The Human Resource

Boileau, Joanna

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51871-8_2

Joanna Boileau⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology ((PSHST))

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Abstract

This chapter examines Chinese and British horticultural traditions, and how two immigrant gardening traditions with very different origins and histories were transported to Australia and New Zealand. Chinese immigrants maintained their traditional Chinese gardening practices in these new environments, but these practices interacted with European and indigenous subsistence traditions and were blended and modifed. In contrast, the intensive horticultural traditions which were imported to Australasia from Britain were overshadowed by broad-scale agriculture for export. Most British migrants who took up agriculture had aspirations to become yeoman farmers. Broad-scale agriculture and pastoralism came to dominate the economies of Australia and New Zealand, with market gardening relegated to a relatively minor role.

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Notes

1.
Liliane Hilaire-Perez and Catherine Verna, ‘Dissemination of technological knowledge in the Middle Ages and early modern era: new approaches and methodological issues’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 47, No. 3, July 2006, p. 559.
2.
One of the earliest recorded arrivals in Australia was Mak Sai Ying (John Shying) who arrived in Sydney in 1818 (Michael Williams, Chinese Settlement in New South Wales, Sydney, 1999, p. 6). The earliest recorded arrival in New Zealand was Wong Ah Poo Hoc Ting (Appo Hocton), a seaman who jumped ship in 1842 and settled in Nelson (Nigel Murphy, A Chronology of Events Relating to the History of the Chinese in New Zealand, Wellington, 2002, p. 2).
3.
Maxine Darnell, ‘The Chinese Labour Trade to New South Wales 1783–1853’, PhD Thesis, University of New England, Armidale, 1997.
4.
Up to 50,000 Chinese arrived on the Australian gold fields in the 1850s, the majority in Victoria. Warwick Frost, ‘Migrants and Technological Transfer: Chinese farming in Australia, 1850–1920’, Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2002, p. 116. See also C.Y. Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement in Australia, Sydney, 1975, pp. 11–13.
5.
Keir Reeves highlights the fluidity and transfer of ideas throughout Australasia during the gold rush period (Keir Reeves, ‘Tracking the dragon down under: Chinese cultural connections in gold rush Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand’, Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, Vol. 3, No 1, 2005, pp. 49–66).
6.
James Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, Vol. 1, Dunedin, 1999, pp. 11–12; Choi, Chinese Migration and Settlement, p. 32; Williams, Chinese Settlement, pp. 10–11.
7.
Henry Yu, ‘The Rhythm of Cantonese trans-Pacific migration’ in Donna Gabaccia and Dirk Hoeder (eds.), Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, Leiden, Boston, 2011, p. 399.
8.
During the nineteenth century some 50 million people emigrated from Europe to the New World (James Belich, Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century, Auckland, 1996, p. 278). Around 10 million of them came from Britain (Joe Powell, Mirrors of the New World: Images and Image-makers in the Settlement Process, Folkestone/Hamden Connecticut, 1977, p. 45). By comparison some 2.35 million people left China during the same period (Zhu Guohong, ‘A historical demography of Chinese migration’, in Hong Liu (ed.), The Chinese Overseas, Vol. 1, London, New York, Routledge, 2006, p. 156).
9.
Belich, Making Peoples, pp. 101, 278–279.
10.
Powell, Mirrors of the New World, p. 48.
11.
Belich, Making Peoples, p. 283.
12.
Belich, Making Peoples, pp. 300–301, 305.
13.
See, for example, Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, Camberwell, 2006, pp. 162–168; and Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, Port Melbourne, 2009, pp. 97–99.
14.
Robin Bromby, Unlocking the Land: The Saga of Farming in Australia, Port Melbourne, 1989, pp. 31–32, 102–103; and Andrea Gaynor, Harvest of the Suburbs: An Environmental History of Growing Food in Australian Cities, Perth, 2006, p. 56.
15.
Michael King, The Penguin History of New Zealand, Auckland, 2003, pp. 260–261.
16.
King, Penguin History of New Zealand, pp. 237–238; and Nigel Murphy, ‘A history of the horticultural industry in New Zealand’, unpublished ms., 2010, p. 18.
17.
For example, in Auckland by the 1950s, European market gardens were operated in conjunction with viticulture, orcharding or dairying and tended to concentrate on a smaller range of crops (Donald Hunt, ‘Market Gardening in Metropolitan Auckland’, MA Honours Thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1956, pp. 3, 24).
