presbyterians brought with them their individual sets of religious practices and rites, there has been little research to date into how effectively these were transferred. A notable exception is Alison Clarke’s penetrating analysis of aspects of holidays, religion, and ethnicity in the nineteenth century in the province of Otago.5 In 1850 over 70 per cent of the Otago settlers were Presbyterian, whether Free Church or other strands. Seventy years later, in 1921, Otago was still more than 55 per cent Presbyterian. The key day in the Christian seven-day week was Sunday and strict observance of the Sabbath was more pervasive in Scotland than in any other part of the British Isles. Strong supporters of Sabbatarianism dominated the Church of Scotland in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and were reinforced by the Free Church following the Disruption in 1843.6 In the early settlement years conforming might involve attendance at up to three services each Sunday, with home worship sometimes substituting in more isolated rural districts.7 No work was to be carried out on the Sabbath, although there could be dispensations in time of emergency, and time was to be devoted to contemplation and the extension of religious knowledge. In its most extreme form, Sabbatarianism forbade even the preparation of food. Undoubtedly there were early backsliders. Wellington’s first Presbyterian minister, Rev. John Macfarlane, disapprovingly recorded the inclination of a number of his congregation to seek leisure rather than attend services.8 For the most part, however, the faithful held to the rules without complaint. Moreover, church attendance was a chance to dress up and socialize; even more pertinently, it represented freedom from labour one day a week. The imposed restrictions became more irksome as the Scottish migrant communities were diluted. In settlements where Scots still constituted the dominant ethnic group, non-churchgoers and

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­ embers of denominations with more liberal attitudes to Sunday m time resented ministers’ and elders’ attempts to impose their creed on whole communities.9 In Dunedin in the 1870s conflicts arose over such issues as Sunday travel, entertainments, sporting meets, and opening hours for the Athenaeum, Sabbatarians stoutly maintaining, with only moderate success, that the moral fibre of the community would be endangered if restrictions were relaxed. Ten years later the convenor of the Presbyterian Synod’s “Committee on the State of Religion and Sabbath Observance” continued to protest bitterly about “the desecration of the Sabbath,” citing “riding, driving, drinking, shooting, gossiping, aimless strolling about, and above all Sabbath-visiting.”10 On the whole, the Sabbatarians won little support for what one North Island newspaper termed their “antiquated notions.”11 However, this did not mean there was a wide public desire for Sundays to become yet another week day. What citizens, including some Presbyterians, sought, was the opportunity, whether or not after devotions, to freely undertake domestic chores or to engage in sports and other leisure activities on Sundays. By 1892 the Otago Witness noted that “at the present time Sabbath keeping is much less strict than it was 50 years ago.”12 But this should not be taken as implying that the influence of the Sabbatarians had been completely pushed to one side. As church historian Ian Breward has pointed out, “Not all New Zealanders cared to honour God with Presbyterian passion, but there was sufficient support from other churches and the public for a day free of commercial pressures to ensure a semi-sacred Sunday until the 1960s.”13 The Sundays above all others in the Presbyterian calendar were communion Sundays.14 Usually scheduled twice a year, they were the culmination of communion seasons, beginning with a fast day on the preceding Thursday, during which prospective communicants were required to spiritually prepare. Such holidays were a long-standing Scottish custom but did not have any clear spiritual foundation. The communion season also had a critical social function: its rituals determined the inclusion or exclusion of individuals from a community elite. In New Zealand, as in Scotland, not all adult Presbyterians were communicants. Many regular churchgoers were simply adherents, eschewing full communicant membership, whether from doubt over worthiness or for more mundane reasons. It has been estimated that adherents constituted more than half of congregations in the early Otago parishes.15



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In the early settlement decades worshippers often travelled considerable distances, and while the fast days were informal arrangements elsewhere in the colony, the Otago provincial government legislatively enshrined the holidays. In the towns the Scottish scheduling of June and December was followed, but in country districts April and October were favoured to avoid peak farming periods of demand. Communicants were expected to be abstemious in terms of alcohol, chaste outside marriage, upright in business, outwardly pious, and strict observers of the Sabbath.16 Those who offended against these precepts could be brought before their fellows for disciplinary action. It was hard, however, to impose these standards on fellow Scots of other faiths or fellow Presbyterians who had slipped, much less migrants from other ethnic backgrounds. By the 1860s fast days were secularized and legislative backing for the holidays was removed following the 1876 abolition of the provincial governments.17 However, it is likely that what had the greatest impact on changing the way in which they were regarded by churchgoers were internal changes in the organization and conduct of the communion services. Quarterly communion was introduced at Dunedin’s Knox Church as early as 1862 and by 1900 over half of the Otago parishes for which records exist had followed suit. Maintaining communion seasons became impossible, although the Dunedin Star noted “the tenacity with which the old Home customs … are adhered to in the country districts.”18 There were also changes in the way communion was accessed. Communicants were now invited by the elders rather than having to prove their fitness to take part. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, communicants were served in their pews rather than at the communion table to speed delivery, the communal goblet was replaced by individual cups in the interests of hygiene, and the use of fortified wine was questioned by temperance advocates.19 By the early twentieth century the Presbyterian communion in New Zealand had become a much more routine affair, mirroring changing customs in many parts of Lowland and urban Scotland, but adapting to new conditions. In most northern hemisphere countries Christmas was the great midwinter Christian festival, second only to Easter in the church calendar.20 Beyond celebrating the birth of Christ through worship, it was a time for feasting, present-giving and general merriment. Associated traditions were brought by English, Irish, and European

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migrants and, despite the mid-summer setting, every effort was made to replicate the festivities. At first a modest affair, as settlement consolidated the Anglican and Catholic churches attracted large congregations. The festival was very much a family occasion. At first, however, Scots Presbyterians stood aside. Though Yuletide had been observed in Scotland up to the sixteenth century, the Calvinists had swept it away as superstition, and a series of church ordinances of the Church of Scotland had forbidden any revival.21 Yet, while the repudiation continued strongly in more isolated rural districts for many decades, for those in towns the activities of fellow migrants of other ethnicities and denominations proved harder to ignore. Even in Dunedin Christmas Day had become a general holiday by 1860, in accord with English practice.22 For Scots Presbyterians, treating the day as a religious event would have been tantamount to acknowledging a Catholic ritual, so many compromised by shifting the focus to the social aspects of the festival, bringing together family members and organizing excursions and other entertainment.23 It was not until near the end of the nineteenth century that the incongruity of Calvinists simply taking the day off on the day other churches celebrated the Nativity was seriously questioned. Increasingly, individual ministers broke with tradition and introduced Christmas services, but not infrequently elders stubbornly resisted. In 1891, for instance, the elders of Dunedin’s First Church turned down their minister’s request to hold a Christmas service, as well as the organist’s request to play carols on Christmas evening.24 It was apparent to most, however, that these reactionaries were fighting a losing battle. In the following year a correspondent in the Otago Witness observed that as “a general festival, half religious and half secular,” Christmas easily took “first place among the observances of Christendom.”25 Lamenting the recalcitrance of aging church laity, he expressed a hope that both Scottish Presbyterians and English dissenters would “soon conform to the practice of the other churches so far as to honour the 25th December with some kind of religious service.” It was not until 1932 that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand approved Christmas religious observances.26 By that point Christmas customs of English and even wider international origin had been absorbed into most nominally Scottish households, including Christmas trees and Father Christmas. Most had acknowledged early that it was not easy to keep up the traditions



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surrounding a northern hemisphere Christmas, which presupposed biting cold, low-hung skies, short days, and “a spectral snow-draped landscape.”27 Instead, as Alison Clarke suggests, what evolved was “a mixture of old-world winter customs and the summer foods and recreations of the southern hemisphere, and a complex amalgam of religious and secular traditions.”28 English traditions such as carolling and the consumption of roast beef and plum pudding became entrenched, but the fare was likely to be consumed under sheltering trees at the beach, amusements followed outdoors rather than indoors, and church was optional. Easter was as foreign as Christmas to many Scots, but at the same time it was the most sacred point of the religious year for devout Anglicans and Catholics.29 Preceded by the season of Lent, forty days of self-denial and penitence, Good Friday was the most solemn day in the church calendar, followed by the joy of Easter Sunday. In the northern hemisphere, too, Easter was the great festival marking the arrival of spring. Yet most nonconformists, including Scots Presbyterians, did not recognize Easter as a religious holiday at any point in the nineteenth century. They held to normal work schedules or simply regarded Good Friday as a secular holiday. The attitude of the largest Scots religious group was deep-seated, based on a conviction that Good Friday services were founded on Catholic ritual. As late as 1899 the New Zealand Presbyterian newspaper Outlook urged that “to avoid all impious scandal it is well to remember not only on Good Friday but on all days that the Son of God died for our sins.”30 Accommodating Easter Sunday was less of a problem. Even the most truculent opponents of Easter observances tended to be Sabbatarians, even if their Easter Sunday services differed little from those of other Sundays. However, the Scots always constituted a minority of the nineteenth-­ century settler population. Good Friday was a common-law holiday in England, and in New Zealand the same precedent was followed, even in Otago.31 This could, and did, lead to tensions in some settlements. Anglican and Catholic clergy occasionally had difficulty mustering their flocks when neighbours openly abjured any commitment to Lenten rituals and either toiled or engaged in more trivial pursuits on the holy days. By 1900 growing numbers of citizens, by no means all Scottish or Presbyterian, viewed the day more as an opportunity for leisure. However, the movement was not all one way. From the 1870s a handful of more liberally-minded Presbyterian­

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congregations had edged toward adopting aspects of the Easter rituals and observances of the other major denominations. Even so, conservative opposition within the church was not worn down until 1931, when the General Assembly recommended the religious observance of Good Friday.32 The English tradition of a further holiday on Easter Monday was never a cause of conflict, since it was not a holy day. In some districts Easter Monday became an acceptable alternative to New Year’s Day for the organization of Caledonian Games and other community gatherings.33 Additionally, though some chose to make the maximum of the four-day holiday, heading for the outdoors with rod and gun, for others Easter Monday was the ideal day for the popular leisure activity of hunting. Easter also provided the best chance in the year for field exercises for the Volunteer Corps, which by the 1880s involved about one in twenty of all New Zealand males between fifteen and forty-nine. When post-Reformation Calvinistic fervour swept away what had been the traditional Scottish Christmas, many of the associated nonreligious customs were simply transferred to Hogmanay, or New Year’s Eve, and to New Year’s Day.34 New Year became the most widely observed regular Scottish holiday and an explicit expression of ethnicity. It was a time of mid-winter revelry, a night “sacred to feasts of haggis, ‘rye loaf,’ shortbread, and Athole Brose,” followed by first-footing ventures into the cold outdoors.35 For many, New Year’s Day was a day of recovery. Migrants naturally sought to replicate these celebrations, and because Hogmanay wasn’t a religious festival, other ethnicities were soon participating. In most of the early settlements the arrival of the New Year was welcomed with exhilaration, especially in the emerging towns.36 The discharge of cannons and small arms was commonplace at midnight; on occasion the local volunteer soldiery also turned out. Larger colonial settlements witnessed fireworks displays, often shipboard, while various bands paraded. Revellers on the streets, frequently well liquored, scattered firecrackers to the discomfort of their fellows. The warmer weather facilitated first-footing on an unprecedented scale. It was not long, however, before complaints about what was dismissed as “larrikinism” began to be expressed, and by the 1870s antics such as the inscription of graffiti or the wanton destruction of property were roundly condemned.37 For many, Hogmanay was a time to gather at home or in small community groups, in the company of relations or friends, to see in the New Year. For the most



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pious Presbyterians, while eschewing overt religious ceremony, such as the watch services favoured by English nonconformists, New Year was a time for reflection.38 The most enthusiastic observances were always in Otago and Southland, but by the 1890s, changes were afoot even there. In 1891 the Ashburton Guardian noted “a fallingoff in the observance of the habits and customs of Hogmanay.”39 In particular, there had been “a decline in the spirit of Scotland’s dream in regard to drinking habits,” and first-footing had become “more honoured in the breach than in the observance.” Instead, the more sedate “Hogmanay Supper,” a cultural gathering with alcohol in moderation, attained popularity with the older set.40 For most, including domestic workers, New Year’s Day was a holiday. In Scotland, winter weather constrained how the day might be spent, but in New Zealand there were wider possibilities. In the early settlement years, New Year’s Day tended to be devoted to family gatherings, local excursions, and picnics. Yet by the 1870s there was a stronger emphasis on community recreation.41 The gatherings and picnics were on a larger scale, church- or otherwise ­institutionallyoriented, and group excursions were often over considerable distances, facilitated by better road transport and an emerging rail network. At the same time, organized amusements proliferated. Horse racing and local sports were always popular, but top of the list in most communities was Caledonian Games.42 Ultimately, the New Year holiday was one of the Scots’ most enduring legacies to their new country. By adapting it to the mid-summer call of the outdoors, New Zealanders made it all their own.43 And by the early twentieth century most New Zealanders, whatever their ethnicity, enjoyed at least four days’ holiday over Christmas and New Year, something still unthinkable in their countries of origin.

The Dimensions of Leisure Religious historians agree that the nature of Presbyterianism experienced more radical changes in New Zealand than in mid- and latenineteenth-century Scotland. In the absence of an established church what evolved was what Peter Matheson has termed “settler Presbyterianism.”44 It was essentially middle class in its ethos and strongly focused on work and family, with the kirk providing the binding. For the most spiritually committed Scots Presbyterians, religion was more than passively listening to sermons twice or three times on

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a Sunday. Religious customs permeated almost all aspects of daily life, and roles and responsibilities were expected of both genders. Both in the kirk and in the community wrapped around it, men, especially those recognized as elders, assumed leadership roles as of right. Women were allocated the status of helpmates, and younger community members were expected to obediently worship and selfimprove. The tightly controlled theocratic community optimistically envisaged by William Cargill and Thomas Burns, and perhaps only approached among Rev. Norman McLeod’s Waipu followers, always struggled to take hold more widely, but in the early settlement decades at least attempts were made to adhere to the home doctrinal enthusiasms of the 1840s. However, in New Zealand, of necessity, there was greater interaction between Presbyterians and other Protestant denominations, the paucity of clergy sometimes leading to common services.45 Just as important, the internecine disputes that continued in Scotland were not carried to the new country, although there were always divisions between moderate and stricter parishes and, at a higher level, until 1901 between the Synod of Otago and Southland and the other New Zealand Presbyterian churches.46 Scots Presbyterians may have clung to their Sabbatarianism and their communion rites, but other aspects of ritual became more relaxed, most notably church music, as well as the norms of everyday living. Despite nostalgia, twelve thousand miles from home there was greater pragmatism. By the 1870s, many, if not all, had come to “wear their Protestant culture comfortably, like an old baggy suit. Their language was not that of classical Calvinism, but the couthy earthy dialect of ordinary folk.”47 Yet, curiously, by the 1890s a more puritanical tone was again becoming evident. There was a new stridency in the campaigns for temperance, Bible in Schools, prohibitions on gambling, and advocacy of public morality.48 In part this may be attributed to regular infusions of Scottish- and Ulster-trained clergy, but it was squarely aimed at safeguarding the kirk-oriented Scottish Presbyterian community that had evolved. For the devout, and those who purported to be, this was a comfortable world.49 People socialized with likeminded people and usually drew marriage partners from fellow adherents. In country districts the kirk was the Sunday rallying point for whole communities; a trysting place for couples, and a place for farmers to share their complaints and to compare progress with flocks and crops. It was no less a collecting point in the towns, a



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location where successes and failures could be shared. Over time, the kirk became the centre for a wide range of extracurricular activities. In the early years, with leisure time at a premium in the developing colony, participation, beyond services, had largely been confined to the conduct of Sunday school. Yet by the 1880s church groups met regularly at other times of the week.50 In both town and country Ladies Guilds were established. These were soon augmented by branches of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union, Mothers’ Prayer Groups, and Christian Endeavour Societies. For Presbyterian women, regardless of location, such groups provided an opportunity for social life outside the individual home but still within a tight-knit social group. The needs of young people from the 1880s were centred on the Bible Class movement, an outgrowth of Sunday Schools, which grew rapidly until the First World War.51 Long split into male and female streams, the movement offered young adults fellowship and limited opportunities for self-improvement in respectable surroundings. In the rural districts, however, there was always a stronger female membership of such groups. This highlights an anomaly. While undoubtedly the church leaders, the elders, exclusively male until the twentieth century, met regularly, attempts to establish kirk-linked men’s clubs generally experienced limited success.52 Perhaps it was because there were already too many church offshoots; perhaps it was simply that the men of the congregations had other business or demands on their time outside the days formally set aside for worship. Yet this in no way diminished their leadership roles. Even though not all Scots were Presbyterians, nor all Scots baptized Presbyterian regular churchgoers, by 1901 more New Zealand Presbyterians worshipped in their churches every Sunday than adherents of any other denomination, and over half of these were in the parishes of Otago and Southland. Other New Zealand Scots sought fellowship beyond the church. For many working-class migrants, the public house became the place where they could relax, freely converse, and at the same time drink alcoholic beverages. This was a transferred custom. Drink had been important in nineteenth-century Scotland, consumed in enormous quantities by all classes. It has been estimated that by the 1830s Scots over the age of fifteen consumed on average a pint of whisky a week, in addition to a large quantity of beer.53 Further, there was the “poteen” tradition: illicit spirits were as enthusiastically distilled

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in urban cellars and tenements as Highland glens. Any ambitions the Otago founders may have had to ban or restrict alcohol were soon swept away. From the first year alcohol was imported in large quantities to the infant town of Dunedin, and by the early 1850s three substantial hotels and sundry small grog shops were doing a roaring trade.54 For secular Scots, Catholics, and the Congregationalists, as well as non-Scots, there were few sanctions on the friendly pint or dram. Moreover, there was even ambivalence among those of the “true faith,” resulting in a split between strict teetotalers and more moderate Presbyterians. Nor was the taste for liquor confined to the working classes. Members of the elite might have preferred to partake in their homes, and, later, in their clubs, but strict Sabbatarianism and a deep thirst for alcohol were not necessarily antithetical.55 The demand for liquor escalated with the gold mining influxes of the 1860s in the south. It was therefore logical that migrant Scots should become enthusiastic about recreating the distilling tradition in their new home. From 1841 there had been a blanket ban on such activity, primarily to restrict supply to North Island M aori. ¯ Quite when illicit distilling began is unclear, but there is evidence rural settlers were operating small pot stills by the early 1850s.56 Almost certainly within a decade it had become a widespread cottage industry, and not just in the south. In 1867 the Secretary of Customs reported the seizure of thirty-three stills in the preceding twelve months.57 It was partially in recognition of that that the 1868 Distillation Act provided for legal distillation on a commercial scale under licence, and imposed heavy penalties for illicit distillation. Within two years two well-equipped distilleries were established, the New Zealand Distillery in Dunedin and the Crown Distillery in Auckland.58 Both were established by Scots, and both quickly introduced technology and expertise from the home country. Though the staple product was whisky, substantial volumes of gin and brandy were also distilled. Between 1869 and 1872 the output of the two distilleries reached nearly 200,000 gallons of proof spirits, even though substantial amounts of liquor were still being imported.59 Then, with reduced excise returns, and, it has been argued, pressure from British commercial interests, the distilleries were closed, compensation was paid to their owners, and the ban on distillation was reimposed for nearly a century. Stamping out illicit distillation, however, was quite another matter. For generations families continued to produce for their own and



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friends’ consumption, and, guardedly, for sale. In the south of the South Island the “moonshiners,” and the efforts of police and excise officials to catch them, became the stuff of legend.60 Beer, however, was never subject to the same restrictions as spirits; in fact, some quarters encouraged it as a substitute for hard liquor. Once more, Scots were pivotal to meeting demand, both as importers and brewers. “Superior bottled Scottish ale” was for sale in Wellington from early 1840, and New Zealand remained a prime market for Scotland’s brewers for several decades.61 But this in no way discouraged local brewing, always one of the first manufacturing industries in most settlements. Migrant Scots were prominent among the participants, laying foundations early for major twentieth-century conglomerates such as Lion Breweries in the North Island and Speights in Otago. By 1881 Dunedin was regarded as the brewing capital of the colony.62 With just eleven of New Zealand’s ninety-nine breweries, the town produced a quarter of New Zealand’s beer. An examination of ownership records clearly suggests this was not a trade from which staunch Presbyterian businessmen, even elders, shrank.63 Curiously, when Presbyterian support for prohibition gathered strength at the end of the nineteenth century, the greatest impetus was from the working class, possibly reflecting the greater involvement of women, conspicuously Scottish women, in public affairs.64 Although most North Island voters ignored the 1894 licensing poll, backing for prohibition was strongest in the Presbyterian South, especially in the ultra-conservative rural districts. Yet, while several parishes urged the Synod of Otago and Southland to make abstinence a condition of full church membership, prominent churchmen, including the Theological College’s erstwhile professor of theology, William Salmond, continued to take a contrary view.65 Even as the prohibitionists came to dominate, on the eve of the First World War, Salmond was continuing to urge moderation rather than prohibition. Male Scots migrants became enthusiastic followers of several outdoor pursuits. At home, activities such as hunting and fishing had been the preserve of the well-to-do.66 Traditionally, Highland glens and Lowlands streams had been exclusively at the disposal of landowners whose rights were reinforced by draconian Game Laws, which were even more tightly enforced between 1810 and 1840. Thus one of the appealing features of the new world for Scottish working men, as for their English and Irish brethren, was the ability to roam

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freely “along the shore and in the woods and shoot as many fowl and take as many fish as we like.”67 Though the species of birds and fish differed from those encountered at home, they were abundant, and though New Zealand was devoid of indigenous mammals, pigs introduced earlier thrived in the wild. Every opportunity to share in the bounty was taken. As noted earlier, the Rev. John MacFarlane, Wellington and New Zealand’s first Presbyterian minister, expressed dismay in 1841 at the thinness of his Sunday congregations, but the regular discharge of fowling pieces in the adjacent bushland suggested the whereabouts of at least some of the defaulters.68 Further south, in Canterbury, John Deans rejoiced at the ready availability of “as fine wild ducks as I ever saw in Scotland.”69 In 1854 a small hunting group bagged seventy wild pigs in the vicinity of Dunedin in two days.70 The removal of class barriers apart, where hunting and fishing in New Zealand differed from Scotland was that for many in the early settlement decades it was as much about delivering food for the family table as sport. Maintaining the freedom to hunt and fish remained a tenet of colonial policy, but by the 1860s a new outlook was becoming evident. In an age where an imperial hunting circuit was developing, enthusiasm to introduce the game animals and birds, no less the fish, familiar from home was evidenced in the formation of Acclimatisation Societies.71 There was no intention to replicate the Game Laws, but an earnest desire in Otago and Southland to introduce such species that “the sportsman and the lover of nature might enjoy the same sports … that made remembrance of their former lands so dear.”72 The first attempts involved importing fish, trout, and salmon ova via Tasmania in the late 1860s, with mixed initial results. Similarly, though pheasants thrived in the new environment, quail proved much harder to successfully introduce, and grouse harder still. The most concerted efforts by the expatriate Scots, however, were to make red deer available. Unlike red deer released in other parts of New Zealand, those shipped to Otago were of wild Highland origin, procured from the estate of the Earl of Dalhousie.73 Let loose in several parts of the province in 1871, they soon multiplied in the back country, but hunting was not permitted until the mid1880s and then only under licence. The harvesting of indigenous species for the larder freely continued, but from this point on, the rationale for the pursuit of introduced fish, birds, and animals was essentially a sporting one, subject to regulation but otherwise still



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open to all comers, albeit in some cases on payment of a relatively high licence fee. Also open to all comers, most as spectators, was horse racing. If hunting and fishing had been a predominantly Highlands pastime, horse racing was a quintessential Lowlands diversion.74 In the early nineteenth century there was a hierarchy, ranging from informal meets featuring farm horses to scheduled meetings between landowners’ thoroughbreds on a regular circuit. Even so, by the 1830s there were still no more than sixteen registered courses throughout Scotland. The major concentration was in the Borders, overlapping with meetings in northern England. As in most other British colonies, horse racing was soon introduced to New Zealand. It was a feature of the first anniversary days in Wellington, Auckland, and Nelson, and was soon firmly established in the social calendar, boosted by military contingents based in the colony.75 It was nevertheless a rude shock for the staid and serious leading citizens of Dunedin when it was announced that their planned celebrations of the first anniversary of the Otago settlement were to be augmented by organized horse races.76 Deeply opposed to gambling in any form, they blamed the English who had crept into their midst. Yet there were many more than “the Little Enemy” who attended. It was noted that “the multitude was unanimous in approval.”77 Further meetings were organized intermittently throughout the 1850s, generally with large attendances. Racing in the province was placed on a formal basis with the formation of the Otago Jockey Club in 1861.78 To that point horse racing had been regarded as a passing amusement. Thereafter it became more of a business. At the same time, subsidiary meetings proliferated throughout Otago and Southland, many of them more akin to the farmers’ picnic meets of the homeland. Fuelled by the gold boom, Dunedin citizens through the 1860s were gripped by what the Otago Witness later labelled “racing mania.” In 1863 the Jockey Club offered the highest stakes hitherto offered in the Australasian colonies (1,000 sovereigns) for a race which attracted horses from the North Island and as far off as New South Wales.79 Late in the decade the annual Club meetings were augmented by what was termed Tradesmen’s Races, held on the city beaches. Following the 1869 meeting, attended by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Otago Jockey Club was transformed into the Dunedin Jockey Club, placing racing on a fully commercial basis. Whereas previously it had been difficult to locate a suitable course

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every year, the new entity first leased accommodation, then in 1887 purchased 150 acres at Wingatui for its exclusive use.80 In little more than two decades horse racing had firmly established itself in the New Zealand Scottish heartland, and in the affections of migrants, to a degree still unimaginable in Scotland. The interest was not, of course, unique. It was mirrored in the other major New Zealand settlements, but even in those settlements Scots took to racing with enthusiasm. At Turakina, a settlement of little more than 400 in the southern North Island Scottish cluster identified in chapter 3, regular annual race meetings were initiated, despite clerical disapproval, in 1878 and remained a highlight of the year until the first decade of the twentieth century.81 In 1891, a Dunedin editorialist mused that horse racing had become the leading sport not only of Otago and New Zealand, but also Australia, “not a thing to be even dreamt of” in 1848.82 As discussed in chapter 7, Caledonian Games, “the lusty sports of ‘Caledonia Stern and Wild’,” even though they were only held once a year, were arguably the most popular distinctively Scottish outdoor recreational activities for many decades.83 Regular organized sport, largely the entertainment of the moneyed classes, was unusual in early nineteenth century Scotland.84 Indeed it was frowned upon for the masses as a diversion from daily toil; sport was something to be restricted to the very occasional public holidays. Nevertheless three distinctively Scottish games were transplanted to New Zealand soil: shinty, curling, and golf. One never really took hold, another was confined to a small group in the south of the South Island, and the third became Scotland’s greatest sporting legacy to the new land. Shinty, a close relation of Irish hurling, had the longest pedigree, dating back to at least medieval times.85 Most commonly played in the Highlands, between districts, parishes, or villages, it had been largely confined to festival days but it had begun to decline by the 1840s, possibly because of a reputation for violence and associated drunkenness. It was not to experience a homeland revival until the 1890s. The evidence suggests that it was played only occasionally in New Zealand, and, as at home, mainly on holidays. Looking back in 1900, an old settler recalled that there were regular games each New Year’s Day at Wellington in the 1840s, and teams were drawn from the “Scotch settlement” at Kaiwharawhara.86 These ceased as the town occupied the lands on which the contests took place, but in the early and mid-1860s shinty was listed in events promoted at



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Caledonian Games. Thereafter reports die away, although in 1877 the Otago Daily Times reported danger to passersby in Dunedin’s Cumberland Street, from twenty to fifty factory boys playing there in their lunch hours.87 The same year, however, the Tuapeka Times lamented the inclination of “colonial boys” to shy away from such manly exercise during New Year celebrations.88 By the early 1900s the traditional Scottish game had been supplanted by its more genteel English variant, field hockey, which was played widely by both males and females. To the approval of one correspondent, “the scrimmaging element had been almost entirely eliminated.”89 The willingness of Scots to adopt sports with origins elsewhere was also shown by their fondness for cricket, and, from the 1870s, rugby football.90 Of all the games in which Scots indulged at home, the most popular in the nineteenth century was curling, a form of bowls on ice. Played by all classes, in town and country, it was the first Scottish sport to have hundreds of clubs, the majority affiliated to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, launched in 1838.91 Predictably, the game in New Zealand first appeared in Otago, with an attempt to form a club in Dunedin in 1868. Five more years passed before the club took shape. At the same time a second short-lived club was established at Haldon Station in South Canterbury.92 Both were admitted as members of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1874. The real breakthrough came in mid-1878 when the game was introduced to Central Otago, which was to become its undisputed stronghold. When the cold inhibited gold-seeking or farming activities, the stones were brought out on to frozen ponds or dams in the vicinity of villages such as Naseby and Mt Ida, with runholders, shepherds, and miners competing side by side. By 1886, with seven registered clubs, there was sufficient interest to establish the New Zealand Curling Province.93 In the ensuing three decades clubs came and went. In 1910 there were eight competing at the national championship (bonspiel), by which time curling attracted spectators from Dunedin by rail, after attempts to maintain the game on the seaboard foundered.94 Curling went into decline when the First World War started, and did not fully recover until the eve of the Second World War. In New Zealand curling was always destined to be a boutique sport, restricted in numbers and geographical area. Adherents nevertheless stayed true to the traditional game longer than anywhere else it was played.

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Golf, in contrast, was constantly evolving and by 1900 had spread from Otago across New Zealand.95 Though of similar lineage to shinty and curling, the first golf clubs were not formed until the mideighteenth century. By 1850 there were still fewer than fifty clubs, almost all the preserve of landowners and the emerging professional and commercial elites. In the words of one historian, the course and clubhouse were together “the tribal playground of the new middle class.”96 Golf boomed in Scotland in the course of the nineteenth century, drawing in participants from all classes, although there were clear divisions between clubs and courses. Nevertheless, it was not until 1871 that the first New Zealand club was formed in Dunedin. The Otago Daily Times congratulated the founders on “the establishment of a game in the Antipodes which will recall many happy recollections of early days.”97 The moving force was C.R. Howden, owner of the New Zealand Distillery, and the foundation membership of the Dunedin Golf Club mirrored Scottish practice, including leading business lights and professors from Dunedin’s new university. Despite such support, the club always struggled, not least to provide a proper course. In 1877 the Otago Daily Times registered its astonishment that “such an ancient, noble and recreational game should be patronised by so few … It is not so quiet as croquet, nor is it as violent as shinty or cricket.”98 The appeal was to no avail and by 1880 the club had slipped into recess. At the same time a possible companion club formed in Christchurch in 1873 had also gone into recess, and organized golf in New Zealand lapsed for over a decade. The revival of the game in the early 1890s again owed much to the Howden family.99 While the Christchurch club revived of its own accord in 1891, C.R. Howden was central to the formation of the Otago Golf Club in early 1892, and his brother D.B. helped establish the Hutt Club (Wellington) a few months later. Later C.R.’s son was to be a founder of the Invercargill club. By 1893 there were four active clubs and the first national championship was held in Dunedin that year.100 Four more clubs were established in 1894 and 1895. The network spread rapidly in the early decades of the twentieth century, through town and country. By 1914, seventy-three men’s and twenty ladies’ clubs catering to golfers from all social groups and spread over both major islands were affiliated with the New Zealand Golf Association, set up in 1910.101 Undoubtedly elite clubs emerged, but New Zealand was perhaps the only country outside Scotland where



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the twentieth century game was relatively egalitarian, crossing class and racial lines. By mid-century more New Zealanders played golf than any other organized sport. Just as Scots were unlikely to have arrived in New Zealand kiltclad, any suggestion that they arrived to the skirl of pipes is also soon dispelled. The Scots brought with them several musical traditions; the most pervasive was their sacred music.102 Presbyterians believed that psalms were the only fitting vehicle for the worship of God through music, and that they should be sung without accompaniment. Anything not specifically sanctioned by scripture had no place in divine worship. Organs in Scottish churches had thus been destroyed in the first flush of Calvinism. Emphasizing pious austerity, the psalms were sung under the leadership of a precentor, or “conductor of the psalmody,” who used a special pipe to ensure accurate pitch. Traditionally too, the musical component of the service centred on the congregations, not a choir. But, as in contemporary Scotland, some were becoming impatient with the plainness of this sacred music diet.103 They therefore sought to augment the psalms with modern hymns, as the English Presbyterians had, to promote the use of choirs, and to reintroduce organ music to services. This led to bitter divisions between congregations and parishes, not least between the northern and southern divisions of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand.104 The Northern Province was more amenable, the Synod of Otago and Southland far less so. Confronted with the question, the first General Assembly in 1862 refused to rule against the use of organs and harmoniums, though it did allow the English Presbyterian hymnary to be used in 1873, but in each case the decision was left to the individual congregations.105 The controversy dragged on through the 1870s. In several documented instances minister and flock were in opposition; the strongest resistance to change was among the laity. For some, the obduracy had more to do with holding to old ways than any interpretation of holy writ. Although the Scottish General Assembly had made concessions in the mid-1860s, two more decades passed before these were even contemplated by large sections of the Scottish Church. Thus it was not until the 1880s that even a progressive congregation such as Dunedin’s Knox Church agreed to install an organ and introduce hymns to its worship.106 Evidence from parish histories suggests that even then the battle over the “kist o’ whistles” was far from done. In the 1890s there was still wrangling at Christchurch’s

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Knox Church, and dispute over the introduction of an harmonium to St Paul’s Whanganui stretched over several years.107 For secular music, there were clear differences between the Highlands and Lowlands traditions. The wider Highlands vocal tradition of Gaelic song was maintained only as long as the Gaelic language was in everyday use, usually not much more than a generation.108 Because Highlanders were a minority among New Zealand’s Scots, performing the music tended to be confined to individual homes, and more widely in the rural districts where more Highlanders lived. The songs included Ossianic lays and ballads, labour songs and, when appropriate, mourning and funeral songs.109 It was partially in an endeavour to rescue these cultural traditions that Gaelic societies were fostered from the 1880s, although with a few exceptions these too tended to be short-lived. Concerts were a regular feature of the repertoires, with mixtures of solo Gaelic songs, choral performances, piping, and Highland dancing. The Lowlands musical traditions had been subjected to a wider range of pre-migration external influences, so were always more polymorphic. Extant shipboard diaries record the early migrants bringing with them, in addition to bagpipes, fiddles, flutes, accordions, concertinas, pianos, and harmoniums.110 It has been suggested that Scottish migrants on the first ships to Otago confined themselves to psalmody and national songs, yet reports of the first Anniversary Ball in 1849 note that there was dancing to a quadrille band until “morning’s grey light.”111 Even so, musical life in the Scottish settlements was primarily private, a feature of home and family. On public occasions addresses were punctuated by recitations and the performance of popular ballads and folk songs, there being a natural affinity for the lays of Burns.112 As settlement consolidated, there were occasional concerts, and from the 1860s there were visiting troupes, usually from the Australian colonies, featuring Scottish performers. Perhaps spurred by nostalgia, such visitations had become regular occurrences by the late 1890s. Notable arrivals included The Caledonian Entertainers, a vaudeville company, and Miss Jessie Maclachlan, “the Queen of Scottish Song.”113 A tradition was thus established well before the sentimentality of Harry Lauder. By this point, however, despite little evidence of public performance outside the home before the advent of the Caledonian societies in the 1860s, the bagpipes were firmly established in the public mind as the most pervasive symbol of Scottish music.114 The Games



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provided solo pipers the opportunity to compete. They were also expected to provide the accompaniment for dancing. An even greater fillip came from the formation of pipe bands, the first in Invercargill in 1896.115 Patterned on the pipe and drum ensembles of the British Army’s Highland regiments, the bands were soon in demand at entertainments and public functions throughout New Zealand. There have been suggestions that their emergence coincided with rising jingoistic fervour, but it was just as likely that they were received with such enthusiasm because of the migrant minority’s desire to cling to a distinctive part of their homeland’s culture.116 The launch of the Piping and Dancing Association of New Zealand in 1908 imposed standards of etiquette on piping and also prescribed standards for Highland-style dancing, which had similarly flourished as a result of contests at Caledonian Games.117 By the early 1900s there were already strong rivalries between the different schools of dance and conflict over the appearance of female dancers in what, for most of the nineteenth century, had been a maledominated activity. On a less competitive level the Lowlands style of Scottish country dancing persisted. At first informal at family and community gatherings, country dancing was also encouraged through the Caledonian Games, but from the late nineteenth century had separated to form Scottish Country Dance Clubs.118

Languages and Literature Not all Scottish migrants’ recreational activities involved exercising the body or safeguarding the soul. An unusually high proportion devoted at least some of their time to matters of the mind. Respect for education was a tradition migrants had carried with them. T.M. Devine has submitted that by the mid-nineteenth century this had become “a potent symbol of Scottishness.”119 From the sixteenth century the objective of education had been to enable common people to read the Bible; hence imparting the necessary skills had been devolved to church-linked schools. By the early nineteenth century the tenet was that most working folk should be able to “read, write and account.”120 In the rural Lowlands in 1840 most parish schools provided an adequate standard of education to about age thirteen, but in the burgeoning towns arrangements were more erratic. There the average level of schooling was no more than nine years; the levels in the Highlands and Islands were even more problematic.

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The situation was further complicated by the everyday use of three languages.121 On the western periphery Scottish Gaelic was the common tongue, while in the Lowlands Broad Scots (Lallans) and Scottish Standard English competed according to situation and class. Even so, the level of literacy was much higher than in England, Wales, or Ireland and the Scots migrants brought with them a strong reading tradition. The first immigrant ships to Dunedin in 1848 carried on board a library of 1,000 volumes for public use.122 It was also logical that settlers should write, not just letters home, but creatively, their writing a blend of old and new world experiences. Yet for many, the spoken word, the key to unwritten traditions and oral literatures, was just as precious as the written. In the colonial cultural melting pot, strenuous efforts were needed to retain at least a part of this spoken heritage. The most distinctive of the Scottish languages was Gaelic. It had a rich oral and written tradition and until about the fifteenth century had been the common language for the greater part of Scotland.123 Yet by the eighteenth century it was largely restricted to the Highlands and the Western Islands, even there coming under further assault after “the ’45.” Even so, by 1800 Gaelic remained the sole language for nearly 300,000 Scots, around 18.5 per cent of the Scottish population. A much larger number was almost certainly bilingual.124 However, despite increasing numbers of Highland migrants to Otago in the 1860s and early 1870s, it was estimated that in 1872 there were no more than 2,000 Gaelic speakers among the province-wide Scottish-born population of 21,400.125 Elsewhere in New Zealand Gaelic-speaking communities tended to be localized, often reflecting arrival origins. At Turakina, for example, the core of the community had boarded ship together on the Blenheim in 1840. The Rev. McLeod’s followers at Waipu had also been part of a community migration. In both instances the migrants had originally been drawn from predominantly Gaelic-speaking locations. It was in tight-knit settlements such as these that “the Gaelic” remained in everyday use longest, reinforced by constant use of the language in religious devotions. Maintaining the language in larger centres was a great deal more difficult, even in the South Island Scottish heartlands. As early as the 1870s fears were being expressed that the language was fading, increasing the likelihood that this would inhibit further Highlands migration.126 In particular, controversy surrounded the refusal of the



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Presbyterian Church to recruit clergy capable of preaching in Gaelic. One vituperative 1872 correspondent, “Old Identity,” went so far as to claim that many Highland migrants had “lapsed into a species of heathenism from want of a Gaelic Gospel Ministry.”127 At the time, more than eight years had elapsed since a Gaelic service had been preached in one of the main Dunedin churches, allowing many hundreds who understood the English language imperfectly to “wander like sheep without a shepherd.” In an attempt to preserve what existed, perhaps to reclaim something of what had been lost, the New Zealand Gaelic Society was founded in Dunedin in 1881.128 Among its stated aims were to discuss “questions affecting the interests of Highlanders,” to celebrate Highland dancing and music, to translate English songs and hymns into Gaelic, and above all “the conservation of the Gaelic language.”129 Its membership was exclusive, restricted to the Highlands-­born, and, at first, to those who spoke the Gaelic tongue. The new organization attracted strong early support, both from the public and from men of influence; its first three chiefs were Dr J.R.A. Menzies, former superintendent of Southland Province, Rev. D.M. Stuart, first minister of Knox Church, and Hon. John McKenzie, the reforming minister of lands in the first Liberal government elected in 1891. There was appreciable momentum in the Gaelic Society’s first decade, with enthusiastic newspaper reports of social gatherings, the development of a library, and in 1888 the initiation of monthly Gaelic services and a weekly Gaelic Bible Class at Chalmers Church, a part-­congregation that had earlier broken away over the issue of instrumental music.130 The pity was that the die was probably already cast. Growing numbers in the wider New Zealand Scottish community believed attempts to maintain Gaelic were ill-considered, that it was better to promote the use of English. Further complicating matters, in Scotland the number of monoglot Gaelic speakers was plummeting; the nearly 300,000 of 1800 had dropped to fewer than 44,000 by 1891.131 Yet beyond the regular meetings of the Dunedin Gaelic Society and offshoots established in other centres, there were few opportunities to informally use the language. When Highland families came to live in communities where few others spoke Gaelic, the language began to die in the second generation. By the third, only isolated words or phrases remained. This realization forced changes in the Gaelic societies. When McKenzie was installed as chief in ­January 1895, he excused himself from responding in

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the mother tongue: while he “had a good deal of the language, and could converse in it pretty freely … he was more accustomed to speaking in English.”132 There were now many members “who could not speak Gaelic, but had strong Highland leanings – who were as good Highlanders as any of them.” From this point the Gaelic societies became cultural groups, essentially outlets for enthusiasts. It was this enthusiasm that led to the first New Zealand publications including Gaelic material just before, and immediately after, the First World War.133 However, by 1900 Gaelic had already slipped into disuse, even in the isolated Highland enclaves. In 1914 Rangitikei landowner Sir James Wilson noted that when he first took up his property in 1874, the older people at Turakina conversed only in Gaelic in most cases, whereas those who also spoke English did so with a “beautiful intonation;” now, he lamented, the tongue had been irrevocably lost.134 At Waipu the erosion was slightly slower, but the result the same. Scotland’s non-Gaelic speaking migrants were located along a linguistic continuum ranging from the traditional Broad Scots at one end to Scottish Standard English at the other.135 By the 1840s, Lowlands or Broad Scots (Lallans) was the language of the common people, the vernacular for many rural communities and the growing numbers of urban working-class Scots.136 Although both also wrote in English, it was also the dialect of Burns and Scott, leading to literary emulators in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Scottish Standard English was more recent, having evolved since the 1707 Act of Union.137 Borrowing from the English of northern England, but with phonological and lexical additions from Broad Scots, it was essentially the language of the Scottish middle class: professionals, officials, merchants. It was also the language of instruction in all but the most rudimentary schools, sometimes contrasting with the language of the home. It was inevitable that these Lowlands languages would soon be modified post-migration, although Broad Scots held some currency well beyond the first generation, becoming by default the language of Caledonian ceremony.138 At Scottish gatherings, even those with a Highland tinge, it was regularly employed: to have addressed the haggis in Scottish Standard English would likely have drawn ridicule. Its use in addresses and recitations at Burns club dinners was deemed mandatory, and many of the clubs formed from the late 1880s considered it obligatory to foster facility in the dialect.



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Modification started almost as soon as the migrants landed. Recent research has postulated a three-phase modification process in the evolution of New Zealand English.139 In the first, covering the early contact decades, from the 1840s to the 1870s, migrants largely held to the speech patterns they had brought with them. In the second phase, roughly the last three decades of the nineteenth century, when the first and second New Zealand-born generations became ascendant, variations became much more apparent, although elements of the original dialects remained clearly identifiable. In the third phase, essentially the twentieth century, these last were steadily eroded as a new composite dialect, New Zealand English, emerged. Linguists now agree that the dominant dialectical influence on the evolution of New Zealand English was the southeastern England type, not because most of New Zealand’s migrants came from that location, but because English speech forms encountered there were most commonly found in the other dialects.140 The extent to which Lowlands Scottish language forms were incorporated into New Zealand English remains a matter of debate. Drawing on a detailed study of the origins of New Zealand English, at first appearance there seemed to be little phonological impact, but further analysis suggests there might be more than immediately meets the ear.141 The original investigation, based on an assessment of unique recordings of 325 individuals made in the late 1940s, all born between 1850 and 1900, permitted residual Scottish elements in the second and third generations, most subsequently lost, to be distinguished. Those who retained Scottish influences in their speech patterns the longest were, unsurprisingly, mainly from Otago and Southland, but it is equally likely that those who grew up in predominantly Scottish communities elsewhere held the features longer than those living in more mixed populations.142 The same explanation may be applied to the enduring retention of “the Southland burr,” an example of rhoticity that can still be found in Southland and parts of Otago.143 The case for lexical contributions to New Zealand English is much stronger. However, even in this case no one knows the precise origin of words generally regarded as Scottish but which might equally have come from northern England or Ulster, or even been introduced through the Australian colonies. Nevertheless, a survey based on the groundbreaking Dictionary of New Zealand English (2007) noted the large number of words

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a­ rguably introduced from Scottish Standard English, deeming this “one of the striking results” of the investigation.144 “A well-conditioned colonist,” stated the New Zealand Journal in 1844, “is of necessity a reading man: debarred from the more frivolous amusements of the mother country, he has no resource but in books, or the debasing influence of the tavern.”145 New Zealand was systematically settled at a time when what has been termed “the reading revolution” was underway, the rising standards of public literacy matched by an unprecedented outpouring of printed works: books, periodicals, newspapers.146 Nowhere was this more evident than in Scotland. The unusually high levels of literacy already noted were catered to in a golden age of Scottish publishing. During the early nineteenth century decades Scottish firms such as Constable, A & C Black, Blackie, and Collins competed vigorously with their London counterparts, subsequently penetrating that business.147 Macmillan, founded in London in 1843 by the sons of a Scottish crofter, was by no means singular. The resulting drop in the price of books meant that many of the better-off migrant families carried with them small personal libraries. It was thus not uncommon in devout households for regular Bible readings to be augmented by extracts from such works as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Milton’s Paradise Lost, or Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.148 For the less straitlaced, editions of Burns and Scott were at least a foundation. Understandably then, an acute shortage of new reading matter, beyond colonial newspapers, was a frustration. Throughout the 1840s there were few specialist booksellers, an exception being Wellington’s William Lyon, who had run a business in Hamilton, near Glasgow. Migrants therefore had to rely on private packages or speculative consignments for auction to general merchant houses.149 This lent impetus to the early formation of public libraries in all of New Zealand’s major settlements at a much more rapid rate than in North America or the Australian colonies. Unlike the free public libraries of Scotland, however, the New Zealand libraries, though labelled public, were overwhelmingly subscription libraries, whether established in association with mechanics’ institutes, athenaeums, or managed by community groups.150 But, mirroring Scotland, the early emphasis was on reading for self-improvement; the stock included colonists’ guides, histories, religious commentaries, and only classic works of fiction, together with newspapers and periodicals.



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The predominantly Scottish province of Otago was the most book-conscious of all the settlements151 and the library brought to Dunedin on the first two immigrant ships in 1848 was soon put to good use. Replicating a scheme that had operated in East Lothian, following the opening of the Church of Otago Library in June 1849 a proposal was advanced to circulate crates of fifty books to the outdistricts, thereby paving the way for the Otago provincial administration in 1862 to introduce financial support for public libraries.152 By 1875 there were eighty-eight in a province with a population of 115,680, nearly half of all the public libraries in the colony.153 While responsibility for aid to public libraries was accepted by the central government following the 1876 abolition of the provincial system of government, the level of support afforded was erratic. Libraries came and went and by 1901, despite a rise in the population of Otago to 173,145, the number of subsidized public libraries in Otago had actually dropped by one.154 This was an outcome of both changing circumstances and the consolidation of resources. As an example, when the Lawrence Athenaeum Library was founded in 1865, it was one of eight serving the Tuapeka district, the site of Otago’s first alluvial gold rush. At its peak, in addition to migrant settlers, there had been over 10,000 miners on the field. By 1901 the library was serving a district population of no more than 1,000, but the book stock had risen from 500 to 6,500 volumes.155 Elsewhere in New Zealand public library services had expanded rapidly, considerably more than doubling between 1874 and 1901, with the greatest growth in the upper North Island.156 What stands out from an examination of the 1901 census return by counties is the popularity of libraries in those with strong Scottish settlement clusters. Not so obvious from the census returns is that the purpose of reading and the function of libraries had fundamentally altered. Libraries had changed from being centres for self-improvement to storehouses providing entertainment. There had been, library historian J.E. Traue notes, “a switch from intensive reading, deliberate and reverential, of a small number of texts, mostly religious … to extensive or promiscuous reading.”157 Reading for pleasure had become an acceptable leisure activity and recourse to novels, as well as newspapers and periodicals, had become as much a part of the daily routine as food, shelter, and clothing. This was evidenced by the creation of libraries associated with workplaces, even including farms and sheep stations, for example the Wairarapa’s Brancepeth

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property. The switch to reading for pleasure meant that by 1901 most of the smaller libraries were buying only fiction. The extant Brancepeth collection shows that Scots helped provide the entertainment for expatriate Scots and others.158 The station’s owners were English, but many of their employees were Scottish, and the wear and tear on volumes demonstrates the popularity of Scottish writers. Beyond the classics, William Blake’s tales promoting Celtic consciousness were well read, as were the works of George Macdonald; the library held fourteen of his titles. S.R. Crockett’s “vernacular fictions,” set in Galloway, were also popular, but the best-loved was the prolific Amelia Barr. Later the works of writers such as R.L. ­Stevenson were eagerly awaited. If self-improvement was the primary focus of much of the reading of the earliest Scots migrants, their writing tended to have similar functional purposes. The first efforts, in both the private and public contexts, were to provide information.159 The Scots were scarcely unique in their epistolary practices, but recent research suggests they were among the more diligent of New Zealand’s colonial correspondents. A study of 784 extant letters, the preponderance from Otago and Southland, most of the remainder from the southern North Island Scottish settlements, reinforces the centrality of kith and kin in the migration process. There was heavy emphasis in the letters on conditions and prospects in the two locations.160 These letters were for limited circulation within families and between close associates. A few, however, found their way into print, and it is likely that a number were published for publicity purposes between 1848 and 1852 in organs such as the Edinburgh-based Otago Journal.161 With similar purpose the first books were penned. From the 1840s there were published accounts of colonial experiences, hints for intending migrants, and, a little later, reminiscences. An early example was Alexander Marjoribanks’s Travels in New Zealand (1846), published in London.162 A cabin passenger to Wellington on the Bengal Merchant in 1840, Marjoribanks was one of that settlement’s prospective elite, but his chatty and amusing volume was scarcely a paean of praise for the New Zealand Company. There was a steady trickle of such publications until the 1870s. Typical were James Adam’s Emigration to New Zealand: Description of the Province of Otago (1857) and J.T. Thomson’s Rambles with a Philosopher; or Views of the Antipodes (1867), the former a short guidebook, the latter a more extended outline of life in the province of Otago.163



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Adam was an early Otago arrival and later served as the province’s immigration agent in the United Kingdom, while ­Thomson took up an appointment as Otago provincial surveyor in 1856. From the 1870s, three decades after the beginning of systematic colonization, reminiscences became the most popular non-fiction genre by New Zealand’s Scottish writers. Adam was again a contributor with his Twenty-five Years of Emigrant Life in the South of New Zealand, but of greater long-term interest from the southern heartlands was Alexander Bathgate’s Colonial Experiences; or Sketches of People and Places in the Province of Otago, New Zealand, both published in 1874, Adam in London and Bathgate in Glasgow.164 An arrival in Dunedin from Peebles in 1863, Bathgate paralleled his business interests with a literary career that extended to the 1920s. More substantial by far were the memoirs of James Coutts Crawford (Recollections of Travel in Australia and New Zealand) and John Logan Campbell (Poenamo: Sketches of Early Days in New Zealand), both published in London, in 1880 and 1881 respectively.165 Crawford, a former naval officer from Strathaven, arrived in Wellington from South Australia in 1839, and became a substantial landowner and public figure of some note. Campbell, an Edinburgh medical graduate, also travelled to New Zealand via Australia, and for sixty years was at the forefront of the Auckland mercantile community. By 1900, however, the demand for such works had slackened; much of the romance was gone. Creative writing by New Zealand’s Scots was slower to materialize. When it did the writers inhabited two worlds: the old, to which most looked back with nostalgia and regret, and the new, with which they had to come to terms. In a penetrating review of the poetry and fiction of the Scottish settlers, Kirstine Moffatt distinguishes four major themes: the geographic and psychological dislocation experienced by migrants; the contrast between the homeland rich in history and the new world full of possibilities, but otherwise a blank canvas; the dream of an egalitarian society; and the enduring moralistic legacy of Presbyterianism.166 With few exceptions, the major influences were from the Lowlands, the same fundamental texts as modern Scottish literature. Verse was the first literary form in which Scottish migrants expressed themselves, with “the Burns effect” being clearly evident.167 William Golder’s New Zealand Minstrelsy, locally published in 1852, was unquestionably modelled on Burns’s Ministrelsy

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of the Scottish Borders, written a half century earlier.168 Also from Strathaven, and also a passenger on the Bengal Merchant in 1840, but in steerage, Golder was a teacher and part-time farmer. Classifiable as an “artisan poet,” his work mixed home forms with colonial locations, although its use of Broad Scots was less pronounced than among contemporaries.169 Most other Scottish colonial versifiers regularly employed the Lowlands vernacular. Arriving in Dunedin the year Golder’s volume first appeared, Paisley-born John Barr, soon dubbed the “Bard of the Otago Province,” also imitated Burns, expressing Scottish identity, praising the new home in vernacular, declaiming the poverty and privilege left behind. Described by Hocken as “a general favourite,” one always prepared to “sing one or two of his new compositions” at social gatherings, his work tended to be published in weekly newspapers and as broadsheets before being collected.170 In fact, Barr was but one of a number of local bards. Most performed on social occasions, publishing as circumstances permitted, purveying sentimental nostalgia and contrasting the new world with the old. Representative were the Rangitikei’s “Backwoodsman” (Louis McLachlan), a first-generation descendant of the Blenheim Scots, Auckland’s John Liddell Kelly, and later, the “Bard of the Inangahua,” Kilmarnock’s Hugh Smith.171 Though these rhymers tended to be dismissed by twentieth-century literary historians, their popularity strongly suggests they met a need, and their use of the Lowlands vernacular helped ensure its continuance for several generations. Slightly to one side was Jessie Mackay, described by a later commentator as “the first poet of any importance to be born in New Zealand.”172 Daughter of a Sutherlandshire shepherd, she inherited from him both his Presbyterianism and his radical political views. There is a harder edge to her writings than with most of her male counterparts, as is also the case with those of Edinburgh-born Wilhelmina Sheriff Elliot, another political activist.173 The works of these popular poets, male and female, folk and more cultured, together with those of others such as Robert Francis and Edith Hodgkinson, maintained their appeal until well into the twentieth century with those whose education in language was rudimentary. Despite the growing nineteenth-century enthusiasm for the novel, prose fiction by New Zealand’s Scottish migrants was even slower to appear than verse, and arguably lost its ethnic distinctiveness even earlier. Most offerings shared the literary characteristics of the



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v­ ersifiers. “Recording” novels heavy on description of place were prominent, with regular use of vernacular in the dialogue. One of the first to be noted was G.H. Wilson’s Ena, or the Ancient Maori (1874), which implied a strong affinity between M aori ¯ and the primitive Gael, and, contrary to the preference for Lowlands models, employed Macpherson’s prose version of the Ossianic sagas to structure the work.174 Nearly ten years later, from the pen of ­Alexander Bathgate, came the first of what have been termed the “rolling stone” novels, Waitaruna (1881), a tale of how two lads from the same ship, one cheerful and practical, the other thoughtful and bookish, make their ways on the gold fields and sheep properties of southern New Zealand.175 With an autobiographical base, there are strong moralistic overtones. In similar vein were William Langton’s Mark Anderson (1889), described as “bearing noticeably the mark of the manse … varied with some vivid Scotticisms,” and Dugald Ferguson’s Vicissitudes of Bush Life in Australia and New Zealand (1893) and Mates (1912).176 R.N. Adams’s The Counterfeit Seal (1897) focused on the opening years of the Otago settlement and was considered “very informative and very pious.”177 Few of these authors made their living from their writings, which naturally limited their output. Although almost invariably those who published more extended works, particularly prose fiction, did so in the United Kingdom, in the twentieth century interest in such works overseas perceptibly waned. Equally, interest in New Zealand dropped as the locally born came to overwhelmingly dominate and the search for New Zealand literary canons picked up pace in the 1930s. Vestiges of Scots tradition can be traced in many modern writers, poets, and novelists, but are incidental to stronger New Zealand identities.178

Conclusion Chapter 8 noted that many of the introduced folkways relating to everyday living had been either abandoned or substantially modified within two generations. Those that survived became juxtaposed with the customs of New Zealand’s other major ethnic groups. By 1900 the dominant domestic ways were colonial New Zealand ways. In terms of the broader cultural traditions transported, however, some subtly different patterns were emerging. The church remained a constant. For perhaps a majority of Scottish ­communities and ­families, the

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Presbyterian faith continued to be central to their lives. Enthusiasm for regular worship and kirk-related activities seemingly diminished little until the late twentieth century. Yet within four decades of the beginning of systematic Scottish settlement, many of the introduced rituals had been revised, and though Christmas and Easter observances were not fully sanctioned until the 1930s, there was more comfortable accommodation with the followers of other faiths. This did not invariably imply a more liberal outlook on the part of congregations; progressives were always counterbalanced by obdurate traditionalists, and the late-nineteenth and early-­twentieth-century decades were marked by strong church backing for several reactionary social campaigns. Yet what is significant is that the New Zealand Presbyterian Church was not the Scottish Presbyterian Church; it was already developing its own persona. The turn of the twentieth century also witnessed a renaissance in several cultural areas. In earlier decades pursuits such as piping and Scottish dancing had mainly been confined to homes, but from the 1890s there was new and wider interest. The trend is also evident in the growing number of ethnic associations. The revived interest might be partly attributed to the availability of more leisure time, but it is equally conceivable that it was a reaction to the culturally smothering emergence of the “New Zealand-British” identity. Maintaining the Gaelic might have been challenging to all but a few, but folk music and dance forms held greater community appeal. Even so, traditions changed. Whereas earlier solo piping and male dancing had been the norms, now pipe bands flourished and women came to dominate dance competitions. There were no such transformations in the case of literary endeavour. While there was an early inclination to embrace the canons of home, by the early twentieth century this had largely passed. In more overtly leisure areas, field sports, or organized competitions such as golf, traditional Scottish activities were successfully transplanted and transformed in New Zealand from being the preserve of the wealthy to pastimes enjoyed by citizens of all stations.

10 New Zealand’s Place in the Scottish Diaspora and Settler Worlds

Scots who migrated to New Zealand were, like Scottish migrants everywhere, a heterogeneous group, making them a difficult body to study. They also assimilated quickly into the host societies, perhaps because, as T.M. Devine has suggested, the Act of Union ensured that they did not experience the same kind of prejudices as the Irish.1 Yet the research presented in this book demonstrates that the New Zealand Scots have distinctive features compared with other British migrants within New Zealand and Scots migrants to other New World destinations. These features ensured that the Scottish contribution to the evolution of New Zealand society and culture was greater than in most other destinations. Indeed, the present study generally supports Belich’s contention that New Zealand was “the neo-Scotland.”2 Eastern Canada complicates the claim, but recent research suggests that Scottish influence there has been retrospectively exaggerated for political purposes and in an attempt to promote tourism.3 This study also supports an earlier proposition that the higher proportion of Scots within the New Zealand migrant mix, particularly when compared with the Irish, made it into a rather different country than Australia.4 Yet, as in every other part of the British Empire, Scots were still a minority compared with the English, despite being overrepresented among emigrants from the British Isles. This meant that throughout the Empire their history became overlaid by English law and was largely determined by the dictates of colonial policy devised in London. Thus, even though the present study confirms that Scots were culturally more distinct than English migrants, they were never more than an important minority in an English colony, and later, dominion. A fuller assessment of their contribution in the New Z ­ ealand

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context therefore awaits a much fuller investigation of the English migrants. Until then, despite this study’s best efforts to compare the Scots with English and Irish migrants, our understanding will remain partial.5 What follows, under five main headings, is a comparison of the experiences and influences of New Zealand’s Scottish migrants with those of Scottish migrants in Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa. It is acknowledged that Scots went to every part of the so-called “informal” as well as the “formal” British Empire, however the destinations chosen for comparison, all white settler societies and recognized parts of the wider “British world,” have been deemed the most logical.6

Reasons for Leaving: New Zealand’s Place in the Scottish Diaspora Even if New Zealand was “the neo-Scotland” by the early twentieth century, it held a modest place in the broader Scottish diaspora: only about 68,000 people, or around 6 per cent of the 1,841,534 Scots who emigrated before 1914, went to New Zealand.7 North America always attracted the great majority because immigration began earlier there than elsewhere; it was closer and well served by regular shipping services and it held out the greatest opportunities. Consequently, about 516,000 or 28 per cent of the total travelled to Canada, with larger numbers to the United States. Around 810,000 or 44 per cent of Scots migrants ventured to non-European destinations. The more populous Australian colonies drew about 250,000 or 19 per cent of the Scottish emigrant total. Scots played an important role in the developing history of South Africa, representing about 14 per cent of white persons born outside the country by 1911, but their total numbers, at 37,138, were much smaller.8 Overall, Scots made up a little over 20 per cent of New Zealand’s nineteenth-­century migrants from Britain and Europe.9 This compares with around 12 per cent in Australia, around 17 per cent in Canada, and between 2 and 3 per cent in the United States.10 As was shown in chapter 2, and confirming earlier studies, the great majority of Scottish migrants who travelled to New Zealand were voluntary departures, “adventurers” rather than “exiles,” to borrow Marjory Harper’s perceptive classification.11 Rebecca Lenihan’s finegrained research has made it clear that although Highlanders were



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slightly overrepresented according to their proportion of the Scottish population, Lowlanders still heavily dominated the migration flow to New Zealand.12 Migration to New Zealand was too late to have had much direct connection to the Highland Clearances. Similarly, what T.M. Devine and others have called the “Lowland Clearances,” the amalgamation of tenant farms into bigger units, the removal of a whole social class known as the “cotters” or small landowners and artisans, and the immiseration of farm servants, were largely completed before much Scottish emigration to New Zealand. With the possible exception of Waipu and Orcadians on Stewart Island,13 New Zealand lacked the concentrations of Presbyterian or Catholic Highlanders that characterized the settlement of Eastern Canada, or even Western Victoria in Australia.14 Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, Midlothian, and Aberdeenshire were the dominant source areas, signalling the fact that the great majority of Scots who came to New Zealand were committed to modernity rather than hankering after some kind of idealized feudal past.15 The availability of relatively cheap land, if seldom free, along with selection preference by recruiting agencies, helps explain why there were more New Zealand migrants in rural occupations than among Australian Scots. Conversely, the greater opportunities for manufacturing in Australia attracted more labourers direct from Scottish factories.16 Even among Highlanders, Scottish migration to New Zealand seems to have been more dominated by families than elsewhere. Families appear to have been more important in the Australian than in the North American diaspora, whereas in South Africa men outnumbered women nearly two to one.17 As in all migrant groups who left the British Isles for New Zealand, young men were overrepresented, but married men and women appear to have been more heavily represented among the Scots who travelled to New Zealand.18 The cost, physical discomfort, and length of the journey clearly dissuaded many women from taking passage on their own, especially in comparison with the Irish. Migration agencies also showed a preference for families across time, not just in the initial phase of Wakefield settlement.19 Chain migration was common, if not as evident as at some other destinations. Whole families, whether they were Lowlanders, Highlanders, Shetlanders, or Orcadians, reconstituted themselves across the second half of the nineteenth century.20 The cost of the voyage, more than four times that of travelling across the Atlantic,21 sometimes compounded by the expense of even

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getting to ports of embarkation, mostly debarred the lowest strata of Scottish society from journeying to New Zealand. The majority of New Zealand’s Scots came from the respectable working classes, that is, generally skilled, and the lower middle class. The majority were literate and upwardly mobile. At the other end of the scale, as noted in earlier chapters, apart from a small leavening of farmers, professionals, and businessmen, only a few came from the upper echelons of society. Fewer merchants migrated compared with those who went to South Africa or Australia, although Scots soon assumed prominent positions among the business communities of New Zealand. Greater opportunities existed for merchants in Sydney and Hobart during the convict era, down to the mid-nineteenth century, and later in Melbourne during the gold rushes of the 1850s. Free land grants to this group gave them an advantage over most other settlers and some went on to become successful pastoralists, bankers, and stock and station agents with direct links to Scottish shipping and industrial magnates.22 Clerics were important, to provide for their Scottish congregations, but in comparison with South Africa, or even Australia, very few Scottish missionaries travelled to New Zealand. The Church of England dominated the early mission field, via the Church Missionary Society, whereas the Wesleyan Missionary Society operated at a more modest level. French Catholics led by the Marist order competed for M ¯aori souls.23 Presbyterians remained largely absent from the missionary endeavour until the late nineteenth century, when missions to China, India, and Melanesia became more important, but the New Zealand Presbyterian Church showed little interest in M ¯aori until the twentieth century. M ¯aori Presbyterianism became tribally distinctive, especially among the central North Island Tuhoe people, as well as some of the Ng ¯ati Kahungunu hapu (sub-tribes) in northern Hawkes Bay.24 New Zealand’s Scots came from every part of their homeland, including the remote Outer Hebrides, but Lowlanders dominated, averaging around 70 per cent of Scottish migrants who came to the country before 1920. After the initial phase of settlement (1840 to 1852), Lanarkshire was always the primary source of migrants. Midlothian, including Edinburgh, played a more important role in the first organized settlement of Otago as the founders directed the whole project from the Scottish capital. The capital city and its environs remained an important source of migrants throughout, but became less so after the gold rush era of the 1860s, when more



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migrants arrived in the 1870s from Ross and Cromarty, Ayrshire and Aberdeen than Midlothian. Shetland in particular contributed a significantly higher proportion of migrants in this decade. In the early twentieth century Renfrewshire and Stirling became more important, but nearly a quarter of all Scots migrants arriving in these years were still from Lanarkshire.25 Orcadians also arrived in greater numbers in the early twentieth century, when few went to either Australia or Canada, in contrast to the 1880s, when Orcadians found Queensland a more attractive destination and migration to New Zealand was almost at a standstill.26 Scots travelling to New Zealand left in response to a complex set of push and pull factors. The major waves to New Zealand were related to the vagaries of the trade cycle and fluctuations in migration flows to North America.27 Usually Scots left for New Zealand when unemployment was high at home and wages were low and when New Zealand offered something more than other destinations. Undoubtedly the gold rushes of the 1860s made the difference in that decade (although many gold rush immigrants had also spent some years on the Victorian gold fields). In the 1870s the New Zealand government’s offer of assisted passages and high wages coincided with a major downturn in the Scottish economy, when recession and even famine stalked the Highlands. The United States economy was also in a severe recession at this time and immigration dried up. Many Scots, like English agricultural labourers, therefore decided to undertake the much longer voyage to New Zealand rather than linking with kin and other Scots in North America.28 The “inverse relationship” between the New Zealand and Australian economies during the nineteenth century, that is, the propensity of New Zealand to flourish when Australia experienced recession and vice versa, also dictated on which side of the Tasman Sea Scots decided to disembark.29 Consequently, the gold rushes of the early 1850s pushed Australia, and especially Victoria, to the forefront as a destination area, whereas the economic difficulties of the 1870s there, in comparison with the booming New Zealand economy, shifted flows in New Zealand’s direction. In the early twentieth century New Zealand again proved more attractive to Scots because it recovered earlier from the so-called “Long Depression” than Australia and was not ravaged by drought and flood to the same extent.30 Yet, as a rule, and not only during the gold rush decades, New South Wales, Victoria, and New Zealand were really a single

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labour market, with many people, especially single men, crossing back and forth according to circumstance.31 New Zealand’s increasing reliance on pastoral or grassland farming created opportunities for rural Scots rather than factory workers. Scots shepherds and experienced farm workers remained in high demand from the 1860s into the twentieth century and won high wages compared with other rural labourers. The success of Scottish farmers, discussed in chapter 4, highlights the opportunities that New Zealand held out for persons with rural experience and appropriate skills. Indeed, the preponderance of rural occupations within the Scottish migrants to New Zealand does not fit easily with T.M. Devine’s arguments about the “Scottish paradox.”32 In Devine’s view, a country that industrialized even faster than England should not have lost so much labour, skill, and capital – of the economic, social, and cultural kind – so quickly. Yet New Zealand attracted persons who were either trying to escape the worst excesses of over-rapid urbanization and industrialization or who hoped to realize the more traditional agrarian dream of owning a viably-sized farm. There seems to have been little of the resistance to agricultural innovation displayed by some Highlanders in Canada before the mid-nineteenth century.33 In travelling across such vast tracts of space many Scots migrants to New Zealand were, in fact, attempting to travel back in time to a simpler, pre-industrial order. Others hoped to turn the modernity unleashed by the second agricultural revolution in the Scottish Lowlands to advantage in a colony with apparently abundant land, a point more recently stressed by Devine.34 In short, the industrial revolution only explains Scots migration in terms of changes within agriculture, rather than in relation to the factory system of production. Furthermore, it must not be forgotten, as Angela McCarthy has argued, that Scots took advantage of improvements in information about emigrant destinations by making use of innovations such as the telegraph and popular press, and transport technologies, especially steam ships, to travel to somewhere as distant as New Zealand.35 This aspect of both the so-called “first” and “second” industrial revolutions helps explain why somewhere like Scotland lost so many people while at the same time attracting so many others from predominantly rural countries such as Ireland and Italy. Both inflows and outflows thereby problematize the notion of “paradox.”



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As chapter 4 makes clear, those with skills in the metallurgical and textile industries certainly fared well in New Zealand, but there was simply much less scope for such activity in the Empire’s giant stock farm compared with Australia and Canada, let alone the United States. Distinctive groups like the Shetlanders and Orcadians came for more particular reasons, such as a late clearance, overpopulation, or the offer of special assistance. Case studies of these two groups by Lenihan and Harland36 appear to confirm the starting hypothesis that “the profiles of the migrant flows from Scotland were never fixed or one-dimensional, varying according to time, region of origin, class, occupation and gender.” This complexity was observable at most Scots destinations, but Highlanders were clearly more important in Eastern Canada, just as industrial workers from the industrial heartland went to North America and Australia in much higher proportions. A much higher percentage of farmers and skilled farm workers from the Eastern and Western Lowlands went to New Zealand, although Scots also had much success in Canada and the United States as farmers and gardeners.37

Encountering and Settling Although Scots migrants dominated in Otago and Southland, just as they dominated in Eastern Canada, they nevertheless spread across the whole of New Zealand, just as they scattered across the whole of Canada and Australia. The densities were never uniform. Even in south-central Otago, the site of the first gold rushes, there were fewer Scots compared with rural Southland or rural Otago. Moreover, as chapter 3 has shown, there were substantial clusters in South and Mid-Canterbury, reinforcing earlier suggestions that the notion of “English” Canterbury seriously distorts historical reality. Similarly, even though the West Coast is regarded as the most Irish place in New Zealand, about 19 per cent of gold miners from the mid- to late-1860s were Scots.38 There were other important Scottish clusters in Wellington, the Rangitikei, eastern Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay, Waikato, and Auckland, and strong evidence that Scots-born New Zealanders moved from the South Island to the North Island from the late nineteenth century in pursuit of farm ownership.39 Such dispersal suggests similar patterns to those discerned in the work of S­ tephen Hornsby on Canada, where Scots migrants soon moved west to the Prairies and even on to British Columbia.40 ­Prentis and

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Lucas have recorded similar movements in Australia, where, despite an initial preference for Victoria, Scots soon moved to Queensland and then to all other states in search of opportunity.41 Scottish migrants who settled any one area of New Zealand were usually represented roughly in proportion to their percentage of the Scottish home population, except where occupational specializations such as shepherding caused groups such as Highlanders to be overrepresented. Highlanders were consequently overrepresented in upland Southland and the Mackenzie Country, whereas Eastern Lowlanders were underrepresented. Conversely, Western Lowlanders dominated in a commercial hub like Auckland city.42 This seems little different from how Scots distributed themselves across Australia and South Africa, although concentrated clusters (or knots) characterized those parts of Eastern Canada settled earlier than New Zealand.43 As chapter 6 revealed, Scots, like most other immigrants, struggled to come to terms with environmental difference in New Zealand, even if New Zealand’s cool and damp climate proved less of a challenge than Canada’s frigidity, or the heat and aridity of Australia and South Africa. Scottish-trained botanists and geologists in all parts of the Empire made a more substantial contribution to the development of natural sciences than any other ethnic group. They mapped the underlying structures of the land, built botanic gardens and arboretums, and collected plants, animals, and rock samples for museums in the new lands, as well as for Kew Gardens in London and the universities and museums of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen.44 However, it is likely that, as in New Zealand, deeper research will probably reveal that, even though some Scots emerged at the forefront of early efforts at conservation, the great majority had a much larger impact as improvers of farm land, remaking the environments and landscapes of their adopted countries along generically modern lines rather than in any particularly distinctive Scottish way.

The Public World: Economic Successes and Contributions to Civil Society The present study confirms that the stereotype of “the successful Scot” has some basis in historical reality. Imperial and Scottish historians have stressed the extent to which Scots soon joined colonial economic and social elites because of their particular Scottish skill



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sets, their experience of capitalism, their capacity for networking, and their Calvinist commitment to hard work and meticulous organization.45 Most historians of the Scots in Canada and Australia support this notion, which has attained the status of a “given,” to the extent that it has become respectable academic orthodoxy.46 The analysis presented in earlier chapters bears out claims that the Scots overachieved in a society where wealth accumulation resulted mainly from the acquisition and farming of land, or from commercial and financial activity often linked directly to agricultural development.47 Close comparison of men born in Scotland with those of English origin in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand listings makes it clear that Scots were overrepresented among the ranks of successful farmers, among manufacturers of metal products, and as financiers, whether within banks or stock and station agencies. At the same time, the differences between Scots and English in these areas were often subtle. The finding that many New Zealand farmers came from the counties of Ayrshire and Perthshire, where the “Lowland Clearances” ensured that the second agricultural revolution made rapid progress, explains much about the widespread commitment of Scottish migrants to improvement. The role played by Scots in smaller types of business was more problematic; outside Otago those in the middle were at most no more important than, or as successful as, the English. There are clear signs that although Scots networked a little more obviously than their English peers, they were not especially clannish in business activities except, perhaps, in Otago. It is important to bear in mind that the notion of the successful Scot has been distorted by a kind of triumphalism of the Scottish nationalist variety and can be pushed too far. The New Zealand story is much more complex. Class clearly vitiates any simplistic arguments about ethnic or cultural exceptionalism, because most of the identifiable successes came from the Scottish middle classes, even if they were subtly different from their English equivalents in the emerging colony. Broader imperial dynamics, as well as those peculiar to the new colony itself, cannot be overlooked in explaining the successes of some Scots. As with every other aspect of Scottish life, the dual Scottish and British identities of the migrants privileged them by providing access to opportunity that often made them difficult to differentiate from other members of the successful colonial elite, whether in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, or South Africa. They were heavily represented among those whom Marxists might

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have once called “haute bourgeoisie,” or followers of “dependency theory” would have described as “compradors,” the middlemen linking centre and periphery.48 Avoiding “ethnic conceit,” similar kinds of examination are now required in other destinations of Scottish migration if the currently coarse understanding of Scottish success within the colonies of the British Empire is to be refined. The present study has not focused on Scottish failures, though there were many examples. Fledgling studies of crime and criminality suggest that Scots were underrepresented among persons convicted of crime, just as they were seriously underrepresented among convicts transported to Australia.49 However, it is essential to interrogate this understanding much more critically, and to examine the group condemned by social engineer Duncan MacGregor as “idle and useless persons.”50 Coleborne and McCarthy’s ongoing study of inmates of mental institutions in nineteenth-century New Zealand may eventually offer new insights.51 A study of Scots and crime, both at home in Scotland and in New Zealand, would be equally valuable.52 Historians could also profitably pay more attention to Scots who experienced bankruptcy as they struggled to cope with the vagaries of the colonial economy, and so build on the work begun many years ago by David Macmillan in Australia.53 Additionally, there is the much larger group, ignored by most historians to date, of those whose fortunes fluctuated along with the volatile economic cycles that marked the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Evidence for such experiences can be found in occasional reminiscences and autobiographies. Arthur James, who became well-known as a Presbyterian elder and Sunday school teacher in Otago, shared what Harper has labelled the “snakes and ladders” experience of emigration.54 His father John had experienced success as a pharmacist and draper in Dunedin in the 1850s, before failing as a farmer and a toll booth operator at Taieri Mouth 40 km south of Dunedin in the early 1860s. John then, remarkably, recovered his fortune when he took over the Anderson’s Bay toll booth, just as that Dunedin suburb began to grow rapidly. He made so much money that he was able to finance Arthur’s training as a law clerk. Unfortunately for Arthur, his eyesight began to fail so he turned to a series of unsuccessful ventures, including sawmilling and delivering the Bruce Herald, the most popular country paper of the day, all the way from Milton to Invercargill, over 150 km. Things became so desperate that the Presbyterian Church had to



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rescue Arthur by providing him with work as an accountant. Then, after saving enough to take up farming at Gore in 1898, Arthur had to abandon this venture a few months later when flooding ruined the property. In despair, he moved to the North Island and there the handwritten tale of mixed fortune ends.55 Letters left by unsuccessful gold miners of Scottish origin suggest that the kind of intermittent “skidding” experienced by Arthur James was by no mean atypical.56 Such experiences also seem to provide limited support for Miles Fairburn’s work on social mobility in nineteenth-century New Zealand.57 Such roller-coaster rides could be paralleled in all other colonies settled by Scots, as well as by migrants from other parts of Britain. The activism of Scots in trade unions and parties of the left in Australia and Canada, not just in New Zealand, suggests that genuine idealism and moral critique were sometimes accompanied by the experience of blocked mobility, or a longer-term inability to advance up the social ladder.58 Harper suspects that the fortunes of many immigrants of Scottish origin rose and fell with the fluctuations of the trade cycle rather than rising steadily over the long term.59 Harper and Devine agree that such mixed fortune was common in the Canadian experience, MacKenzie writes about “Ne’erdo-wells” in South Africa,60 and Erickson provides examples for the United States, where Scots both climbed and skidded.61 Belich has linked such experiences to the boom and bust cycles that accompanied the rapid growth of every English-speaking “New World” economy throughout the nineteenth century, confirming that British migrants everywhere experienced downward as well as upward social mobility.62

Public Worlds: Building Civil Society and Associational Life Chapters 5 and 7 on civil society and associational culture confirm that there is much substance in the popular belief that in New Zealand Scots developed more distinctive cultural institutions and practices than the English. It also seems that Scots established more diverse cultural forms than the Irish, even if St Andrew’s Day is far less well-known and celebrated than St Patrick’s Day. Perhaps it is not sensible to place undue emphasis on “the ‘radical’ Scot,”63 just as Australian studies have shown that the influence of “the

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c­ onservative Scot” has been exaggerated in Australia because of the prominence of twentieth-century prime ministers of Scottish heritage.64 What merits greater emphasis is the diversity of political belief, from conservatism to socialism, and of culture, from refinement to populism, a diversity that can be found equally among the English and Irish communities. Scots in Australia, as in New Zealand, stood on both sides of the debate over free trade versus protectionism. John ­MacKenzie has reached similar conclusions for Scots in South Africa, although the Scots there seemed to exhibit even more flexibility than their New Zealand contemporaries, and the story is complicated by the presence of an Afrikaans-speaking majority within the white population.65 Although there was sometimes an alarming authoritarian and coercive tendency among both Scottish conservatives and radicals in New Zealand, nothing emerged like the quasifascist ideology that appeared in Nova Scotia during the difficult years of the Great Depression of the 1930s.66 Nevertheless, it is suggested that there were subtle Scottish influences in the making of New Zealand politics, law, religion, and education. Burns was invoked more by Scots of all political persuasions than any single English or Irish poet by politicians of English or Irish descent, but the ambiguity that inheres in any poetry meant that conservatives could easily substitute the bucolic and nostalgic Burns for the more radical Burns. Even so, Burns’s glorification of independent rural producers provided moral justification for the closer settlement policies promoted by leading “land radicals” such as Donald Reid and John McKenzie. Burns also reinforced artisan radicalism, along with more overtly political writers like Tom Paine, and shaped the biting rhetoric of dissident Scottish journalists like Sam Lister of the Otago Workman and the Wairarapa-based ­Liberal member of the House of Representatives and land reformer ­Alexander Wilson Hogg.67 Presbyterianism, though clearly associated with both political and social conservatism in Australia, also played an ambiguous role in New Zealand. On the one hand, its relatively democratic organization encouraged the spread of democratic practices in the new land. Firstwave feminism’s drive to increase women’s rights received a boost from the active late nineteenth-century role played by women in the life of the church. If women could run Sunday schools, they should have a say in the election of school committees and licensing boards. Unsurprisingly, supporters of suffrage included many m ­ inisters,



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while leading women activists including Margaret Sievwright and Kate Sheppard, as well as the poet Jessie Mackay, drew at least some of their inspiration from their Presbyterian upbringings. So too did some women participants in the early labour movement. Women’s entry into both secondary and higher education owed something to Presbyterian teaching and advocacy by prominent Scotsmen. Once they had taken advantage of new opportunities, however, daughters of Scottish immigrants often became as concerned with correct behaviour, sobriety, and elegance as with women’s advance toward equality. Temperance proved attractive to such women, not only because it protected women and children from violent male behaviour, but because it offered a means of controlling the unseemly side of male behaviour as personified by Burns himself.68 Presbyterianism’s insistence on the centrality of respectability and seemly behaviour also toned down any radical impulses and reinforced establishment fears of the uncivilizing tendencies of mass democracy. Even some labour politicians, like David Pinkerton, supported temperance for these very reasons, although supporters of the Independent Labour Party opposed the extreme of prohibition that the so-called New Zealand “Temperance” movement always wanted. A number of key trade unionists and labour activists had direct links to the Scottish Independent Labour Party and its ethical critique of capitalism. Possibly the most important example was Peter Fraser, an activist in New Zealand from his arrival in 1911, later prime minister during the Second World War.69 A handful of expatriate Scots, like Angus McLagan and Alex Galbraith, went further in supporting more radical Marxist and syndicalist positions, but most preferred to work within the system rather than outside it (as, in the end, McLagan himself did). Given that the great majority of nineteenth-century Scots voted Liberal and supported Gladstone, it is perhaps surprising that they did not make a stronger contribution to New Zealand liberalism, with its greater emphasis on direct state action.70 Those like Stout and Scobie Mackenzie, who wrote about such things, found themselves hankering for a more laissez-faire approach to development, although Stout, as has been noted, came to accept a role for the state in mediating class tension. Likewise, John Findlay accepted that a different kind of liberalism had emerged in New Zealand, and from around 1900 came to accept its insistence on increasing the role of the state. Men like Findlay soon saw how greater state

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participation, even in areas promoted by advanced democracy, for instance more open access to secondary education, enhanced opportunities to increase social control and so change and even “reforge” both individual and society. Certainly private schools played a much less important role in New Zealand education than was the case in Australia, partly because Scots, including Stout, John McKenzie, and Alexander Hogg, attacked privilege in education right up to the First World War. Separate Presbyterian schools were very much a development of later decades.71 Much the same pattern unfolded as New Zealand’s legal system evolved. Because New Zealand was founded as a British colony, it operated under a very English form of jurisprudence compared with Scottish law and its Roman elements in which precedent rather than codification reigned supreme. Common law tradition encouraged conservative interpretations by the judiciary and, apart from a brief moment in the late 1890s and early 1900s, little legal innovation emerged in New Zealand in the first settlement century.72 Jurists and social engineers from Scottish backgrounds like MacGregor, Stout, Findlay, and Salmond wished to increase the powers of the state and so reduce individual liberty. In so doing, they deviated from classical liberal approaches and moved back toward the kind of godly commonwealth envisaged by Rev. Thomas Burns. Between them, Stout as chief justice, Findlay as attorney general, and S­ almond as solicitor general, introduced an increasingly intrusive set of state regulations that became decidedly repressive under the pressures imposed by the great Maritime Strike of 1913 and then the First World War.73 Yet, despite this desire to coerce citizens into correct and orderly behaviour, they did little to challenge the English legal hegemony. This broad range of political belief and action, shaped by class, education, and life experience, typified all migrant groups who journeyed to New Zealand and, it seems, Australia and Canada. Scots in Canada were also active on all sides of the political spectrum, despite their reputation for conservatism, often associated with their strong links to the loyalists driven out from the new republic of the United States of America.74 Once again, class, and the ability, or failure, to improve the lot of one’s family in the new country, more than ethnicity, influenced political activity. Scots could be found in both Liberal and Conservative camps, along with more radical or heterodox movements such as Social Credit. The fact that they led variants



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of Liberal and Conservative parties meant that Scottish Canadians too were fairly evenly split over free trade versus protectionism. The presence of a significant French-speaking minority ensured that the great ethnic divide in Canada existed between the British and the French, Scottish ethnicity appearing to have played only a limited role in party politics, other than that Scots could be found among the elites of the big cities and some provincial towns. Generally, Canadian historians have paid more attention to materialism, economic structures and forces, class dynamics, and pragmatism rather than deep ideological convictions, and the clash of the Anglophone and Francophone worlds in shaping politics, than any kind of rivalry between the subsets of British migrants.75 Scots everywhere in the Empire wore various shades of blue, yellow (the long-forgotten colour of the Liberal Party in Britain and New Zealand), pink, and red in terms of their political allegiance. The most dominant colour, however, was yellow, because the Liberals were a broad-church party and liberalism’s political philosophy was heterogeneous. Comparative studies of how that liberalism varied between Scotland and the offshoot societies would help to determine how Scottish political beliefs transmuted into something different in other localities. As for the United States, much deeper investigation is required to push understanding beyond a few trite associations about whether the role played by Scots in formulating the Declaration of Independence was influenced by the ancient Declaration of Arbroath.76 Recent postgraduate research suggests that although distance did not hinder the worldwide proliferation of Scottish societies in the nineteenth century, Scottish associational life assumed much more distinctive forms in New Zealand than in the English or Irish communities.77 Scots clubbed together soon after arrival, but over time the Caledonian societies became more important than any other form of Scottish association. In contrast, St Andrew’s societies, organizations that had assumed a much more important role in North America and Australia, were less so in New Zealand.78 The New Zealand Caledonian societies tended to be far more ethnically inclusive than their equivalents in other countries, with migrants from English and Irish backgrounds freely joining, along with Germans, Chinese, and M ¯aori. Class and wealth rather than ethnicity seemed a much more important determinant of who held executive positions, although leadership was not as dominated by the top

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end of the colonial elite as in big cities like Melbourne or Toronto. Very quickly the “Calies” concentrated on leisure and sport rather than any kind of benevolent activity. They engaged in little charitable work, in strong contrast to Canada and the United States and, to a lesser extent, Australia. New Zealand Caledonian societies also failed to show the same enthusiasm for political engagement as their equivalents in Victoria, who argued passionately that the Australian Army should maintain its Scottish regiments.79 The Caledonian societies soon became as much New Zealand institutions as Scottish ones. Their sports, apart from caber tossing, came to differ little from those of mainstream New Zealand society. Highland dancing and piping were certainly distinctively Scottish, but persons from diverse Scottish backgrounds soon began to participate in solo piping, and later in pipe bands and in dancing competitions.80 Indeed Bueltmann argues that Caledonian societies grew into crucial community organizations in both urban and rural areas, to the extent that their existence raises questions about Miles Fairburn’s claim that nineteenth-century New Zealand was an “atomised society,” lacking the bonds of kin, ethnicity, or associational and community life.81 Informal Burns celebrations gained in popularity from the 1850s, with formal clubs proliferating from the 1890s. They may have emerged a little later than elsewhere, but once again these organizations were not ethnically exclusive, although they seemed to have held great appeal for the majority Lowlanders. The Gaelic and Highland societies pursued much more exclusive strategies, insisting that their members have some acquaintance with Gaelic language, song, and customs. Members of the Highland societies had to prove that their genealogy, and preferably upbringing, included Highland elements. Given New Zealand’s small population base, these more exclusive associations struggled to maintain their membership beyond the second generation of migrants and faded rapidly after the First World War. All of these organizations, along with the Scottish lodges of the Masonic order, helped greatly in empowering Scots to hold a kind of tripartite identity: Scots, Britons, and New Zealanders. Once the Masons established New Zealand rather than distinctively Scottish lodges, members were forced to make a choice as to which of their identities they would choose to emphasize. Country lodges tended to move in the New Zealand direction, whereas Dunedin-based



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lodges remained more conservative and stayed with their older Scottish links.82 Like the other Scottish associations, lodges under the English, Irish, and Scottish constitutions could not afford to be rigidly exclusive. Men from every part of the British Isles, therefore, belonged to supposedly national lodges. The small population base also meant that the lodges, of whatever constitution, had to help one another out in ways that could never have happened in Britain, especially as they struggled to offer the benevolent and welfare services expected back in the old countries. Yet the Scottish lodges managed to perform distinctive rituals, for instance featuring the poetry of that well-known Mason Robbie Burns, that were alien to English or Irish lodges.83 More work is required on the Masons and the Manchester Unity (“Oddfellows”) Lodges in New Zealand, along with smaller equivalents such as the Ancient Order of Foresters. Now that Masonic records are being opened up to historians across the English-speaking world, it should be possible to distinguish ethnic divisions from class divisions in organizations established to provide cohesion for particular social groups, for instance skilled tradesmen and professionals.84 This ability to help build New Zealand society while maintaining allegiance to Scottish custom supports the argument that associations enabled migrants to connect the public parts of their lives to the private.85 Thanks to organizations like the Caledonian societies, immigrants could choose to be as Scottish, British, or New Zealand – in both spheres of their lives – as they wished, without fear that clinging to selected aspects of the old ways would prevent them from contributing to the building of a new and somewhat different society. Ethnicity thereby proved functional as a key adaptive strategy in a new society, just as it did in North America and Australia, but adaptation did not obliterate Scottish identity, especially not in the cultural sphere. The plethora of associations established throughout the Empire and in the United States had, in part, a defensive purpose, seeking to reinforce a distinctive Scottish identity, so they could succeed in preserving some traditional customs into the twenty-first century.86 Careful observation reveals subtle Scottish influences in architecture, both public and private, despite the dominance of wooden buildings in the early years of settlement. “Wattle and daub” buildings owed something to Scottish precedent and various grand houses featured Balmoral elements, while Edinburgh-like terrace houses

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appeared in north Dunedin in the 1890s. Californian-style villas and later bungalows, however, proved much more popular and important. Furniture inside these houses at first tended to be utilitarian and roughly made, and later followed English and American styles rather than Scottish ones. Some Presbyterian churches also appear similar to their Scottish equivalents, although First Church in Dunedin reveals as much about Mrs Burns’s Anglican origins as it does about Presbyterian church architecture.87 This surrender of a distinctive Scottish style is somewhat different from Australia, where grand houses and public buildings, especially in Brisbane, incorporated more Balmoral elements, while at the same time reflecting an Adamite influence from the classical period of Scottish architecture.88 Public buildings in Canada, including some provincial legislatures, also contain Scottish elements, especially from Edinburgh’s Georgian “new town,” a fashion that peaked too early to have much influence in New Zealand and was not revived to the same extent as in North America. The massive hotels built for travellers on the Canadian Pacific railway also have a baronial appearance.89 Another key distinction related to public activity in New Zealand is that, despite the popularity of both the Boys’ Brigade and pipe bands, New Zealand Scots at no stage formed distinctive Scottish regiments, as happened in Australia, South Africa, and Canada, though colonial troops and overseas mercenaries sometimes wore kilts for practical reasons when engaged in bush fighting in the Land Wars of the 1860s.90 In the twentieth century New Zealand Scottish soldiers admired the native Scots troops they encountered, but they always fought as New Zealand units and did not wear kilts, although some units had pipers. First World War soldiers from Otago and Southland fought as the “Otago Mounted Rifles,” or the “Otago Regiment,” not as the “Otago Scottish” or with designations such as the “Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa,” the “Calgary Highlanders” or the “Toronto Scottish.” In 1939 the “First Scottish New Zealand and First Armoured Car Regiment” was formed. Even so, in the Second World War most men from Otago and Southland fought in the 23rd Battalion.91 This lower martial profile cannot simply be explained in terms of numbers, because there were many more Scots in New Zealand than South Africa. Rather it represented the determination of most to integrate into the new host society as quickly as possible by fighting in general New Zealand units rather than distinctively Scottish ones.