18.
Murphy, ‘History of the horticultural industry’, p. 18.
19.
The earliest work that has survived in its entirety was written by Chia Su Hsieh around 535 ad (Francesca Bray and Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China Vol. 6, Part II: Agriculture, Cambridge, 1984, p. 55).
20.
Guohua Xu and L. J. Peel (eds.), The Agriculture of China, Oxford, 1991, p. 166.
21.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, pp. 19–20.
22.
Kwang-chih Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th edn, Harvard, London, 1986, pp. 234–237; and Michael Chazan, World Prehistory and Archaeology: Pathways Through Time, Boston, 2011, pp. 241–242.
23.
Tianlong Jiao, The Neolithic of South East China: Cultural Transformation and Regional Interaction on the Coast, Youngstown, 2007, p. 256; Ekaterina Pechenkina, Robert Benfer and Xiaolin Ma, ‘Diet and health in the Neolithic of the Wei and middle Yellow River basins, Northern China’, in Mark Nathan Cohen and Gillian M. Crane-Kramer (eds.), Ancient Health: Skeletal Indicators of Agricultural and Economic Intensification, Gainsville, 2007, p. 259; and Chang, Archaeology of Ancient China, p. 231.
24.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, pp. 423–424.
25.
Ibid., pp. 3–4.
26.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, pp. 4–5; Xu and Peel, Agriculture of China, p. 93; and Jacqueline Newman, Food Culture in China, Westport, 2004, pp. 35, 87–88.
27.
Xu and Peel, Agriculture of China, p. 70.
28.
Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972, p. 3; and Xu and Peel, Agriculture of China, p. 71.
29.
Xu and Peel, Agriculture of China, pp. 69–70; Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, pp. 111–112; and Franklin Hiram King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, London, 1949, p. 87. Maize, peanuts and sweet potato all originated in the Americas; they were introduced to southern China after the middle Ming Dynasty (fourteenth century ad). Another variety of sweet potato was introduced from the Philippines towards the end of the sixteenth century (Xu and Peel, Agriculture of China, p. 69).
30.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, p. 542.
31.
Xu and Peel, Agriculture of China, pp. 66, 70–71.
32.
Robert Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silt, and Silk, Cambridge, 1998, p. 308.
33.
Ibid., p. 120.
34.
Alexander Don, Under Six Flags, Dunedin, 1898, pp. 91–99.
35.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 105. See also Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, pp. 105–106.
36.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, pp. 90–91.
37.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, p. 254.
38.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, pp. 15, 171.
39.
Ibid., p. 74.
40.
Ibid., p. 73.
41.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, pp. 289–290; King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 171.
42.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, p. 292; King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 175.
43.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, p. 290; and Thomas McCalla and Donald Plucknett, ‘Collecting, transporting and processing organic fertilisers’ in Donald Plucknett and Halsey Beemer (eds.), Vegetable Farming Systems in China, Boulder, Colorado, 1981, pp. 23–24.
44.
Anderson, Food of China, New Haven, London, 1988, p. 102; Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, p. 290; McCalla and Plucknett, ‘Collecting, transporting and processing’, p. 19.
45.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, pp. 67, 175; McCalla and Plucknett, ‘Collecting, transporting and processing’, p. 24.
46.
King’s Kuching was possibly modern Xinxing, in Guangdong (King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 181).
47.
Helen Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening in New Zealand, Auckland, 1984, p. 3.
48.
Xu and Peel, Agriculture of China, p. 66; Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 3.
49.
Jaques Barrau, ‘Histoire et préhistoire horticoles de l’Océanie tropicale’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, Vol. 2, 1965, p. 56, quoted in Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 3.
50.
Bray and Needham, Science and Civilisation, 6:II, p. 245.
51.
Ibid., pp. 247–248.
52.
Ibid., p. 197.
53.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 182.
54.
Chinese engineering treatises and dynastic histories testify to the centralised planning and financing required for these engineering works (Joseph Needham in collaboration with Wang Ling and Lu Gwei Djen, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Part III, Civil Engineering and Nautics, Cambridge, 1971, pp. 374–376, 378).
55.