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Private Worlds Scots carried their traditional folkways with them wherever they travelled, but within New Zealand they only appear to have behaved in a rigidly exclusive manner in the closed fundamentalist community of Waipu. Even in the supposed Scottish heartland of Otago and Southland a hybrid persona soon emerged. Scots women, locked into an endless round of domestic tasks and child care responsibilities, probably clung to traditional customs more than their menfolk, who had to mingle with other migrants in the world of paid work, but their lives soon became hard to distinguish from those of other hardworking settler wives and daughters. Support for women giving birth, for example, became much less elaborate and more improvised as mothers-to-be called upon whoever was available to help rather than turning to generations of nearby female kin. Courtship became much less elaborate in the freer colonial context whereas, conversely, marriage soon became more ornate as Free Church influence waned. Coping with death also changed in subtle ways as women began to attend burials and families chose to bury their loved ones in municipal rather than church graveyards. By the early 1900s Scottish death ways could scarcely be distinguished from the English, although gravestones became more elaborate and obviously Celtic in an effort to mark out ethnic distinctiveness in the cities of the dead.92 Even in Otago and Southland, where Presbyterians remained the majority denomination well into the twentieth century, less committed believers began to backslide from as early as the 1850s. Presbyterians, whether in predominantly Presbyterian Scots spaces such as Otago or in areas where they were a minority in comparison with Anglicans, also had a much richer ceremonial life than the stereotype of joyless puritans might suggest. Communion and the harvest festival in autumn played important roles in the Presbyterian calendar and received enthusiastic support from many adherents. Christmas gradually assumed much more importance than in Scotland. All settlers soon embraced New Year’s Day as an ideal opportunity for community leisure activity, Caledonian Games often marking the new colony’s most popular public holiday. Observance of Easter differed markedly from Anglican and Catholic practice up to the 1930s. New Zealand Presbyterians did not hold services on Good Friday, nor did they mark the day as special. Church music also varied according to the preferences of minister and congregation.

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Rev. Burns’s First Church in Dunedin clung to unaccompanied singing, led by the precentor, whereas Knox, encouraged by Dr Donald ­Stuart, soon switched to choral music enhanced by the “kist o’ whistles” or organ.93 Similar changes emerged in the Presbyterian Church in Australia, although church historian Ian Breward argues that the Otago Presbyterians were more conservative and resistant to change than their Australian counterparts.94 The clothes worn by Scottish immigrants had a decidedly “plain” Scottish flavour at first, but by the 1880s factory-made cloths ensured that it became harder to distinguish Scots from English or Irish migrants – even as Scots became influential in New Zealand clothing manufacture. Kilt wearing, apart from ceremonial occasions, was never widespread, but from the 1890s women increasingly adopted the kilt and from the 1930s girls’ schools adopted kilts as uniforms. Much the same pattern emerged in other British colonies, although given the larger size of associations and gatherings, as well as the greater representation of Highlanders, kilts and tartans became more conspicuous in the American South.95 Food preferences exhibited a decidedly colonial bias; Scots, like fellow migrants, soon switched from a hefty reliance on oatmeal to wheat bread and generous helpings of meat and vegetables. Yet they maintained a liking for sweet desserts and baking, encouraged by the availability of cheap sugar from Queensland and Fiji,96 which perhaps helps explain why by 1900 Scottish and New Zealand dental health was among the worst anywhere.97 Similar trends occurred in Australia and Canada, where a more varied and abundant diet soon replaced traditional fare, with haggis and neeps and tatties only consumed on ceremonial occasions.98 Leisure opportunities increased as farms, businesses, and towns became more established and as economic conditions improved from around 1896. Initially, much leisure activity centred on the kirk, especially in country districts. Once a more determined puritan attitude emerged from the late 1880s, energies were directed toward temperance and Bible class. Harrier and other sporting clubs also spread as the Presbyterian Church struggled to retain the allegiance of young men, despite the ongoing loyalty of women of all ages. Ladies’ Guilds and Mothers’ and Mission Unions sprang up to enable women to play a more active role in the life of the church.99 Scots who were indifferent to religion probably spent more time in public houses, or celebrating Burns, if Sam Lister’s journalistic



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tirades are to be believed. Presbyterians featured among the colony’s leading brewers.100 Young men deserting the Presbyterian Church tended to devote their energies to emerging colonial sports such as rugby, cricket, and tennis, but some helped make a distinctive contribution to golf. Early clubs were dominated by men and, soon after, women of Scottish heritage. It seems that until relatively recently the game remained much more democratic and less exclusive than in the large Australian cities or in Canada. In contrast to golf, shinty did not last long, and curling, dependent on reliable ice rinks, never became more than a “boutique” pastime in comparison with Canada or the United States. Scots also played a prominent part in organizing Caledonian Games from early on, soon incorporating such distinctively colonial sports as wood chopping and, from the 1890s, cycling. Trout and salmon fishing, assisted by the Acclimatisation Societies in which Scots played an active role, became ever more popular, as did hunting, including the pursuit of deer introduced by Scottish settlers. Despite initial opposition from the early settlers of Dunedin to all forms of gambling, Dunedin became as enamoured of horse racing as the rest of the colony once gold miners flooded into the city in the early 1860s. Outside the church, piping dominated musical performance. Solo piping flourished from the 1860s and pipe bands grew out of earlier military assemblages of pipers, proliferating after the formation of the Invercargill Pipe Band in 1896. (There are, today, over eighty still in existence.101) The formation of the Piping and Dancing Association of New Zealand in 1908 raised standards and formalized both activities, providing both an annual timetable and the infrastructure of support so vital to stimulating any cultural activity. New Zealanders from a range of ethnic backgrounds, like Canadians and Australians, have continued to participate in these activities, but Highland dancing remains an instantly recognizable form of Scottish performance.102 Although Gaelic was only spoken by a small minority of Scottish immigrants, these Highlanders shared a passion for reading with their Lowland compatriots. Together they played an active part in establishing libraries and athenaeums, although their reading became more mixed as the nineteenth century progressed. Mechanics’ Institutes were never exclusively Scottish, as in Canada.103 Like many other colonials, Scots read a wide range of fiction, sharing an enthusiasm with most others for Walter Scott’s novels, Robert

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Louis Stevenson’s stories, and Burns’s poetry. New Zealand produced its fair share of Burns and Scott copyists, none of whom rose to any great heights, although the novels of Alexander Bathgate share a utopian optimism with many novelists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. All of this seems little different from trends in Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa: Scots first clung tenaciously to their traditional customs but soon also began to accommodate the ways of the host destination. Caledonian Games soon became hard to distinguish from other American, Canadian, or Australian public occasions, except for the conspicuous outward representations of Highland culture, such as the wearing of kilts and tartans, the playing of bagpipes, performing the Highland sword dance, and tossing the caber. Yet as the migrants assimilated and became increasingly Canadians, Americans, South Africans, Australians, or indeed New Zealanders, rising prosperity and growing numbers enabled them to build the infrastructure – in the form of libraries, halls, churches, and, after 1914, schools – to both preserve and reactivate distinctive cultural practices and ceremonies. So Invercargill, as the capital of the province with the greatest concentration of Highlanders, acquired its Clan Hall, and Dunedin its Caledonian sports ground. Most towns have their Presbyterian churches, some of which later became Union churches (always an ad hoc arrangement in New Zealand, unlike the formal merger of Methodists and most Presbyterians into the Uniting Church of Australia). The persistence of institutional structures in the form of both the Presbyterian Church and the various associations, despite their frequently elderly members, meant that Scots in New Zealand, as everywhere in the English-speaking world, lived private lives that were subtly different from those of their fellow citizens from other ethnic groups. Cultural differentiation thereby survived, despite the outward appearance of increasing similarity over time.

Attitudes Toward and Relations with M ¯aori as Indigenous People Historians of the Scottish diaspora have generally condemned Scots for their harsh treatment of the indigenous peoples they encountered. John MacKenzie, for instance, writes of South Africa’s Scots that, despite Scots missionaries’ initial humanitarian concern for the



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well-being of African people, they soon deprived local tribal groups of land, wealth, and rights, and exploited their labour as mercilessly as the Dutch Afrikaners and English mine owners.104 Similarly, Eric Richards wrote in 1984 that “the acquisitive, the ruthless, the racist, the brutal, the hypocritical” had been left out of an analysis of Scots in Australia, along with “the drunken, and the unsuccessful Scots.”105 Don Watson found that Scots pastoralists in Western Victoria treated local Aboriginal people particularly harshly, stooping to poisoning their water holes as part of a concerted campaign to clear them from their ancestral lands to make way for sheep.106 For many years historians seemed to have lost sight of this savage irony. Malcolm Prentis has recently concluded that the appalling record of Western Victoria was repeated in other parts of Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia, but that better relations between Scots and Aborigines emerged in New South Wales and North Queensland.107 On the other hand, as Henry Reynolds has pointed out, the first white Australian to question the appalling treatment of Aborigines was also a Scot, Rev. Dr John Dunmore Lang.108 Relations between Scots and the First Nations peoples of North America (whose histories do not intersect precisely with the border between Canada and the United States) have not been studied in as much depth. The growing literature unfolds a dismal narrative, although early relations were more nuanced. Examining the relations between Highlanders and “Indians,”109 Colin G. Calloway argues that because both groups inhabited storied landscapes and had communal land-holding practices, “Highlanders often had more in common with the Indians than with the English.”110 At first, they created “fluid communities held together by shared experiences and interests, children and ties of kinship rather than allegiance to the state.”111 Later this cosy relationship became confused by the British use of Highland troops against Indians.112 Highland traders also clashed with Indian hunters as they competed to extract a declining resource, although such conflict did not stop intermarriage between the two groups.113 As the nineteenth century unfolded, a similar irony to Western Victoria’s emerged: dispossessed Highland emigrants, hungry for land, supporting English and Irish immigrants in removing Indian tribes, whether agriculturalists or nomadic herders, to reservations. Arguing that they would use the land better than the indigenous people, Highland Scots in Canada ousted the indigenous owners from their homelands in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, just

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as in the Red River Valley and the southern and western states of the United States.114 Calloway nevertheless concludes that despite “dispossession and dislocation” the “diasporic Scots,” through their “revived symbols and reinvented traditions” and success in adapting to a new world, contributed to Indian survival and resurgence by providing an example that Indians could follow.115 Canadian historians and historical geographers such as Rusty Bittermann and Cole Harris paint a bleaker picture in their examination of race relations on the East and West Coasts. Once what Richard White has called the “middle ground,” or intermediary space of the early phase of contact, became the ground controlled and owned by the colonists, First Nations peoples were dislocated, dispossessed, exploited, and marginalized by colonialism. In British Columbia, as in the rest of Canada and the United States, tribes were moved to reservations.116 A similar but more complex and varied story can be told for New Zealand. There is a comforting orthodoxy that the country’s clannish Second World War Labour prime minister, Peter Fraser, had a much better relationship with M ¯aori than his predecessors because of his Highland upbringing. Fraser supposedly repaired much of the historical damage caused to M aori ¯ through bringing substantive state assistance to assist their revival.117 But this cannot be taken too far. In fact, subsequent research suggests that such an interpretation is hopelessly whiggish and naïve. Unlike North America, with its lengthy period of intimate relations between Highlanders and Indians, few Scots were sealers or whalers, although Atholl Anderson has suggested they constituted the second largest group among the newcomers in southern New Zealand.118 The absence of a Scottish mission to M ¯aori also meant that Scottish settlers did not fall under the influence of humanitarianism to the same extent as their English counterparts, even if many, perhaps most, English immigrants 119 ¯ resented humanitarian defence of M aori. Certainly New Zealand did not produce a Scottish defender of M ¯aori rights to match ­Dunmore Lang in Australia, and while the Scots who came to Otago in 1848 viewed the local K ai ¯ Tahu tribe benignly, the numbers of this tribe were so low as to be non-threatening. Neglect, rather than overt oppression, characterized settler attitudes and actions.120 It has been well canvassed that Donald McLean, a Gaelic-speaking Highlander, was in the vanguard of those who dispossessed M ¯aori of



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large tracts of their land in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, by buying land at rock bottom prices and flouting land purchasing laws, while other Scots-born civil officials assisted with, then carried on, his mission. Scottish soldiers were not much involved in the New Zealand Wars (the Land Wars) of the 1860s, which were largely fought over ownership of the key resource in nineteenth-century New Zealand – the land. Most of the troops were Irish or English soldiers. However, Duncan Cameron, the principal commander of the imperial forces, was a Scot and has enjoyed an undeserved reputation for ¯ chivalry and questioning the purpose of the war. admiring M aori As James Belich and others have shown, Cameron’s qualms only emerged after the failure of outright military force.121 Then, in the 1890s, the Highland-born land reformer John M ­ cKenzie oversaw the “purchase” of most of the remaining North Island M ¯aori land of any quality, at a very low price, for exactly the same reason as Highlanders moved on to Indian land. McKenzie believed that white settlers were better equipped by history and experience to use the land productively.122 The irony of a Scot, especially one profoundly shaped by the Clearances, inflicting similar damage on another clan society, remains a fracture at the heart of the New Zealand polity. At a lower level, however, there are indications that individuals and small groups of Scots could forge strong relationships with local tribes, to the extent that one editorialist felt able to claim in 1891 that “the Scotch Highlander and the Maori” were “keenly allied in character.” While this may well have been overstressing the situation, at Turakina, in the southern North Island, a harmonious relationship long existed that was finally overtaken only after incursions from other migrant groups. The Highland settlers took up land in the 1850s, welcomed by and practically assisted by the ¯ Apa for the tribe’s own strategic reasons. In the course of Ng ati the New ­Zealand Wars, M aori ¯ and migrants remained united in the face of hostility from surrounding tribes. During the 1870s and 1880s they continued to live, work, and play together, even as the tribal land base continued to be eroded, because the pressures were national rather than local. A case can be made that the blending Scottish and M ¯aori cultures were ultimately overtaken by the evolving New Zealand-British identity, although a surprising number of local families continued, and still continue, to acknowledge their dual ancestries.123

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Overall Comparative Importance Despite the complexity, variation, and subtlety of the Scottish contribution to the evolution of New Zealand’s society and culture, and the determination of most Scots migrants to integrate and become New Zealanders as quickly as possible, their contribution proved more significant than in other parts of the British world for one simple reason. At more than 20 per cent of the pre-First World War immigrant mix, Scots were easily the second most important ethnic minority in New Zealand. Unlike Canada, New Zealand did not possess a large European minority speaking a different language. Further, the fact that Presbyterians made up 25 per cent of religious adherents, augmented by northern Irish, reinforced the Scots as the second most powerful and important ethnic group, since Presbyterianism was fundamentally a Scottish religion. No one has really described this relationship between ethnicity and religion better than the early historian of Dunedin, James Barr, who wrote, “The particular woof of Christian belief, has, until thirty years ago, at any rate, been weaving into the singularly well adapted warp of the Scots – into their hard metaphysical heads until … it has become so interwoven with the modes of thinking of the majority, that you come to regard as synonymous – a Scotchman, and a Presbyterian.”124 Such a concentration of Presbyterians furthermore ensured that New Zealand remained one of the most Protestant countries in the Empire. Catholic Scots, with English and Irish fellow worshippers, made up only about 14 per cent of adherents. Such influence, however, was never what Proudfoot and Hall have labelled “essentialist.”125 Rather it was qualified by the need to assimilate and live inside the bounds of the newly emerging colonial society. Yet other stereotypical contributions are closer to historical reality, as the more multi-layered analysis employed in this study attempts to show. It is accepted that these higher level and more readily observable contributions were also often not greatly different than those evident in other countries settled by Scots, principally because the focus is on a similar group of migrants in different places. As in other destinations, Scots made a particular contribution to education, ensuring that girls and young women received easier access to secondary and tertiary institutions than in England. The broad-based and utilitarian universities of New Zealand developed much more along Scottish than English lines, and did not follow



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the classic models of Oxford and Cambridge. Scottish associations also seemed more distinctive, active, and prominent than those of the English or Irish, even if they concentrated on sports days and Burns readings rather than benevolent work, and happily admitted all comers to compensate for New Zealand’s low population base. There is also some truth in the suggestion that Scots succeeded better in the worlds of farming, business, and metal manufacturing than others did. The politics of New Zealand Scots may have had a subtle Scottish flavour and style, but generally Scots could be found inhabiting all parts of the political spectrum. They cannot accurately be lumped together as “conservative,” as in Australia and the Canadian big cities, any more than they can be categorized as “radical.” Beyond these few key areas of distinction, it is difficult to discern much more apart from differences visible only at a very private and subtle level. And what could be more Scottish?

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Notes

Preface 1 Brooking, “The Most Subtle Scots,” 1–22. 2 The New Zealand conferences were: Scots Abroad: The New Zealand Scots in International Perspective, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 6–8 July 2006; Nations, Diasporas, Identities, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 27–30 March 2008. A selection of papers from the first conference has been published in three successive issues of Immigrants & Minorities 29, 2 (2011), 29, 3 (2011), 30,1 (2012). A further selection from the second conference has been published in the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies 4,1 (2010). 3 Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity; McClean, Patterson, and Swain, eds, Counting Stories, Moving Ethnicities.

chapter one 1 “The Emigrant’s Kist – 19th Century Scottish Migration to Canada,” http://helen-caldwell.suite101.com/the-emigrants-kist—19th-century-­ Scottish-migration-to-Canada-a258136. Accessed 4 December 2011. 2 Flinn, ed., Scottish Population History, 441–2. 3 Brooking, “Sharing Out the Haggis,” 49. 4 Belich, Making Peoples, 316. 5 Belich, Paradise Reforged, 221. 6 Sinclair, History of New Zealand. 7 See, for instance, Pearce, Scots of New Zealand; Hewitson, Far Off in Sunlit Places. 8 There have been at least five popular accounts of the Waipu settlement, the most recent Robinson, To the Ends of the Earth. The single scholarly study is Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart.

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9 McLintock, History of Otago; Olssen, History of Otago. An exception was Brooking, And Captain of their Souls. 10 For a recent overview of the broad trends, see Phillips and Hearn, Settlers. 11 Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 1–15. 12 The paragraph is based on Patterson, “Making New Zealanders: Exploring P ¯akeh ¯a Whakapapa.” 13 Patterson, “Cousin Jacks, New Chums and Ten Pound Poms.” 14 Patterson, “Making New Zealanders,” 7–10. 15 Arnold, Farthest Promised Land. 16 Akenson, Half the World from Home. 17 Patterson, ed., Irish in New Zealand. 18 The most significant theses were: Molloy, “Those Who Speak to the Heart”; McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand”; and Coleman, “Transmigration of the Piob Mohr.” Only Molloy’s doctoral thesis was subsequently published: see Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart. 19 Brooking, And Captain of their Souls; Brooking, “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside.” 20 Brooking, Lands for the People? 21 McAloon, No Idle Rich; Stone, Young Logan Campbell, and Founder and His Gift; Bassett and King, Tomorrow Comes the Song. 22 Brooking and Coleman, Heather and the Fern, 49–66. 23 Scholars such as T.M. Devine, John M. MacKenzie, and Marjory Harper evinced a growing interest in the New Zealand Scottish experience, which was shortly to be demonstrated in broad surveys of Scottish emigration. That the diaspora was also attracting political interest is demonstrated by such popular publications as MacAskill and McLeish, Wherever the Saltire Flies. 24 The goals and objectives of the proposed research are drawn from the documentation accompanying an application for funding to the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund, February 2004. 25 This is not to suggest that Scottish migration to New Zealand ceased after 1920. Patently, Scots continued to arrive in New Zealand in later decades, sometimes in appreciable numbers, especially after the Second World War. The eighty years from 1840, however, were those in which the inflows were of greatest long term significance. 26 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand.” The raw data from the “Peopling of New Zealand” Project were kindly made available to the team by Dr Jock Phillips. 27 A complete set of the registration forms filed was made available on fiche by the Scottish Special Interest Group of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists in July 2005.



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28 For example: Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart; Olssen, Building the New World. While it was soon resolved that Caversham was perhaps the least Scottish of Dunedin’s suburbs, the most recent volume in the Caversham Project series adds strength to the team’s views on the nineteenthcentury mixing of ethnicities: Olssen, Griffen, and Jones, An Accidental Utopia?. 29 For a more detailed account of the projects demographic investigations, including discussion of the sources and methodologies, see Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa.” 30 For background on the Scots in the New Zealand economy see Brooking “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside”; also McAloon, “Scots in the Colonial Economy.” 31 Brooking, “Green Scots and Golden Irish.” 32 Bueltmann, “Brither Scots Shoulder tae Shoulder”; Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity; Sullivan, “Scots by Association.”

chapter two 1 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand.” 2 Phillips and Hearn, Settlers. A more detailed discussion is online at http:// www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/home-away-from-home/sources. 3 For more information on the dataset see Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa.” 4 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, and Withers, Urban Highlanders, among others, provide good overviews of these flows. 5 Richards, Highland Clearances. 6 Aitchison and Cassell, Lowland Clearances. 7 Devine, Great Highland Famine. 8 Handley, Agricultural Revolution in Scotland; Whittington, “Was there a Scottish Agricultural Revolution?”; Mills and Parry, “A Scottish Agricultural Revolution”; Adams and Whyte, “The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland”; Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland; Devine, “Social Responses to Agrarian Improvement”; Knox, Industrial Nation; Whyte, Scotland before the Industrial Revolution; Campbell, Rise and Fall of Scottish Industry; Whatley, Industrial Revolution in Scotland; Devine, Great Highland Famine; Fry, Wild Scots; Richards, Highland Clearances. 9 This periodization was adopted to ensure comparability with Phillips and Hearn’s study, which was in turn structured according to known trends within New Zealand migration history, these also being reflective of economic and social trends in New Zealand. For further discussion of the divisions see Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 13–18.

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10 Return Relating to the Population of Scotland at each Decennial Period, Table II, 1881 Census of Scotland, 2–3. 11 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 2–3, outlines the difficulties inherent in ascertaining Scottish emigration statistics. 12 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 151–7. See also Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 107–8. 13 Erickson, “Who Were the English and Scots Emigrants to the United States”; McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 122. 14 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 177, citing Harper, Emigration from North-East Scotland and the Glasgow Sentinel and Journal of the Industrial Interests, 20 March 1869; Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 21; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 75–6. 15 A chain of migration from New Deer, Aberdeenshire will be noted in chapter 3. For the case of Shetland migration see Lenihan, “In Habits, in Character.” 16 For more on Glasgow’s tobacco trade see Devine, Tobacco Lords; Gordon, “Industrial Development,” 169. 17 Gordon, “Industrial Development,” 167–8. 18 Ibid., 167 and 171. 19 Ibid., 172–3. 20 Whittington, “Agriculture and Society,” 159. 21 Gordon, “Industrial Development, “ 170. 22 Ibid., 176. 23 Ibid., 174–5. 24 Population, Scotland, Vol. II, Abstracts, 1881 Census of Scotland, 527–48. 25 Devine, Scottish Nation, 24,113; Buchan, Capital of the Mind. 26 Whyte, “Early Modern Scotland: Continuity and Change,” 130; “Enumeration Abstract: Edinburgh,” 1841 Census of Scotland, 23–6. 27 Doherty, “Urbanization in Scotland,” 251; Gordon, “Industrial Development,” 173. 28 Devine, Scottish Nation, 160. 29 Doherty, “Urbanization in Scotland, 1750–1914,” 252. 30 Devine, Scottish Nation, 161; Buchan, Capital of the Mind, provides interesting background. 31 Gordon, “Industrial Development,” 178; Population, Scotland, Vol. II, Abstracts, 1881 Census of Scotland, 555–62. 32 Calculations based upon information from the Scottish Registrar Generals reports for the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s and Census figures for 1851, 1861, and 1871. The figure of the increase between 1851 and 1861 is an approximation as the Registrar General’s reports did not begin until 1855.



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33 Doherty, “Urbanization in Scotland, 1750–1914,” 253; Thomson, Paper Industry in Scotland, 112–4. 34 Doherty, “Urbanization in Scotland, 1750–1914,” 252. 35 Gordon, “Industrial Development,” 177. 36 Carter, Farm Life in Northeast Scotland, provides a good account of the social and economic aspects of the development of agriculture in Aberdeen (and the rest of the North East). 37 Handley, Scottish Farming in the Eighteenth Century, 244, 258–61. 38 H. Jones, “Population from c. 1600,” 106; McClean notes the incidence of this in her thesis. 39 Withers, Urban Highlanders, 26; Campbell and Devine, “The Rural Experience,” 46; Preliminary Report, Table IV, 1871 Census of Scotland, 10–11. 40 Devine, “Temporary Migration and the Scottish Highlands,” 344–59, 344. 41 Richards, “Ironies of the Highland Exodus,” 74–85, 79. Between 1831 and 1841 Argyll’s population decreased by 3.56 per cent, then between 1841 and 1851 the county lost a further 8.29 per cent of its population, a net population decrease of approximately 11,000 people over that decade alone. Withers, Urban Highlanders, Table 2.1, 26; net population calculations based on Registrar General Reports. 42 Calculations based on tables 4.1 and 4.2 in Withers, Urban Highlanders 88 and 92; Brock, The Mobile Scot, 100. 43 For more on the truck system see “Truck Commission,” transcribed by Angus Johnson; (the full report of this 1872 truck system commission is available online). See also Hilton, Truck System; Smith, Shetland Life and Trade. 44 Devine, Scottish Nation, 253–4. 45 This gender imbalance in New Zealand and the implications of it for colonial society are discussed in, for example: Elphick, “What’s Wrong with Emma”; Dalziel, “The Colonial Helpmeet”; Phillips, A Man’s Country?; Macdonald, “Too Many Men and Too Few Women.” 46 This ratio was 99.25:100 in 1916; however, this nearly equal figure for 1916 is due to the number of New Zealand men outside of the country on census night 1916 due to the First World War service. Excluding 1916, the greatest female to male ratio for the New Zealand population generally was 90.33:100, reached in 1901. These “New Zealand” population figures, throughout the chapter, are exclusive of M ¯aori, being based on the census statistics available. 47 Population by gender tables in the published Censuses of Scotland 1801–1881; Population by birthplace tables in the New Zealand Censuses

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1871–1916. The ratio of Scottish females to males in the NZSG data is 79.03:100.00 for the “whole period,” 1840–1921. 48 This latter figure probably reflects the youthfulness of the settler population in relation to the sending society, rather than any predilection for immigrants to produce large families. 49 See, for example, “Diagram 1: Age of the Vogel Immigrants 1871–1879” in Morris, “The Assisted Immigrants to New Zealand,” 138–50; ­Macdonald, “Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in New Zealand,” 97–102; Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 139. 50 Erickson, “Emigration from the British Isles to the U.S.A,” 360; Swierenga, “Demography of Dutch emigration,” 395, cited in Erickson “Emigration from the British Isles to the U.S.A.,” 360. See also McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 586. 51 This difference of 463 probably being the result of married men coming to the colony ahead of their wives and children, and of men marrying M ¯aori women, who were not included in census figures. 52 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 384–5. 53 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” carried out such a task with a sub-sample of her migrants. See chapter 7. 54 Widowed migrants have been excluded from the proportions because a much greater proportion of the Scottish population was widowed than were NZSG migrants at arrival in New Zealand, and this difference skews the proportions presented making comparison more difficult. 55 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand, 1840–1880.” 56 Oddities in the NZSG data include the counties of Tauranga, Maniototo and Waitaki, that all had more Scots females than males (as did Waimea County) with 106.25, 102.78 and 101.98 females per 100 males respectively. Whangarei County – the county that included Waipu – held the lowest ratio of females to males in the NZSG data with just 53.57 Scots females for every 100 Scots men. 57 NZSG migrants 00205, 00212, 00213, 00219. 58 Richards, Britannia’s Children, 97; Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 95. 59 For a detailed breakdown of the sectors and sub-sectors used for analysis of occupation in this chapter, see Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” Appendix 5.1. 60 Though being a developing rather than developed nation, the nature of New Zealand manufacturing was, of course, different to that in Scotland. See Linge, “Manufacturing in New Zealand.” 61 Fairburn, “Social Mobility and Opportunity,” 53. 62 NZSG database, migrant 01494.



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63 NZSG database, migrant 03955; Graeme and David McKinlay, McKinlay’s of Dunedin, Home Page, http://www.mckinlays.co.nz/index.html. 64 And as attested by further examples in Hunter, Age of Enterprise. See also McAloon, No Idle Rich. 65 Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 126.

chapter three 1 King, Penguin History of New Zealand, 173; Sinclair, History of New Zealand, 102. 2 Belich, Making Peoples, 315, 325, 402. 3 Census of the Colony of New Zealand, various years. 4 “Auckland and New Zealand Company settlers by country of origin, 1840–52,” www.TeAra.govt.nz, based upon sample of death registers, “Peopling” project, Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Wellington. http:// www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/history-of-immigration/4/4. 5 Phillips, “History of Immigration,” http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/ NewZealanders/NewZealandPeoples/HistoryOfImmigration/en updated 21 September 2007; Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 1–2. 6 For more on the commercial and industrial growth of Auckland see Hunter and Morrow, eds., City of Enterprise, and specifically Winder, “Making Space,” 108–31. 7 Table I: “Number and Description of Manufactories and Works in Auckland, Wellington, and Nelson, 1850” based on Statistics of New Zealand for the Crown Colony Period 1840–1852, (Auckland: Dept. of Economics, Auckland University College, 1954) 46, in Linge, “Manufacturing in New Zealand,” 141. 8 This growth of industry and commerce in the city is noted in Belich Making Peoples, 368; Platts, Lively Capital, Ch 5; Sinclair, History of New Zealand, 226, 309. 9 See, for example, discussion of these Waipu migrants in Pearce, Scots of New Zealand and Hewitson, Far Off in Sunlit Places. Previous publications on this group include: Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart; Robinson, Lion of Scotland and To the Ends of the Earth; McPherson, Watchman against the World; Molloy, “No Inclination to Mix with Strangers,” 221–43. 10 Maureen Molloy. “McLeod, Norman – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1 September 2010. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/ 1m39/1.

290

Notes to pages 60–2

11 Information from NZSG migrant database, individuals 03395 and 03880. 12 Robinson, To the Ends of the Earth, 33. 13 Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart, 9. 14 Ibid., 118. 15 NZSG migrants 03395 and 03880; Lynne McKenzie, “McKenzie’s from Scotland Via Nova Scotia to New Zealand,” http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry. com, updated 31 December 2001, accessed 13 January2009. 16 Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart, 55. 17 Return of the Freeholders of New Zealand, (Wellington, Government Printer, 1884), cited in ibid., 57. 18 Hargreaves and Hearn, “Special Settlements,” 67–72, 67. 19 McCaskill, “The Goldrush Population of Westland,” 32–50. 20 Hearn and Phillips, “Immigration Study Findings,” Unpublished Manuscript, Part 3: The Provincial and Gold-Rush Years, 1853–70 c. 2007, available at: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/home-away-from-home/ sources. For more on these gold rushes see also: May, West Coast Gold Rushes; McCaskill, “The South Island Goldfields in the 1860s,” 143–69; and Hearn, “Scots Miners in the Goldfields,” 67–86. 21 For more information see Butterworth, Chips Off the Auld Rock, 75–9; Hall-Jones, Martins Bay, 77–83; Mackenzie, Pioneers of Martins Bay; Hargreaves and Hearn, “Special Settlements,” 67–72; Roxburgh, Jacksons Bay; ACFQ 8226 IM6/5/2 Jackson’s Bay 4 August 1876 – 18 August 1877, and ACFQ 8226 IM6/5/3 Jackson’s Bay 29 October 1877 – 28 May 1878, Archives New Zealand (ANZ), Wellington. 22 Hargreaves and Hearn, “Special Settlements,” 69–71. 23 Butterworth, Chips Off the Auld Rock, 76. 24 Lenihan, “In Habits, In Character.” 25 “Letter to the Honourable the Colonial Secretary from Robert Stout, 18 September 1871,” IM 6-10-1, Stewart Island, ANZ, Wellington, 1. 26 Memo on Special Settlements, Stewart’s Island, from His Honor the Superintendent Otago, 17 January 1872, ajhr, 1872, D-7A, 3. 27 Letter to The Honourable The Colonial Secretary from Robert Stout, 18 September 1871, 1–3. 28 Howard, Rakiura, 249. 29 Duncan, “The Land for the People,” 170–90. Regarding South to North Island and rural to urban drifts see: King, Penguin History of New Zealand, 280–1; also Part I, Section III, 1921 Census of New Zealand, 54–7; Vol.1, Introductory notes, 1926 Census of New Zealand, 4–5; Vol.1, Introductory notes, 1936 Census of New Zealand, ix–x; and Vol.1, Introductory notes, 1956 Census of New Zealand, 11 and 23–5.



Notes to pages 63–9

291

30 The “exception” of the small number of migrants from the Far North living in Auckland Province is likely due to sample size. 31 Lowlands dominated only, of course, in the sense that Lowland Scotlandborn migrants were the majority among Scots in Auckland Province. The province itself was, in 1878, just 12.44 per cent Scottish, excluding the New Zealand-born population (6.66 per cent Scotland-born including New Zealand-born). 32 Ninety-six of the NZSG migrants were born in the Highlands region and died in Southland Province; 62 of these have an occupation recorded in New Zealand, and 41 of these were engaged in agriculture in New Zealand – 66.13 per cent of Highlanders living in Southland with employment recorded. See, generally, Buchanan, “Sheep Rearing in New Zealand,” 365–79; Cumberland, “Agricultural Regions of New Zealand,” 43–63; Critchfield, “Growth of Pastoralism,” 283–300; Peden, “Pastoralism and the Transformation of the Rangelands.” 33 For more on Southland see Wilson, “Myth and Misunderstanding”; ­Holcroft, Old Invercargill; Hall-Jones, Historical Southland and (for biographies of some of the more prominent Southland settlers) Hall-Jones, Invercargill Pioneers. 34 Yska, Wellington; Patterson, “A ‘Half Australian, Half American’ Town,” 179–200. 35 Appendix Tables, Table LXX, 1881 Census of Scotland, lxi. 36 Hocken, Contributions to the Early History of New Zealand, 17, Chs 1–6 and Ch 16; McLintock, History of Otago, Ch 4; Brooking, And Captain of Their Souls, Chs 2 and 3; Olssen, History of Otago, Ch 5. 37 McClean, “Scottish Piety,” 21. 38 Ibid., 26–7. 39 Brooking, And Captain of Their Souls, 119. 40 Brooking, “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside,” 160. 41 “Regulations to be observed in the selection of emigrants for a free passage dated 1 July 1843,” cited in Marais, The Colonisation of New Zealand, 62. 42 On New Zealand Company selection policies, see also: Simpson, The Immigrants, 77. 43 Brooking, And Captain of Their Souls, 55–6. 44 Reed, Story of Otago, 228; Glasson, The Golden Cobweb, 18. 45 Reed, Story of Otago, 265. 46 Table No.11, 1871 Census of New Zealand. 47 For further detail on the Scottish communities and settlements in Otago and Southland see: Olssen, History of Otago; Brooking, And Captain

292

Notes to pages 70–6

of Their Souls; Thomson, ed., Southern People; Griffiths, ed., Advance Guard. Series 1, 2, 3. 48 See Aitchison and Cassell, Lowland Clearances, 118; Levitt and Smout, State of the Scottish Working-Class, 156–60; McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 132. 49 Phyllis Barnett-Drummuir, “Notes on the family of William Watson, born Cadder, 1775,” family history notes prepared by Mrs Barnett-Drummuir, 3–4 and 6 (of 7); Phyllis Barnett-Drummuir, “A Lassie from Lanarkshire,” unpublished family history, 1–4 of 4. 50 Barnett-Drummuir, “A Lassie from Lanarkshire,” 1–4 of 4. 51 Desiree Margaret Mulligan, “Mary Edie’s Biscuits and Other Interesting Information About: The Edie Family of Edievale,” unpublished family history, Chs 1 and 2. 52 Cookson, “Pilgrims’ Progress,” 13–40. 53 Cyclopedia, Canterbury, 954–9. 54 Cyclopedia, Canterbury, 359, 686, 711. 55 Ward, Early Wellington, 28. 56 “Blenheim: Greenock 25 August 1840, Kaiwharawhara 27 December 1840,” unpublished notes on the passage of the Blenheim, including a passenger list, prepared by Donald D. Cameron, (1990) 1; Ward, Early Wellington, 28; Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 56. 57 Parr, “Kaiwarra or the Village That Was,” 4–9; Anonymous, “Onslow Settlers of the 1840s: Donald Macdonald, Laird of Kaiwarra,” 4–11; Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 56. 58 Anonymous, “Onslow Settlers,” 4 and 6; Ward, Early Wellington, 58–9. 59 “Blenheim: Greenock 25 August 1840, Kaiwharawhara 27 December 1840,” unpublished notes on the passage of the Blenheim, 5; Anonymous, “Onslow Settlers,” 4 & 6. Figures for “Kaiwarrawarra” settlement from Crown Colony Statistics 1840–1852, Table 2. 60 Patterson, “It Brings to Mind the Wild Valleys of Lovely Glencoe.” 61 M.J. Ulyatt, “The Kaiwarra Camerons,” unpublished family history, 22. 62 Cameron, “Cameron of Kaiwharawhara,” unpublished family history, 6. 63 Fyfe and Douglas, Morvern to Glenmorven, 153. 64 Sutherland, Sutherlands of Ngaipu, 32. 65 Fyfe and Douglas, Morvern to Glenmorven, 185; For more on the various land transactions in the Wairarapa and the involvement of the Cameron brothers, see Cameron, “Cameron of Kaiwharawhara,” 8–9; and Ulyatt, “The Kaiwarra Camerons,” 35–37, 47–53, 55, 69. 66 Sutherland, Sutherlands of Ngaipu, 98–99.



Notes to pages 76–81

293

67 Cameron, “Cameron of Kaiwharawhara,” 14 and 16. 68 “Sutherland Genealogical Tree,” unpublished, compiled by Keith N. ­Lambert (nd). 69 Sutherland, Sutherlands of Ngaipu, 67–8 and Family Tree at the end of the book 70 Fordell sits just north of the 1876 Whanganui and Rangitikei Counties border, while Mangamahu is north east of Fordell. Turakina, just over 10 km south of Fordell, lies completely within Rangitikei County as defined in 1878, and Parewanui, just over 20 km south of Turakina, falls within Manawat ¯u County. 71 Voelkerling and Stewart, From Sand to Papa, 32. 72 Not one of the “Pahaoa” Camerons mentioned previously. 73 Voelkerling and Stewart, From Sand to Papa, 87–8; Wilson, Early Rangitikei, 58; Anonymous, “Onslow Settlers,” 6. 74 Wilson, Early Rangitikei, 58; Voelkerling and Stewart, From Sand to Papa, 41. 75 Bremner, “The Kai Warra Road and Khandallah,” 39–42. 76 Ulyatt, “The Kaiwarra Camerons,” 67. 77 “Intention to Marry,” BDM 20/1868, 219, ANZ; Higgie Family Tree, unpublished, supplied by Barbara Mariott. 78 Personal communication between Rebecca Lenihan and Alexa ­McPherson, 13 October 2007; Higgie Family Tree, supplied by Barbara Mariott; Clapham, Pukehou, 198, 235. 79 Campion, The Road to Mangamahu, 97. 80 Sutherland Family Material, unpublished, provided by Spin and Joan Sutherland. 81 Ibid. 82 “Diary of Nathaniel Sutherland (Jr), 1867–70,” transcribed by ­Janette Godfrey, Sutherland Family Material provided by Spin and Joan ­Sutherland, 3. 83 Ibid., 4. 84 “Diary of Nathaniel Sutherland (Jr).” 85 Ibid., 36. 86 Ibid. 87 Personal communication between Rebecca Lenihan and Bobbie Amyes, 24 February 2009. 88 “Diary of Nathaniel Sutherland (Jr)” and “Where the Howies were in NZ in 1869,” unpublished notes provided in personal communication between Rebecca Lenihan and Bobbie Amyes, 10 July 2009. 89 “Where the Howies were in NZ in 1869.”

294

Notes to pages 81–8

90 “The Aiken Connection to Matarawa in 1869,” unpublished notes provided in personal communication between Rebecca Lenihan and Bobbie Amyes, 13 July 2009. 91 “Bobbie Amyes, speech for NZSG Hutt branch meeting April 2005,” unpublished, provided in personal communication between Rebecca Lenihan and Bobbie Amyes, 24 February 2009. 92 “Beatrice Robertson,” unpublished notes provided in personal communication between Rebecca Lenihan and Bobbie Amyes, 5 March 2009. 93 For further background of this area, and Turakina in particular, including the ways in which Scottish identity have been preserved, and an historiography of the district, see Annabell, “Caledonia, Stern and Wild” and ­Annabell, “Smoke in the Hills?”

chapter four 1 Anthony Trollope, quoted in Mackenzie, “On Scotland and the Empire,” 726. 2 Porter “‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’ and Empire,” 277. 3 Devine, Scottish Nation, 471. 4 Ibid., 473. 5 Ibid., 473–4. 6 Brooking, “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside,” 156–89. 7 McAloon, “Scots in the Colonial Economy,” 87–102. 8 Galt, “Wealth and Income in New Zealand,” 49. 9 McAloon, No Idle Rich. 10 Devine, Scotland’s Empire, 189. 11 Cyclopedia of New Zealand. The Cyclopedia is also available online at http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-cyclopedia.html#name412298-1. Hereafter, the Cyclopedia will be referenced by the title of each volume. 12 Olssen and Hickey, Class and Occupation, 34–42, 123. 13 Although criticism could be made of this undiscriminating approach, it would be possible to separate those who left Scotland as adults from those who left as minors; this has not, however, so far been done. 14 In discussion Duncan Ross has emphasized the importance of considering the extent to which Otago was distinctive. 15 Olssen and Hickey, Class and Occupation, discusses this at length. 16 There is a case for classifying schoolteachers as semi-professionals. They were employed, not independent. But Olssen and Hickey suggest that the criterion is expertise rather than employment status (Class and



Notes to pages 89–93

295

­Occupation: 63, 74–5), which could justify the approach taken here. In any case, nineteenth-century barristers and solicitors did not require a university education either. 17 Some may think this table is excessively disaggregated, but categories can be merged according to preference. 18 Galt, “Wealth and Income,” 150–1. 19 Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland. 20 Devine, Clearance and Improvement, Ch 6, qualifies the frequent account of wholesale aggregation, while emphasising the generally rapid pace of change. 21 Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, 43. 22 Ibid., 60. 23 Ibid., 68. 24 Ibid., 144. 25 Devine, Clearance and Improvement, 137. 26 Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, 140–1. 27 Ibid., 47. 28 Ibid., 65. 29 Smout, Nature contested, 93. 30 Ibid., 99. 31 Devine, Transformation of Rural Scotland, 65. 32 Brooking, Lands for the People? 33 New Statistical Account of Scotland, 15 vols (Edinburgh: William ­Blackwood, 1834–45), 5: 47. Hereafter, NSA. 34 NSA 5: 613. 35 Ibid., 5: 97. 36 Ibid., 5: 248. 37 Ogilvie, Pioneers of the Plains. 38 NSA 10: 143. 39 Ibid., 10: 205. 40 Smout, Nature Contested, 94. 41 NSA 10: 222. 42 Ibid., 10: 227. 43 Ibid., 15: 56. 44 Journal of the proceedings of the Provincial Council of Canterbury, 11, 13 April 1855. Under New Zealand’s quasi-federal system from 1853 to 1876 the provincial superintendent was the head of the executive, was not a member of the provincial legislature, and was therefore in some ways analogous to the governor of an American state. 45 Cyclopedia, Canterbury, 859.

296

Notes to pages 93–8

46 Ibid., 572. 47 Ibid., 356, 359. 48 Ibid., 696, 706. 49 Devine, Clearance and Improvement, 111. 50 Holm, Nothing but Grass and Wind. 51 Ibid., 15: 65, 98. 52 Cyclopedia, Wellington, 1,329. 53 Ibid., 1,246; see also Hunter, Age of Enterprise. 54 Prince, “Changing Rural Landscape,” 36–7. 55 Ibid., 50–8. 56 Ibid., 64–72. 57 This paragraph relies on Jones, Doing Well and Doing Good. Thanks to Dr Jones who engaged in a number of encouraging discussions and suggested finding out about James Lillico. 58 Murray Roberts case discussed in McAloon, “Scots, Networks and the Colonial Economy,” 243–63. 59 Although Ritchie was born in Orkney, he is described here as a Glaswegian since his father and grandfather, both ministers, appear to have been from that city, and the family was certainly back in Glasgow by the late 1850s, after Ritchie’s father had died. Thanks to Jill Harland for discussions in which it was agreed that despite his many estimable qualities, Ritchie should not really be counted as an Orcadian. 60 Palmer, “The New Zealand and Australian Land Company,” 194. 61 Robertson, “Shipping and Shipbuilding,” 40. See also McLean, The Southern Octopus, 24–30. 62 Michael S. Moss, “Denny, Peter (1821–1895),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/51876]. Ritchie became an Anglican in Dunedin. While it is sometimes suggested in general terms that some settlers did this for social standing, the impression gained from Ritchie’s extensive correspondence is that it is much more likely that he simply came to prefer Anglican theology and worship. In any case, being Presbyterian was hardly a barrier to social standing in Dunedin. 63 Palmer, “New Zealand and Australian Land Company.” 64 Ritchie to J. Galbraith, 30 Dec 1880; J.M. Ritchie Private Letterbook, National Mortgage and Agency Papers, UN28, Hocken Library, University of Otago. Cited in McAloon, No Idle Rich, 68. 65 Fitzpatrick, British Empire in Australia, xxviii. 66 Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 221.



Notes to pages 99–117

297

67 Erik Olssen, “Macandrew, James – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m1/1. Thanks to Jo Bunce, completing a PhD on Macandrew at Victoria University of Wellington, for many informative discussions. 68 Stone, Makers of Fortune. 69 As suggested in Arnold, Farthest Promised Land. 70 Young “The Economic Characteristics of Small Craft Businesses,” 33–52. 71 Cyclopedia, Hawkes Bay and Taranaki, 576. 72 Ibid., 568–9. 73 Cyclopedia, Wellington, 510. 74 McLean, Southern Octopus, 24–30. 75 Furniss, Servants of the North. 76 Cyclopedia, Otago, 957. 77 Cyclopedia, Wellington, 638. 78 Walter Turnbull was the father of Alexander, founder of the Alexander Turnbull Library. 79 Cyclopedia, Wellington, 599–600. 80 Ibid., 675. 81 Millen, Kirkcaldie & Stains. 82 Cyclopedia, Auckland, 668. 83 Cyclopedia, Otago, 319. 84 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 6. 85 J.M. Ritchie to W. Brodie 22 Jul 07, J.M. Ritchie Private Letterbook no 12, 1906–1910. National Mortgage and Agency Co. Papers, UN28, Hocken Library, University of Otago. 86 J.M. Ritchie to W.S. Davidson, 12 May 1902, J.M. Ritchie Private Letterbook no 10, 1900–1903, National Mortgage and Agency Co. Papers, UN28, Hocken Library, University of Otago. 87 Buettner “Haggis in the Raj,” 212–39. 88 Devine, Scottish Empire.

chapter five

1 Belich, Making Peoples, 316. 2 Belich, Paradise Reforged, 221. 3 Devine, “Three Hundred Years of the Anglo-Scottish Union.” 4 Lynch, Scotland: A New History, 388. 5 See, generally, Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, Ch 8. 6 Bassett with King, Tomorrow Comes the Song, 250, 303.

298

Notes to pages 118–23

7 Alan Ward. “McLean, Donald – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m38/1. 8 Fargher, The Best Man Who Ever Served the Crown?, 1. 9 Quoted Fargher, The Best Man Who Ever Served the Crown?, 89. 10 Goldsmith, Waitangi Tribunal Rangahaua Whanui District 11A: Wairarapa, 26. 11 Fargher, The Best Man Who Ever Served the Crown?, 124, 185–6, 217. 12 Ibid., 303. 13 James Mackay Sr to Donald McLean, 2 Jul 1857. McLean Papers MS 32 Folder 420, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. 14 Alexander Mackay is not to be confused with the geologist Alexander McKay. James and Alexander pronounced their surname “Mackie.” See, generally, Harry C. Evison. “Mackay, James – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/ 1m29/1; David A. Armstrong. “Mackay, Alexander – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographies/2m11/1. 15 Quoted Fargher, The Best Man Who Ever Served the Crown?, 91, 105. 16 Ibid., 132. 17 Monro to Edward Stafford, 20 Oct 1857, Stafford Papers MS 28 folder 52, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. 18 Murdoch, “The Legacy of Unionism in Eighteenth-Century Scotland,” 78. 19 Devine, “Three Hundred Years of the Anglo-Scottish Union,” 8. 20 Ibid., 7–8. 21 Cited in Wright-St Clair, Thoroughly a Man of the World, 84; see also Stone, Young Logan Campbell, 128. 22 Cited in Wright-St Clair, Thoroughly a Man of the World, 101. 23 Cited in Stone, The Father and his Gift, 130. 24 Stone, The Father and his Gift, 230–1. 25 McIlvanney, Burns the Radical, 4. 26 Leask, Robert Burns and Pastoral, 18 27 Ibid., 38. 28 Readman, “The Edwardian Land Question,” 188. 29 Beresford, “Witnesses for the Defence,” 50. A key song in this idealization was “The Roast Beef of Old England” which was sometimes sung at public gatherings in mid-nineteenth-century New Zealand.



Notes to pages 123–8

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30 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol. 25, 1877, 250. 31 See, generally, the following essays in Cragoe and Readman, eds. The Land Question: Place, “Chartism and the Land”; Cameron, “Setting the Heather on Fire”; Taylor, “Richard Cobden, J.E. Thorald Rogers and Henry George”; and Readman, “The Edwardian Land Question.” 32 Leask, Burns and Pastoral, 117–18. 33 McIlvanney, Burns the Radical, 1–2. 34 Ibid., 69, 96. 35 Devine, Clearance and Improvement, 100. 36 McIlvanney, Burns the Radical, 22. 37 Ibid., 23. 38 Ibid., 131. 39 Ibid., 27. 40 Burns, too, eulogized Alfred the Great as an ideal king in an idealized Anglo-Saxon freedom; Ibid., 51. 41 Deans, Letters to My Grandchildren, 17. 42 Miller, Centennial History of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 11. 43 Stewart J. Brown, “Chalmers, Thomas (1780–1847),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, October 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5033]. 44 A point made in a number of places, for instance McKean, The Church in a Special Colony, 35. 45 Ibid., 50. 46 Miller, Centennial History of St. Andrew’s, 11. 47 Cited in Matheson “1840–1870: The Settler Church,” 40. 48 Brunt, Deep Roots and Firm Foundations, 12. 49 Cited in McLintock, The History of Otago, 273. 50 Otago Daily Times, 17 January 1866, 5. 51 For a selection of examples, see Matheson, “Settler Church” and Ian Breward, “1871–1901: Clamant Needs, Determined Battlers.” 52 Leask uses the term “parish state” and suggests that Robert Burns’s “sexual rebellion was in part a deliberate act of defiance against Scotland’s ‘parish state,’ and not solely an exercise in private hedonism.” Leask, Burns and Pastoral, 186. 53 The best synopsis of MacGregor’s career is Margaret Tennant, ­“MacGregor, Duncan – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara”the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2m7/1. 54 The New Zealand Magazine, 2, 1877, 207. 55 Ibid., 3, 1877, 320.

300

Notes to pages 128–31

56 “Report upon the Hospitals of the Colony,” Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1888, H-9, 6. 57 The most recent biographical essay is David Hamer, “Stout, Robert – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt. nz/en/biographies/2s48/1. 58 Stout was not the only immigrant who concluded that the law would serve his ambitions better than schoolteaching – the Danish-born Oscar Alpers, who would briefly sit on the Supreme Court in Stout’s last years as chief justice, was another. 59 Dunn and Richardson, Sir Robert Stout, 192. 60 The most extensive biography is still Hamer, “The Law and the Prophet.” 61 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol. 48, 1884, 202. 62 Ibid., vol. 55, 1886, 558. 63 Having been out of parliament from 1887 until mid-1893, Stout was in no position to take over the premiership when John Ballance died in March of the latter year. Even though Stout was a strong candidate for judicial office, the appointment undoubtedly got him out of Seddon’s way. 64 Hamer, “Stout, Robert – Biography.” 65 Alex Frame. “Salmond, John William – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3s1/1 66 Frame, Salmond, 27. 67 Ibid., 28–9. 68 Ibid., 59. 69 For contrasting views, see Walker, The Scottish Legal System, 39–41 (a “substantial” influence and “a material source of the living law of Scotland”); White and Willock, The Scottish Legal System, 22 (“very limited”). 70 Hoeflich, Roman and Civil Law, 133. 71 Frame, Salmond, 102-04. 72 Findlay, Degeneration, 3. John Ballance (1839–1893) led a Liberal-Labour alliance to parliamentary victory in the election of 1890. An Ulsterman, a freethinker, and a newspaper proprietor, he seems to have been unduly in awe of Stout. The standard biography is McIvor, The Rainmaker. 73 Findlay, Degeneration, 4. 74 Ibid., 5. 75 His wife, Josephine Arkle, was the daughter of a Palmerston storekeeper, James Arkle, Lanark-born, and a long-time supporter of John McKenzie. 76 Frame, Salmond, 77. 77 Findlay, Legal Liberty.



Notes to pages 131–5

301

78 Ibid., 4. 79 Ibid., 9–10. 80 Ibid., 10, 17 81 Ibid., 11. 82 The New Zealand Magazine, 6, 1877. 83 See, generally, Bassett, Sir Joseph Ward. 84 Ostler, “Bench and Bar 1903–1928,” 72. 85 Frame, Salmond, 162. 86 Cited in Frame, Salmond, 166. 87 Frame, Salmond, 167–8. 88 Matheson, “Settler Church,” 41 89 Salmond, The Reign of Grace, 35–6. 90 Rev. Dr D.M. Stuart of Knox Church, quoted Breward, “Clamant Needs, Determined Battlers,” 53. 91 Barber, “James Gibb’s Heresy Trial,” 150. 92 Breward, “Claimant Needs, Determined Battlers,” 55. See also Peter Matheson. “Salmond, William – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s3/1. 93 A wowser, for those unfamiliar with Australasian English, is a puritanical opponent of innocent pleasures, particularly those associated with alcohol, gambling, and the like. 94 Cited in Frame, Salmond, 87. The elder Salmond’s line anticipates Tony Crosland: “Total abstinence and a good filing system are not now the right signposts to the socialist utopia. Or at least, if they are, some of us will fall by the wayside.” Greg Ryan, a colleague, advises that the prohibition pamphlet enjoyed substantial funding by the liquor industry. 95 Matheson, “Settler Church,” 17, 33. 96 Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 137. 97 A point made by McKean, Church in a Special Colony, 28. 98 Maclaren, “Privilege, Patronage and the Professions,” 97. 99 Ibid. 100 Anderson, “The Scottish University Tradition,” 72. 101 Cherry Hankin. “Brown, John Macmillan – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2b41/1. 102 D.V. Fenby, “Black, James Gow – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2b24/1. 103 Brunt, Deep Roots and Firm Foundations, 11.

302

Notes to pages 135–8

104 Ian Breward, “Fraser, Charles – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1f17/1. 105 Ian W. Fraser, “Aitken, John Guthrie Wood – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographies/3a8/1 106 William Renwick, “Blair, John Rutherfurd – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2b26/1. See also Bourke, Kelburn, King Dick and the Kelly Gang for a rather more sceptical view of Blair. 107 Graham C. Stoop, “Laidlaw, Robert Alexander Crookston – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographies/3l2/1. 108 Geoffrey W. Rice, “Hay, James Lawrence – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 3-Feb-11. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/5h11/1. 109 Stephanie Dale, “Stewart, William Downie – Biography”; from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10 http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3s35. 110 Dorothy Page, “Dalrymple, Learmonth White – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1d2/1. 111 Eileen Wallis, “Burn, Margaret Gordon – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2b50/1. 112 Devaliant, Kate Sheppard. 113 Erik Olssen, “Pinkerton, David – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 22-Nov-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2p17/1. 114 Otago Daily Times, 18 November 1890, 4. More generally, see Erik Olssen, Building the New World, Chs 7 and 8. 115 Kerry Taylor, “McLaren, David – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3m22/1. 116 Evening Post 28 Jan 1935, 13. 117 Olssen, Building the New World, 171–6.



Notes to pages 139–44

303

118 For the Christian Socialist tinge in Lister and Hogg, see Stenhouse, “Controversy over the Recognition of the Religious Factor,” 52. 119 Les Cleveland, “Hogg, Robert – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3h30/1. See also Yska, Truth. 120 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol. 146, 1909, 100. 121 Ibid., vol. 147, 1909, 239. 122 Brooking, Lands for the People. 123 Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 136. 124 Ibid., 133. 125 Ibid., 352. 126 Ibid., 357. 127 Bassett with King, Tomorrow Comes the Song. 128 Fiona McKergow, “Aitken, Jessie – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3a7/1. On Baxter see David Grant, “Baxter, Archibald McColl Learmond – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara– the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt. nz/en/biographies/3b19/1. 129 Patricia A. Sargison, “Henderson, Christina Kirk – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10 http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2h28/1. 130 Richardson, “Billy Banjo,” 86. 131 Richardson, Coal, Class & Community, 131. 132 Len Richardson, “McLagan, Angus – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10 http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/4m23/1. 133 Roberta Nicholls, “Stewart, Catherine Campbell – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/ 4s48/1. 134 Among them, McCarthy, Scottishness and Irishness and Fraser, Castles of Gold.

CHAPTER SIX 1 Grove, Green Imperialism; MacKenzie, “Assurance and Anxiety”; ­MacKenzie, Scots in South Africa, 204–15.

304

Notes to pages 145–50

2 Young, Our Islands, Our Selves. 3 Thomas Burns, 15 April 1848, Journal of the Reverend Thomas Burns, 1 ­ 847–48, Ms77, OSM; Hargreaves and Hearn, Letters from Otago, 12–13 and 15. 4 Seddon, Old Country. 5 Patterson, “Reading Between the Lines,” 162–3. 6 Ibid., 163. 7 Beattie, The Southern Runs; Pinney, Early North Otago Runs; Brooking, Lands for the People?, 33–8. 8 Patterson, “Reading Between the Lines,” 2–12. 9 The phrase, first used by John Turnbull Thomson, became almost an accepted usage by the late 1850s; Sinclair, “Waste Howling Wilderness.” 10 Brad Patterson, “Kettle, Charles Henry – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1k11/1. 11 West, “An Environmental History of the Otago Peninsula”; Cronon, Changes in the Land. 12 Beattie, Southern Runs; Pinney, Early North Otago Runs; Brooking, Lands for the People?, xxx. 13 Lee, First Order Geodetic Triangulation. 14 Hall-Jones, Mr Surveyor Thomson. 15 Lawn, Pioneer Land Surveyors. 16 Patterson, “Reading Between the Lines,” Chs 11 and 13. 17 Easdale, Mungo Park’s Trunk. 18 Graham Langton, “Douglas, Charles Edward – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/ 2d16/1/1; Pascoe, ed., Mr Explorer Douglas; Wilson, Flight of the Huia, 88–91. 19 Brooking, “Mackenzie, Thomas Noble” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3m18/1/1; and Grigg, “Tom Mackenzie.” 20 Arnold, “Opening of the Great Bush.” See also West, “An Environmental History of the Otago Peninsula”; and Campbell, “Evolution of Hawke’s Bay Landed Society.” 21 Brooking, “Great Escape.” 22 Barr, Old Identities. 23 Ibid., 51. 24 Bagge, “Valuable Ally or Invading Army?”



Notes to pages 151–4

305

25 Arnold, “Opening of the Great Bush”; Arnold, New Zealand’s Burning; Arnold, Settler Kaponga. 26 Wild, Life and Times of Sir James Wilson, 48. 27 Ibid., 50-81; Brooking and Pawson, eds, Seeds of Empire, 22–3. 28 Wild, Life and Times of Sir James Wilson, 59. 29 Eldred-Grigg, A Southern Gentry, 112–3, 119–21. 30 Wild, Life and Times of Sir James Wilson, 117–214; Brooking, “Agrarian Businessmen Organise,” 329–364 31 Palmer, “New Zealand and Australian Land Company,” 300. 32 Cyclopedia, Otago, 334; and Palmer, “New Zealand and Australian Land Company,” 300, 304, and 380. 33 Palmer, “New Zealand and Australian Land Company.” 34 McAloon, No Idle Rich, 61, 64, 134–8, and 140; Palmer, “New Zealand and Australian Land Company.” On Arthur J. Burns, see Cyclopedia, Otago, 335. 35 Scrivener, “The Subdivision and Closer Settlement of Edendale Estate.” 36 Ibid., 75. 37 Figures on birth place for Otago/Southland extracted from Scotter, Run, Estate And Farm; Beattie, Southern Runs; Pinney, Early North Otago Runs; Campbell, “Runholding in Otago and Southland”; Sinclair, “High Street Quaking”; Peden, “Pastoralism and the Transformation of the Rangelands”; Peden, Making Sheep Country. Figures for Canterbury extracted from Acland, Early Canterbury Runs; Pinney, Early South Canterbury Runs; Peden, “Sheep Farming Practice in Colonial Canterbury”; Peden, “Pastoralism and the Transformation of the Rangelands”; and Peden, Making Sheep Country. 38 Burnard, “A Colonial Elite,” 15, 40–1, 45; Hall, “Land for the Landless”; D.C. McDonald, “Campbell, Robert,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2c4/1. 39 Pinney, Early North Otago Runs, 141–3. 40 Noel Crawford, “McLean, Allan,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m37/1; McAloon, No Idle Rich, 31, 41, 45, and 88. 41 Burnard, “A Colonial Elite,” 40 and 57; McAloon, No Idle Rich, 88. 42 Pinney, Early South Canterbury Runs and Early North Otago Runs; Campbell, “Runholding in Otago and Southland,” 82 and 85; ­Brooking, “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside,” 156–90; Sinclair, “High Street Quaking.”

306

Notes to pages 154–7

43 Pinney, Early South Canterbury Runs and Early North Otago Runs; Campbell, “Runholding in Otago and Southland,” 82 and 85; ­Brooking, “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside”; Scrivener, “Runholding in the Wakatipu Basin.” 44 Scrivener, “Runholding in the Wakatipu Basin,” 24. 45 For an expression of this view see Relph, “A Century of Human Influence on High Country Vegetation,” 133; Mather, “Desertification of Central Otago, New Zealand,” 215; Ministry for the Environment, State of the New Zealand Environment; and McIntyre, Whose High Country?, ­136–61 and 128–283. 46 Peden, Making Sheep Country, 41–64. 47 Peden, “Sheep Farming Practices in Colonial Canterbury.” 48 Ibid. 49 Peden, Making Sheep Country, especially 95–198; Scrivener, “Runholding in the Wakatipu Basin”; Pinney, Early North Otago Runs and Early South Canterbury Runs; Brooking, “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside.” 50 Patterson, “Laagers in the Wilderness,” 3–14. 51 Bagnall, Wairarapa, Chs 9 and 15. 52 McGregor, Early Stations of Hawke’s Bay. 53 Ibid., 54 Campbell, “The Evolution of Hawke’s Bay Landed Society.” 55 R. Winsome Shepherd, “Hay, David,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2h23/1. 56 On Arthur Yates from Manchester see “Yates: New Zealand’s Leading Gardening Company Celebrates 125 Years,” http://www.garden-nz.co.nz/ latest-news/news/yates-celebrates-125-years.html, accessed 14 November 2008. On Robert Nimmo, John Blair and Adolf Moritzon see Cyclopedia, Otago, 351–2. On grass seed merchants in general, see Pawson, “Plants, Mobilities and Landscapes”; Pawson, “Biotic Exchange in an Imperial World”; Wood and Pawson, “The Banks Peninsula Forests and Akaroa Cocksfoot.” 57 Evans, History of Farm Implements. 58 Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Otago, 325; Thomson, ed., Southern People, 195. 59 Bush Advocate, 8 May 1888, 3. 60 Hearn and Hargreaves, Speculators’ Dream; McArthur, “Gold Rush to Gold Dredge.” 61 Ministry for the Environment, The State of the New Zealand Environment, Chs 8 and 41; the Clutha figure comes from ajhr, 1920, D6B, cited



Notes to pages 158–60

307

in Hearn, “Mining the Quarry,” in Pawson and Brooking, Environmental Histories of New Zealand, 92 and 304. 62 Hale, Pioneer Nurserymen of New Zealand, 7. 63 On Duncan and Davies see Strongman, Gardens of Canterbury, 53 and Hale, Pioneer Nurserymen, 107–11. On George and Henry Matthews see Ibid., 71. On James Gebbie Sr and Jr see Ibid., 82–3. On all these nurserymen and their contribution to horticulture in Dunedin see Shaw, Southern Gardening, 17–47. 64 Alison Evans, “Tannock, David,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3+3/1; ­Dawson, History of Gardening, 186-8; Grove, Green Imperialism, passim; MacKenzie, “Empire and the Ecological Apocalypse.” 65 Dawson, History of Gardening in New Zealand, 106. 66 Leach, “Exotic Natives and Contrived Wild Gardens.” 67 Patterson, “Thistle Entwined with the Fern,” 37–8. 68 Brooking, Hodge and Wood, “The Grasslands Revolution Reconsidered”; Park, “Swamps Which Might Doubtless Easily Be Drained”; Hunt, Wetlands of New Zealand. 69 Clayton, “Settlers, Politicians and Scientists”; Green, “A Necklace of Jade.” 70 Brooking, “The Historical Background to the Otago/Canterbury Regional Council Boundary Dispute.” 71 Young, Our Islands, Our Selves, 102, 105, and 116–8; Tom Brooking, “Mackenzie, Thomas Noble,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3m18/1/1; Grigg, “Tom Mackenzie.” On Mackenzie and HEP development in Fiordland see Fox, “The Power Game.” 72 Young, Our Islands, Our Selves, 114–5; Wild, James Wilson of Bulls; Tom Brooking, “Wilson, James Glenny,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2w28/1. On the productivist paradigm see Brooking and Pawson, Seeds of Empire passim. 73 “Robert Cunningham Bruce,” in G.H. Scholefield, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, I (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs 1940), 107. 74 Henderson, “Far South Fancies”; Geoffrey Vine, “Bathgate, Alexander,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.

308

Notes to pages 160–3

nz/en/biographies/2b8/1, and Vine, “Doing a Good Work”; Bathgate, “The Sparrow Plague and Its Remedy.” 75 Roche, Forest Policy in New Zealand, 79–80; Roche, History of New Zealand Forestry, 86-7; Wynn, “Pioneers, Politicians and the Conservation of Forest,” 179–85; Star, “Place of Native Forest in New Zealand’s Mental Landscape, 1874.” 76 Roche, Forest Policy in New Zealand, 79–80, and History of New Zealand Forestry, 86-7; Angus MacLeod, “Kirk, Thomas,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographies/2k10/1; Wynn, “Destruction Under the Guise of Improvement?,” 113; Star, “Place of Native Forest in New Zealand’s Mental Landscape, 1874”; James Beattie, “Environmental Anxiety in New Zealand, 1850-–1920.” 77 “Sketch of the Botany of Otago 1868,” Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1, (1868), 182 and 181; Nancy M.Adams, “Buchanan, John,” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b42/1; Holland, O’Connor and Wearing, “Remaking the Grasslands of the Open Country,” 71; Robert Peden, Making Sheep Country, 41–64 and 95–133. 78 Buchanan, “Notes on the Flora of the Province of Wellington,” 213. 79 Buchanan, Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand; Peden, “Pioneer Grassland Farming,” in Brooking and Pawson, eds., Seeds of Empire, 64. 80 Lindsay, Contributions to New Zealand Botany, 20, 81, 28. 81 Lindsay, “On the Conservation of Forests in New Zealand,” 38–46. 82 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1874, 16, 401, cited in Star, “Place of Native Forest in New Zealand’s Mental Landscape, 1874.” 83 Stone, Makers of Fortune, 107–8, 159–61, 164–5. 84 Seddon, New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1894, 86, 191. 85 Seddon’s introductory address to the Timber Conference, ajhr, 1896, H–24, 7–8, cited in Wynn, “Destruction Under the Guise of Improvement?,” 112. 86 Runte, National Parks; Schama, Landscape and Memory, 188–90. 87 Worster, Passion for Nature, 32. 88 On the Scenery Preservation Act see Young, Our Islands, Our Selves, 84–5 and 106–7; Park, Theatre Country, 125, and 133–4; Star and Lochhead, “Children of the Burnt Bush,” 126–7. The rest is based on Tom Brooking, A Biography of Richard John Seddon, in progress; Daiches, Robert Burns



Notes to pages 163–5

309

and His World, 50–1; Manning, “Burns and God,” 130; McIlvanney, The Radical Burns, 110. 89 Young, Our Islands, Our Selves, 107–8. On Ell, see Eric Pawson, “Ell, Henry George” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3e4/1; on Potts see Young, Our Islands, Our Selves, 75–7; and Star, “T.H. Potts and the Origins of Conservation.” 90 Young, Our Islands, Our Selves, 102, 113, 118, 120, and 126–7; A.D. Thomson, “Cockayne, Leonard” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/3c25/1. 91 Smith, Early Adventures in Otago, 52. 92 Lynch, “The Garden of Otago.” 93 Wood, “Soil Fertility Management in Nineteenth century New Zealand Agriculture,” 53–5 and 155–160. 94 James Blackie to John McGlashan in Edinburgh, 22 July 1848, McGlashan Papers, MS 463, Hocken Library, University of Otago. On the transformation of New Zealand rain forest into grasslands see Holland, O’Connor, and Wearing, “Remaking the Grasslands of the Open Country,” and Wynn, “Destruction Under the Guise of Improvement?” 95 Letters from members of the Buchanan family in Otago to Kirkintolloch in Scotland, MS 1628/2, Hocken Library. 96 Hargreaves and Hearn, Letters from Otago, 15. 97 Fraser, I Remember, 4–5, 14 and 26. 98 “A Settler to his Parents,” 13 September 1849 in Hargreaves and Hearn, Letters from Otago, 1848–49, 37–8. 99 Arch Henderson to his niece, 2 December 1869, AB 018, Otago Settlers’ Museum (hereafter OSM). 100 Thomas Adam to his brother Alick, 30 May 1857, Thomas Adam Letters, BB-0003, OSM. 101 Beattie, “Lusting After a Lost Arcadia.” 102 Hepburn, The Journal of George Hepburn, 93. 103 See, for example, Grey, Aotearoa and New Zealand, 19, when he writes “the alien nature of the dark and seemingly forbidding bush gave further impetus to its clearing in favour of something more familiar – grassy hills.” This notion is also repeated constantly through the essays in Phillips, ed., Te Whenua, Te Iwi: The Land and the People and infuses Wilson, The Urge to Clear the “Bush.”

310

Notes to pages 165–9

104 Fraser, I Remember, 1–5; and Smith, Early Adventures, 42–3. 105 Adam, Twenty-Five years of Emigrant Life, 127. 106 Barr, The Old Identities, 17. For a fuller discussion on Scots in the Empire and attitudes to the environment see Grove, Green Imperialism; ­MacKenzie, ed., Imperialism and the Natural World; Brooking and ­Coleman, “Newest Scotland”; Hale, Pioneer Nurserymen of New Zealand; Ogilvie, The Deans of Canterbury; Geoffrey F. Vine, “Doing Good Work”; Shaw, History of the Dunedin Horticultural Society; and Star and ­Lochhead, “Children of the Burnt Bush”; Clayton, “Settlers, Politicians and Scientists.” 107 Beattie, “Lusting After a Lost Arcadia,” 50–2, and 117. 108 Peter Thompson, “Paper Presented to the Otago Institute,” Otago Witness, 23 September 1871. 109 “Dunedin Naturalists’ Club Minute Books,” Ms 1 5333A, Hocken Library. 110 “First Annual Report of the Dunedin Field Naturalists’ Club”; Otago Witness, 3 August 1872. 111 R.K. Dell, “Hector, James” – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h15/1. 112 Wynn, “Destruction Under the Guise of Improvement?” 106. 113 Otago Witness, 22 July 1865, p. 4 cited in Star “Landscape Evaluation,” 22. 114 James Hector, Memo 1 to the Colonial Secretary in Walter Buller, “The Birds of New Zealand,” New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, 1867, D-7, 3. 115 As minister of works in the Liberal government, Seddon even dragged the departing governor – the blue blooded and High Tory Earl of Onslow – over the pass on horseback in 1892 to ensure that its attractions were known in the highest inner circles of Empire: Seddon, The Seddons, 160–1. 116 James Hector, “Geological Expedition to the West Coast of Otago,” Otago Provincial Gazette, 6, No. 274 (5 November 1863): 458, 460–1 and 463, cited in Star, “Making a Way,” 13. 117 Hector, New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, 1867, D-7, 3. 118 See Brooking and Pawson, Seeds of Empire, 14–16. 119 Stafford, Scientist of Empire. On this subject also see Griffiths and Robin, eds., Ecology and Empire. 120 Brooking and Pawson, Seeds of Empire, 1–33. 121 Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, 36 (1903): 539.



Notes to pages 169–72

311

122 Young, Our Islands, Our Selves, 72, 113, and 120; Galbreath, Scholars and Gentlemen Both; Beattie and Stenhouse, “Empire, Environment and Religion.” 123 The notion of New Zealand hitting its environmental limits contrasted with the optimism inherent in the phrase “Government and Company, Unlimited” as used by the Chicago Progressive Henry Demarest Lloyd in his Newest England, 309–38, an account based on a visit to New Zealand in 1899. It suggests that the small country was making rapid progress by developing itself as a carefully controlled company, but one with limitless potential rather than some kind of vast corporate body bent on endless expansion without regulation or control. See Brooking, Hodge and Wood, “The Grasslands Revolution Reconsidered” on the way in which the South Island reached the environmental limits for farming in the early 1900s. 124 Beattie and Stenhouse, “Empire, Environment and Religion”; Thomson in New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1909, 148, 218, and 222; 1910, 150, 95–8; 1911, 155, 594–7. The cake metaphor comes from Sinclair, William Pember Reeves, 204 and 211–2. Also see Brooking, Lands for the People?, 89 and 271. 125 Pawson and Brooking, eds., Environmental Histories of New Zealand, 4. 126 Guthrie-Smith, Tutira, xxi–xxii. 127 For example, Wynn, “Remapping Tutira” applies the insights of historical geography to understanding both the text and the man who wrote it; and Calder, “The Plots of Tutira” employs the skills of a literary critic to develop further Cronon’s comments about the importance of storytelling in environmental history and thereby examines the book as a kind of a parable of New Zealand settlement. His conclusion on p.156 reinforces the argument in this chapter: “It is the long view that allows us to see the settlement of New Zealand by Europeans on the same stage as its settlement by rabbits and weasels, bumble bees and trout, and in terms of processes and tendencies that resist reduction to the cartoon binaries of colonist or invader, improvement or ruination.” 128 Guthrie-Smith, Tutira, xxiii. 129 Ibid., xxiii. 130 Guthrie-Smith, “The Changing Land,” in Making New Zealand, 12. 131 Ibid., 19–20. 132 Brooking, Hodge and Wood, “The Grasslands Revolution Reconsidered,” 175. 133 Brooking, And Captain of Their Souls, 148.

312

Notes to pages 173–6

chapter seven 1 Bueltmann, Hinson, and Morton, eds, Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie. For other studies that document the wider influence of ethnic associations see also: Comerford and Kelly, eds, Associational Culture; Hughes, “The Scottish Migrant Community of Victorian and Edwardian Belfast.” 2 Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity. 3 A study that further aids misconceptions is Offwood’s anecdotal Oatcakes to Otago; for a study of Waipu, see Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart. 4 For a wider discussion of the influence and development of Scottish ethnic practices throughout New Zealand see Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity. 5 http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ searched on 17 June 2010, using the “exact phrase” search. While some of the hits refer to clubs and societies abroad (especially in the search for “Andrew’s Society”), the vast majority of findings were for New Zealand. Papers Past contains more than one million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals, covering the period 1839 to 1932. At point of search it included fortyeight publications, covering small-town newspapers as well as papers from Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch. While not all papers are searchable, and few cover the full study period, Papers Past has proven indispensable for researching New Zealand’s Scottish associations, offering extremely rich reportage on their activities, as well as their memberships. 6 Cyclopedia of New Zealand; periodicals include the New Zealand Scot, the New Zealand Scotsman, and the Scottish New Zealander (copies held at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington). 7 The number of associations was established by cross-referencing a variety of sources, including manuscripts (society records), newspaper reports on conspicuous events such as Caledonian Games, societies listed under the Friendly Societies or Incorporated Societies Acts, periodicals such as the New Zealand Scotsman, and entries found in the six volumes of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand. 8 Otago Witness, 16 August 1862; Otago Daily Times, 29 October 1862; Otago Witness, 1 November 1862. The Otago Caledonian Society’s establishment had been first discussed in connection with the Scottish sports held at Jones’s Horse Bazaar and the Queen’s birthday celebrations five months later, see Otago Witness, 28 December 1861; 4 January 1862, 5 and 31 May 1862.



Notes to pages 176–80

313

9 Some of the tensions between the two “identities” are evident at a Dunedin town board meeting in 1862, cf. Otago Witness, 30 August 1862. The emergence of ethnic associations in connection with the arrival of immigrants in search for gold was not specific to the Scots. German associations on the West Coast emerged under similar circumstances. See Bueltmann, “Ethnizität und organisierte Geselligkei” Historische Zeitschrift; also Bueltmann and MacRaild, “Globalising St George.” 10 Southland Times, 2 January 1863; New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, 11 January 1865. 11 Tenfelde, “Civil Society and the Middle Classes in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” 91. 12 See for instance the rules of the Oamaru Caledonian Society from 1893, North Otago Museum Archive, Oamaru: 98/29c; these rules are the same as those of the Caledonian Society of Otago, but in 1906 included a fourth rule identifying the promotion of education as an objective, see Caledonian Society of Otago Rulebook of 1906. Dunedin: MS-1045/005, Hocken Library. 13 Otago Witness, 15 January 1881; Otago Witness, 5 March 1881; see also Entwistle, History of the Gaelic Society of New Zealand. 14 Bueltmann, “The Image of Scotland Which We Cherish in Our Hearts”: for comparison, see also Bueltmann, “Remembering the Homeland.” 15 See for example New Zealand Scot 2, no. 1 (November 1913). 16 Daily Southern Cross, 3 December 1850. 17 Otago Witness, 10 February 1855; Hawke’s Bay Herald, 15 January 1859. 18 Timaru Herald, 26 January 1900. 19 Thames Star, 26 January 1889. 20 Thames Star, 25 January 1890. 21 A longer discussion on the role of Burns anniversaries as sites of memory can be found in Bueltmann, “The Image of Scotland”; for the use of memory narratives, see also Brockmeier, “Introduction: Searching for Cultural Memory.” 22 Poverty Bay Herald, 25 January 1908. 23 Anderson, Education and the Scottish People; also Houston, Scottish Literacy. 24 Poverty Bay Herald, 25 January 1908. 25 For a menu, see for example Grey River Argus, 28 January 1884. 26 Timaru Herald, 27 January 1886. 27 Poverty Bay Herald, 26 January 1909; Otago Witness, 30 January 1869. 28 Cf. Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory.”

314

Notes to pages 180–5

29 Poverty Bay Herald, 26 January 1912. 30 Auckland Burns Club AGM report, 4 November 1886, Auckland City Library Special Collections, NZMS77; the exact year of foundation remains unclear, but it was most likely in the early 1880s. 31 Thames Star, 27 December 1890; members of the club had been rehearsing the drama “Robert Burns” and performed it before members of the club, see Thames Star, 31 July 1891. 32 Observer, 9 November 1889. 33 Thames Star, 2 December 1893; Thames Star, 11 December 1893. 34 Gaelic Society Annual General Meeting report, reprinted in Otago Witness, 6 August 1891. 35 Otago Witness, 5 March 1881; complete rules are available for the post1930 period in Entwistle, History of the Gaelic Society, 150–63. 36 For instance in relation to the Inglesides organized in Oamaru, cf. Oamaru Caledonian Society, Meeting of Directors’ minutes, 8 August 1892, North Otago Museum Archive, Oamaru, 382/29d. 37 Evening Post, 3 January 1887. 38 Bush Advocate, 11 October 1892. 39 Oamaru Caledonian Society Rulebook, 1893, North Otago Museum Archive, Oamaru, 98/29c. 40 Bueltmann, Hinson, and Morton, eds, Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie. 41 Bush Advocate, 11 October 1892. 42 Timaru Herald, 25 August 1875. 43 Clarke, Holiday Seasons. 44 Timaru Herald, 27 May 1872. 45 Timaru Herald, 5 May 1875. 46 Timaru Herald, 4 January 1876. 47 Timaru Herald, 2 January 1889. 48 Timaru Herald, 2 January 1894. 49 Attendance numbers have been taken from newspaper accounts of the annual gatherings, as well as from annual reports from the Society that were reprinted in the Timaru Herald. While these estimates may not always be correct, they nonetheless offer a suitable indication. It is worth noting that the deepest dips, for instance that in 1890, were the result of poor weather rather than a general decrease in interest. For a map comparing figures across New Zealand, see Bueltmann, “Manly Games,” 233. 50 For instance Timaru Herald, 1 January 1889. 51 Caledonian Society of Timaru, Annual Report, 1885, reprinted in Timaru Herald, 5 October 1886. 52 Timaru Herald, 2 January 1877.



Notes to pages 186–92

315

53 Timaru Herald, 2 January, 1879. 54 Timaru Herald, 4 January 1876. 55 Ibid. 56 Timaru Herald, 2 January 1877. 57 Bueltmann, “Manly Games.” 58 See for instance the program of the Inglewood Caledonian Society, Alexander Turnbull Library Ephemera Collection, Wellington, Eph-AHIGHLAND-GAMES-1908-01. 59 Timaru Herald, 4 January 1876. 60 Wellington Independent, 3 January 1867. 61 Timaru Herald, 1 January 1878. 62 Figures taken from the Society’s annual reports for these years as reprinted in Timaru Herald, 14 October 1882, and Timaru Herald, 7 October 1884. 63 At the 1907 Timaru Games, for instance, the three-mile bicycle handicap was won by Australian cyclist Plunkett, cf. Star, 2 Jan 1907. 64 Timaru Herald, 2 October 1888; Timaru Herald, 8 October 1889; Timaru Herald, 7 October 1890. 65 As was the case in Oamaru, where the Caledonian Society had gambled too much, never fully recovering from purchasing a ground to hold its sports when visitor numbers fell. For details, see Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity. 66 Timaru Herald, 2 January, 1878. 67 Timaru Herald, 2 January 1886; see also South Canterbury Caledonian Society Letters and Memorandum of Agreement and Tender Application, March and April 1886, South Canterbury Museum Archive, Timaru, A17.18; for the lease of parts of the Timaru Reserve by the South Canterbury Caledonian Society in 1904, see ibid., A17/25. 68 Timaru Herald, 5 October 1886. 69 Ibid. 70 Caledonian Society of Timaru, Annual Report, 1900, reprinted in Timaru Herald, 19 June 190. 71 Cf. Bueltmann, “No Colonists are more Imbued with their National Sympathies than Scotchmen.” 72 Wanganui Herald, 5 January 1907. 73 Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, 302; Putnam, “Bowling Alone.” 74 Cf. Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity. 75 Details compiled from Lenihan’s genealogy database (Thomas Pringle, no. 05012; William Pringle, no. 05013); The Cyclopedia of New Z ­ ealand, Canterbury volume, where all Pringle brothers are listed; shipping manifests of the Eastern Empire and the Mermaid; and Timaru cemetery

316

Notes to pages 192–8

r­ ecords (William Pringle, ref 32572; Thomas Pringle, ref 32597; ­Alexander Campbell Pringle, ref 24922). The help of Marina Borland of Christchurch, who supplied valuable information in aid of tracing the three brothers in New Zealand is gratefully acknowledged. 76 Further evidence of this can be found in Bueltmann, “Where the Measureless Ocean”; see also McCarthy, ed., A Global Clan. 77 For instance Oamaru Caledonian Society Rulebook, 1893, North Otago Museum Archive, Oamaru, 98/29c. 78 For instance in Timaru, cf. Annual Report, 1887, reprinted in Timaru Herald, 4 October 1887. 79 Gender, at least until the late nineteenth century, was also an impediment. However, this was less the outcome of a deliberate policy to exclude women than a reflection of the fact that associational life was very much a male domain. 80 This pattern is replicated throughout New Zealand, see for instance examples from Wellington in Bueltmann and Horn, “Migration and Ethnic Associational Culture.”  81 Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity, especially Ch 4. 82 All people listed were members of the Timaru Caledonian Society. 83 Timaru Herald, 16 June 1883. 84 See for instance O’Connor, “Nowhere in Canada is St. Andrew’s Day Celebrated with Greater Loyalty and Enthusiasm,” 103–4. 85 Habermas, Structural Transformation. 86 Bueltmann, “Ethnic Identity, Sporting Caledonia and Respectability,” 180. 87 Fairburn, The Ideal Society. 88 The Rev. Father Mackay at a Waitaki Gaelic Society meeting, North Otago Times, 28 September 1896.

chapter eight 1 Otago Witness, 23 February 1878; Ashburton Guardian, 15 October 1904. 2 Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 1–11. 3 For background see essays in Fraser and Morris, People and Society in Scotland, Volume II; also Smout, A Century of the Scottish People 1830–1950. 4 Olssen, “Families and the Gendering of European New Zealand,” 37–62; for an earlier survey see Olssen and Levesque, “Towards a History of the European Family in New Zealand.” 5 Olssen, “Families and the Gendering of European New Zealand,” 40.



Notes to pages 199–203

317

6 The standard study is McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand.” See also: Phillips and Hearn, Settlers; Macdonald, A Woman of Good Character. 7 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 361. 8 Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 128–9. 9 Thomson, “Marriage and Family on the Colonial Frontier.” 10 Pool, “A Caledonian Conundrum.” A more detailed background is Pool et al., The New Zealand Family from 1840. 11 Pool, “Caledonian Conundrum,” 8. 12 Ibid., 9. 13 Soper, The Otago of Our Mothers, 51. Brooking, And Captain of their Souls, 156–60. 14 Pool, “Caledonian Conundrum,” 10–11. 15 Ibid., 17. 16 Bueltmann, “Where the Measureless Ocean Between Us Will Roar.” 17 Patterson, “It brings to mind the wild valleys of lovely Glencoe …” 18 For case studies see Ch 3. 19 McClean, “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand,” 136. 20 The most scholarly overview remains Molloy, Those Who Speak to the Heart. 21 In a 1980 study Pickens found that in the province of Canterbury, while over 60 per cent of English and Irish bachelors married brides of similar origin, only 42 per cent of Scots acquired Scottish brides: Pickens, ­“Marriage Patterns in a Nineteenth-Century British Colonial Population,” 189. 22 There are similarities to marriages contracted between Scots and indigenous Indians in North America, see Calloway White People, Indians, and Highlanders, 147–74. 23 While research on Scots-M ¯aori intermarriage is in its infancy, a useful introduction to interracial marriage is Riddell, “A ‘Marriage of the Races’?”. A recent study, based on a PhD dissertation, is Wanhalla, In/visible Sight. 24 Binney, “‘In-Between’ Lives,” 99. 25 Ibid., 94. 26 On background to M ¯aori customary marriage, Biggs, M ¯aori Marriage. A contemporary account is. Wakefield, Adventure in New Zealand, 1:323–5. See also Morton, The Whale’s Wake, 213–4, 257–63. 27 Anderson, Race Against time, 3. 28 Atholl Anderson, “Newton, Wharetutu Anne – Biography,” from Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New

318

Notes to pages 203–6

Zealand, updated 1 September 2010, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographies/1n4/1. 29 Jenny Lee, “Taiaroa, Tini Kerei – Biography,” from Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1 September 2010, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2+2/1. 30 Grover, Cork of War, is a “factional” account of Nicoll’s life; Anthony Dreaver, “McDonald, Hector – Biography,” from Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1 September 2010, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2+2/1; ­Campbell, Making Waves: Captain Jock McGregor. 31 Wanhalla, In/visible Sight, 31–2; for a poignant case study see Wanhalla, “One White Man I Like Very Much.” 32 Wanhalla, In/visible Sight, Ch 3 especially 60–66; Wanhalla, “Marrying ‘In’.” 33 Wanhalla, In/visible Sight, 65. 34 Anderson, Race Against Time, 29–30; Wanhalla, In/visible Sight, 111–15. 35 Binney, “‘In-Between’ Lives,” 100. 36 Garry James Clayton, “Balneavis, Henry Colin – Biography,” from Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1 September 2010, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographies/162/1. 37 Easdale, Mungo Park’s Trunk, 72–3, 86–7. 38 Although denied by European descendants and his biographer, M ¯aori genealogies (whakapapa) support claims that Auckland merchant and civic leader John Logan Campbell fathered a son and a daughter by Te Opetaua Tonga Awhikau of Southern Taranaki. Gratitude is expressed to Dr Maui John Mitchell and Hilary Mitchell (Nelson) for copies of the genealogies and supporting documents. 39 Standard accounts of the Waipu settlement, despite its placement in a district of heavy M ¯aori settlement, are virtually silent on interracial relations. MacDonald, The Highlanders of Waipu, Ch 16 states that there was little interaction and intermarriage virtually unknown. 40 Brad Patterson, “It Is Curious How Keenly Allied in Character Are the Scotch Highlander and the M ¯aori.” 41 These points have been made in discussions with tribal researcher Dr Maui John Mitchell and Professor Piri Sciascia, Assistant Vice Chancellor (M ¯aori), Victoria University of Wellington. 42 Toynbee, Her Work and His; Millen, Colonial Tears and Sweat; Olssen, “Women, Work and Family.” 43 Erickson, “Emigration from the British Isles to the USA in 1831”; ­Erickson, “Emigration from the British Isles to the USA in 1841: Part 1.”



Notes to pages 206–13

319

44 Toynbee, Her Work and His, 62,188; Dalziel, “The Colonial Helpmeet.” 45 Belich, Making Peoples, 395–6. 46 McClean, “Reluctant Leavers,” 103–6. 47 Toynbee, Her Work and His, 188–9. 48 Zeitlin, “The Life Cycle: Folk Customs of Passage.” 49 The discussions of life-cycle customs draw heavily for Scottish background on Bennett, Scottish Customs; for childbirth see 1–87. 50 Soper, Otago of Our Mothers, 51–2. 51 Richards, “A Colonising Achievement,” 23. 52 Jessie Campbell to Sister Isabella, 17 March 1845, in My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates, eds Porter et al., 348. 53 Jessie Campbell to Mother, 27 June 1843, in My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates, eds Porter et al., 347. 54 Wassner, Labour of Love, 12. 55 Wassner, Labour of Love, 19; Wood, “Bastardy Made Easy?” 56 Tennant, “Mrs Grace Neill.” 57 Wassner, Labour of Love, 20. 58 Bennett, Scottish Customs, 89–199: Macdonald, “Courtship, Marriage and Related Folklore.” 59 Ashburton Guardian, 5 July 1921. 60 Macdonald, Woman of Good Character, 139. 61 Dalziel, “‘Making Us One:’ Courtship and Marriage.” 62 Jessie Campbell to Sister, 17 October 1843, in Porter et al., My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates, 217. 63 Patterson, “Whatever Happened to Poor Waring Taylor?,” 124. 64 Bennett, Scottish Customs, 125–98. 65 Southland Times, 27 November 1888. 66 Southland Times, 5 April 1888. 67 Southland Times, 18 July 1891. 68 Wood, “Bastardy Made Easy?,” 42. 69 Bennett, Scottish Customs, 201–305; Gordon, “Death and Associated Customs.” 70 Powell, “It Was Hard to Die Frae Hame,” 28. 71 Ibid., Ch 2. 72 Rev. Richard Taylor, diary entry for 6 June 1863, cited Cleaver, “Dealing with Death,” 63. 73 Cleaver, “Dealing with Death,” 63. 74 Otago Daily Times, 27 January 1871. 75 Clutha Leader, 26 July 1878. 76 Southland Times, 23 August 1888. 77 Powell, “It Was Hard to Die Frae Hame,” 20.

320

Notes to pages 213–17

78 Schafer, “Dead Serious? Funeral Directing in New Zealand,” 97–9. 79 Star, 16 June 1908. 80 Deed, “Unearthly Landscapes,” Ch 3. 81 Ibid., 113–16. 82 Ibid., 132. 83 Nelson Evening Mail, 3 November 1909. 84 A wide ranging survey of Scottish architecture is Stell, Shaw and Storrier, eds, Scotland’s Buildings; see also Carruthers, ed., The Scottish Home. 85 Salmond, Old New Zealand Houses, 37–45. 86 Stacpoole, Colonial Architecture in New Zealand, 42. 87 Salmond, Old New Zealand Houses, 60. 88 Statistics of New Zealand, 1864 – Part 1, Census No 7. “Comparative Table showing the Numbers and Descriptions of Houses in New Zealand in December 1861 and December 1864 … ,” (Auckland: W.C. Wilson for the New Zealand Government, 1866). 89 Arnold, “The Virgin Forest Harvest.” 90 Census of the Colony of New Zealand 1891 – Part 1 Population and Houses, Table 17, “Population and Dwellings in Boroughs,” (Wellington: Government Printer, 1892), 20. 91 Herd, “Dunedin Houses.” 92 Ibid., 180–1. 93 Lemon, Taieri Buildings, 5. See also Lemon, More Taieri Buildings. The following descriptions of properties are taken from Lemon, Taieri Buildings, 28–9, 35–6, 47–8. 94 Census of the Colony of New Zealand 1891 – Part 1 Population and Houses, Tables 15 and 17 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1892), 10, 20. 95 Stone, The Father and His Gift, 140–1, and 170–1; Allan, “The Story of Newstead or Renwick House,” 30. 96 The second Lathenty is described on a website of historic houses in the Rangitikei district: http://www.historichouses.co.nz/home examples.html. 97 Cottrell, Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era; Northcote-Bade, Colonial Furniture in New Zealand. Valuable background on Scottish furniture styles from the late seventeenth century is Cotton, Scottish Vernacular Furniture. The 2002 issue of Regional Furniture, journal of the Regional Furniture Society, is devoted to Scottish furniture. 98 Grant, Highland Folk Ways, 167–97. 99 Cottrell, Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era, 40. 100 Peterson, New Zealanders at Home, 38–9. 101 Cottrell, Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era, 8; Northcote-Bade, Colonial Furniture, 5.



102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127

128 129 130

Notes to pages 217–25

321

Northcote-Bade, Colonial Furniture, 64. Cottrell, Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era, Ch 16 and 17. Peterson, New Zealanders at Home, 72–3. New Zealand Herald, 14 July 1881, cited Peterson, New Zealanders at Home, 64. Northcote-Bade, Colonial Furniture, 140–3. Hutchinson, “Chair Making in the Northern Counties of Scotland and in New Zealand”; David Jones, “Scotch Chests.” Otago Witness, 23 February 1878. Earp, Hand-Book for Intending Emigrants, 38–44. Trevor-Roper, “The Invention of Tradition,” 25. Pickles, “Kilts as Costumes,” 45. Stewart, Patterns on the Plain, 19. Stewart, Patterns on the Plain; Jones, Doing Well and Doing Good. Ladanyi, “The New Zealand Scottish Regiment,” 29. Pickles, “Kilts as Costumes,” 49–53. Ibid., 53–7. Macdonald, “Marching in Unison, Dressing in Uniform.” Fenton, The Food of the Scots. Steven, “Diet and Health in Scotland.” Simpson, A Distant Feast, 74. Veart, First Catch Your Weka, 31. Ibid., 33–41. Jessie Campbell to Sister 1845, cited Drummond, ed., Married and Gone to New Zealand, 66. Crawford, “Stocking the Colonial Kitchen.” Angus, The Ironmasters. Veart, First Catch Your Weka, 4. Otago Witness, 31 December 1896; Nelson Evening Mail, 2 January 1908; North Otago Times, 27 January 1891; Grey River Argus, 28 January 1884. Leys, ed., Brett’s Colonists’ Guide, 582–691. Veart, First Catch Your Weka, 58–60. St Andrew’s Cookery Book.

chapter nine 1 Maver, “Leisure Time in Scotland.” 2 For an introduction see Brooking and Coleman, “Newest Scotland.” 3 Jackson, Churches and People; McEldowney, ed., Presbyterians in Aotearoa.

322

Notes to pages 225–30

4 Terry Hearn, “Religious Denominations, 1901,” TeAra – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1 September 2011, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/ en/english/11/2. 5 The following discussion leans heavily on a magisterial thesis: Clarke, “Feasts and Fasts.” A more accessible popular work is Clarke, Holiday Seasons. 6 Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 183. 7 Clarke, “A Godly Rhythm.” 8 Wood, Twelve Months in Wellington, 31–2. 9 Jackson, Churches and People, 153–8. 10 Clarke, “A Godly Rhythm,” 52. See also McKean, The Road to Secularisation in Presbyterian Dunedin. 11 Evening Post, 30 August 1883. 12 Otago Witness, 22 December 1892. 13 Breward, “Clamant Needs, Determined Battlers,” 51. 14 Clarke, “Days of Heaven on Earth.” 15 Ibid., 277. 16 Ibid., 279. 17 Otago Witness, 26 January 1878. 18 Dunedin Star, 20 May 1899. 19 Clarke, “Days of Heaven on Earth,” 285–9. 20 Miles, Christmas Customs and Traditions; Armstrong, “Christmas in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America.” 21 Taranaki Herald, 24 December 1902. 22 Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 37. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 38. 25 Otago Witness, 22 December 1892. 26 Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 38–9. 27 Otago Witness, 24 December 1881. 28 Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 23. 29 Hutton, Stations of the Sun, 151–78. 30 Cited Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 129. 31 Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 132–3. 32 Ibid., 129. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., Ch 2. 35 Ashburton Guardian, 2 January 1891. 36 New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, 2 January 1841; Otago Witness, 11 January 1879.



Notes to pages 230–5

323

37 Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 87. 38 Ibid., 92. 39 Ashburton Guardian, 2 January 1891. 40 Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 40. 41 Ibid., 94–105. 42 Bueltmann, “Manly Games, Athletic Sports.” 43 Clarke, Holiday Seasons, 118. 44 Matheson, “The Settler Church 1840–1870,” 32–3. 45 Davidson, Pious Energy, 10. 46 Matheson, “The Settler Church 1840–1870,” 40; McKean, Church in a Special Colony, 132. 47 Matheson, “The Settler Church 1840–1870,” 27. 48 Breward, “Clamant Needs, Determined Battlers,” 56–62. See also Garing, “Against the Tide.” 49 Davidson, Pious Energy, 31–40; Barber, “The Expanding Frontier,” 89, 96–7. 50 The widening circle of church-centered activities is evident from parish histories. Representative examples are: Wilson, Turakina; Murray, Knox Church 1880–1980; McArthur, From the Kirk on the Hill; Garing, The Church in the Village; Turney, Our Heritage Forever. 51 Garing, “Four Square for Christ.” On the operation of Sunday Schools, see Keen, “Feeding the Lambs.” 52 Murray, Knox Church, 31. 53 Smout, Century of the Scottish People, 133. 54 Olssen, A History of Otago, 45. 55 Matheson, “The Settler Church 1840–1870,” 28. 56 Perry, New Zealand Whisky Book, Ch 2. 57 Ibid., 70. 58 Ryan, “Scottish Contribution to New Zealand Beer,” 26–9; Perry, The New Zealand Whisky Book, 68–73. 59 Perry, The New Zealand Whisky Book, 91. 60 Brooking and Coleman, “Newest Scotland,” 5–6; Stuart, The Satyrs of Southland; Ogilvie, Moonshine Country. 61 New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, 14 November 1840; Ryan, “Scottish Contribution to New Zealand Beer,” 269. 62 Leckie, Otago’s Breweries, 10. 63 Leckie, Otago’s Breweries. 64 Olssen, A History of Otago, 141. 65 Ryan, “Scottish Contribution to New Zealand Beer,” 275; Salmond, Prohibition.

324

Notes to pages 235–9

66 Burnett, “Sports in the Countryside,” 204–6; Hart-Davis, Monarchs of the Glens. On the Game Laws see Devine, The Scottish Nation, 452–3. 67 Peter Brown to father, mother, sisters and brothers, 5 April 1840, printed in New Zealand Journal, 12 September 1840, cited Rosalind McClean, “Living in New Zealand but really in Scotland?,” 2. 68 Wood, Twelve Months in Wellington, 31–2. 69 Pioneers of Canterbury: Deans’ Letters 1840–1854, ed. L.G.D. Acland, 57–8. 70 Hunter, Hunting, 48. 71 McDowall, Gamekeepers for the Nation is the most authoritative source. For an overview see also Druett, Exotic Intruders. 72 Star, “From Acclimatisation to Preservation,” 80. 73 Banwell, Highland Stags of Otago. 74 Kay and Vamplew, “Horse-Racing”; Fairfax-Blakeborough, History of Horse Racing in Scotland. 75 As an example see Patterson, Early Colonial Society Through a Prism. In the absence of a specialist history, for historical background of horse racing in New Zealand see Poulson, “Racing, Horse.” 76 “Horse Racing in Otago. A Synopsis of Events from the Settlement of the Province up to the Starting of the DJC,” Otago Witness, 22 December, 1891. 77 “Horse Racing in Otago.” 78 Poulson, “Racing, Horse,” 18–19. 79 “Horse Racing in Otago.” 80 Poulson, “Racing, Horse,” 18. 81 Patterson, “It is curious how keenly allied in character are the Scotch Highlander and the M ¯aori,” 176–7. 82 Otago Witness, 22 December 1891. 83 Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity, 125. 84 For general background see Maver, “Leisure Time in Scotland,” 174–203; also introduction to Jarvie and Burnett, Sport, Scotland and the Scots, 1–18. 85 Maclennan, “Shinty”; Hutchinson, Camanachd!. 86 Hawera and Normanby Star, 10 September 1900. 87 Otago Daily Times, 4 December 1877. 88 Tuapeka Times, 5 December 1877. 89 Evening Post, 25 August 1898. 90 Maver, “Leisure Time in Scotland,” 182–3. There are regular reports of cricket and rugby being played in the New Zealand Scottish settlements.



Notes to pages 239–43

325

The first recorded cricket match in Dunedin was on 1 January 1849: Reese, New Zealand Cricket 1841–1914, 19. As an organized sport, rugby football was played in Otago from 1875: Swan, History of New Zealand Rugby Football, 1: 34–40. While crude forms of association football were played, the major Scottish movement in the sport was after 1900. 91 Smith, “Curling”; Smith, Curling: An Illustrated History. 92 Mawhinney, The Roaring Game, 9; see also Cameron, History of New Zealand Curling, 1-2; Otago Witness, 2 May 1874. 93 Mawhinney, The Roaring Game, 12. 94 Cameron, History of New Zealand Curling, 33; Otago Witness, 5 August 1908. 95 Kelly, Golf in New Zealand, Chs 1 and 2. 96 Ibid., 6.10; see also Geddes, “Golf.” 97 Otago Daily Times, 18 July 1871. 98 Otago Daily Times, 12 May 1877. 99 Kelly, Golf in New Zealand, 25–7, 31; Sweetman, The Hutt Golf Club, 11–13. 100 Kelly, Golf in New Zealand, 26–7. 101 Ibid., 32. 102 Farmer, History of Music in Scotland, 149–50. 103 Breward, “Clamant Needs, Determined Battlers,” 46. 104 McKean, Church in a Special Colony, 58–60. 105 Ibid., 88–90. 106 Andrewes, “The ‘Whistling Kirk’,” 63–4. 107 Murray, Knox Church, 18; Turney, Our Heritage Forever, 20. 108 Coleman, “Scots,” 115. 109 Entwistle, History of the Gaelic Society of New Zealand, 36. 110 Coleman, “Scots,”115. 111 Thomson, Oxford History of New Zealand Music, 34. 112 Examples include Burns dinners (e.g., Otago Witness, 10 February 1855) and post Caledonian Games celebrations (e.g. Wanganui Chronicle, 7 January 1864). 113 Thames Star, 10 March 1911; Wanganui Chronicle, 19 October 1905. 114 Coleman, “Ceòl Mór of the South,” 149. 115 Coleman, “Scots,” 115. 116 Nicholson, Piping and Dancing Association, 7–8. 117 Ibid., Ch 9. 118 Laidlaw and Hutchinson, Sociable, Carefree, Delightful. 119 Devine, The Scottish Nation, 389. 120 Smout, Century of the Scottish People, 211.

326

Notes to pages 244–8

121 Devine, Scottish Nation, 231, 298, 400–1; Withers, Urban Highlanders, Ch 7. 122 Matheson, “The Settler Church, 1840–1870,” 24. 123 For background see Withers, Gaelic in Scotland. 124 “Scottish Gaelic: Numbers of Speakers 1755–2001,” in Scottish Gaelic, 5. http://en.wikipedia-org/wiki/Scottish-Gaelic. 125 Otago Witness, 14 December 1872. 126 North Otago Times, 31 October 1874. 127 Otago Daily Times, 22 May 1872. 128 Otago Daily Times, 5 January 1881; see also Entwistle, History of the Gaelic Society, 12. 129 Entwistle, History of the Gaelic Society; Otago Daily Times, 29 July 1885. 130 McKean, Church in a Special Colony, 90; Entwhistle, History of the Gaelic Society, 17. 131 “Scottish Gaelic: Numbers of Speakers 1755–2002,” 5. 132 Otago Daily Times, 3 January 1895. 133 Coleman, “Gaelic (Scots).” 134 Wilson, Early Rangitikei, 112–115. 135 See Macafee, “Scots and Scots English”; Stuart-Smith, “Scottish English: Phonology.” 136 Devine, Scottish Nation, 298. 137 Stuart-Smith, “Scottish English,” 47–8. 138 Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity, 84 139 Trudgill, Maclagan and Lewis, “Linguistic Archaeology.” For a full account of the “Origins of New Zealand English” project see Gordon et al., New Zealand English. An earlier inquiry is Bauer, “Attempting to Trace Scottish Influence on New Zealand English.” 140 Peter Trudgill, “On the Irrelevance of Prestige, Stigma and Identity,” 45. 141 Trudgill et al., “Linguistic Archaeology,” 105. 142 Ibid., 115 143 Bartlett, “Regional Variation in New Zealand English: The Case of Southland.” 144 Bauer, “The Dialectical Origins of New Zealand English.” 145 New Zealand Journal, 6 July 1844 cited Liebich, “The books are the same,” 197. 146 Traue, “A Paradise for Readers?” 147 Feather, A History of British Publishing, 78. 148 Gillespie-Needham, “The Colonial and His Books,” 68. 149 Liebich, “The books are the same,” 200; Coleridge, “New books, just received from London.” 150 Traue, “A Paradise for Readers?” 323.



Notes to pages 249–55

327

151 Gillespie-Needham, “The Colonial and His Books,” 108; Traue, “Once upon a time in New Zealand,” 7. 152 Harris, “Otago Libraries 1848–1948,” 25–34. 153 Traue, “Once upon a time in New Zealand,” 7. 154 New Zealand Official Year Book (Wellington: Government Printer, 1903), 176. 155 Traue, “The Public Library Explosion,” 161–2. 156 New Zealand Official Year Book (Wellington: Government Printer, 1903), 176. 157 Traue, “The Public Library Explosion,” 157. 158 Wevers, Reading on the Farm, 59, 155, 191–3, 241. 159 Elliott, Gerber and Sinke, Letters Across Borders. 160 Bueltmann, “Where the Measureless Ocean Between Us Will Roar.” 161 The Otago Journal (Edinburgh: William Forrester, 1848–52). 162 Marjoribanks, Travels in New Zealand. 163 Adam, Emigration to New Zealand; Thomson, Rambles with a Philosopher. 164 Adam, Twenty-five Years of Emigrant Life in the South; Bathgate, ­Colonial Experiences. 165 Crawford, Recollections of Travel; Campbell, Poenamo. 166 Moffatt, “The Poetry and Fiction of Scottish Settlers,” 59–77. 167 Riach, “Heather and Fern.” 168 Golder, New Zealand Minstrelsy. 169 Opie, “William Golder.” 170 Sorrell, “John Barr (1809–1889).” 171  McLachlan, Backwoodsman Rangitikei; Kelly, Heather and Fern; Smith, Poetical Works of Hugh Smith. 172 MacD.P. Jackson, cited Jane Stafford, “Jessie Mackay 1864–1938,” 322; see also Moffatt, “Poetry and Fiction of Scottish Settlers.” 173 Moffatt, “Poetry and Fiction of Scottish Settlers.” 174 Stevens, New Zealand Novel, 14; Jones, “The Novel,” 112. 175 Stevens, New Zealand Novel, 18. 176 Ibid., 18–19. 177 Ibid., 20. 178 Alan Riach, “Scotland,” 484.

chapter ten 1 T.M. Devine visiting Dunedin, talking to The D Scene, 16 November 2011, 24. 2 Belich, Paradise Reforged, 221.

328



Notes to pages 255–8

3 Harper and Vance, “Introduction”; McKay, “Tartanism Triumphant”; McKay, Quest of Folk. 4 Brooking, “New Zealand.” 5 Patterson, “Cousin Jacks, New Chums and Ten Pound Poms,” represents a start. 6 On the Scots in such locations see Cage, ed., Scots Abroad. 7 Based on McClean, “Scottish Emigration to New Zealand”; Akenson, Half the World from Home; Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 3; Harper, “Emigration” in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History; Cage et al, “Scots.” New Zealand figure is confirmed by Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa.” 8 MacKenzie with Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 66 and 161. 9 McClean, “Scottish Emigration to New Zealand”; Brooking, “Sharing out the Haggis,” 49–50; Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 54–5; Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 7–18. 10 Prentis, Scots in Australia, 8; McCarthy, “Scottish Migrant Ethnic Identities,” 144–6. 11 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles. 12 Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 30–57. 13 Devine, Scottish Nation, 147–51, 460–7; Aitchison and Cassell, Lowland Clearances. 14 See Bumsted, Scots in Canada; Harper and Vance, Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory; Kiddle, Men of Yesterday; Watson, Caledonia Australis; Richards, “Highland and Gaelic Immigrants”; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 60, 88, 90. 15 Akenson, “What did New Zealand do to Scotland and Ireland.” 16 Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 112–1; Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 126–71. 17 Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 98–125 reinforces McClean’s point about the key role played by families rather than single immigrants, “Scottish Emigration to New Zealand,” 162, 195, 311, 434–9; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 55, 58; and MacKenzie with Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 161. 18 Richards, Britannia’s Children, 299–300. 19 McClean, “Reluctant Leavers?” 20 McClean, “Scottish Emigration to New Zealand,” 162, 168–9, 311, ­435–6, 438–9; Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 120–4, 172–206; ­Harland, “The Orcadian Odyssey.” 21 Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 22. 22 MacKenzie with Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 94–134, 270; Macmillan, Scotland and Australia 1788–1950; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 34, 83, 104, 111, 126, 20; Ville, Rural Entrepreneurs, 122–3.



Notes to pages 258–62

329

23 Anglicans, English Methodists and French Catholics dominated the mission to New Zealand – see Owens, “New Zealand before Annexation.” On Australia, see Prentis, Scots in Australia, 277–9. 24 Chivers, “Religion, Ethnicity and Race”; Whitelaw, “A Message from the Missahibs”; Binney, Chapman and Wallace, Mihaia, 136–54; Paterson and Stenhouse, “Ng ¯a poropiti me ng ¯a H ¯ahi: Prophets and the Churches”; Paterson, “M ¯aori ‘Conversion’ to the Rule of Law.” 25 Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 35–6, 252 and Ch 6. 26 Harland, “The Orcadian Odyssey.” 27 Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, 22–31. 28 Morris, “Assisted Immigrants to New Zealand,” 104–14; Wilson, “Myth and Misunderstanding”; Arnold, Farthest Promised Land. These earlier findings have been confirmed both by Phillips and Hearn, Settlers and Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 30–1, 45–8, 51–7. 29 Dowie, “Inverse Relations of the New Zealand and Australian Economies, 1871–1900.” 30 Wilson, “Myth and Misunderstanding”; Garden, Droughts, Floods and Cyclones, 236–98. 31 Arnold, “Some Australasian Aspects of New Zealand Life.” 32 Devine, “The Paradox of Scottish Emigration,” 2. 33 Wynn, “On the Margins of Empire,” 240–1. 34 Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 98–9, 101. 35 McCarthy, “The Scottish Diaspora Since 1815,” 513–16. 36 Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 172–206 on Shetlanders; Jill Harland, “The Orcadian Odyssey.” 37 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 103–6; Prentis, Scots in Australia, ­112–16; Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 223–60; Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 101–04, 144–5, 157. 38 Hearn, “Scots Miners in the Goldfields, 1861–1870”; Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 61, 69. 39 Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 58–97. 40 Hornsby, “Patterns of Scottish Emigration to Canada, 1750–1870,” 387–416. 41 Prentis, Scots in Australia, 60–76; and Lucas, “Scottish Immigration 1861– 1945,” 65–7. 42 Lenihan, “From Alba to Aotearoa,” 59–81. 43 Hornsby, Nineteenth Century Cape Breton; Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 206, 230–2. 44 Zella, “Sir William K. Logan and Sir J. W. Dawson”; MacKenzie with Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 204–16; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 168–70; Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation; Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 157–8.

330

Notes to pages 263–5

45 Porter, “‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’ and Empire,” 277; MacKenzie, “A Scottish Empire?”; Devine, Scottish Nation, 471–4; Devine, Scotland’s Empire, 189; Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 165–6. The latest work offers a more qualified view. 46 A Kingdom of the Mind, ed. Rider and McNabb. Eric Richards seemed more sceptical of Scottish success in Australia in his review of Malcolm Prentis’s first edition of Scots in Australia in Historical Studies, 21, 83 (October 1984): 282–3. 47 Brooking, “Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside.” 48 For this older approach see Denoon, Settler Capitalism; also Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment. 49 Clausen, “Crime and Criminals in Dunedin”; Fairburn and Haslett, “Violent Crime in Old and New Societies”; Robson, Convict Settlers of Australia; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 37–53. 50 See Ch 5. 51 Dr Catharine Coleborne of the University of Waikato and ­Professor Angela McCarthy have won a Marsden grant to study inmates of ­mental institutions in nineteenth-century New Zealand, paying particular ­attention to their ethnic composition. One MA has already been completed under their supervision: Knewstubb, “Respectability, Religion and Psychiatry.” 52 Fabia Fox’s preliminary findings for her master’s thesis on crime and gender in nineteenth-century Dunedin suggest that Scottish men and women were underrepresented among those appearing before the police and courts in comparison with the Irish and English. The contrast is most marked among women, with few Scots attracting the interest of either police or judiciary. 53 Macmillan, Scotland and Australia 1788–1950; Macmillan, The Debtor’s War. 54 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 280. 55 Adam’s Family History, Ms 1067–1, Hocken Library. 56 Arch W. Henderson Letters, 1860–1875, AB 018, and Letters of William to George Wilson, 1 June 1862 –14 June 1872, Box 56.31, Otago Settlers Museum, cited in Brooking, “Weaving the Tartan into the Flax,” 187–90. 57 Fairburn, “Social Mobility and Opportunity in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand”; Fairburn, Nearly Out of Heart and Hope. 58 Prentis, Scots in Australia, 136–7. 59 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 252–6 (farmers), 263–8 (artisans) and 279–81 (general). 60 Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 158–62; MacKenzie with Dalziel, The Scots in South Africa, 148–9.



Notes to pages 265–70

331

61 Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, 51–63 (agricultural immigrants) and ­398–411 (general). 62 Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 95–6, 185–92, 198, 294 and 360–4. 63 Brooking, “Sharing Out the Haggis,” 60–4. 64 Prentis, Scots in Australia, 125–32. 65 MacKenzie with Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 223–33. 66 Harper and Vance, eds, Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory, 28–33; McKay, “Tartanism Triumphant” and Quest of Folk. 67 Olssen, Building the New World, 171–6; Brooking, Lands for the People?, 111, 124, 176–7, 189. 68 Grigg, “The Attack on the Citadels of Liquordom,” 29–118. 69 Bassett with King, Tomorrow Comes the Song. 70 Devine, Scottish Nation, 281–5. 71 See Brooking, “Sharing out the Haggis,” 177, for the dating of Presbyterian schools. On the opening up of secondary education see McLaren, “Education and Politics … Part 1”; “Education and Politics … Part 2”; “Secondary Education for the Deserving.” 72 Warbrick, “New Zealand Judges and the Law Lords”; Hayes, Law on Public Access, 16–20, 34–46. 73 Nolan, ed., Revolution; Olssen,”Waging War.” 74 Leach, “Scottish identity and British loyalty”; Martin, “Canada from 1815.” 75 Innis, History of the Canadian Pacific Railway; Innis Empire and Communications; Morton, Kingdom of Canada; Morton, Manitoba; Brown, ed., Illustrated History of Canada; Buckner, Canada and the British Empire; Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 158–62. 76 Cowan, “For Freedom Alone.” 77 Bueltmann, “Brither Scots Shoulder tae Shoulder”; Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity; Sullivan, “Scots by Association.” 78 Morton, “Ethnic Identity in the Civic World of Scottish Associational Culture”; Morris, “The Enlightenment and the Thistle”; Bourbeau, “The St Andrews’ Society of Montreal; O’Connor, “Nowhere in Canada is St Andrew’s Day Celebrated with Greater Loyalty and Enthusiasm”; Noble, “The Chicago Scots”; Sullivan, “Scottish Associational Culture in Early Victoria Australia; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 198–208. 79 Sullivan, “Scottish Associational Culture in Early Victoria Australia,” 157–9. 80 Tanja Bueltmann, “Brither Scots Shoulder tae Shoulder,” and Scottish Ethnicity; Sullivan, “Scots by Association.” 81 See Fairburn, Ideal Society and its Enemies.

332

Notes to pages 270–5

82 Sullivan, “Lessons of the Lodge,” 34–52. 83 Ibid., 19–33. 84 Work has begun on the role and function played by Lodges in Britain and across the Empire; see Morris ed., Class, Power, and Social Structure in British Nineteenth-century Towns; Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire. 85 Bueltmann, “Brither Scots Shoulder tae Shoulder,” and Scottish Ethnicity. 86 Harper, Adventurers and Exiles, 362–8; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 197–208; 87 Brooking, “Burns, Thomas – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b52/1. 88 Prentis, Scots in Australia, 222–4. 89 Kalman, History of Canadian Architecture, I: 112, 159, and II, 710; K ­ alman, Concise History of Canadian Architecture, 240, 498. 90 Belich, “I Shall Not Die,” 104. 91 MacKenzie with Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 252–7; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 143–53; Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 163, 167–8; Hoare, Faces of Boyhood; Byrne, Official History of the Otago Regiment; ­ ugsley, Anzac Experience; Wright, Shattered Glory; Ross, 23 Battalion; P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Scotland. 92 O’Neill, “A Sense of Place.” 93 Andrewes, “The Whistling Kirk.” 94 Breward, History of the Australian Churches; Breward, History of the Churches in Australasia. 95 Ray, “Bravehearts and Patriarchs”; Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 277–8. 96 Birch and Blaxland, South Pacific Enterprise, Chs 2 and 3. 97 Brooking, History of Dentistry in New Zealand. 98 Bennett, Oatmeal and the Catechism; Reid, Scottish Tradition in Canada; Prentis, Scots in Australia, 211–12. 99 Keen, “Feeding the Lambs”; Stenhouse, “God, the Devil and Gender.” 100 Ryan, “The Scottish Contribution to New Zealand Beer.” 101 http://www.nzpipebands.org.nz/pipeband_nzbands. 102 Prentis, Scots in Australia, 211; Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, 276; Brooking and Coleman, “Newest Scotland”; O’Donnell, “Dancing at the auld Cale.” 103 Marks, “Lawrence Athenaeum and Miners’ Institute”; Hurd, “The Oamaru Athenaeum and Mechanics’ Institute”; Morris, “The Enlightenment and the Thistle,” 51–2, 56, 58.



104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119 120

121

122 123 124 125

Notes to pages 277–80

333

MacKenzie with Dalziel, Scots in South Africa, 2–21. Richards, cited in Prentis, Scots in Australia, 3. Watson, Caledonia Australis. Prentis, Scots in Australia, 90–2. Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts. Calloway uses the term Indians because he views “First Nations” as a Canadian notion that ignores the fact that nomadic Indian bands frequently moved across the border with the United States: Calloway, White People, Indians, and Highlanders, xix. Calloway, White People, Indians, and Highlanders, 5. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 90–116. Ibid., 117–146, 147–74. Ibid., 175–229. Ibid., 272. Bittermann, “The Hierarchy of the Soil”; Harris, Making Native Space; White, Middle Ground. Bassett with King, Tomorrow Comes the Song, 250–2, 303–5, 333–4. Anderson, Race Against Time, 3; Anderson, The Welcome of Strangers, on the pre-Scottish settlement period; for other discussion see Wanhalla, In/ Visible Sight. Storey, “What Will They Say in England?” See Olssen, History of Otago, 49, 90, 157, 167, 197–8, 223 and 244; Evison, Te Wai Pounamu, 226, 397, 426 and 317–478 on Ng ¯ai Tahu’s long fight against old injustices; Dacker, The Pain and the Love, on the impact of marginalization and land loss on Otago’s indigenous people; Wanhalla, In/visible Sight and Stevens, “Gathering Places.” James Belich, “Cameron, Duncan Alexander – Biography,” from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ biographies/1c2/1. Brooking, Lands for the People?, 131–56. Patterson, “It is curious how keenly allied in character are the Scotch Highlander and the Maori,” 163–84. Barr, The Old Identities, 225. Proudfoot and Hall, Imperial Spaces, 244.

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– Education and Opportunity in Victorian Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Andrewes, Jennifer M. “The ‘Whistling Kirk:’ Music at Knox Church, 1860–1990,” in Building God’s Own Country: Historical Essays on Religion in New Zealand. John Stenhouse and Jane Thomson, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2004. Angus, John H. Donald Reid Otago Farmers’ Limited: A History of Service to the Farming Community of Otago. Dunedin: Donald Reid Otago Farmers’ Ltd, 1978. – The Ironmasters: The First One Hundred Years of H.E. Shacklock Limited. Dunedin: H.E. Shacklock Ltd, 1973. Annabell, Jessie M. “‘Caledonia, Stern and Wild’: Scottish Identity in Wanganui and Rangitikei, 1880–1918.” MA diss., Massey University, 1995. – “Smoke in the Hills? Representations of Turakina’s Past.” BA (Hons) diss., Massey University, 1993. Anonymous. “Onslow Settlers of the 1840s: Donald Macdonald, Laird of Kaiwarra,” The Onslow Historian: Official Journal of the Onslow Historical Society Inc. 18, 4, (1988). Armstrong, Neil. “Christmas in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America: A Historiographical Overview,” Cultural and Social History 1 (2004). Arnold, Rollo. Settler Kaponga 1881–1914: A Frontier Fragment of the Western World. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1997. – New Zealand’s Burning: The Settlers’ World in the Mid 1880s. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1994. – The Farthest Promised Land: English Villagers New Zealand Immigrants of the 1870s. Wellington: Victoria University Press with Price Milburn, 1981. – “The Virgin Forest Harvest and the Development of Colonial New Zealand,” New Zealand Geographer 32 (1976). – “The Opening of the Great Bush, 1861–1881: A Social History of the Bush Settlements of Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay and Wellington.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1971. – “Some Australasian Aspects of New Zealand Life, 1890–1913,” New Zealand Journal of History 4, 1 (April 1970). Aspinwall, Bernard. “The Scottish Religious Identity in the Atlantic World, 1880–1914,” in Religion and National Identity. Stuart Mews, ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982. Bagge, Michael L.S. “Valuable Ally or Invading Army? The Ambivalence of Gorse in New Zealand, 1835–1900.” BA (Hons) diss., University of Otago, 2000.



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– “Lusting after a Lost Arcadia: European Environmental Perception in the Dunedin Area, 1840–1860.” BA (Hons) diss., University of Otago, 1999. Beattie, James and John Stenhouse. “Empire, Environment and Religion,” Environment and History 13, 4 (2007). Belich, James. Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. – Paradise Reforged. A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000. Auckland: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2001. – Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders. From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century. Auckland: Allen Lane/ Penguin, 1996. – “‘I Shall Not Die’”: Titokowaru’s War New Zealand, 1868–1869. Wellington: Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, 1989. Bennett, Margaret. Scottish Customs. From the Cradle to the Grave. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2004. – Oatmeal and the Catechism: Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec. Edinburgh/Toronto: John Donald and McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. Beresford, Kathryn. “‘Witnesses for the Defence:’ The Yeomen of Old England and the Land Question, c. 1815–1837,” in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman, eds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Biggs, Bruce. M ¯aori Marriage: An Essay in Reconstruction. Wellington: Polynesian Society, 1960. Binney, Judith. “‘In-Between’ Lives: Studies from Within a Colonial Society,” in Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand’s Pasts. Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2006. Binney, Judith, Gillian Chapman and Craig Wallace. Mihaia: The Prophet Rua Kenana and His Community at Maungapohatu. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1990. Birch, Allan M. and J.F. Blaxland. South Pacific Enterprise: The Colonial Sugar Refining Ltd. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1956. Bittermann, Rusty. “The Hierarchy of the Soil: Land and Labour in a Nineteenth-Century Cape Breton Community,” Acadiensis 18, 1 (1988). Borrie, W.D. The European Peopling of Australasia: A Demographic History, 1788–1988. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1993. – Immigration to New Zealand, 1854–1938. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1991.



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Bourbeau, Catherine. “The St Andrews Society of Montreal: Philanthropy and Power,” in Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora. Tanja Bueltmann, Andrew Hinson and Graeme Morton, eds. Guelph: University of Guelph, 2009. Bourke, Kevin. Kelburn, King Dick and the Kelly Gang: Richard Seddon and Political Patronage. Wellington: Hit or Miss Publishing, 2008. Bremner, Julie. “The Kai Warra Road and Khandallah in the 1840s,” The Onslow Historian: Official Journal of the Onslow Historical Society Inc. 7, 3 and 4 (1977). Breward, Ian. A History of the Churches in Australasia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. – A History of the Australian Churches. St. Leonards NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1993. Breward, Ian. “Clamant Needs, Determined Battlers 1871–1901,” in Presbyterians in Aotearoa, Dennis McEldowney, ed. Wellington: Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, 1990. Bridge, Carl and Fedorowich, Kent, eds. The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity. London: Frank Cass 2003. Brock, Jeanette M. The Mobile Scot: A Study of Emigration and Migration 1861–1911. Edinburgh: John Donald 1999. Brockmeier, J. “Introduction: Searching for Cultural Memory,” Culture & Psychology 8, 1(2002). Brooking, T.W.H. A History of Dentistry in New Zealand. Auckland: New Zealand Dental Association, 1981. – “Agrarian Businessmen Organise: A Comparative Study of the Origins and Early Phase of Development of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales and the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, ca ­1880–1929.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 1977. Brooking,Tom. “Green Scots and Golden Irish: The Environmental Impact of Scottish and Irish Settlers in New Zealand – Some Preliminary Ruminations,” Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies 3, 1 (2009). – “Weaving the Tartan into the Flax,” in The Global Clan: Scottish Migrant Networks and Identities Since the Eighteenth Century. Angela McCarthy, ed. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006. – “‘Sharing out the Haggis’: The Special Scottish Contribution to New Zealand History,” in The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Tom Brooking and Jennie Coleman, eds. ­Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003.

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– “The Most Subtle Scots: A Report on the State of Scottish Studies in New Zealand.” Unpublished paper delivered to Celtic Connections: Irish-Scottish Studies Down Under conference, Victoria University of Wellington, 24–26 Oct, 2002. – “New Zealand,” in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History. Michael Lynch, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “The Historical Background to the Otago/Canterbury Regional Council Boundary Dispute.” Unpublished report commissioned by the Otago Regional Council, Dunedin, 1998. – “The Great Escape: Wakefield and the Scottish Settlement of Otago,” in Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the Colonial Dream: A Reconsideration. Wellington: Friends of the Turnbull Library, 1997. – Lands for the People? The Highland Clearances and the Colonisation of New Zealand: A Biography of John McKenzie. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1996. – “‘Tam McCanny and Kitty Clydeside’: The Scots in New Zealand,” in The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise. R.A. Cage, ed. London: Croom Helm, 1985. – And Captain of their Souls: An Interpretative Essay on the Life and Times of Captain William Cargill. Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1984. Brooking, Tom and Jennie Coleman, eds. The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003. – “Newest Scotland: Life and Leisure of Scottish Immigrants in New Zealand to 1940,” in Work n’ Pastimes: 150 Years of Pain and Pleasure, Labour and Leisure. Norma J. Bethune, ed. Dunedin: New Zealand Society of Genealogists, 1998. Brooking, Tom and Eric Pawson, eds. Seeds of Empire: The Environmental Transformation of New Zealand. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011. Brooking, Tom, Robin Hodge, and Vaughan Wood. “The Grasslands ­Revolution Reconsidered,” in Environmental Histories of New Zealand. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds. Sydney: Oxford University Press, 2002. Brosnahan, Sean. “Being Scottish in an Irish Catholic Church in a Scottish Presbyterian Settlement: Otago’s Irish Scottish Catholics, 1848–1895,” Immigrants and Minorities 30, 1 (2012). Brown, Callum G. The People in the Pews. Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1780. Glasgow: Economic and Social History Society of Scotland, 1993.



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Brown, Craig. The Illustrated History of Canada. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002. Brown, I.G.and T.A. Cherry. Scottish Architects at Home and Abroad. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 1978. Brunt, Phoebe M. Deep Roots and Firm Foundations: A History of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church Christchurch, 1864–1964. Christchurch: St Paul’s Church, 1964. Brunton, Warwick. “The Scottish Influence on New Zealand Psychiatry before World War II,” Immigrants and Minorities 29, 3 (2011). Buchan, James. Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed the World. London: John Murray, 2003. Buchanan, John. The Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand. Wellington: Government Printer, 1880. – “Notes on the Flora of the Province of Wellington. With a List of Plants Collected There,” Transactions of the nz Institute 6, (1873). Buchanan, R. Ogilvie. “Sheep Rearing in New Zealand,” Economic Geography 7, 4 (1931). Buckner, Phillip. Canada and the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Bueltmann, Tanja. “Ethnizität und organisierte Geselligkeit: Das Assoziationswesen deutscher Migranten in Neuseeland im mittleren und späten 19. Jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift (forthcoming). – “Remembering the Homeland: St Patrick’s Day Celebrations in New Zealand to 1910,” in Irish Cultural Memory, Volume 2: Diaspora and Memory Practices. O. Frawley, ed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012. – “‘The Image of Scotland which We Cherish in Our Hearts”: Burns Anniversary Celebrations in Colonial Otago,” Immigrants & Minorities 30, 1 (2012). – Scottish Ethnicity and the Making of New Zealand Society, 1850 to 1930. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. – “Manly Games, Athletic Sports and the Commodification of Scottish Identity: Caledonian Gatherings in New Zealand to 1915,” Scottish Historical Review 89, 2 (2010). – “‘Brither Scots Shoulder tae Shoulder:’ Ethnic Identity, Culture and Associationism among the Scots in New Zealand to 1930.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. – “Ethnic Identity, Sporting Caledonia and Respectability: Scottish Associational Life in New Zealand to 1910,” in Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora. Tanja

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­ ueltmann, Andrew Hinson, and Graeme Morton, eds. Guelph: UniverB sity of Guelph, 2009. – “‘No Colonists are more Imbued with their National Sympathies than Scotchmen:’ The Nation as an Analytical Tool in the Study of Migrant Communities,” New Zealand Journal of History, 43 2 (2009). – “‘Where the Measureless Ocean between us will Roar:’ Scottish Emigration to New Zealand, Personal Correspondence and Epistolary Practices, c 1850–1920,” Immigrants and Minorities, 26, 3 (2008). Bueltmann, Tanja and D.M. MacRaild. “Globalising St George: English Associations in the Anglo-World to the 1930s,” Journal of Global History 7, 1 (2012). Bueltmann, Tanja and Gerard Horn. “Migration and Ethnic Associational Culture: A Comparative Study of New Zealand’s Irish and Scottish Migrant Communities to 1905,” in Associational Culture in Ireland and the Wider World. R.V. Comerford and Jennifer Kelly, eds. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011. Bueltmann, Tanja, Andrew Hinson, and Graeme Morton, eds. Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora. Guelph: University of Guelph, 2009. Buettner, Elizabeth. “Haggis in the Raj: Private and Public Celebrations of Scottishness in Late Imperial India,” Scottish Historical Review 81, 2 (2002). Bumsted, J.M. The People’s Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North America, 1770–1815, Edinburgh and Winnipeg: Edinburgh University Press and Manitoba University Press, 1982. – The Scots in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1982. Burnard, Trevor G. “A Colonial Elite: Owners of Large Freehold Estates in Waitaki County, 1870–1890.” BA (Hons) diss., University of Otago, 1982. Burnett, John. “Sports in the Countryside,” in Scottish Life and Society: The Individual and Community Life. John Beech, Owen Hand, Mark Mulheron, and Jeremy Weston, eds. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005. Burnett, J.A. “‘Hail Brither Scots O’ Coaly Tyne’: Networking and Identity among Scottish Migrants in the North East of England, ca. ­1860–2000,” Immigrants and Minorities 25, 1 (2007). Butterworth, Susan with Graham Butterworth. Chips Off the Auld Rock: Shetlanders in New Zealand. Wellington: Shetland Society of New Zealand, 1997.



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Byrne, A.E. The Official History of the Otago Regiment in the Great War 1914–1918. Dunedin: J.Wilkie and Co. Ltd., ca 1920. Byrnes, Giselle. Boundary Markers: Land Surveying and the Colonisation of New Zealand. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2001. Cage, R.A., Malcolm Prentis, Eric Richards and D. Lucas. “Scots,” in The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and their Origins. James Jupp, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Cage, R.A. ed. The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise. London: Croom Helm, 1985. Calder, Alex. “The Plots of Tutira,” in The Settler’s Plot: How Stories Take Place in New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2011. Calder, Jenni, ed. The Enterprising Scot: Scottish Adventure and Achievement. Edinburgh: Royal Museum of Scotland, 1986. Calloway, Colin G. White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Cameron, Christine. History of New Zealand Curling. Oturehua: New Zealand Curling Province, 1982. Cameron, Ewen A. “Setting the Heather on Fire: The Land Question in Scotland, 1850–1914,” in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman, eds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. – Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1880–1925. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996. Campbell, D. and R.A. MacLean, Beyond the Atlantic Roar: A Study of the Nova Scotia Scots. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975. Campbell, Eliott. “Scottish Identity in Dunedin and Christchurch to 1920: An Application of the ‘New British History’ to New Zealand.” MA diss., University of Canterbury, 2002. Campbell, Felicity. Making Waves: Captain Jock McGregor – Shipmaster and Whanganui Pioneer. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2004. Campbell, John Logan. Poenamo. Sketches of the Early Days of New Zealand. Romance and Reality of Antipodean Life in the Infancy of a New Colony. London: Williams and Norgate, 1881. Campbell, M.D.N. “The Evolution of Hawke’s Bay Landed Society, 1850–1914.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1972. Campbell, Marilyn. “Runholding in Otago and Southland, 1848–1876.” MA diss., University of Otago, 1981. Campbell, R.H. The Rise and Fall of Scottish Industry, 1707–1939. Edinburgh: John Donald1980.

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Campbell, R.H. and T.M. Devine, “The Rural Experience,” in People and Society in Scotland,1830–1914. W. Hamish Fraser and R.J. Morris, eds. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1990. Campey, Lucille H. An Unstoppable Force: The Scottish Exodus to Canada. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2008. Campion, M.H. The Road to Mangamahu: A History of the Whangaehu River Valley from Reid’s Hill to Mt View. Wanganui: Wanganui Chronicle, 1988. Carruthers, Annette, ed. The Scottish Home. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland 1996. Carter, Ian. “The Scottish Contribution to the Development of New Zealand Universities,” Bamforth Lecture, University of Otago, 1992. – Farm Life in Northeast Scotland 1840–1914: The Poor Man’s Country. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979. Checkland, S G. Scottish Banking: A History 1695–1973. Glasgow: Collins, 1975. Chivers, Susan. “Religion, Ethnicity and Race: The Mission of the Otago Church to the Chinese 1860–1950.” MA diss., University of Otago, 1992. Clapham, Ian. Pukehou: The Frasers of Lower Rangitikei: Family Tree of the Descendants of Duncan and Marjory Fraser, 1795–1995. Feilding: Fraser Family Reunion, 1996. Clarke, Alison. Holiday Seasons: Christmas, New Year and Easter in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007. – “A Godly Rhythm: Keeping the Sabbath in Otago, 1870–1890,” in Building God’s Own Country: Historical Essays on Religion in New Zealand. John Stenhouse and Jane Thomson, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2004. – “Feasts and Fasts: Holidays, Religion and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Otago.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 2003. – “‘Days of Heaven on Earth’: Presbyterian Communion Seasons in Nineteenth-Century Otago,” Journal of Religious History 26, 3 (2002). Clausen, Ingrid. “Crime and Criminals in Dunedin, 1880–1893.” BA (Hons) diss., University of Otago, 1983. Clayton, Neil. “Settlers, Politicians and Scientists: Environmental Anxiety in a New Zealand Colony.” Postgraduate Diploma in Arts diss., University of Otago, 1998. Cleaver, Philip. “Dealing with Death: The P ¯akeh ¯a Treatment of Death, 1850–1910.” MA diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1996.



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Clifford, James. “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9, 3, 1994. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997. Coleman, J.S. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990. Coleman, Jennie. “Ceòl Mór of the South: Theme and Variations on an Immigrant Music Culture,” in The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Tom Brooking and Jennie Coleman, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003. – “Scots,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 9 Australia and the Pacific Islands. Adrienne L. Kaeppler and J.W. Love, eds. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998. – “Gaelic (Scots),” in Book and Print in New Zealand: A Guide to Print Culture in Aotearoa. Penny Griffith, Ross Harvey, and Keith Maslen, eds. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1997. – “The Transmigration of the Piob Mhor: The Scottish Highland Piping Tradition in the South Island of New Zealand with particular reference to Southland, Otago and South Canterbury, to 1940.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 1996. Coleridge, Kathleen. “‘New books, just received from London’: Access to New Publications in Colonial Wellington,” Script and Print 29, 1–4 (2005). Collie, John. Study of the Otago Free Church Settlement 1848–1948: A Century’s Growth by a Southern Sea. Christchurch: Presbyterian Bookroom, 1948. Comerford, R.V. and Jennifer Kelly. Associational Culture in Ireland and the Wider World. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011. Constantine, Stephen, ed. Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the Dominions Between the Wars. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Cookson, John. “Pilgrims’ Progress – Image, Identity and Myth in Christchurch,” in Southern Capital, Christchurch, Towards a City Biography 1850–2000. John Cookson and Graeme Dunstall, eds. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2000. Cotton, Bernard D. Scottish Vernacular Furniture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2008. Cottrell, William. Furniture of the New Zealand Colonial Era: An Illustrated History 1830–1900. Auckland: Reed, 2006. Cowan, E.J. “For Freedom Alone”: The Declaration of Arbroath, 1320. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2003.

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Deans Family. Pioneers of Canterbury: Deans Letters 1840–1854. L.G.D. Acland ed. Dunedin: A.H. Reed, 1937. Deed, Stephen. “Unearthly Landscapes: The Development of the Cemetery in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand.” MA diss., University of Otago, 2004. Denoon, Donald. Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. Devaliant, Judith. Kate Sheppard: A Biography. Auckland: Penguin, 1992. Devine, T.M. To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2011. – “Three Hundred Years of the Anglo-Scottish Union,” in Scotland and the Union 1707–2007. T.M. Devine, ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. – Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland 1700–1900. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2006. – Scotland’s Empire 1600–1815. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2004. – The Scottish Nation 1700–2000. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1999. – Clanship to Crofters’ War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. – “The Paradox of Scottish Emigration,” in Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society: Proceedings of the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar, University of Strathclyde, 1990–91. T.M. Devine, ed. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992. – ed. Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992. – The Transformation of Rural Scotland: Social Change and the Agrarian Economy, 1660–1815. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1994. – “Social Responses to Agrarian Improvement: the Highland and Lowland Clearances in Scotland, 1500-1800,” in Scottish Society, 1500–1800. R.A. Houston and I.D. Whyte, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. – The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988. – “Temporary Migration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century,” The Economic History Review New Series, 32, 2 (1979). – The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and Their Trading Activities, c. 1740–90. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1975. Devine, T.M. & R.J. Finlay. eds. Scotland in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1996.

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Devine, T.M, C.H. Lee and G.C. Peden, eds. The Transformation of Scotland: The Economy Since 1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Doherty, J. “Urbanisation in Scotland, 1750–1914,” in An Historical Geography of Scotland. G. Whittington and I.D. Whyte, eds. London, Academic Press, 1983. Dollimore, E.S. The New Zealand Guide: A Comprehensive Gazetteer, Geographical Reference and Travel Guide. Dunedin: Wise, 1957. Donnachie, Ian and Christopher Whatley. The Manufacture of Scottish History. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1992. Dow, Derek A. The Influence of Scottish Medicine. Carnforth: Parthenon, 1988. Dowie, J.A. “Inverse Relations of the New Zealand and Australian Economies, 1871–1900,” New Zealand Economic Papers 1, 1 (1963). Druett, Joan. Exotic Intruders: The Introduction of Plants and Animals into New Zealand. Auckland: Heinemann, 1983. Drummond, Alison, ed. Married and Gone to New Zealand. Hamilton: Paul’s Book Arcade, 1960. Drummond, Andrew L. and James Bulloch. The Church in Late Victorian Scotland, 1874–1900.Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1978. – The Church in Victorian Scotland, 1843–1874. Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1975. Duncan, J.S. “The Land for the People: Land Settlement and Rural Population Movements, 1886–1906,” in Land and Livelihood: Geographical Essays in Honour of George Jobberns. Murray McCaskill, ed. Christchurch: New Zealand Geographical Society, 1962. Dunn, W.H. and I.L.M. Richardson. Sir Robert Stout: A Biography. Wellington: Reed, 1961. Earp, G. B. Hand-Book for Intending Emigrants to the Southern Settlements of New Zealand. London: W.S. Orr and Co. , 1849. Easdale, Nola. Mungo Park’s Trunk. Christchurch: TeWaihora Press, 2009. Eldred-Grigg, Stevan. A Southern Gentry: New Zealanders Who Inherited the Earth. Auckland: Reed, 1980. Elliott, Bruce S., David A. Gerber and Suzanne M. Sinke, Letters Across Borders: The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Elphick, Judith. “What’s Wrong with Emma? The Feminist Debate in Colonial Auckland,” New Zealand Journal of History 9, 2 (1975). Entwistle, E. R. History of the Gaelic Society of New Zealand, 1881– 1981. Dunedin: The Author, 1981.



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Erickson, Charlotte. “Who were the English and Scots Emigrants to the United States in the late Nineteenth Century?” in Population and Social Change. D.V. Glass and Roger Revelle, eds. London: Edward Arnold, 1972. – “Emigration from the British Isles to the USA in 1841: Part 1. Emigration from the British Isles,” Population Studies 43, 3 (1989). – “Emigration from the British Isles to the USA in 1831,” Population Studies 35 (1981): 175–97. – Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century America. London: London School of Economics and Political Science/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972. Evans, B.L. A History of Farm Implements and Implement Firms in New Zealand. Feilding, New Zealand: Fisher Printing, 1956. Evison, Harry C. Te Wai Pounamu The Greenstone Island: A History of the Southern M ¯aori during the European Colonisation of New Zealand. Christchurch: Aoraki Press, 1993. Fairburn, Miles. Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer’s Diary. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1995. – The Ideal Society and its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society 1850–1900. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1989. – “Social Mobility and Opportunity in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand,” New Zealand Journal of History 13, 1 (1979). Fairburn, Miles and S.J. Haslett. “Violent Crime in Old and New Societies: A Case Study Based on New Zealand 1853–1940,” Journal of Social History 20, 1 (1986). Fairfax-Blakeborough, J. History of Horse Racing in Scotland. Whitby: The Author, 1973. Fargher, Ray. The Best Man Who Ever Served the Crown? A Life of Donald McLean. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2007. Farmer, H.G. A History of Music in Scotland. London: Hinrichsen, 1947. Feather, John. A History of British Publishing. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2005. Fenton, Alexander, ed. The Food of the Scots. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007. Findlay J.G. (“A Citizen”). The Degeneration of Liberalism in New Zealand. Wellington: Evening Post, 1897. – Legal Liberty: A Lecture Delivered before the Philosophical Society, Palmerston North, on Thursday, April 21, 1910. Wellington: New Zealand Times, 1910.

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Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Fitzpatrick, Brian. The British Empire in Australia 1834–1939. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1969. Flinn, Michael, ed. Scottish Population History from the 17th Century to the 1930s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Fox, Aaron. “The Power Game: The Development of the ManapouriTiwai Point Electro-Industrial Complex, 1904–1969.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 2001. Frame, Alex. Salmond: Southern Jurist. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1995. Frank, A.G. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America; Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967. Fraser, Anne Black. I Remember: 1848–1866. Dunedin: Reed, 1937. Fraser, Lyndon. Castles of Gold: A History of New Zealand’s West Coast Irish. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2007. – ed. A Distant Shore: Irish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2000. Fraser, W. Hamish and R.J. Morris. People and Society in Scotland, Volume II, 1830–1914. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1990. Fry, Michael. Wild Scots: Four Hundred Years of Highland History. London: John Murray, 2005. – The Scottish Empire. East Linton: Tuckwell Press and Birlinn, 2001. Furniss, Cliff. Servants of the North: Adventures on the Coastal Trade with the Northern Steamship Company. Wellington: Reed, 1977. Fyfe, Frank and Bebe Douglas, Morvern to Glenmorven. Masterton: Morrison Book Committee, 2000. Galbreath, Ross. Scholars and Gentlemen Both: G.M. and Allan Thomson in New Zealand Science and Education. Wellington: Royal Society of New Zealand, 2002. Gallagher, Tom and Graham Walker. Sermons and Battle Hymns: Protestant Popular Culture in Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990. Galt, Margaret. “Wealth and Income in New Zealand 1870–1939.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1985. Garden, Don. Droughts, Floods and Cyclones: El Ninos that Shaped Our Colonial Past. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009. Garing, Maureen N. The Church in the Village: A History of Khandallah Presbyterian Church 1902–2002. Wellington: Khandallah Presbyterian Church, 2002.



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-– “Against the Tide: Social, Moral and Political Questions in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, 1840–1970.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1989. – “Four Square for Christ: The Presbyterian Bible Class Movement: Its Background, Its Rise, Its Influence and Its Decline.” MA diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1985. Geddes, Olive M. “Golf,” in Sport, Scotland and the Scots. Grant Jarvie and John Burnett, eds. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000. Gibson, John G. Old and New World Highland Bagpiping. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005. Gillespie-Needham, Dulcie N. “The Colonial and His Books: A Study of Reading in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1971. Glasson, H.A. The Golden Cobweb (A Saga of the Otago Goldfields, 1861–1864). Dunedin: Otago Daily Times & Witness Newspapers, 1957. Golder, William. New Zealand Minstrelsy, containing Songs and Poems on Colonial Subjects. Wellington: Stokes and Lyon, 1852. Goldsmith, Paul. Waitangi Tribunal Rangahaua Whanui District 11A: Wairarapa. Wellington: Waitangi Tribunal, 1996. Gordon, Anne. “Death and Associated Customs,” in Scottish Life and Society: The Individual and Community Life. John Beech, Owen Hand, Mark Mulheron, and Jeremy Weston, eds. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005. Gordon, Elizabeth, Lyle Campbell, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Andrea Sudbury, and Peter Trudgill, New Zealand English: Its Origins and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Gordon, G. “Industrial Development, c. 1750–1980,” in An Historical Geography of Scotland. G Whittington and I.D. Whyte, eds. London, Academic Press, 1983. Gordon, L.G. “Immigration into Hawke’s Bay, 1856–1876.” MA diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1965. Grant, I. F. Highland Folk Ways. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1995. Green, Albert. “A Necklace of Jade: The Dunedin Town Belt, 1848– 1903.” MA diss., University of Otago, 2003. Greif, S. W. ed. Immigration and National Identity in New Zealand: One People, Two Peoples, Many Peoples? Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1995. Grey, Alan H. Aotearoa and New Zealand: A Historical Geography. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1994.

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Griffiths, G.J. ed. The Advance Guard. 3 vols, Dunedin: Otago Daily Times 1973–74. Griffiths, Tom and Libby Robin eds. Ecology and Empire: An Environmental History of Settler Societies. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997. Griffiths, Trevor and Graeme Morton, eds. History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 to 1900. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Grigg, A.R. “The Attack on the Citadels of Liquordom: A Study of the Prohibition Movement in New Zealand, 1894–1914.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 1977. Grove, Richard. Green Imperialism. Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Grover, Ray. Cork of War: Ng ¯ati Toa and the British Mission. Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1982. Guthrie-Smith, Herbert. Tutira: The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station. Auckland and Seattle: Godwit University of Washington Press, 1999. – “The Changing Land,” in Making New Zealand: Pictorial Surveys of a Century, II, 30. Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. trans. T. Burger with F. Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991. Hale, Allen M. Pioneer Nurserymen of New Zealand. Wellington: Reed, 1955. Hall, Bob. “Land for the Landless. Settlement of the Otekaike Estate in North Otago 1908,” New Zealand Journal of History 19, 1 (1985). Hall-Jones, F.G. Invercargill Pioneers. Invercargill: Southland Historical Committee, 1946. – Historical Southland. Invercargill: H. & J. Smith, for the Southland Historical Committee, 1945. Hall-Jones, John. Mr Surveyor Thomson: Early Days in Otago and Southland. Wellington: Reed, 1971. – Martins Bay. Invercargill: Craig Printing, 1987. Hamer, D.A. “The Law and the Prophet: A Political Biography of Sir ­Robert Stout, 1844–1930.” MA diss., University of New Zealand, 1960. Handley, J.E. The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland. Glasgow: Burns, 1963.



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– Scottish Farming in the Eighteenth Century. London: Faber and Faber, 1953. Hanham, H.J. Scottish Nationalism. London: Faber and Faber, 1969. Hargreaves, R.P. and T.J. Hearn. “Special Settlements of the South Island New Zealand,” New Zealand Geographer 37, 2 (1981). Hargreaves, R.P. and T.J. Hearn, eds. Letters from Otago, 1848–1849. Dunedin: Hocken Library, 1978. Harland, Jill. “The Orcadian Odyssey: The Emigration of Orkney Islanders to the Antipodes, with special reference to the South Island of New Zealand, 1848–1914.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 2012. Harland-Jacobs, Jessica L. Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717–1927. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Harper, Marjory. “ A Century of Scottish Emigration to New Zealand,” Immigrants and Minorities 29, 2 (2011). – Adventurers and Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus. London: Profile Books, 2004. – “Emigration,” in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History. Michael Lynch, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. – “British Migration and the Peopling of the Empire,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. III, The Nineteenth Century. Andrew Porter, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. – Emigration from North-East Scotland: Willing Exiles. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988. Harper, Marjory and Michael E. Vance, eds. Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory: Scotia and Nova Scotia, c. 1790–1990. Halifax/ Edinburgh: Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies/ Fernwind Publishing and John Donald, 1999. Harper, Marjory and Stephen Constantine. Migration and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Harraway, H.C. “John Roberts: Man of Business.” MA diss., University of Otago, 1967. Harris, John. “Otago Libraries 1848–1948,” New Zealand Libraries 11 (1948). Harris, R. Cole. Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance and Reserves in British Columbia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2002. Hart-Davis, D. Monarchs of the Glens: History of Deer Stalking in the Scottish Highlands. London: Jonathan Cape, 1978.

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Harvie, Christopher. Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics, 1707 to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2004. Hayes, B.E. The Law on Public Access along Water Margins. Wellington: Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 2003. Hearn, T.J. and R.P. Hargreaves. The Speculators’ Dream: Gold Dredging in Southern New Zealand. Dunedin: Allied Press, 1985. Hearn, Terry. “Scots Miners in the Goldfields, 1861–1870,” in The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Tom Brooking and Jennie Coleman, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003. Henderson, Jennifer. “Far South Fancies: Alexander Bathgate and his Ideal Society.” MA diss., University of Otago, 2007. Hepburn, George. The Journal of George Hepburn. W. D. Stewart, ed. Dunedin: Coulls, Somerville, Wilkie and A.H. Reed, 1934. Herd, Joyce. “Dunedin Houses,” in Historic Buildings of New Zealand: South Island. Frances Porter, ed. Auckland: Methuen, 1983. Hewitson, Jim. Far Off in Sunlit Places: Stories of the Scots in Australia and New Zealand. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1998. Hilton, George W. The Truck System, Including a History of the British Truck Acts, 1465–1960. Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1960. Hoare, Michael E. Faces of Boyhood: An Informal Pictorial Record of the Boys’ Brigade in New Zealand, 1886–1982. Wellington: The Brigade, 1982. Hocken, T.M. Contributions to the Early History of New Zealand. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co. , 1898. Hoeflich, M.H. Roman and Civil Law and the Development of AngloAmerican Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth Century. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997. Holcroft, M.H. Old Invercargill. Dunedin: John. McIndoe, 1976. Holland, Peter, Kevin O’Connor and Alex Wearing, “Remaking the Grasslands of the Open Country,” in Environmental Histories of New Zealand. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds. Sydney: Oxford University Press, 2002. Holm, Janet. Nothing but Grass and Wind: The Rutherfords of Canterbury. Christchurch: Hazard Press, 1992. Horn, Gerard E. “‘A loyal, united and happy people’: Irish Protestant Migrants to Wellington Province 1840–1930; Aspects of Migration, Settlement and Community.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 2010.



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Hornsby, Stephen J. Nineteenth-Century Cape Breton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. Hornsby, Stephen J. “Patterns of Scottish Emigration to Canada, 1750– 1870,” Journal of Historical Geography 18, 4 (1992). Houston, R.A. Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Howard, Basil. Rakiura: A History of Stewart Island, New Zealand. Wellington and Dunedin: Reed for the Stewart Island Centennial Committee, 1940. Howell, David. British Workers and the Independent Labour Party 1888–1906. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983. Hughes, Kyle. “The Scottish Migrant Community of Victorian and Edwardian Belfast.” PhD. diss., Northumbria University, 2010. Hunt, Janet. Wetlands of New Zealand: A Bitter-Sweet Story. Auckland: Random House, 2007. Hunter, Ian. Age of Enterprise: Rediscovering the New Zealand Entrepreneur 1880–1910. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007. Hunter, Ian and Diana Morrow, eds. City of Enterprise: Perspectives on Auckland Business History. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006. Hunter, James. Scottish Exodus: Travels Among a Worldwide Clan. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 2005. – A Dance Called America: The Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1995. Hunter, Kate. Hunting: A New Zealand History. Auckland: Random House, 2009. Hurd, Rachel. “The Oamaru Athenaeum and Mechanics’ Institute.” BA (Hons.) diss., University of Otago, 1995. Hutchinson, David. “Chair Making in the Northern Counties of Scotland and in New Zealand,” Regional Furniture 16 (2002). Hutchinson, Roger. Camanachd! The Story of Shinty. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2004. Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Innis, Harold. A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971. – Empire and Communications. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950. Jackson, H.R. Churches and People in Australia and New Zealand, 1860–1930. Wellington: Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, 1987.

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Jamieson, Lynn and Claire Toynbee. Country Bairns: Growing Up 1900–1930. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000. Jarvie, Grant and John Burnett, eds. Sport, Scotland and the Scots. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000. Jones, David. “Scotch Chests,” Regional Furniture 2 (1988). Jones, H. “Population from c. 1600,” in An Historical Geography of Scotland. G. Whittington and I.D. Whyte, eds. London and New York: Academic Press, 1983. Jones, Lawrence. “The Novel,” in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature. Terry Sturm, ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991. Jones, S.R.H. Doing Well and Doing Good: Ross and Glendining. Scottish Enterprise in New Zealand. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2010. Kalman, Harold. A Concise History of Canadian Architecture. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2000. – A History of Canadian Architecture, I. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1994. Kansteiner, W. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41, 2 (2002). Kay, Joyce and Wray Vamplew. “Horse-Racing,” in Sport, Scotland and the Scots. Grant Jarvie and John Burnett, eds. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000. Keen, David S. “Feeding the Lambs: The Influence of Sunday Schools in the Socialisation of Children in Otago and Southland, 1848–1901.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 1999. Kelly, G.M. Golf in New Zealand: A Centennial History. Wellington: New Zealand Golf Association, 1971. Kelly, John Liddell, Heather and Fern: Songs of Scotland and Maoriland. Wellington: The Author, 1902. Kidd, Colin. Subverting Scotland’s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689–c. 1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Kiddle, Margaret. Men of Yesterday: A Social History of the Western District of Victoria. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1962. King, Michael. The Penguin History of New Zealand. Auckland: Penguin, 2003. Knewstubb, Elspeth. “Respectability, Religion and Psychiatry in New ­Zealand: A Case Study of Ashburn Hall.” MA diss., University of Otago, 2011. Knox,W.W. Industrial Nation: Work, Culture and Society in Scotland, 1800–Present. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.



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Kumar, K. “Civil Society: An Inquiry into the Usefulness of an Historical Term,” British Journal of Sociology 44, 3 (1993). Ladanyi, Stephen. “The New Zealand Scottish Regiment: A Brief History 1939–1982.” MA diss., University of Canterbury, 1982. Laidlaw, M.D. and M.M. Hutchinson. Sociable, Carefree, Delightful: A History of Scottish Country Dancing in New Zealand. Dunedin: Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, New Zealand Branch, 1995. Lawn, C.A. The Pioneer Land Surveyors of New Zealand. Wellington: New Zealand Institute of Surveyors, 1977. Leach, Gillian I. “Scottish Identity and British Loyalty in Early Nineteenth Century Montreal,” in A Kingdom of the Mind: How the Scots Helped Make Canada. Peter E. Rider and Heather McNabb, eds. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006. Leach, Helen. “Exotic Natives and Contrived Wild Gardens: The Twentieth Century Home Garden,” in Environmental Histories of New Zealand. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds. Sydney: Oxford University Press, 2002. Leask, Nigel. Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Leckie, Frank G. Otago’s Breweries: Past and Present. Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1997. Lee, L.P. First Order Geodetic Triangulation of New Zealand, 1909–49. Wellington: Department of Lands and Survey, 1978. Lemon, Daphne. More Taieri Buildings. Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1972. – Taieri Buildings. Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1970. Lenihan, Rebecca. ‘‘‘In habits, in character, in fact … [in] … everything except language ... like the Norwegians:’ New Zealand’s Shetland Migrants,” Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies 4, 1 (2010). Lenihan, Rebecca A. “From Alba to Aotearoa: Profiling New Zealand’s Scots Migrants, 1840–1940.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. Levitt, Ian and Christopher Smout. The State of the Scottish WorkingClass in 1843: A Statistical and Spatial Enquiry Based on the Data from the Poor Law Commission Report of 1844. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979. Leys, Thomson W. ed. Brett’s Colonists’ Guide. Auckland: H. Brett, 1883. Liebich, Susann. “‘The books are the same as you see in the London shops’: Booksellers in Colonial Wellington and their Imperial Ties, ca 1840–1890,” Script and Print 31, 1–4 (2007).

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Lindsay, William Lauder. “On the Conservation of Forests in New Zealand,” Journal of Botany 6 (1868). – Contributions to New Zealand Botany. London: Williams and Norgate, 1868. Linge, G.J.R. “Manufacturing in New Zealand: Four Years in a Century of Growth,” in Land and Society in New Zealand: Essays in Historical Geography. R.F. Watters, ed. Wellington: Reed, 1965. Little, J.I. Crofters and Habitants: Settler Society, Economy and Culture in a Quebec Township, 1848–1881, Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1991. Lloyd, Henry Demarest. Newest England: Notes of a Democratic Traveller in New Zealand with some Australian Comparisons. New York: Doubleday, Page and Co. , 1902. Lucas, D. “Scottish Immigration 1861–1945,” in The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins. James Jupp, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lynch, Anthony. “The Garden of Otago: A History of Small Scale Farming in the Clutha Area 1848–1870.” MA diss., University of Otago, 1989. Lynch, Michael. Scotland: A New History. London: Century, 1991. Macafee, Caroline. “Scots and Scots English,” in Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. R. Hikey, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. MacAskill, Kenny and Henry McLeish. Wherever the Saltire Flies. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2006. Macdonald, Charlotte. “Marching in Unison, Dressing in Uniform: Stepping Out in Style with Marching Teams,” in Looking Flash: Clothing in Aotearoa New Zealand. Bronwyn Labrum, Fiona McKergow, and Stephanie Gibson, eds. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008. – “Too Many Men and Too Few Women: Gender’s ‘Fatal Impact’ in Nineteenth-Century Colonies,” in The Gendered Kiwi. Caroline Daley and Deborah Montgomerie, eds. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1999. – A Woman of Good Character: Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand. Wellington: Allen and Unwin, 1990. Macdonald, Charlotte J. “Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in New Zealand, 1853–1871.” PhD diss., University of Auckland, 1986. Macdonald, Fiona. “Courtship, Marriage and Related Folklore,” in Scottish Life and Society: The Individual and Community Life. John Beech, Owen Hand, Mark Mulheron, and Jeremy Weston, eds. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005.



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MacDonald, Gordon. The Highlanders of Waipu, or Echoes of 1745. Dunedin: Coulls Somerville Wilkie, 1928. Macdonald, Lesley Orr. A Unique and Glorious Mission: Women and Presbyterianism in Scotland 1830–1930. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2000. MacGibbon, John. Going Abroad: The MacGibbon Family and Other Early Scottish Emigrants to Otago and Southland, New Zealand. Wellington: Ngaio Press, 2002. MacKenzie, John M. “Scots in New Zealand and Elsewhere in the British Empire,” Immigrants and Minorities 29, 2 (2011). – “A Scottish Empire? The Scottish Diaspora and Interactive Identities,” in The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Tom Brooking and Jennie Coleman, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003. – “Assurance and Anxiety: The Imperial Condition,” in The Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires: Imperialism, Scotland and the Environment. John M. MacKenzie, ed. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997. – “Empire and the Ecological Apocalypse: The Historiography of the Imperial Environment,” in Ecological Imperialism: Environmental History of Settler Societies. Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin, eds. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997. – Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires: Imperialism, Scotland and the Environment. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997. – “On Scotland and the Empire,” International History Review 15, 4 (1993). – ed. Imperialism and the Natural World. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. MacKenzie, John M. and T.M. Devine. Scotland and the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. MacKenzie, John M. with Nigel R. Dalziel. The Scots in South Africa: Ethnicity, Identity, Gender and Race, 1772–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Mackenzie, Mrs Peter. Pioneers of Martins Bay: The Story of New Zealand’s Most Remote Settlement. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1952. Maclaren, A. Allan. “Privilege, Patronage and the Professions: Aberdeen and its Universities, 1760–1860,” in Scottish Universities: Distinctiveness and Diversity. Jennifer J. Carter and Donald J. Withrington, eds. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992.

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Maclennan, Hugh Dan. “Shinty,” in Sport, Scotland and the Scots. Grant Jarvie and John Burnett, eds. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000. Macmillan, D.S. Scotland and Australia 1788–1950: Emigration, Commerce and Investment. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. – The Debtor’s War: Scottish Capitalists and the Economic Crisis in Australia 1841–1846. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1960. Marjoribanks, Alexander. Travels in New Zealand. London: Smith, Elder and Co. , 1846. Manning, Susan. “Burns and God,” in Robert Burns and Cultural Authority. Robert Crawford, ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Marais, J.S. The Colonisation of New Zealand. London: Dawsons, 1968. Marks, Robin. “Lawrence Athenaeum and Miners’ Institute: A Fragment of Goldfields History.” MA diss., University of Otago 1973. Martin, Ged. “Canada from 1815,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire. Volume III: The Nineteenth Century. Andrew Porter, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Mather, A.S. “The Desertification of Central Otago, New Zealand,” Environmental Conservation, 9, 3 (1982). Matheson, Peter. “The Settler Church 1840–1870,” in Presbyterians in Aotearoa. Denis McEldowney, ed. Wellington: Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, 1990. Maver, Irene. “Leisure Time in Scotland during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Scottish Life and Society: The Individual and Community Life. John Beech, Owen Hand, Mark Mulheron, and Jeremy Weston, eds. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005. Mawhinney, Wilson. The Roaring Game: A History of Curling in New Zealand 1873–2002. Ranfurly: New Zealand Curling Association, 2002. May, Philip Ross. The West Coast Gold Rushes. Christchurch: Pegasus, 1962. McAloon, Jim. “Scots, Networks and the Colonial Economy: The Nineteenth-Century Business Relationships of Sanderson & Murray of Galashiels and Murray, Roberts & Co. of Dunedin,” Immigrants and Minorities 29, 3 (2011). – “Scots in the Colonial Economy,” in The Heather and Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Tom Brooking and Jennie Coleman, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003. – No Idle Rich: The Wealthy in Canterbury and Otago. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2002.



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McArthur, J.F. From the Kirk on the Hill: A History of the Presbyterian Church in Gore 1881–1981. Gore: Gore Presbyterian Church History Committee, 1981. McArthur, N. A. “Gold Rush to Gold Dredge: The Evolution of Alluvial Gold Mining Technology in Otago, 1861–1898.” BA (Hons) diss., University of Otago, 2007. McCarthy, Angela. “The Scottish Diaspora Since 1815,” in Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. T.M. Devine and Jenny Wormald, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. – “Scottish Migrant Ethnic Identities in the British Empire Since the Nineteenth Century,” in Scotland and the British Empire. John MacKenzie and T.M. Devine, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. – Scottishness and Irishness in New Zealand Since 1840. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. – ed. A Global Clan: Scottish Migrant Networks and Identities Since the Eighteenth Century. London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006. McCaskill, Murray. “The South Island Goldfields in the 1860s: Some Geographical Aspects,” in Land and Livelihood: Essays in Honour of George Jobberns. Murray McCaskill, ed. Christchurch: New Zealand Geographical Society, 1962. – “The Goldrush Population of Westland,” New Zealand Geographer 12, 1 (1956). McClean, Rosalind. “Living in New Zealand but Really in Scotland? Scottish Women’s Changing Worlds between 1840 and 1920,” unpublished paper (2006). – “Scottish Piety: The Free Church Settlement of Otago, 1848–1853,” in Building God’s Own Country: History Essays on Religions in New Zealand. John Stenhouse and Jane Thomson, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2004. – “Reluctant Leavers? Scottish Women and Emigration in the Mid Nineteenth Century,” in The Heather and Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement. Tom Brooking and Jennie Coleman, eds. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003. McClean, Rosalind, Brad Patterson, and David Swain, eds. Counting Stories, Moving Ethnicities: Perspectives from Aotearoa–New Zealand. Hamilton, NZ: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Waikato, 2012. McClean, Rosalind R. “Scottish Emigrants to New Zealand, 1840–1880: Motives, Means and Background.” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1990.

362

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McDonald, K.C. City of Dunedin: A Century of Civic Enterprise. Dunedin: Dunedin City Council, 1965. McDowall, R. M. Gamekeepers for the Nation: The Story of New Zealand’s Acclimatisation Societies 1861–1990. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1994. McEldowney, Dennis, ed. Presbyterians in Aotearoa 1840–1990. Wellington: Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, 1990. McGregor, Miriam. Early Stations of Hawke’s Bay. Wellington: Reed, 1970. McIlvanney, Liam. Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002. McIntyre, Roberta. Whose High Country? A History of the South Island High Country of New Zealand. Auckland: Penguin, 2008. McIvor, Timothy. The Rainmaker: A Biography of John Ballance, Journalist and Politician, 1839–1893. Wellington: Heinemann Reed, 1989. McKay, Ian. “Tartanism Triumphant: The Construction of Scottishness in Nova Scotia, 1933–1958,” Acadiensis 21, 2 (1992). – The Quest of Folk: Anti-Modernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. McKean, John. The Road to Secularisation in Presbyterian Dunedin. The First Fifty Years of the Otago Settlement. Dunedin: Presbyterian Historical Society of New Zealand, 1993. – The Church in a Special Colony: A History of the Presbyterian Synod of Otago and Southland 1866–1991. Dunedin: Synod of Otago and Southland, 1994. McKenzie, N.R. The Gael Fares Forth: The Romantic Story of Waipu and Her Sister Settlements. Wellington: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1942. McLachlan, Louis. Backwoodsman’s Rangitikei. Poems and Songs. Maisie Earle, ed. Wanganui: McPhail and Earle, 2008. McLaren, I.A. “Education and Politics: Background to the Secondary Schools Act, 1903: part 2: Secondary Education for the Deserving,” New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies 6, 1 (1971). – “Education and Politics: Background to the Secondary Schools Act, 1903: part 1: Secondary Education for the Privileged,” New Zealand Journal for Educational Studies 5, 2 (1970). McLean, Gavin. The Southern Octopus: The Rise of a Shipping Empire. Wellington: New Zealand Ship & Marine Society and the Wellington Harbour Board Maritime Museum, 1990.



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McLean, John. Sailors and Settlers: The Migration of Highlanders from Nova Scotia to New Zealand in the 1850s and 1860s. Wellington: ­Winter Productions, 2010. McLean, Marianne. The People of Glengarry. Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993. McLintock, A.H. The History of Otago: The Origins and Growth of a Wakefield Class Settlement. Dunedin: Otago Centennial Historical Publications, 1949. McPherson, Flora. Watchman Against the World: The Remarkable Journey of Norman McLeod & His People from Scotland to Cape Breton Island to New Zealand. Nova Scotia: Cape Breton Books, 1993. Merrington, E.N. A Great Coloniser: The Rev Dr Thomas Burns. Dunedin: Otago Daily Times and Witness Newspapers, 1929. Miles, Clement A. Christmas Customs and Traditions: Their History and Significance. New York: Dover, 1976. Millen, Julia. Kirkcaldie & Stains: A Wellington Story. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2000. – Colonial Tears and Sweat: The Working Class in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand. Wellington: Reed, 1984. Miller, Graham M. Centennial History of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1856–1956: First Presbyterian Church in Canterbury. Christchurch: St Andrew’s Church, 1956. Mills, Dennis and M.L. Parry. “A Scottish Agricultural Revolution,” Area 8, 3 (1976). Ministry for the Environment. The State of the New Zealand Environment. Wellington: Ministry for the Environment, 1997. Moffatt, Kirstine. “The Poetry and Fiction of Scottish Settlers in New Zealand,” Immigrants and Minorities 30, 1 (2012). Molloy, Maureen. Those Who Speak to the Heart: The Nova Scotian Scots at Waipu 1854–1920. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1991. – “Friends, Neighbors, and Relations: The Practice of Kinship in Waipu, New Zealand, 1857–1917,” Journal of Family History 14 (1989). – “Kinship, Authority and Transitions to Adulthood: The Highland Scots at Waipu, New Zealand 1854–1914,” Journal of Social History 22, 3 (1989). – “‘No Inclination to Mix with Strangers’: Marriage Patterns among Highland Scots Migrants to Cape Breton and New Zealand, ­1800–1916,” Journal of Family History 11 (1986).

364

Selected Bibliography

– “Those who speak to the heart: kin and community among the Nova Scotians at Waipu, 1850–1914.” PhD diss., University of Auckland, 1986. Morgan, Margaret. “The Right Man for His Time: Donald McNaughton Stuart DD.” MA diss., University of Otago 1992. Morris, John. “The Assisted Immigrants to New Zealand, 1874–1879: A Statistical Study.” MA diss., University of Auckland, 1973. Morris, R.J. “The Enlightenment and the Thistle: The Scottish Contribution to Associational Life in Canada,” in Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora. Tanja Bueltmann, Andrew Hinson, and Graeme Morton, eds. Guelph: University of Guelph, 2009. – ed. Class, Power, and Social Structure in British Nineteenth-Century Towns. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986. – “Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780–1850: An Analysis,” Historical Journal 26, 1 (1983). Morton, Graeme. “Ethnic Identity in the Civic World of Scottish Associational Culture,” in Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora. Tanja Bueltmann, Andrew Hinson, and Graeme Morton, eds. Guelph: University of Guelph, 2009. Morton, Harry. The Whale’s Wake. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1982. Morton, W.L. Manitoba: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. – The Kingdom of Canada: A General History from Earliest Times. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963. Murdoch, Alexander. “The Legacy of Unionism in Eighteenth-Century Scotland,” in Scotland and the Union 1707–2007. T.M. Devine, ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Murray, Fergus. Knox Church 1880–1980. Christchurch: Knox Presbyterian Church Centennial Committee, 1980. Nathan, Simon and Mary Varnham, eds. The Amazing World of James Hector. Wellington: Awa Press, 2008. New Statistical Account of Scotland, 15 vols. Edinburgh: William Blackwood 1834–45. Nicholson, J.C. Piping and Dancing Association of New Zealand (Inc) 1908–1983. Dunedin: Dominion Council, Piping and Dancing Association, 1983. Noble, Gus. “The Chicago Scots,” in Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora. Tanja Bueltmann,



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Andrew Hinson, and Graeme Morton, eds. Guelph: University of Guelph, 2009. Nolan, Melanie, ed. Revolution: The Great 1913 Strike in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2006. Nora, P. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989). Northcote-Bade, Stanley. Colonial Furniture in New Zealand. Wellington: Reed, 1971. O’Connor, Shannon. “‘Nowhere in Canada is St Andrew’s Day Celebrated with Greater Loyalty and Enthusiasm’: Scottish Associational Culture in Toronto, c. 1836–1914,” in Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora. Tanja Bueltmann, Andrew Hinson, and Graeme Morton, eds. Guelph: University of Guelph, 2009. O’Donnell, S.A. “Dancing at the Auld Cale: A History of Highland Dancing in Dunedin between 1863 & 1900.” BA (Hons) diss., University of Otago, 1998. O’Neill, Pamela. “A Sense of Place: Monastic Scenes in Irish-Australian Funerary Monuments,” in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand: History, Politics and Culture. Laurence M. Geary and Andrew J. McCarthy, eds. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008. Offwood, David. Oatcakes to Otago: A Chronicle of Dunedin’s Scottish Heritage. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 2003. Ogilvie, Gordon. Moonshine Country. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1971. – Pioneers of the Plains: The Deans of Canterbury. Christchurch: Shoal Bay Press, 1996. Olssen, Erik. “Families and the Gendering of European New Zealand in the Colonial Period, 1840–80,” in The Gendered Kiwi. Caroline Daly and Deborah Montgomerie, eds. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1999. – Building the New World: Work, Politics and Society in Caversham 1880s–1920s. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1995. – “Where To From Here? Reflections on the Twentieth-Century Historiography of Nineteenth-Century New Zealand,” New Zealand Journal of History 26, 1 (1992). – “Waging War: The Home Front, 1914–1918,”in The People and the Land – Te Tangata me Te Whenua: An Illustrated History of New Zealand 1820–1920. Judith Binney, Judith Bassett and Erik Olssen, eds. Wellington: Allen and Unwin, 1990. – A History of Otago. Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1984.

366

Selected Bibliography

– “Women, Work and Family: 1880–1926,” in Women in New Zealand Society. Phillida Bunkle and Beryl Hughes, eds. Auckland: Allen and Unwin, 1980. Olssen, Erik and Andree Levesque. “Towards a History of the European Family in New Zealand,” in Families in New Zealand Society. Peggy G. Koopman-Boyden, ed. Wellington: Methuen, 1978. Olssen, Erik and Clyde Griffen, with Frank Jones. An Accidental Utopia? Social Mobility and the Foundations of an Egalitarian Society, ­1880–1940. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2011. Olssen, Erik and Maureen Hickey. Class and Occupation: The New Zealand Reality. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005. Ommer, R.E. “Primitive Accumulation and the Scottish clann in the Old World and the New,” Journal of Historical Geography 12, 2 (1986). Opie, Brian. “William Golder, 1810–1876,” Kotare 7, 5 (2008). Ostler, Hubert. “Bench and Bar 1903–1928,” in Portrait of a Profession: The Centennial Book of the New Zealand Law Society. Robin Cooke, ed. Wellington: Reed, 1969. Owens, J.M.R. “New Zealand before Annexation,” in The Oxford History of New Zealand, (second edition). G.W. Rice, ed. Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1993. Palmer, Mervyn. “The New Zealand and Australian Land Company in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 1971. Park, Geoff. Theatre Country: Essays on Landscape and Whenua. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006. – “‘Swamps which might doubtless easily be drained’: Swamp Drainage and Its Impact on the Indigenous,” in Environmental Histories of New Zealand. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds. Sydney: Oxford University Press, 2002. Parr, Norah. “Kaiwarra or the Village That Was,” The Onslow Historian: Official Journal of the Onslow Historical Society Inc. 10, 2 (1980). Parry, M.L. & T.R. Slater, eds., The Making of the Scottish Countryside. London: Croom Helm, 1980. Pascoe, John, ed. Mr. Explorer Douglas. Wellington: Reed, 1957. Paterson, Lachie. “M ¯aori ‘Conversion’ to the Rule of Law and NineteenthCentury Imperial Loyalties,” Journal of Religious History 32, 2 (2008). Paterson, Lachie and John Stenhouse. “Ng ¯a poropiti me ng ¯a H ¯ahi: Prophets and the Churches.” in Ki te Whaiao: An Introduction to M ¯aori Culture and Society. Tania M. Ka’ai, John C. Moorfield, Michael P.J. Reilly, and Sharon Mosley, eds. Auckland: Pearson Education, 2004.



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Patterson, B.R. Early Colonial Society Through a Prism: Reflections on Wellington’s First Anniversary Day. Wellington: Wellington Historical and Early Settlers’ Association, 1994. Patterson, Brad. “Cousin Jacks, New Chums and Ten Pound Poms: Locating New Zealand’s English Diaspora,” in Locating the English Diaspora, 1500–2010. Tanja Bueltmann, David Gleeson and Don MacRaild, eds. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012. – “Turakina’s Highland Games: Maintaining a Gaelic Tradition?” Immigrants and Minorities 30, 1 (2012). – “‘It is curious how keenly allied in character are the Scotch Highlander and the M ¯aori’: Encounters in a New Zealand Colonial Settlement,” Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies 4, 1 (2010). – “Making New Zealanders: Exploring Pakeha Whakapapa,” unpublished paper in The Future of New Zealand Studies, Stout Research Centre 25th Anniversary Lecture Series, 27 May 2009. – “The Thistle Entwined with the Fern,” Wellington: unpublished opening address, The Scots in New Zealand exhibition, Te Papa TongarewaMuseum of New Zealand, August 2007. – “‘It brings to mind the wild valleys of lovely Glencoe…’: The Scots in Early Wellington,” unpublished paper presented as Friends of the ­Turnbull Library Winter Lecture, Wellington, New Zealand, 17 May 2006. – Ulster-New Zealand Migration and Cultural Transfers. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006. – “Celtic Roots amidst the Fern: Irish-Scottish Studies in New Zealand.” Journal of New Zealand Studies 2–3 (2003–04). – ed. The Irish in New Zealand: Historical Contexts & Perspectives. Wellington: Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, 2002. – “A ‘Half Australian, Half American’ Town: The Economic Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Wellington,” in Dynamic Wellington: A Contemporary Synthesis and Explanation of Wellington. Jack McConchie, David Winchester, and Richard Willis, eds. Wellington: Institute of Geography, Victoria University of Wellington, 2000. – “Whatever Happened to Poor Waring Taylor?: Insights from Business Manuscripts,” The Turnbull Library Record 24 (1991). – “Laagers in the Wilderness: The Origins of Pastoralism in the Southern North Island Districts, 1840–55,” Stout Centre Review 1 (1991). – “Reading Between the Lines: People, Politics and the Conduct of Surveys in the Southern North Island, New Zealand, 1840–1876.” PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 1984.

368

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Pawson, Eric. “Biotic Exchange in an Imperial World: Developments in the Grass Seed Trade,” in Agri-food Commodity Chains and G ­ lobalising Networks. Christina Stringer and Richard Le Heron, eds. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. – “Plants, Mobilities and Landscapes: Environmental Histories of Botanical Exchange,” Geography Compass 2 (2008). Pawson, Eric and Tom Brooking, eds. Environmental Histories of New Zealand. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002. Payne, Peter L, ed. Studies in Scottish Business History. London: Croom Helm, 1967. Pearce, G.L. The Scots of New Zealand. Auckland: Collins, 1976. Pearson, David. The Politics of Ethnicity in Settler Societies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Peck, D.L. “Civility: A Contemporary Context for a Meaningful Historical Concept,” Sociological Enquiry 72, 3 (2002). Peden, Robert. Making Sheep Country: Mt Peel Station and the Transformation of the Tussock Lands. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2011. – “Pastoralism and the Transformation of the Rangelands of the South Island of New Zealand, 1841 to 1912. Mt Peel Station, a Case Study.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 2007. – “Sheep Farming Practice in Colonial Canterbury 1843–1882. The Origin, Diffusion of Ideas, Skills, Technique and Technologies in the Creation of the Pastoral System.” MA diss., University of Canterbury, 2002. Perry, Stuart. The New Zealand Whisky Book. Auckland: Collins, 1980. Peterson, Anna C. K. New Zealanders at Home: A Cultural History of Domestic Interiors 1814–1914. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2001. Phillips, Jock. A Man’s Country? The Image of the Pakeha Male: A History. Auckland: Penguin, 1996. – ed. Te Whenua, Te Iwi: The Land and the People. Wellington: Allen and Unwin/Port Nicholson Press with Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, 1987. Phillips, Jock and Terry Hearn. Settlers: New Zealand Immigrants from England, Ireland and Scotland 1800–1945. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008. Pickens, K.A. “Marriage Patterns in a Nineteenth-Century British Colonial Population,” Journal of Family History 5 (1980).



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Pickles, Katie. “Kilts as Costumes: Identity, Resistance and Tradition,” in Looking Flash: Clothing in Aotearoa–New Zealand. Bronwyn Labrum, Fiona McKergow, and Stephanie Gibson, eds. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007. Pinney, Robert. Early North Otago Runs. Auckland: Reed, 1981. – Early South Canterbury Runs. Auckland: Reed, 1971. Pittock, Murray. Celtic Identity and the British Image. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Place, Malcolm. “Chartism and the Land,” in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman, eds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Platts, Una. The Lively Capital: Auckland 1840–1865. Christchurch: Avon Fine Prints, 1971. Pool, Ian. “A Caledonian Conundrum: The Differing Reproductive Regimes of Scots in the ‘Old Country,’” paper presented to Ethnic Counting Seminar, Irish Scottish Studies Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, 2 March, 2007. Pool, Ian et al. The New Zealand Family from 1840: A Demographic History. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007. Porter, Andrew. “‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’ and Empire: The British Experience Since 1750?” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 18, 3 (1990). Porter, Frances, ed. Historic Buildings of New Zealand: South Island. Auckland: Methuen, 1983. Porter, Frances, and Charlotte Macdonald with Tui MacDonald, eds. My Hand will Write What My Heart Dictates: The Unsettled Lives of Women in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996. Poulson, J. A. “Racing, Horse” in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. 3. A.H. McLintock, ed. Wellington: Government Printer, 1966. Powell, Debra. “‘It Was Hard to Die Frae Hame’: Death, Grief and Mourning among Scottish Migrants to New Zealand, 1840–1890.” MA diss., University of Waikato, 2007. Prentis, Malcolm. “‘It’s a Long Way to the Bottom’: The Insignificance of ‘the Scots’ in Australia,” Immigrants and Minorities 29, 2 (2011). – The Scots in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2008. Prince, Hugh C. “The Changing Rural Landscape, 1750–1850,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 4, 1750–1850. G.E. Mingay, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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376

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378

Selected Bibliography

Wevers, Lydia. Reading on the Farm: Victorian Fiction and the Colonial World. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2010. Whatley, Christopher. Scottish Society, 1701–1830. Beyond Jacobinism, Towards Industrialisation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. – The Industrial Revolution in Scotland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. White, Robin M. and Ian D. Willock. The Scottish Legal System. Edinburgh: Butterworths, 1993. Whitelaw, Brooke. “A Message from the Missahibs: New Zealand Presbyterian Women Missionaries in the Pubjab, 1910–1940.” MA diss., University of Otago, 2001. Whittington, G. “Agriculture and Society, 1750–1870,” in An Historical Geography of Scotland. G. Whittington and I.D.Whyte, eds. London: Academic Press, 1983. – “Was there a Scottish Agricultural Revolution?” Area 7, 3 (1975). Whyte, I.D. Scotland before the Industrial Revolution. London: Longman, 1995. – “Early Modern Scotland: Continuity and Change,” in An Historical Geography of Scotland. G. Whittington and I.D.Whyte, eds. London: Academic Press, 1983. Wild, L.J. The Life and Times of Sir James Wilson of Bulls. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1953. Wilson, Geoffrey A. The Urge to Clear the ‘Bush’: A Study of Native Forest Clearance on Farms in the Catlins District of New Zealand, ­1861–1990. Christchurch: Rural Ministry Publications, 1992. Wilson, James G. Early Rangitikei: A Few Notes, Collected from Various Sources of the Settlement on the Rangitikei River of a Number of Maoris of Different Tribes. A Short History of the Purchase and Colonization of the Land between the Turakina and Oroua Rivers, and an Account of the Various Pioneers. Christchurch, Wellington and ­Dunedin: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1914. Wilson, Kerry-Jayne. Flight of the Huia: Ecology and Conservation of New Zealand’s Frogs, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2003. Wilson, Malcolm W. Turakina: The Story of a Country Parish. Christchurch: Presbyterian Bookroom, 1952.



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Wilson, Megan J. “Myth and Misunderstanding: The Enigma of the Scottish Highland Migrants to Otago/Southland, 1870–1879.” MA diss., University of Otago, 2003. Winder, Gordon. “Making Space: Clusters and Districts in Auckland Manufacturing 1889–1908,” in City of Enterprise: Perspectives on Auckland Business History. Ian Hunter and Diana Morrow, eds. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006. Withers, Charles W.J. Urban Highlanders: Highland–Lowland Migration and Urban Gaelic Culture, 1700–1900. East Lothian: Tuckwell Press, 1998. – Gaelic Scotland. The Transformation of a Culture Region. London: Routledge, 1988. – Gaelic in Scotland, 1688–1981: The Geographic History of a Language. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984. Womack, Peter, Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands. London: Macmillan, 1989. Wood, Claire. “Bastardy Made Easy?: Unmarried Mothers and Illegitimate Children on Charitable Aid – Dunedin 1890–1910.” BA (Hons) diss., University of Otago, 1990. Wood, John. Twelve Months in Wellington, Port Nicholson. London: Pelham Richardson, 1843. Wood, Vaughan and Eric Pawson. “The Banks Peninsula Forests and Akaroa Cocksfoot: Explaining a New Zealand Forest Transition.” Environment and History, 14, 4 (2008). Wood, Vaughan. “Soil Fertility Management in Nineteenth Century New Zealand Agriculture.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 2003. Worster, Donald. A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Wright, Matthew. Shattered Glory: The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front. Auckland: Penguin, 2010. Wright-St Clair, R.E. Thoroughly a Man of the World: A Biography of Sir David Monro, M.D. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1971. Wynn, Graeme. “On the Margins of Empire, 1760–1840,” in The Illustrated History of Canada, revised ed. Craig Brown, ed. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002. Wynn, Graeme. “Destruction Under the Guise of Improvement? The Forest, 1840–1920,” in Environmental Histories of New Zealand. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002. – ‘Remapping Tutira. Contours of the Environmental History of New Zealand,” Journal of Historical Geography 23, 4 (1997).

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Index

A & T Burt, 157 Abbot, Edward Immyns (artist), 172 Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, 31–2; background information, 34–5; and chain migration, 81–2, 286n15; and family cookbooks, 222; female migrants from, 41–2; individual migrants, 81–2, 98, 127, 130, 165; and James ­McAndrew, 161; and John Turnbull Thomson, 147; male workforce professionals, 34; migrant marriage statistics, 113–4; migrant numbers, 26, 86–7, 106, 257; migrants to Canterbury Province, 74; migrants to Otago Province, 69, 258–9; migrants to Wellington Province, 64–5, 81; and New Zealand maritime occupations, 101–2; and nurserymen, 157; period of arrival of migrants, 28; university, 127, 262 acclimatization, 167–8, 275; societies, 236, 275 Act of Union 1707, 84, 117, 120–1, 246, 255

Adam, James, 165, 250–1 Adam, Thomas 165 Adams, R.N., 253 adaptation of migrants to new environment, 20, 24, 291 age distribution of migrants, 10, 21, 38–47 agrarian ideology, 90, 122–3 agricultural improvement, 262–3; and Burns, 122; and George Malcolm Thomson, 168–9; and Herbert Guthrie-Smith, 169–71; and James Hector, 167–8, New Zealand, 91–2, 167–72; Scotland, 89–90, 92, 150–64 agricultural machinery manufacturers, 157 agricultural and pastoral associations, 152, 184, 189, 193 agricultural revolution, 22, 55, 260, 263 agriculture: and application of science, 169; and Canterbury (NZ), 91; and industrial revolution, 260; and mechanization, 100; and migrant settlement patterns, 46–7; as occupation in NZ, 47–54, 94, 291n32; reputation

382 Index

of Scottish agriculture, 84; and Scottish counties, 32–7 Ainge, Joseph, 105 Aiken, Alexander, 81 Aiken, Anne, 81 Aiken, Catherine, 81 Aiken family, 81–2; Aiken, George, 81 Aiken, William, 81 Aitken, Jessie, 141 Aitken, John, 135 Akenson, Donald Harman, 7, 8 Albion Line (Glasgow), 97 alcohol, 128, 227, 231, 233, 234, 301. See also beer; breweries and brewing; prohibition; temperance; whisky Alexander Turnbull Library, 297n78 Allen, James, 47 Allen, John, 47 Allen, Joseph, 4 Allen, William Brown, 47 Ancient Order of Foresters, 271 Anderson, Andrew, 73 Anderson, Atholl, 278 Anderson, Edmund, 148 Anderson, John, 73 Anglicans, 143, 212; and the Canterbury Association, 72; proportion in NZ compared to Presbyterians, 20, 225; and religious festivals, 228–9, 273 Arbor Day, 160 architecture, 197, 214–5, 271–2; domestic, 215 Ardachie, 146 Ardross, 146 Argyle. See Argyll Argyll and Argyllshire: background information, 35–6, 287n41; and

chain migration, 30; distribution of migrants in NZ, 73; individuals from, 76, 117, 203; migrant marriage statistics, 113–14; migrant numbers, 28; migration patterns, 30–2; and Southland county (NZ), 64 Arkle, James, 300n75 Arkle, Josephine, 300n75 Arnold, Rollo, 7, 150 Artisan Democracy, 116, 122–5, 137–9, 266; radicalism, 137–8, 266 artisans, 88, 122, 138–9, 252, 257 artists, 113, 161, 172 Ashburton, 154, 184, 187 Ashburton Guardian (newspaper), 209, 231 assimilation, 10, 19; cultural, 223 assisted passages. See migration, assisted associational culture, 16–7; development and growth of in NZ, 173–96, 254, 265, 269–72; and identity, 72; and language, 19, 246; role in migrants adaptation to new environment, 11 associations, as sites of memory, 178–82 athenaeums, 248, 275 Australia: comparison of Scots immigration to NZ with Australian experiences, 261–81; economic success of Scots in, 263; economy, 259; export of seeds to, 156; farming practices, 155; and gold, 71, 87, 259; immigration to NZ via, 70–1, 78, 81, 87, 93–4, 154–5, 251; impact on



Index 383

language, 247; Scots immigration to, 255–9 authoritarianism, 15, 129, 132, 143, 266 Ayr and Ayrshire: background information, 32–3; cattle in NZ, 150; and Cyclopedia of nz, 87; farming practices brought to NZ, 90–3; individual migrants from, 47, 93, 104, 130, 134, 158–9; and Lowland Clearances, 263; migrant marriage statistics, 113–4; migration to NZ from, 26, 29, 69, 87, 257; settlement patterns in NZ, 59, 73–4 “Backwoodsman” (poet Louis McLachlan), 252 Baines, Dudley, 6 Ballance, John, 130, 137, 169 Balneavis, H.C., 205 Banantyne, Marian, 104–5 Banff, 28, 34 Bank of New South Wales 95 Bank of New Zealand, 101 banking, 34, 84, 96, 101, 263; occupation, 85, 87, 101, 258 bankruptcy, 98, 264 banks. See Bank of New South Wales; Bank of New Zealand; City of Glasgow Bank; Colonial Bank of New Zealand; Oriental Bank Bannerman, Alexander, 134 Bannockburn, 146 “Bard of the Inangahua” (poet Hugh Smith), 252 “Bard of the Otago Province” (poet John Barr), 252 Barr, Amelia, 250

Barr, James, 150, 165, 280 Barr, John, 219, 252 Barron, Alexander, 148 Barry, James, 103 Bassett, Michael, 8 Bathgate, Alexander, 160, 169, 218, 251, 253, 276 Baxter, Archibald, 141 Beattie, James, 165 beer, 180, 212, 222, 233, 235. See also alcohol; breweries and brewing; Lion Breweries; Speights Begg, Alexander Campbell, 158 Belich, James (historian), 4, 56, 98, 265, 279; description of colonial women’s life, 206; and neo-­ Scotland theory, 4, 20, 116, 255 Bellfield, 154 Bengal Merchant (ship), 74–5, 77, 250, 252 Ben Lomond, 146 Bennett, Robert, 74 Ben Ohau, 154 Bentham, Jeremy, 125, 130 Berwick and Berwickshire, 29, 37, 90, 137 Bethune, Kenneth, 210 “Better Britain,” 167 Bible: class, 233, 274; Gaelic language, 245; and literacy, 243; in schools, 232. See also Sunday school birdlife, 164–5; hunting, 236; introduced, 160, 168–9; native, 149, 160, 165–6, 168–9; threats to grain farming, 168–9; threats to survival, 92, 166–8 Birds of New Zealand, 167–8

384 Index

birth, 17, 273; statistics, 26, 28–9; childbirth, 207–9; deaths in childbirth, 204–5; homebirth, 207–9; infant and young persons’ survival rate, 200; midwifery, 207–9; migrant birth place Scotland, 48, 58–63, 68, 73, 86, 105, 153. See also illegitimate births; midwifery Bittermann, Rusty, 278 Blackie, James, 164 blacksmiths, 73–4, 88, 100–1 Blairlogie, 76, 146 Blair, John, 135, 156 Blake, William, 250 Blenheim (ship), 74–8, 201, 244, 252 Boag, John Stuart, 74 Boag, William, 74, 93 Boag, William Cunningham, 74 Bonny Glen, 146 Book of Martyrs (1563), 248 Borders (Scotland): background information, 31–2, 37–8; and horse racing, 237; house construction, 214; individuals, 95–6, 147, 154; migrant gender information, 44; migrant marriage status, 43; migration to NZ from, 5, 22; occupations of migrants from, 48; settlement patterns in NZ, 63 botanical gardens. See gardens botanists, 160–1, 166–7, 262 bourgeoisie: haute, 263; rural, 89; Scottish, 123 Bower, Andrew Joseph, 184 Boys’ Brigade, 272 Braco estate, 93 Braeburn, 146

Brancepeth library, 249–50 Breadalbane, 70 Brett’s Colonists’ Guide (1883), 222 Breward, Ian, 226, 274 brewers and brewing, 235, 275; statistics, 112 British Columbia, comparison with NZ, 261, 278 British Empire: botanical gardens, 158; and NZ, 23; NZ as stock farm for, 171; and Scots, 84, 255–6, 264 British world, 20, 256, 280 Broad Scots (Lallans), 244, 246, 252 Brose, 222, 222, 230 Bruce Herald (newspaper), 264 Bruce, James, 194 Bruce, Robert, 160 Brydone, Thomas, 97, 152 Buchanan, Andrew, 154 Buchanan, John (artist), 161 Buchanan, John (weaver and farmer), 164 building and construction: building firms, 103; industrial buildings, 59; houses, 76, 165, 215; as migrant occupation, 48, 51–4, 88, 100 building materials, 159, 214–6; brick, 214–6; corrugated iron, 215; stone, 165, 214–15; wattle and daub, 214; weatherboard, 215; wood, 214–15 Buller, Walter, 168 burial customs, 21, 211–14, 273 Burn, Margaret, 137 burning of bush, 16, 150, 153–4, 161–2, 164; M ˉaori, 16



Index 385

Burns, Richard, 203 Burns, Robert (Robbie): agrarian ideology, 15, 122, 137–8, 266; celebrations of his birth, 173–5, 178–80; imitated by other poets, 251–2, 276; influence on Independent Labour Party, 140; influence on language, 246; influence on Richard Seddon, 163; and politics, 125; and Tom Paine, 123–4. See also Burns celebrations; Burns clubs Burns, Rev. Thomas: and education 134; farming practices, 149–51; reflections on NZ landscape, 145–6; and Rev. Thomas ­Chalmers; 126–7; and Scottish Free Church 66, 126, 232 Burns celebrations, 175, 222, 270, 313n21 Burns clubs, 17, 84, 174–81, 194, 197, 246 Bush, 165–6; farms, 88; felling, 46; fighting, 272; regenerating, 157, 169. See also bushmen; burning of bush Bush Advocate (newspaper), 157 bushmen, 54 butchers and butchery, 52, 88 Bute, 28, 64 Cage, R.A., 8 Cairnard run, 154 Caithness and Caithness-shire: background information36–7; farming practices, 94; individual migrants from, 73–4, 95; migrant birth statistics, 28; migrant marriage statistics, 113 Calder, Alex, 311n127

Caledonian Games: analysis of role of Games, 182–91, 196; and Caledonian Societies, 182; and Highland dancing, 243; as a holiday event, 230–1, 238, 273; and kilts, 219–20; and pipe bands, 220; role in survival of Scottish culture, 177, 181–2, 276; and Scottish country dancing, 243; and shinty, 238–9 Caledonian societies, 17, 173–196, 242, 269–70, 312 n7, 8, 12, 315n65; and civic life, 191–6 Callaghan, Christina, 103 Callaghan, John, 103 Calloway, Colin, 277–8, 333n109 Calvinists and Calvinism: attitudes, 263; criticism of, 133 and J.M. Ritchie, 97, 107; and Robbie Burns, 124; and Rev. Thomas Burns, 127; and Yuletide celebration, 228; 230; language, 232; and music, 241. See also churches Cameron, Annie, 76, 78 Cameron, Christine, 76 Cameron, Donald (son of John), 78 Cameron, Donald (“the piper”), 76, 78 Cameron, Donald (“the weaver”), 76, 78 Cameron, Duncan, 76 Cameron, Duncan (principal commander of imperial forces), 279 Cameron, Ernest, 76 Cameron, John, 76–7 Cameron, Mary, 76 Campbell, Andrew, 80 Campbell, Captain Moses, 77, 208 Campbell, Dick, 80

386 Index

Campbell, George, 80 Campbell, Jessie, 208, 221 Campbell, John Logan, 8, 99, 120–1, 162, 216, 251, 318n38 Campbell, M.D.N., 156 Campbell, Peter, 204 Campbell, Robert, 104, 153, 155 Canada, 3, 19; and chain migration, 30; and Clearances, 23; Eastern Canada, 255, 257, 261–2; immigration experience compared with NZ, 256–81; and “Scottish” weeds, 150 Canadian Pacific railway, 272 Canadian Prairies, 261 Canterbury and Otago Association, 97 Canterbury (NZ), 72–4, 91; Caledonian Games, 188; curling, 239; farming, 64, 88–9, 93, 151; and Highlanders, 63, 87; and land owning companies, 152; land policy, 92, 147; occupations, 110; population statistics, 46, 58; Provincial Council, 147; religion, 126; Scottish runholders, 153–4; volunteer military units, 220 Canterbury University College, 134 Canterbury (UK), 87 Cargill, Mary Ann, 200 Cargill, Capt William (founder of Otago settlement), 8, 66, 68, 149, 159, 163, 200, 232 Cassells, Margaret, 96 Cassells, Mary, 96 Catholics, 280; and alcohol, 234; and Christmas 228–9; and Easter, 229, 273; Irish, 198;

­ arist Order, 258; and M ˉaori, M 258; and weddings, 211 Caversham (Dunedin), 11, 285n28 cemeteries, 212–13 chain migration, 30, 66, 69–72, 81–82, 257; from Shetlands, 30, 257 Chalmers Church, Dunedin, 245 Chalmers, Thomas, 126–7, 131 cheese making, 91, 152, 221 child welfare, 140 childbirth. See birth children: ages, 55; and childbirth, 208; and culture and tradition, 18, 55, 198, 207; Cyclopedia data, 85–6; death, 212; female reproduction rate, 200; gender balance, 44–7; illegitimate, 202; immigration, 13, 68, 191; immigration statistics, 39–7; and liberalism, 131; and marriage connections, 79; mixed–race, 203–5; as part of families, 13, 60, 71, 76–9; welfare, 135, 141, 182, 267 Chinese, 269 Christchurch, 45, 74; Caledonian Games, 187; and church music, 242; education, 135; engineering firms, 100; farming, 93; gardens, 158; Golf Club, 240; religion, 126, 142; Scottish Society, 190; Christian Endeavour Societies, 233 Christmas, 18, 183, 187, 227–31, 254, 273 churches, 15, 134; and Christian festivals, 227–31; and communion, 226–7, 232, 273; as a community 11; and culture, 18; and democracy, 124; and death,



Index 387

212, 273; divisions within, 232, 241; and education, 243; and Gaelic language, 245; and leisure activities, 18, 224–5, 231–3, 274; and marriage, 202, 210–11; and migrant identity, 5, 84, 86, 125; and missionaries, 258, 278; and music, 241, 273–4; and prohibition, 235; and role of women, 266; and social improvement, 15, 254. See also Anglicans; Catholics; Church of England; Church of Scotland; Disruption (1843); evangelism; Free Church of Scotland; fundamentalism; kirk; Presbyterianism; Sabbatarianism; Union churches Church Missionary Society, 258 Church of England, 258. See also Episcopal Church Church of Otago Library, 249 Church of Scotland, 59, 125–6, 225, 228; moderate, 124–5; New Light, 125. See also Free Church of Scotland City of Glasgow Bank, 97 civil society: Scottish contribution to, 262–72 Clackmannan, 28 Clark, Eliza, 78 Clark, James McCosh, 102 Clarke, Alison, 225, 229 class, 10, 11, 14–15, 92, 107; and alcohol, 233–5; and associational life, 271; and the church, 134, 231; and the Clearances, 257; and courtship, 209–10; and dress, 218–20; and economic success, 263; and food, 220–2; and house furnishings, 216–18;

labouring class, 121; and language, 244, 246; and leadership, 193; and liberalism, 137; lower class, 128; lower middle class, 99; and marriage, 209–10; middle class, 17, 85–7, 107, 117, 122, 129, 191; and politics, 137, 237–9; ruling class, 122; and sport, 238–41; upper class, 85–7, 121; upper middle class, 121; and women, 136–7, 206; working class, 15, 58, 121, 129–30, 140, 142; yeomanry, 123 Clearances, Highland, 22–3, 36, 118–19, 123, 257, 279; Lowland, 90, 257, 263 closer settlement movement, 15, 23, 153, 207, 266 clothing, 164, 197, 218–19, 249, 274 clothing trades, 95, 112, 219, 274 Clutha, 69, 163 Clyde Bank, 146 coachbuilding, 101 coal, 22, 33, 35, 71; coalmining, NZ, 46–7, 141; coalmining, Scotland, 71, 84; and poetry, 141 coalfields: poet (Edward Hunter), 141; political activism, 141 Cobden, Richard, 123 Cockayne, Leonard, 163 Coleborne, Catherine, 264 Colonial Bank of New Zealand, 101 Colonial Experiences; or Sketches of People and Places in the Province of Otago, New Zealand (1874), 251 Colonial Museum, 167 commerce, 10, 35, 37, 50, 58, 84, 98, 289n8

388 Index

Communist Party, 142 Compradors, 263 concerts, 181, 242; visiting troupes, 242. See also music conservation: English influence, 163; and the environment, 164–6; of forests, 159–64; individuals involved in, 151; role of Scots, 13, 16, 144, 149, 262; and “sustainability,” 166. See also Field Naturalists Club; Forest and Bird Protection Society conservatism: and Burns, 124; and the church, 133, 135–7; and the judiciary, 130; and land policy (NZ), 120, 123; and Presbyterianism, 15, 133, 135–7; and Scots, 19, 143; theological, 12, 133, 135–7, 274 Cookson, Joseph, 71 Coombes, James, 94 Coronet Peak, 154 cottars/cotters, 90, 124, 257 cotton textiles production, Scotland, 32, 33, 35. See also ­weavers, cotton Counterfeit Seal (1897), 253 courtship customs, 18, 209–10, 273 Covenanters, 140–1 Craigie Lea, 79 Crawford, James Coutts, 251 crime, 264 Crockett, S.R., 250 Cromarty, 28, 36, 64, 259 crop farming, 89, 93, 150–2, 159; Taieri Plain, 164 Crown Distillery, 234 Crown Law Office, 132–3 Cruikshank, D.B., 102

Cullen, John (police commissioner), 158 cultural practices, 12, 276; English, 223, 227–31, 235 Cunningham family, 73 Cunningham, John, 93 curling, 238–40, 275 cycling: and Caledonian Games 187, 190, 275; Christina ­Callaghan, 103 Cyclopedia of New Zealand (1897–1908): association information, 193; comparisons with English migrants, 263; construction of databases from, 14, 86; description of content, 86; migrant information from, 72, 75, 86–106, 149, 179; migrant statistics from, 108–15 dairy farming, 91, 127, 150–2; commercial, 152–3; occupations, 112 dairymaids, 52 Dalmatians, 145, 159 Dalrymple, Learmonth, 136–7 Dalvey, 154 Dalziel family, 61 Dalziel, Gavin, 74 Dalziel, Robert, 74 dancing: Caledonian Games, 185–6; Highland, 242, 270, 275; and kilts, 220; and New Zealand Gaelic Society, 245; and piping, 243; and Piping and Dancing Association of New Zealand, 243, 275; renewed interest in, 19, 254; Scottish country, 243; Scottish country dance clubs, 243. See also Highland dancing



Index 389

Danes, 80, 149, 156, 192 Dannevirke, 157, 182 Darwin, Charles: Darwinism, 127, 135, 160–1, 168–9; Descent of Man (1871), 168; theory of displacement, 160–1, 168–9 Davidson, William Soltau, 97, 152 daughters of Scottish settlers, 69, 267, 273 Deans, family, 104, 159; John, 159, 236 death customs, 18, 207, 211–14, 273; English, 213, 273. See also burial customs; funerals; cemeteries Declaration of Arbroath, 269 de facto relationships, 211 deforestation, 95, 159–60, 169 democracy: and Alexander Hogg, 139; artisan, 116, 122, 138; and Burns, 124, 138; and Covenanters, 140; and New Zealand Constitution (1852), 120; Scottish contribution to, 12, 15, 143 demography: “Caledonian conundrum,” 17, 199; profile of migrants, 9–10, 13, 21, 38–47, 155 Denny, Peter, 97 Denny, William, 97, 104 dependency theory, 264 Depression: economic, 25; Great Depression (1930s), 136, 266; Long Depression (1880s), 151, 259 developmentalist ethos, 167 Devine, T.M., 84, 243, 255, 257, 265 diaspora, Scottish: and associational culture, 16, 194, 196; and

Burns anniversaries, 179; and class, 107; comparison between NZ and other countries, 19; maintenance of links to Scotland, 12; and NZ, 256; relations with indigenous peoples, 276; research into, 9, 284n23 Dictionary of New Zealand English (2007), 247 disarmament, 137, 141 Disruption (1843), 15, 97, 117, 126, 225 Distillation Act 1868, 234 distilling, 233, 234; illicit, 233–5; distilleries, 233–4. See also whisky divorce, 138, 211–2 domestic environment: buildings, 215; chores and Sabbatarianism, 226; evolution of traditional practices, 18–19, 197, 207, 214, 253; role of Scottish female migrants, 105, 206, 273 domestic service: employment in NZ, 47–53, 68, 121; employment in Scotland, 34, 44; individual migrants, 204; holidays, 231 Douglas (ship), 76 Douglas, Charles Edward, 149 Douglas, William Dawson, 52 Dowgray, John, 141 Downie Stewart, William, 136 drainage of land: New Zealand, 16, 92–3, 151, 153, 159, 164; Scotland, 90–4 Duchess of Argyle (ship), 58 Duke of Argyll, 117 Duke of Edinburgh, 237 Dumbarton, 28, 36, 97, 103, 161

390 Index

Dumfries and Dumfries-shire: draining of land, Scotland, 90; individual migrants from, 74, 95, 162; migrant statistics, 29, 114; textile industry, Scotland, 37 Dunalister, 154 Duncan, Andrew, 158 Dundas, Alexander, 148 Dundee, 33, 42; migrants from, 204, 214 Dunedin, 45; agricultural machinery manufacture, 157; and alcohol, 234–5; and Burns, 179, 181; Caledonianism, 176–7, 183, 186, 193; and church music, 241, 274; comparison with Waipu, 174; and conservation, 163–4, 166; and cooking, 221–2; curling, 239; and death, 212–13; education, 136–7; farming, 149, 152, 164; Gaelic, 178, 181, 244–5; golf, 240; horse racing, 237–8, 275; housing, 214–17, 271–2; hunting and fishing, 236; labour movement, 138; landscape, 164–5; libraries and literature, 249, 251–2; Masonic lodges, 271; nurserymen, 157–8; occupations, 95–7, 100, 105, 264; place names, 146; politics, 136, 162; religion, 133, 138, 201, 226–8, 280; seed merchants, 156; settlement, 56, 66–72; shinty, 238; surveying, 147; and timber preservation, 159, 164, 166; woollen mills, 152 Dunedin Amenities Society, 160 Dunedin Hospital, 208–9 Dunedin Industrial Exhibition, 221–2

Dunedin Jockey Club, 237 Dunedin Star (newspaper), 227 Dunsandel, 74 Duntiblae, 70 East Lothian, 28, 165, 249 Easter observances, 18, 183, 227, 229–30, 254, 273. See also churches Eastern Canada. See Canada Eastern Lowlands and Lowlanders: background information, 33; migrant statistics, 25–6, 28, 42–4; occupations of migrants in Scotland 37, 48, 261; settlement patterns in NZ, 63–4, 262 ecology, 149, 169 Eden County, 45, 59 Edendale estate, 152 Edie, John, 71–2 Edie, Mary, 71–2 Edinburgh: and Anglicanism, 117, 120–2; background information, 31–6; and Burns, 122; and drapery trade, 85; and Dunedin, 146; explorers of New Zealand from, 149; individual migrants from, 79, 101, 105, 137–8, 158, 162, 168, 209, 251; and internal migration Scotland 23; as primary source of migrants, 258; Edinburgh-style housing, 215, 271 Edinburgh Horticultural and Botanical Gardens, 160. See also gardens education, 10, 134, 280–1; and the Caledonian Society, 313n12; in Canterbury, 153, 159; and the church, 134, 243; equality of,



Index 391

134–5; of individuals, 95, 170; in Otago/Southland, 153; and Presbyterianism, 135; and politicians, 128, 139, 267–8; private schools, 268; and reading, 252; and Scots, 12, 15, 143, 172, 243, 266, 280; self-education, 138, 140, 233, 248–50; and the state, 268; of women, 121, 136, 267 280. See also teachers and teaching; technical education; universities; university education Elfin Bay run, 154 Ell, Harry, 163 Ellen Lewis (ship), 61 Elliot, Alexander, 154 Elliot, Wilhelmina Sheriff, 152 Elliott, James, 95 Emigration to New Zealand: Description of the Province of Otago, (1857) 250 employment of Scots, 102, 104 Ena, or the Ancient Maori (1874), 253 engineering, 22, 84, 87, 157; mining engineer, 103 English grasses, 241 English migrants, 20, 68–9, 83, 86–9, 100, 102–14, 120, 123; comparisons with Scots, 255, 262–6, 269, 271; Presbyterians, 241 English language, 244–6 Englishness, 5,120 enterprising Scot (stereotype), 14 environment, 144–72; and M ˉaori, 163, migrant relationship with, 90, 144, 164–171, 162; and pastoralism, 161; sustainability, 166. See also conservation

environmental Scot (stereotype), 13, 16, 19, 144, 166–7, 170. See also conservation environmental change, 169–71, 262. See also conservation Episcopal Church, 126 Erickson, Charlotte, 6, 46, 265 ethnicity: as an adaptive strategy, 196, 271; and associationalism, 174, 182, 192, 196, 269–70; and celebration of New Year, 230–1; historical amnesia, 5–6; migrant, 173; NZ population, 80; and political activity, 268; and religion, 280; settler identity, 5 Ettrick Shepherd, 139 evangelism: and Church of Scotland, 125–6; and Free Church, 133; and Open Brethren, 136; and Presbyterian Church, 15, 117, 132, 137 Fairburn, Miles, 50, 196, 265, 270 family business, 98, 102, 105, 140, 146 family history, 6, 8; development of interest in, 6; and Cyclopedia of New Zealand, 14 family emigration, 22, 39–47, 55, 65; decisions, 199 family life, 17–19, 197–254; vehicle for transferring culture, 10–12, 55, 198 famine as migration impetus, 5, 22–3, 30, 259. See also potato famine, Scotland farmers, 149–56, 260–1, 263 farming: categorization of farmers, 88–9; farming practices in Scotland and NZ, 89–95, 144; as

392 Index

occupation in NZ, 35–6, 47, 50, 54, 85, 113, 260; as occupation in Scotland, 35–6; sheep farming, 23, 37, 63–4, 95–6, 146, 153–6; stock farming, 144, 150–1, 157, 171, 261. See also agriculture; dairy farming; pastoralism; fat lamb farming; crop farming farming landscapes, 149–53 Far North (Scotland), 22, 25, 28, 36–7, 43–4, 48 Far North (NZ), 56, 205 fat lamb farming, 151–2 feminism, 116, 137, 141, 266–7 fertilizers: chemical, 169; manufacture, 169 Ferguson, Dugald, 253 Fernhill, 154 Fernilea, 81 Field Naturalists Club, 166 Fife and Fifeshire, 23, 32–3, 64, 71, 90, 113–14 fighting: bush, 272. See also soldiers finance services, 14, 85, 107; financiers, 263. See also commerce; banking Findlay, John, 127, 130–3, 267–8, 300n75 First Church, Dunedin, 133, 212, 228 First World War: impact on Census figures, 287n46; impact on immigration, 25; soldiers, 272 Fischer, David Hackett, 197 fish, 220–2, 235–6; introduced, 236; and M ˉaori, 92, 221; as part of diet, 220–2; recipes, 222 fishermen, 54 fishing, leisure activity, 19, 37, 168, 235–7, 275

Fitzgerald, James Edward, 92, 123 flora: introduced, 152, 157–9, 166, 169; native, 151, 161, 166, 169. See also heather; weeds flour milling: occupation, 111–12 folkways, 3, 23, 223, 253, 273; model (Fischer), 197 food customs, 220–3, 274 food manufacture, 112 footwear trades, 99 Fordell, 66, 77, 81–2, 146, 293n70 Forest and Bird Protection Society, 160 forests and forestry, 16, 144, 148–9, 156–69; deforestation, 95, 159–60, 169; reforestation, 171. See also Pinus radiata Forfarshire, 73, 100, 113–14 Fort William, 75, 201. See also Blenheim (ship) Fowlds, George, 131 Francis, Robert, 252 Fraser, Anne Black, 165 Fraser, Catherine, 79 Fraser, Charles, 135 Fraser, Duncan, 78 Fraser, Janet (née Munro), 140–1 Fraser, Jessie, 140 Fraser, John, 60 Fraser, Margaret, 78 Fraser, Marjory, 78 Fraser, Mary, 60 Fraser, Peter (prime minister), 8, 116–17, 140, 267, 278 Free Church of Scotland, 66, 68, 97, 126, 128; doctrine, 133, 225, 273; Otago Free Church settlement, 198, 201. See also churches



Index 393

Friendly Societies. See Ancient Order of Foresters; Masonic order; Oddfellows; Manchester Unity Lodge frozen meat industry, 97, 152 Fulton, Catherine, 70 Fulton, James, 70 Fulton, William John, 183 fundamentalism: Waipu, 273 funerals, 211–13, 242 furniture: American-style, 218, 272; English, 218, 272; importation of, 217; making, 112, 217–18; utilitarian, 217–18, 272 Gaelic: language, 19, 80, 146, 242–6, 270, 275; societies, 17, 174–5, 178–82, 192, 270 Galashiels, 38, 95–6; migrants from, 96 Galbraith, Alex, 267 Galbraith, James, 97 Galt, Margaret, 85, 89 gambling, 133, 232, 237, 275 Game Laws (Scotland), 235–6 gardens: botanical, 157–8, 167, 171, 262; domestic, 158; exotic plants in domestic gardens, 158; Kew Gardens, 167, 262; suburban, 157–8 Gazelle (ship), 61 Gebbie, James, 158 genealogical data as source for migration studies, 11, 21–83 genealogy. See family history; Whakapapa General Assembly of Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, 228, 230. See also churches; Presbyterianism

General Fertility Rate (GFR), 200. See also birth gentry, 153; Anglican, 72; landed, 121 geologists, 262 George, Henry, 123 German migrants, 145, 269; and Jacksons Bay, 61 Gibb, James, 133 Glasgow, 13, 32–3, 36, 58, 79, 85, 96–7, 102, 262; migrants from, 69, 140, 248, 251; Glasgow-style housing, 215 Glasgow, Isabella, 78 Glasgow, Mary, 78 Glenarie, 146 Glendhu, 146 Glen Falloch, 146 Glenmorven, 146 Glenross, 146 gold: discovery of in South Island, 23, 45–7, 68; earnings used to purchase land, 54;impact on demand for liquor, 234; invention of gold dredge, 157; influx of single men, 204; Otago, 71, 127, 176; and settlement, 61; Tuapeka (1861), 70, 249; and Victoria Australia, 68, 70–1, 259; West Coast, 261 Golder, William, 251–2 Goldie, Martha, 210 gold miners, 234, 261, 265, 275 gold mining, 23, 47, 54, 61, 176 golf, 19, 238, 240–1, 254, 275 Gore Browne, Thomas, 119 Grant, W., 154 Grants Brae, 146 grasses and grassland, 144, 152–3, 155–9, 161–2, 164, 171, 260;

394 Index

Danthonia (native grass), 151; white and red clover, 153 Gray, James, 157 “Great” Bush, 149–50 great estates, 151–2 “green” Scot (stereotype). See environmental Scot; conservation Greenock, 58 Grey, Mary, 70–2 Grigg, John, 151 Grove, Richard, 144, 160 Gummie’s Bush, 103 Gunn, David, 73 Gunn, Donald, 73 Gunn, Gordon, 73 Guthrie-Smith, Herbert 166–71; and Tutira (1921), 169–70 haggis, 179–80, 222, 230, 246, 274 Hair, John, 79 Hair, Mary, 79 Half-Caste Disability Removal Act (1860), 202 Hall, Dianne, 280 Halswell, 74 Handbook for Intending Emigrants to the Southern Settlements of New Zealand (1849), 219 handfasting, 209. See also marriage customs Hardie, Keir, 140–1 Harland, Jill, 261, 296n59 Harper, Marjory, 256, 264–5 Harriers, 274 Harris, 30 Harris, R. Cole, 278 Hawke’s Bay, 58, 109, 146, 149, 261; farming, 155–6 Hay, David, 156; James, 136

health, 39, 92, 122, 128,140, 165; dental, 274. See also medicine; mental institutions Hearn, Terry, 5, 22, 55, 71, 199 Heather (calluna vulgaris), 158–9. See also flora Heathfield, 146 Hector, James, 158, 166–8 Henderson, Alexander, 74 Henderson, Arch, 165 Henderson, Christina, 137, 141 Henderson, Elizabeth, 141 Henderson, James, 74 Henderson, Robert, 74 Henderson, Stella, 141 Henderson, William Jr, 74 Henderson & Co., 97, 104 Hercus, George, 95 heresy, 133. See also Presbyterianism Higgie, Alexander, 79–80 Higgie, Mary, 79 Higgie, Thomas, 79 Highland: dancing, 19, 185–6, 220, 242–3, 245, 254, 270, 275–6; dress, 182, 186, 206, 219, 274; Games, 82, 173, 182; identity, 5, 15, 21, 54, 72–3, 198; names for farms, 146; regiments, 219, 243, 272 Highland Lass (ship), 60 Highland societies. See associational culture Highlander Inn, 78 Highlanders: chain migration, 30; and Clearances, 22–3, 36, 123, 257, 279; and customary tenure, 119; death customs, 212, and Eastern Canada, 261; education, 243; farming practices, 94,



Index 395

104, 153–4; Gaelic societies, 178, 244; hunting and fishing, 237; landscape, 145; language, 244;migration statistics, 25, 28, 36, 42–4; music, 242; occupations, 48, settlement patterns in New Zealand, 63–4, 72–3, 81–2, 87, 257, 262; relationships with “Indians,” 277–9; relationships with M ˉaori, 117–19, 278–9; traders, 277 Highlands: background information, 23, 35–6, 90–1; comparison of landscape with NZ, 16, 145; culture, 178, 276; Gaelic, 244–6; houses, 214–16 , 271–2; hunting and fishing, 235–7; internal population shift in Scotland, 22–3; migration from, 25–8, 42–44; music 187, 242; reasons for migration, 22–8, 30, 35–6; schooling, 243; settlement patterns NZ, 63–4, 72–3, 81–2, 153–4; shinty, 238; wakes, 212 Highlands and Islands, 22, 82, 87, 243–4 Highlands region, 32, 44, 94 hockey, 239 Hodgkins, William, 104 Hodgkinson, Edith, 252 Hogg, Alexander Wilson, 266 Hogg, James, 139 Hogg, Robert, 139 Hogmanay, 18, 222, 230–1. See also New Year holidays: and Caledonian Games, 183–7, 273; New Year, 183, 230–1; and religion, 18, 225–30; and sport, 238 Holland, Harry, 132

Horne, David, 100 Horne, Henry, 101 Hornsby, Stephen, 261 horse racing, 231, 237–8, 275; Scotland, 237 hotels and hotelkeeping, 88, 102–5, 113, 234; architecture, 272 housing, 18, 92, 164–5, 214–17, 271–2; Balmoral style, 271–2 Howden, C.R., 240 Howden, D.B., 240 Howie family, 80–2 Hunter, Edward, 141 Hunting, 19, 230, 235–7, 275 Hutcheson, Francis, 125 Hutt, 45, 64, 76, 82 Hutt Golf Club, 240 hydroelectric resources, 149, 169 identity: and associationalism, 72, 84, 174–81, 190, 270–1; colonial, 107, 163; ethnic, 84, 196, 213; New Zealand-British, 6,12, 223, 254, 279; preservation of Scottish, 16–17, 82, 146, 152 illegitimate births, 200 immigrant birth statistics, analysis, 25–6 immigrants, Canadian experiences, 256–81 immigration, 4, 22–6, 30, 42, 68, 128, 256; and population growth, 142. See also migration immigration barracks, 75 Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand, 161 innovation: agricultural, 94, 260; improvements in communication technology, 260; in law, 268 Independent Labour Party, 140, 267

396 Index

intermarriage: with Indians (North America), 277; with M ˉaori, 202–3, 206, 279, 318n39; and genealogy, 206 Invercargill, 45; Caledonian Games, 183; Caledonian Society, 177; Clan Hall, 276; golf, 240; piping, 243, 275; settlement, 64; Shetland settlers, 62 Inverness and Inverness-shire: and Blenheim passengers, 75; individual migrants, 77–8; migrant statistics, 28, 36, 44, 64, 106, 113–14 Ireland: and cottars, 90; and Jacksons Bay settlement (NZ), 61; level of literacy, 244; and Manawat ˉu County (NZ), 82; as migrant source, 5–6, 10, 23; outflow to Scotland, 260 Irish, 38, 58, 68–71, 77, 82–3, 159, 255–6; and associational culture, 182, 192, 269, 271, 281; and Burns, 180; comparisons with Scots, 261, 265–6, 330n52; customs, 227; and indigenous peoples, 277, 279; leisure, 235; migration, 113, 257; prejudice towards, 255; religion, 280; as soldiers, 279 Irish women, marriages to Scots, 105–6 Irishness, 5 iron, 22, 33, 59, 84, 135; corrugated iron, 215; pig-iron, 33 ironwork, 213, 215 ironmongery, 136 Jackson, Henry, 148 Jacksons Bay, 61

James, Arthur, 264–5 James, John, 264 James, Bruce and Co., 194 Jamieson family, 73 Jane Gifford (ship), 58 Jedburgh, migrants from, 38, 93 John Wickliffe (ship), 66, 68 journalism, 266, 271. See also Lister, Samuel K ˉai Tahu, 163, 278 Kailyard literature, 124 Kaiwharawhara, 75–6, 78–9, 238 Kauri milling, 162 Kauri Timber Company, 162 Kelly, John Liddell, 252 Kettle, Charles, 147 kilt, 149, 274; and identity, 219, 276. See also clothing; dancing Kincaid, McQueen and Company, 157 Kincardine, 28, 34 King (Margaret?), 103 King, Michael, 8 Kinross, 93, 155 kinship, 12, 77, 79, 192, 203, 277 kirk, 12, 18, 117, 126, 224; and Covenanters, 140; and death, 211–13; and leisure, 231–3, 254, 274; and the state, 27–32. See also churches Kirk, Thomas, 160–1, 163 Kirkcaldie and Stains, 104 Kirkcaldie, John, 104 Kirkcudbright and Kirkcudbrightshire, 29, 103 kist, emigrants’, 3, 4, 18, 216 kist o’ whistles (organ), 241, 274. See also churches; music Knox Church Christchurch, 242



Index 397

Knox Church Dunedin, 227, 241, 245, 272, 274 Labour (politics,) 137–8, 142, 269; government, 171 labour reform, 138 labourers, 68, 76, 126, 138, 257; agricultural, 52, 68–70, 89, 92, 149–51, 259–61; casual, 90, clothing 219; and housing, 216 labouring, 23, 35, 48–53, 206 Ladanyi, S., 220 Ladies’ Guilds, 233, 274 “lad o’ pairts,” 128, 180 Laidlaw, Robert, 136 Laidmore, 146 Lake Ellesmere, 73–4, 93 Lallans (Lowlands or Broad Scots,) 244 Lambie, Andrew, 154 Lanark and Lanarkshire: background information, 32–3; farming practices, 257; internal migration Scotland, 22–3, 34; individual migrants, 70–1; marriage statistics, 113–14; migrant numbers, 26, 29, 42, 86–7; migrant settlement patterns in NZ, 59, 69, 74; occupation of migrants, 101; primary source of migrants, 106, 257–9; and textile industry, 37 land ownership, 12, 54. See also leasehold land land purchase, 77, 117, 120, 148, 257, 279; from M ˉaori, 118–19, 148 land reform, 116, 122–3, 139–40; Scottish antecedents, 123 land rights, 146

land speculation, 98; “spotting,” 147 Land Wars. See New Zealand Wars landscape, 9–10, 13; comparison between New Zealand and Scotland, 16, 145; modification of, 13, 144–72, 262; settler reaction to 164–5, 168, 309n93 Lang, Jane, 69 Lang, John Dunmore, 277–8 Langsfield, 70 Langton, William, 253 language: and literature, 243–8; of Burns, 123; impact of Scots, 13, 18–19, 223; and Presbyterianism, 232; of Scotland, 173; of Shetland, 36; Gaelic, 181, 242, 270; Lallan, 244. See also English language; Southland burr; Scottish Standard English law, 15, 116, 127, 129–32, 137–8, 266; and “enemy aliens,” 132; English, 255; land purchasing, 279; Roman, 130, 268; Scottish, 266, 268; and the state, 132; and unions, 132 Lawn, C.A., 148 Lawrence Athenaeum Library, 249 lawyers, 87, 136 Learney, 81 leasehold land: New Zealand, 76–7, 147, 152, 154–5, 189; Scotland, 89–90, 92, 123 leisure, 18, 224–54, 274–5; and Caledonian Games, 191; and family history, 6; and organized labour, 138 Leith, 34 Lewis, 30 liberal philosophy, 267–9

398 Index

liberalism, 117, 129–31, 137–8; New Zealand, 267, 269; Scottish, 140 libraries: growth, 244–5, 248–50, 275. See also Church of Otago Library; Lawrence Athenaeum Library life-cycle customs, 207–14 Lillico, James, 96 Lindsay, W. Lauder, 160–1 Linton, 146 Lion Breweries, 235. See also beer, breweries and brewing Lister, Samuel, 138–9, 266, 274 literature, 3, 10, 13, 18, 248–53; Gaelic, 181; kailyard, 124; Scottish, 177 “Little Paisley” (painting), 172 Lochhead family, 73 Longbeach, 151 Loudon, John Claudius, 158 Lowland Scots, 5, 11, 13, 15, 116, 124, 198, 257–8; and associational culture, 270; clothing, 218; customs, 212, 227; education, 243; farming practices, 89–91, 144, 149, 159, 260–1; horse racing, 237; language and literature, 244–7, 251–3, 275; manufacturing, 100; music and dance, 242–3; migration, 262; names, 146; settlement patterns, 63–6 Lowlands (Scotland), 21–44, 48, 54, 58–9, 144, 261 Lyon, William, 248 Macandrew, James, 62, 98, 136, 161, 163 McCarthy, Angela, 260, 264

McClean, Rosalind, 10, 21, 27, 30, 199 McCombs, Elizabeth (née ­Henderson), 142 Macdonald, Charlotte, 209 Macdonald, George, 250 MacDonald, Donald, 75 McDonald, Hector, 204 McDowell, Archibald, 103 McDowell, Robert, 103 McGlashan, John, 66 McGlashan, Stewart, 80 MacGregor, Duncan, 127–30, 132, 264, 268 McGregor, Alexander, 102 McGregor, Barbara, 212–13 McGregor, Duncan, 80 McGregor, Gregor, 80 McGregor, Jock, 204 McGregor, Peter, 217 McGregor, Sandy, 80 McIlraith, Jane, 159 McIlvanney, Liam, 122 McIntosh, Robert, 80–1 McIntosh, Ann, 81 McIntosh, Grace, 20 MacKay, Alexander, 119 MacKay, James Jr, 119 MacKay, James Sr, 119 MacKay, Jessie, 119, 137, 252, 267 Mackenzie, Henry, 101 Mackenzie, Hugh, 154 Mackenzie, Scobie, 131, 267 Mackenzie, Thomas, 149, 159 Mackenzie Country, 154, 262 MacKenzie, John, 144, 265–6, 276 MacKenzie, Thomas, 149 McKenzie, Donald, 102 McKenzie, Hugh, 59–60



Index 399

McKenzie, John (lands minister): and Burns, 266; and education, 268; and Gaelic language, 245–6; and land reform 123, 139–40; and M ˉaori land, 119, 279; naming of farms, 146 McKenzie, Margaret, 78 McKenzie, Miss (from Tain), 78 McKenzie, Thomas Urquhart, 78 McKerrow, James, 148 Maclachlan, Jessie, 242 McLachlan, Louis, 252 McLagan, Angus, 141, 267 McLaren, David, 138 Maclean, Donald, 184 MacLean, John, 142 McLean, Allan, 153, 154 McLean, Donald (land commissioner): and colonial land purchase policy, 117–20; and M ˉaori land, 278; and Maraekakaho, 156; marriage of, 210; memories of Scotland, 145; purchase of Akitio, 156 McLean, John, 117, 154 McLean, Robertson, 154 M’Landress, A., 176 M’Leod, A., 176 McLeod, Donald, 154 McLeod, James, 72–3 McLeod, Rev. Norman (Waipu settlement founder), 59–61, 174, 202, 205, 232, 244 McMaster, Angus, 155 Macmillan, C.B., 102 Macmillan, David, 264 Macmillan (publisher), 248 McNab, Robert, 131 McNaughton, Angus, 73 McNicholl, Duncan, 105

McTaggart, Janet, 141 McTaggart, John, 73 McTaggart, William, 141 McWilliam, Thomas, 81–2 McWilliam, William, 80–1 Making New Zealand, 171 Manawat ˉu, 64–5, 82, 146 Manchester Unity Lodge, 271 Mangamahu, 77, 293n70 manufacturing: agricultural, 157, 169; and Auckland, 59; brewing, 235; clothing, 271; contribution of Borders migrants, 32, 96; Cyclopedia analysis of occupations (NZ), 87–8, 99–100, 108–12, 263; metal products, 263, 281; ranges, 221; toilet bowls, 218; occupation (NZ), 50–3; occupation (Scotland), 34–5, 48–52; Scottish reputation, 84–5; textile, Scotland, 22, 35; woollen, NZ, 95–6, 274; woollen, Scotland, 22, 38 M ˉaori, 5–10, 39, 269, 279; agricultural practices, 163–4; and alcohol, 234; and Caledonian societies, 269; and draining of wetlands, 92, 159; and forests,16, 159; food 21; intermarriage, 18, 202–5; land, 15, 76–8, 118–19, 121, 148, 150 155–6; relationships with migrants, 19, 76–8, 117, 119, 150, 203–6, 276–9; and religion, 258. See also K ˉai Tahu; mixed descent families; Ng ˉai Tahu; Ng ˉati Apa; Ng ˉati Kahungunu; Ng ˉapuhi; Tuhoe M ˉaori: respect for genealogy. See Whakapapa

400 Index

Maoriland Worker (newspaper), 139 Maraekakaho, 156 Marching girls, 220 Margaret (ship), 60–1 Marist order: and M ˉaori, 258 Marital General Fertility Rate (MGFR), 200 maritime: occupations, 101–2, 108–9; strike of 1913, 268 Marjoribanks, Alexander, 250 Mark Anderson (1889), 253 Marlborough, 45–6, 58, 110 marriage, 17–18, 47, 72, 105–6, 206; customs, 18, 209–11, 227, 273; endogamous, 202; exogamous, 17, 201–2; marriage linkages, 113; status, 10, 21, 42, 54, 86; monogamous, 198; patterns, 73–4, 77–9, 106, 198–204, 232. See also de facto relationships; divorce; intermarriage; weddings Marsh, George Perkins, 160 Marshall, David, 93, 136 Marshall, John, 136 Marshall family, 73 Martin, William, 157 Martins Bay, 61 Marxist Social Democratic Federation, 142 Marxist socialism, 117, 267; haute bourgeoisie, 263–4 Masonic Order: Scottish lodges, 270–1 Mates (1912), 253 Matheson, Peter, 231 Matthews, George, 157–8 Matthews, Henry, 157 Mavora Station, 154 medicine, 100, 112, 134

Melbourne, 70, 258 Mein Smith, William, 148 Melville, Alexander, 79 Melville, Andrew, 79 memory: and Caledonian Games, 182, 190; and the Highland Clearances, 123; and culture, 3,6,18, 173, 198, 213; pre-migration life, 124; memory narratives, 180; and the role of association, 178–82. See also sites of memory mental institutions, 264 Menzies, J.A.R., 154, 213, 245 Menzies, Neil, 73 merchant migrants, 85, 87, 95, 156, 258; and Caledonian Societies, 194; language, 246 metal trades, 14, 99–100, 107, 111–12, 157 Middlemarch, 73 Midlothian: background information, 33–5; individual migrants, 73, 141–2; as migrant source, 26, 28, 86, 257–9; migrant statistics, 42, 113–14; settlement patterns, 64, 66, 69 midwifery, 207–9; Midwives Act (1904), 209 migrant source regions, 31–8; Borders, 37–8; Eastern Lowlands, 33–4; Far North, 36–7; Highland, 35–6; North East, 34–5; Western Lowlands, 32–3 migrants, 4,6,11, 259; achievements, 14; adaptation of environment, 16; adaptation to environment, 9,10, 12, 145–6; ages, 39–45; associational culture, 173–96, 265–72; children, 43–7, 68; cultural traditions,



Index 401

197–223, 273–6; demographic profile, 38–47; gender, 40–6; land ownership, 155; leisure activities, 224–54; marital status, 41–3; occupations, 47–54, 86–107; origins, 5–13, 20, 63, 86–7; origins by Scottish county, 26–30; origins by Scottish regions, 31–8; and politics, 140; provinces of settlement, 63; relationships with indigenous peoples, 276–9; settlement patterns, 56–83, 261 migration: assisted, 23, 30, 37, 39, 43, 58, 69–70, 198–9, 259; chain, 30, 66, 69–72, 81–2, 257; from Shetlands, 30, 257; push/ pull factors, 36, 259; reasons for, 21–3, 206, 256–61; statistics, 5–13, 20–83, 86–107; within Scotland, 3, 21, 34, 36. See also family emigration; “Scottish paradox” migration history: developing academic interest, 6 Mill, John Stuart, 131 Mills and Cable, 104 Mills, James, 97 mining, 48, 50, 103; coal, 33, 46, 71, 84; engineers, 103; gold, 176, 234; granite, 35; politics, 141; statistics, 51, 53, 108–11 Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders (1802), 251–2 Mission Unions, 274 missionaries. See churches mixed descent families, 202–6 Moffatt, John, 74 Moffatt, Kirstine, 251 Moneydie, 92

Monro, David, 120–1, 125, 216 Moore, George, 94 Moray, 28, 34, 103 Moray Firth, 90 Moray Place, 146 Moritzon, Adolf, 156 Morrison, Hugh, 76, 155 Morrison, Janet, 76 Morrison, John, 76 Morton, William, 94 Mosgiel Woollen Factory Company (Ltd), 220 Mothers’ Prayer Groups, 233. See also churches Mothers’ Unions, 274. See also churches Mount Arum Station, 154 Mt Nicholas, 154 Munro, Janet (Fraser), 140–1 Murchison, John, 104 Murchison, Roderick, 168 Murison, Alexander Falconer, 130 Murray Roberts and Co., 96 music, 13,136, 181, 186, 254; bagpipes, 186–7, 242, 276; church, 232, 241, 245, 273–5; Highland, 245; secular, 242 Nairn, 28, 30, 34 National Mortgage and Agency Company, 96–7, 107 national parks, 149, 158–9, 163 Native Bird Protection Society, 159. See also conservation native birds. See birdlife Naturalisation of Plants and Animals in New Zealand (1922), 169 naturalists. See conservation neaps/neeps and tatties, 222, 274. See also food customs

402 Index

Neill, Grace, 209 Nelson, 45–7, 58–9, 110, 120–1, 157; anniversary day, 237; housing, 216 Neo-Scotland, New Zealand as, 4, 20, 255–6 Netherdale, 81 networking, 56, 73–4, 83–5, 87, 95–6, 103–7; Pringle brothers, 191–3, 195 New Deer, Aberdeenshire, 81 New South Wales (Australia): gold, 259; horse racing, 237; race relations, 277 New Statistical Account of Scotland (1845), 91 New Year, 18, 230–1, 238–9, 273; and Caledonian Games, 183–4, 187, 230, 273. See also Hogmanay New Zealand and Australian Land Company, 97, 104, 152 New Zealand–British, 6, 223, 254, 279 New Zealand Company, 4, 23, 39, 58, 68, 80; land orders, 75, 77, 79; settlements, 74; ships, 75; recruitment of migrants, 698, 198; surveys, 77, 148 New Zealand Constitution Act, 1852, 120 New Zealand Distillery, 234, 240 New Zealand English (language), 247 New Zealand Farmer, 151 New Zealand Farmers’ Union, 151 New Zealand Forestry League, 160 New Zealand Institute, 167 New Zealand Irish, 7–8 New Zealand Journal, 248

New Zealand Minstrelsy (1852), 251 New Zealand migrant population: age and sex profile, 45–6; male/ female migrant distribution, 45–7; occupations of migrants, 47–55; settlement patterns of migrants, 56–83 New Zealand provinces, 23, 57, 63, 121 New Zealand Wars, 119, 205, 279 Newton, George, 203 Newton, Wharetutu, 203 Ng ˉai Tahu, 119, 203–4 Ngaio Station, 151 Ng ˉati Apa, 206–6, 279 Ng ˉati Kahungunu, 118, 258 Ng ˉapuhi, 205 Nicoll, “Scotch Jock,” 204 Nimmo, Robert, 156 North America: associational culture, 175, 182, 269; buildings, 272; employment opportunities for migrants, 48, 259, 261; ethnicity, 271; migration experiences compared with NZ, 19, 255–80; migration to, 256–9; public library growth, 248; relations with indigenous peoples, 277–8, 317n22; Scottish furniture, 218 North East region of Scotland: background information, 34–5; and chain migration, 66; internal population shifts (Scotland), 23–4; migration from, 22–3; occupation of migrants in Scotland and NZ, 48, 64; settlement patterns in NZ, 63–4, 66, 82 Northern Steamship Company, 102 Nova Scotia, 202, 266, 277



Index 403

“Nova Scotian” Scots, 59 nursing, 102, 113 nurserymen, 157. See also seed merchants

201; Provincial Council, 147; as Scottish settlement, 4, 8, 11, 13, 56; Scottish place names, 146; settlement patterns, 57–62, 87; soldiers, 272 Otago Bootmakers’ Union, 138 Otago Daily Times, 239, 240 Otago Girls’ High School, 136 Otago Jockey Club, 237 Otago Journal (newspaper), 250 Otago Peninsula, 150; stone walls, 172 Otago-Southland Synod. See Synod of Otago and Southland Otago Witness (newspaper), 166, 218–9, 226, 228, 237 Otago Workman (newspaper), 38–9, 266 Otaraia, 155 Otekaike, 104, 153 Oykell, 146

oatmeal, 220, 274 oats, 91, 93, 151–2, 159, 221 occupational mobility, 50–3 occupational networks, 103–8, 137 occupations of migrants; analysis from Cyclopedia, 87–9, 108–13; New Zealand Company migrants, 68; rural, 257, 260; Scotland and NZ analysis, 34–8, 47–55, 59; urban, 95–103 Oddfellows, 271 Okirae, 79 Olympus (ship), 78–9 Oamaru, 152, 154; Caledonian Games, 185–5, 187; Caledonian Society, 193; public gardens, 158 Orcadians, 257, 259, 261. See also Orkney Oriental (ship), 74–7 Oriental Bank, 101 Orkney, 5, 26, 26, 36. See also Orcadians Otago: alcohol, 24–5; analysis of migrants, 45–7, 66–75; Central, 239; curling, 239; early housing, 214–16; forests,159–64; Gaelic, 244, 247; gold, 127, 176, 261; golf, 240; horse racing, 237–8; hunting and fishing, 236; land management, 147–9, 157; land ownership, 152–3; letter writing, 250; libraries and literature, 249; and M ˉaori, 278; occupations of migrants, 97–111; Otago Association, 23, 57, 97, 198,

Pahaoa station, 76–8, 155 Paine, Tom, 266 Paisley, 33, 58; migrants from, 103, 118, 252; textile workers, 69; weavers, 58 P ˉakeh ˉa, 5, 7, 116, 206 P. and D. Duncan, 73, 100 Palmer, Henry Spencer, 148 Palmer, William, 204 Papers Past, 174 Paradise Lost (1667), 248 Pareora/St Andrews, 73 Parewanui, 77–8, 293n70 Park, Robert, 148, 205 pastoral companies, 104 pastoral land syndicates, 97 pastoral properties, 93, 148, 154, 156, 192–3, 206

404 Index

pastoral provinces, 87, 91, 104, 155 pastoralism, 85, 93–5, 151–6; environmental impact, 161; “robber pastoralism,” 156. See also grasses and grasslands; sheep farming; stock farming pastoralists, 94, 104, 118, 156, 258, 277. See also runholders; shepherds Paterson, Anna (Stout), 137 Paterson, James, 93 Peden, Robert, 153, 155 Peebles, 29, 160 “‘Peopling of New Zealand’ project,” 10 Perseverance (ship), 60 Perth and Perthshire: chain migration, 30; individual migrants, 77, 92–3, 96, 123, 156, 204; and internal migration from (Scotland), 23; and land drainage, 93; migrant analysis, 26, 28, 86, 113–4; settlement patterns in NZ, 64, 69, 73–4 philanthropy, Christian, 135 Philip Laing (ship), 66, 68–70 Phillips, Jock, 5, 22, 55, 199 Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), 248 Pinkerton, David, 138, 267 Pinus radiata, 157 Pipe Bands, 220, 243, 254, 270, 272, 275; piping, 19, 242–4, 270, 275. See also music Piping and Dancing Association, 243, 275 place names, use of Scottish in NZ, 146 Pleasant Point, 72–3 Pocock, J. G. A., 6,

Poenamo: Sketches of Early Days in New Zealand (1881), 251 poetry, 251–2, 266; “Backwoodsman,” 252; Bard of the Otago Province, 252; Edward Hunter, 141; Inangahua Bard, 252; John Barr, 252; Louis McLachlan, 252; Robert Burns, 122, 163, 181, 271, 275–6; Hugh Smith, 252 Political Labour League, 138 political philosophies, 116–43. See also agrarian ideology; agrarian activism; Artisan Democracy; conservatism; liberalism; Marxist socialism; populism; Whig ideology Pool, Ian, 199–201 population changes. See demography; New Zealand population population growth in North Island, 62 populism, 15, 117, 143, 266 Porter, Andrew, 84 potato famine: Scotland, 23 “poteen,” 233 Potts, T.H., 163 poverty: attitudes towards, 127, 252 Prentis, Malcolm, 261–2, 277 predestination (Calvinism), 133 Presbyterian activism, 116 Presbyterianism, 11, 12, 15, 18, 20, 82, 84, 124–6, 172, 254, 276, 280; and business, 275; celebrations within, 273; churches, 84, 272, 276; and creative writing, 251–2; and democracy, 266–7; doctrinal development, 117, 125, 132–4; and education,



Index 405

134, 135, 137; and evangelism, 15, 117, 132, 137; and Gaelic, 245; heresy, 133; and M ˉaori, 258; missionaries, 258; music, 24, 273–4; Otago and Southland, 126, 132–3, 225–33, 241–2, 273–4; predestination, 133; Scots Presbyterians, 225; Settler Presbyterianism 231; and temperance, 136–7; traditions and customs, 211–13, 224–36; values, 85. See also Synod of Otago and Southland; Calvinists and Calvinism Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union, 233 Pringle, Alexander, 184, 191–3 Pringle brothers’ network, 195 Pringle, Thomas, 184, 191–3 Pringle, William Campbell, 184, 191–3 professionals (occupation), 33–4, 64, 88, 134, 246, 258, 271 professions, 87, 99 progressive Scot (stereotype), 15, 116, 128–9 prohibition, 128–33, 139, 225, 235, 267, 301n94; gambling, 232 Prohibition: A Blunder (1911), 133 Protestants, 20, 134, 232, 280; Irish, 5; Presbyterians, 232 Proudfoot, L.J., 280 provincial government, 23, 68, 98, 120–1, 198; abolition of provinces, 227, 249; assisted immigration, 39; education for women, 136; land management in Otago and Canterbury, 147; superintendents of provinces, 62, 92, 120, 136, 213, 295n44

puritanical Scot (stereotype), 12, 15, 116, 232, 273–4 race relations, 202–7, 276–9 radicalism: agrarian, 15, 40; artisan, 122–3, 137–9, 266; English, 123; Scottish, 123, 265–6, 281 rainforest. See forests and forestry Rambles with a Philosopher; or Views of the Antipodes (1867), 250 ranges: coal, 221; wood, 221. See also food customs Rangiora, 74 Rangitikei county: analysis of migrants to, 45, 82; “Backwoodsman,” 253; and Blenheim migrants, 75; and Donald McLean, 118; individual settlers, 78, 94, 151, 246; perceived similarity to Scotland, 145; as Scots community, 261; use of Scottish names, 146 Rangitikei River, 79, 145 reading, 19, 244, 248–50, 275 Recollections of Travel in Australia and New Zealand (1880), 251 Red deer, introduction, 236 Redcastle, 154 Reeves, William Pember, 163, 169 reforestation, 171 “Register of New Zealand Immigrants of Scottish Birth” (NZSG), 10, 21, 50 Reid and Gray, 100, 157 Reid, Donald, 123, 147, 216, 266 Reid, Robert, 157 Reid, William, 80 Reign of Grace (1886), 133 Religion: and celebrations, 224–6; and everyday life, 232–3; and

406 Index

Scottish cultural heritage, 18, 223; as occupation from Cyclopedia analysis, 113. See also churches; Presbyterianism, Sabbatarianism, Free Church of Scotland Renfrew and Renfrewshire: background information, 32–3; individual migrants, 73; internal migration (Scotland), 23; migrant statistics, 29–30, 42, 59, 69, 113; as source of migrants, 26, 87, 259 retail industry, 52, 88, 99, 217; occupation, 108–11 Reynolds, Henry, 277 Reynolds, W.H., 104 Rhodes brothers, 104 rhoticity (Southland “burr”), 247 Riccarton Bush, 159 Richards, Eric, 6, 277 Richardson, J.L.C., 136 Richardson, Margaret, 137. See also Sievwright, Margaret Ritchie, John Macfarlane, 96–8, 107, 152, 296n59 and 60 rituals: childbirth, 207; church, 254; communion, 226; courtship, 209; Easter, 230; Lenten, 229; lodge, 271 “robber pastoralism,” 156 Roberts, George, 96 Roberts, John, 38, 96, 98 Robinson, John Perry, 120, 125 Robinson, William, 94 Ross and Ross-shire, 8, 28, 36, 64, 73, 113–14, 146, 259 Ross and Glendining (clothing importers and manufacturers), 95–6, 98, 220

Ross, Helen, 76 Ross, John, 95–6, 98 Roxburgh and Roxburghshire, 29, 146, 151, 191 Royal Caledonian Curling Club, 239 Royal Society of New Zealand, 167 runholders and runholding, 50, 147, 153–6, 239. See also pastoralism; pastoralists Runte, Al, 163 rural lifestyles, 89, 92, 17, 122–4, 144; customs, 208–12, 216, 225, 228, 234–5, 242–3, 246; occupations, 257, 260; Otago, 261; Southland, 261 Russell, Ritchie and Co., 97–8 Russell, H.R., 155 Russell, T.P., 155 Rutherford family, 38, 94 Rutherford, George, 93–4 Sabbatarianism, 127, 133, 225–9, 232, 234 St Andrew’s Cookery Book (1905), 222 St Andrew’s Day, 173, 178, 265 St Andrew’s Societies, 17, 84, 174–5, 178, 196, 267, 269 St Patrick’s Day, 265 St Paul’s Whanganui (church), 242 Salmond, Jeremy, 215 Salmond, John, 127, 129–32 Salmond, William, 129, 133, 235 Sanderson Murray and Co., 96 sawmilling, 99; and forest preservation, 162; occupation, 111, 130, 264; sawmill, 59; Te Koporu mill, 162 Scandinavians, 145, 149, 159



Index 407

Scenery Preservation Act (1903), 162–3 schooling. See education schoolteachers. See teachers and teaching Scotch chests, 218 Scotland: inbound migration, 22–3; internal migration, 21, 34, 36; migration flows to NZ, periodization, 23–5; migration tradition, 22 Scott, Mary, 78–9 Scott, Thomas, 78–9 Scottish business practices, 12, 95 Scottish country dancing, 243; Scottish Country Dance Clubs, 243 Scottish Free Church. See Churches; Free Church of Scotland Scottish Interest Group, New Zealand Society of Genealogists, 22 “Scottish Migration to New Zealand”: project, 9–13; organizing hypotheses, 9–13 Scottish Miners’ Federation, 141 “Scottish paradox,” 260. See also migrants; migration, assisted Scottish Standard English, 244, 246, 248 Scott’s Ferry, 70 Scots: academic study of, 4, 6; comparison with Scots elsewhere, 255–81 Second World War, 7; soldiers, 272 Seddon, George, 145 Seddon, Richard John (premier), 130, 132, 162–3, 168–9 seed merchants, 156–7. See also nurserymen self-improvement, 138, 140, 233, 248–50

Selkirk, 29, 37–8, 96 settlement patterns, migrant, 56–83 settler government, 23, 120, 130–2, 198, 227, 245, 249 settler intermarriage, 83, 201–2 1745 rebellion, 15, 120, 219, 244 Seventy Mile Bush, 149 Shaw, Savill and Albion, 97, 102 sheep, English breeds, 151, 153, 155 sheep farming. See pastoralism shepherds, 52, 104, 153–5, 262 Sheppard, Kate, 137, 267 Shetland: chain migration, 257; immigrants from, 5, 22, 31–2, 36–7, 61, 259; immigration statistic, 28, 30; reasons for migration from, 261 shinty, 238, 240, 275 shipbuilding, 22, 35, 84, 97, 101, 204; owning, 101–2 shipping, 84–5, 97–8, 104; lines 97, 102 Shire Line (Glasgow), 97 Sievwright, Margaret, 116, 137, 267 Sievwright, William, 137 Sinclair, Keith, 4 sites of memory, 173, 178–9, 190 Skye, 30 skilled trades, 88, 99, 100, 271; statistics, 108–11 Smillie, Bob, 141 Smith, Edmund, 165 Smith, Hugh, 252 social control, 131, 268 Social Darwinism, 169 social improvement, 15, 90, 117, 133 social mobility, 52, 54, 258, 264–5

408 Index

socialism, 117, 132, 137–43, 266; Christian, 139; Marxist,117; New Zealand, 140–1; Scottish, 15, 141, 143 soil: erosion, 170–1, fertility, 150, 169, 171 soldiers: English, 279; Irish 279; New Zealand, 272; Scottish, 272, 279; volunteer, 230 Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist (1936), 171 South Africa: comparison of migration experiences, 256–8, 262–3, 265–6, 272 Southland, 11, 13, 45–6, 56–9, 63–4, 69; “burr,” 247; Caledonian societies, 177; farming in, 149, 152–3, 157; housing, 216; language, 247; leisure activities, 236–7, 250; religion, 231, 233, 273; settlement of, 261–2; soldiers from, 272 Speights, 235 sports, 255–41; cricket, 239; rugby football, 239. See also Caledonian Games; curling; golf; hockey; horse racing; hunting and fishing; shinty “spotting,” 147 Spray (ship), 60 Stafford, Edward (premier), 120 Stains, Robert, 104 steamship: travel, 3, 260; promotion, 162 stereotypes, 4, 13–15, 19, 54, 84, 107, 116; conservation, 144, 161, 170; finance and banking, 101; leisure, 224, 262; medicine, 100; Presbyterian, 273 Stevenson, R.L., 250, 275

Stewart Island, 61, 203, 257 Stewart, Catherine, 142 Stewart, Robert, 104 stills, 233–5 Stirling and Stirlingshire, 28, 33, 114, 170, 259 stock and station agents, 96, 184, 258, 263 stock farming, 144, 150–1, 157, 171, 261 stone walls, 147, 150, 172 storekeeping, 85, 88, 100, 135; department stores, 135–6 Stout, Robert (premier and chief justice), 61, 127–30, 132, 137, 267–8 Stout, Anna Paterson (wife of ­Robert), 137 Stuart, D.M., 245 Suburban development, 135, 159 “successful” Scot (stereotype), 12, 14, 19, 85, 106, 262–3; unsuccessful Scot, 277 suffrage: female, 12, 129, 137, 139, 266–7; male, 120; universal, 120 Sunday school, 233, 266 surveying, 75, 146; meridional circuit system, 147; Otago, 147–8; trigonometrical, 147; Wellington, 77, 148 Sutherland and Sutherlandshire, 28, 30, 59, 64, 72–4 Sutherland, Alexander, 72 Sutherland, Alexander Jr, 79 Sutherland, Archibald, 79–80 Sutherland, David William, 76 Sutherland, Dona, 76 Sutherland, Elizabeth (Bessie), 76 Sutherland, James McLeod, 72 Sutherland, Nathaniel Jr, 79–81



Index 409

Sutherland, Nathaniel Sr, 79 Sutherlands district (Canterbury NZ), 72 Suttie, John, 73 swamps: draining, 91, 144, 148, 151, 153, 157, 159; transformation 144, 157, 159 Synod of Otago and Southland, 126, 132–3, 226, 232, 235, 241 Taiaroa, H.K., 203 Taieri County, 69; housing, 215; statistics, 45 Taieri Mouth, 204, 264 Taieri Plain: drainage, 164 Tain, 73 Tannock, David, 158 Taranaki: and Donald McLean, 118; farming, 150; migrants’ statistics, 46, 58; nursery operation in, 158; occupations, 109 teaching: as an occupation, 87–8, 102–3, 113; individual teachers, 162, 164, 168, 217, 252, 264 Te Akatarawa, 104 technical education, 135, 280–1 temperance, 136–7, 227, 232, 267, 274 Te Koporu mill, 162 textiles manufacture: Lanarkshire, 37; Scotland, 22, 32–7, 42, 69, 85 Thames: Burns Club, 179, 181; Caledonian Society, 177 Thames Star (newspaper), 179 Thomson, David, 199–200 Thomson, George Malcolm, 166–9 Thomson, John Turnbull (surveyorgeneral), 147–8, 250–1 Thomson, Peter, 166

Timaru, 72–3; and Burns, 179–80; Caledonian Games, 183–9; Caledonian Society, 183–4, 188–9, 191–3; 314n49 Timaru Flour Milling Co, 194 Timaru Herald (newspaper), 184 timber: building material, 215–17; export of, 162; milling native, 162, 203; in Otago, 159–62; preservation, 159–62, 164; Timber Conference (1896), 162 tobacco trade, Scotland, 32, 107 Tongariro National Park, 158 Totara Estate, 152 tourism, 153, 168, 255 trade unions, 132, 137–8, 140, 265, 267; membership growth, 138 transport: occupation statistics, 50–3, 108–9; rail, 231; road, 231; steamships, 260 Traue, J.E., 249 Travels in New Zealand (1846), 250 Tripp, C.G., 104, 153 Trollope, Anthony, 84 Trossachs, 145 truck system, 37 Truth (newspaper), 139 Tuhitarata, 155 Tuhoe, 258 Tullochgorum, 146 Turakina: Caledonian society, 177; and Gaelic language, 246; Highland Games, 82; horse racing, 238; marriage linkages, 78; relations with M ˉaori, 205, 279; as a Scots community, 66, 77, 244 Turnbull, Alexander, 297n78 Turnbull, Walter, 297n78 Turnbull, Martin & Co. (Glasgow owners of Shire Line), 102

410 Index

tussock lands. See grasses and grasslands Tutira: The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station (1921), 169–70 Twenty-five Years of Emigrant Life in the South of New Zealand (1874), 251 Union churches, 276 Union Steamship Company, 97, 102 United States of America: and Caledonian societies, 270–1; comparison of migration experiences with, 19, 40, 275–8; and curling, 275; economy, 259; employment opportunities for migrants, 261; gender of migrants, 46; migration to NZ via, 87, 192; government style, 120–1; politics, 268–9; and Scottish weeds, 150; and social mobility for Scots migrants, 265. See also North America Uniting Church of Australia, 276 universities: Aberdeen, 127, 262; Edinburgh, 121, 262; Canterbury University College, 134; Glasgow, 262; London, 129; New Zealand, 134; Otago, 127–30, 133, 135, 240; Victoria University College, 139; women’s admittance to, 136 university education, 134–5, 280–1, 294n16 urbanization, Scotland, 32, 92, 197, 224, 260 utilitarianism, 125, 130 Victoria, Australia: assisted migration, 30; and Caledonian

societies, 270; gold fields, 68, 70–1, 103, 259; migrant movement from, 262; Presbyterian and Catholic Highlanders in, 257; relations with indigenous peoples, 277 Vicissitudes of Bush Life in Australia and New Zealand (1893,) 253 Vogel, Julius, 25; Vogel period, 26; Vogel Scheme, 23, 29 voluntary associations and clubs, 11, 196 volunteers, military, 220, 230 Waihao, 73 Waikakahi, 154 Waikato, 261 Waimea County, 45–6, 288n56 Waipu settlement, 4, 11, 56, 59–61; comparison with other Scots settlements in NZ, 56, 58, 83, 174; Gaelic language, 244, 246; relations with M ˉaori, 205, 318n39; as a theocratic community, 232, 257, 273; and traditional ways, 202, 273 Waipukerau, 100 Wairarapa, 66, 75–8, 146, 261; bird sanctuary, 160; land acquisition, 118; and M ˉaori, 118; pastoral runs, 155–6; sheep stations, 249 Waitaki, 69, 73, 288n56; Gaelic Society, 196 Waitaruna (1881), 253 Wakatipu basin, 155 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon (colonial promoter), 198 Wakefield settlements, 257



Index 411

Wales, 49; literacy rate, 244 Walker, Capt Inches Campbell (forester), 160, 163 Wallace County, 45 Walter Peak, 154 Wanganui. See Whanganui Ward, Joseph (prime minister), 130–2, 139, 169 Watson, Alexander, 69–70, 72 Watson, Don, 277 Watson, Walter, 69 Watten, 92 wealth, 12, 19, 85, 91, 96, 167, 263, 269; and organized labour, 138; national, 123 weavers: cotton, 52; Paisley, 58 weaving, 32, 76; fabrics, 219 Webster, Robert, 73 weddings, 210–11, 218 weeds, 150, 166, 170 Wellington: and alcohol, 235; anniversary day, 237; botanical gardens, 167; Caledonian Games, 183, 187; Caledonian Society, 193; flora, 161; and Highlanders, 87; land owning, 151; landscape, 145, 155; mercantile influence, 56, 210; and northward drift, 62; occupations, 59, 64; 101–4, 109; politics, 138, 142; population statistics, 45–6, 58, 62–4, 87; settlement patterns, 56, 65, 74–83; shinty, 238; and surveying, 148 Wesleyan Missionary Society, 258 West Coast (NZ), 45, associationalism, 313n9; gender balance, 45–6; goldfields, 161, 165; and Irish, 261; occupations, 110 West Lothian, 28

Western Islands: Gaelic, 244. See also Harris; Lewis Western Lowlands and Lowlanders: analysis of migrants, 25–6, 29, 43–4; and Auckland, 63, 262; background information 32–3, 58; and manufacturing in NZ, 58–9; occupations of migrants, 48, 261; and textile manufacturing, Scotland, 22, 37 Whakapapa (genealogy): M ˉaori and P ˉakeh ˉa, 5, 7, 206 whalers and whaling, 203–4, 153, 278 Whanganui and Whanganui County: availability of land orders 75, 77–9; and Caledonian societies, 190; clustering of Scots migrants, 66, 82; and Donald McLean, 118, 145; gender and age of migrants, 45–6, individual migrants, 77–9, 208, 210, 212, 221; migrants from Aberdeenshire, 65, 81–2, 222; as part of Wellington Province, 64, 77 wheat, 91, 93, 152, 157, 159; wheat bread, 118, 221–2, 274; wheat rust, 60 Whig ideology, 122, 125, 278; Real Whigs, 125, 130 white-collar workers, 87–8, 108–11 whisky, 233–4. See also Crown Distillery; Distillation Act (1868); “poteen”; stills White, Richard, 278 White Rock, 155 Wigtown, 29 William Cable and Sons, 104 Wilson, Catherine, 137. See also Sheppard, Kate

412 Index

Wilson, G.H., 253 Wilson, James (Ayr clergyman), 92 Wilson, James Glenny, 151, 160, 216, 246 women: clothing, 218, 220, 274; comparison with men, 38, 40, 257; dancing, 254; de facto relationships and divorce, 211; education, 136, 267, 280; equality with men, 137, 267; fallen women, 132; as farmers, 120; fertility, 200; food preparation, 222; golf club membership, 275; Ladies’ Guilds, Mothers’ and Mission Unions, 274; M ˉaori women, 202–4; marriage, 37, 40, 72–4, 113–14, 202–3, 209–10; occupations, 86, 88; places of origin, 105–6; property legislation, 129; in public affairs, 235; religion, 232–3, 274; roles and responsibilities, 10, 18, 266, 273; social and economic advancement, 142; statistics, 38–55; 91, 102–3, 113; suffrage, 137, 139; temperance movement, 136–7, 267; traditional ways, 207, 211–13, 273; unmarried mothers, 209; welfare, 135, 141; women’s rights, 266–7. See also feminism Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 141

Women’s Social and Political Union, 142 wool presses: manufacture, 157 woollen trade: employment of migrants in NZ, 95–6, 100, 112; and Highlands, 35; individuals, 96; networking with Scotland, 96; and Western Lowlands, 22, 35 woollens manufacture, New Zealand, 219–20 working class: and alcohol, 233–5; and Covenanters, 140; clothing, 218, house furnishings, 216; language, 246; and marriage customs, 209; migrants, 58, 258; politics, 137; socialism, 15, 129–30 World War One. See First World War World War Two. See Second World War wowser/s, 133, 139, 143, 301n93 Wrights Bush, 211 Yates, Arthur, 156 yeoman class, 123 yeoman farmers and farming, 150, 152 Young, David, 144 Young, Jane, 81 Young Men’s Christian Association, 135