Alexander Don, ‘Account of travels in Guangzhou: Kwong Chayu to Sanning’, New Zealand Presbyterian, 1 February 1881, p. 149.
56.
King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 6.
57.
Needham in collaboration with Ling and Djen, Science and Civilisation 4: III, p. 332.
58.
Ibid., pp. 334–335.
59.
Ibid., pp. 339, 362.
60.
Ibid., pp. 78–79.
61.
Resources for History, ‘Farming in Celtic Britain’, http://resourcesforhistory.com/Celtic_Farming_in_Britain.htm, accessed 25 March 2011.
62.
Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 73.
63.
Susan Campbell, A History of Kitchen Gardening, London, 2005, pp. 70, 83–84, 125, 145; and Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 74.
64.
Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, pp. 84–87; and Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, pp. 76–85.
65.
Robert Allen, ‘Agriculture during the industrial revolution’, in Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey (eds.), The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, Vol. 1, 1700–1860, Cambridge, New York, 1994, pp. 100–110; Mark Crafts, ‘The industrial revolution’, in Floud and McCloskey (eds.), The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, Vol. 1, pp. 57–58; Norman McCarol, British History 1815–1906, Oxford, 1991, p. 81; and Patrick O’Brien and Roland Quinault, ‘Introduction’ in Patrick O’Brien and Roland Quinault (eds.), The Industrial Revolution and British Society, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 19, 22–26.
66.
Malcolm Thick, The Neat House Gardens, Totness, 1998, pp. 12–13.
67.
Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 81.
68.
During the 1500s and 1600s the gooseberry, globe artichoke and asparagus were introduced into England from Europe, and potatoes, capsicums, maize, tomatoes, kidney beans and yams from the New World (Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, pp. 114–115; and Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, pp. 78–79, 83, 87).
69.
Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, p. 35.
70.
Ibid., pp. 87–88, 117.
71.
Ibid., p. 33.
72.
The Arabs brought this technique to Spain in the eighth century ad, but it did not spread to the rest of Europe for around another three centuries (Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, pp. 119, 123–126; and Thick, Neat House Gardens, pp. 103–104).
73.
In horticulture, a row cover or cloche is any material used as a protective covering to shield plants, usually vegetables, from cold, wind, and insect damage (Wikipedia, ‘Row cover’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_cover, accessed 26 March 2011).
74.
Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, p. 129; Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 84; and Thick, Neat House Gardens, p. 103.
75.
Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, pp. 82–83.
76.
Trade lists included fruit trees and ornamental trees and shrubs; vegetable seeds do not appear until 1677 (Ibid., p. 85).
77.
Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, pp. 237–238.
78.
Ibid., p. 11.
79.
Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 89.
80.
Ibid., pp. 89–91, 96. See also Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day, Oxford, 1997, p. 36.
81.
Thick, Neat House Gardens, pp. 41–58.
82.
Ibid., p. 93.
83.
Ibid., pp. 47, 63–65.
84.
Ibid., p. 64.
85.
Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, p. 111.
86.
Ibid., pp. 70–71; and Thick, Neat House Gardens, p. 42.
87.
Campbell, History of Kitchen Gardening, p. 70.
88.
Hilaire-Perez and Verna, ‘Dissemination of technological knowledge in the Middle Ages’, p. 563.
89.
Thick, Neat House Gardens, p. 12.
90.
Thick, Neat House Gardens, pp. 49–51.
91.
Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture, p. 173.
92.
Thick, Neat House Gardens, pp. 12–13.
93.
James Beattie, pers. comm., July 2014.
94.
Figures collected in 1925, 1945 and 1964 in the Auckland urban area show that in each of these years, the total acreage cultivated by Chinese market gardeners was larger than that cultivated by Europeans (Mohommod Taher, ‘Asians in New Zealand: A Geographical Review and Interpretation’, PhD Thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1965, Table 3.5, p. 184).
95.
Josephine Flood, Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and its People, Pymble NSW, 1995, pp. 259–260, 282; John Mulvaney and Johan Kamminga, Prehistory of Australia, Washington, London, 1999, p. 87; and Macintyre, Concise History of Australia, p. 15.
96.
Louise Furey, Maori Gardening: An Archaeological Perspective, Wellington, 2006, p. 10; and Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 17.
97.
Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, pp. 53–56.
98.
Ibid., p. 101.
99.
In 1840 New Zealand’s first governor, William Hobson, named Auckland as the site of the nation’s first capital (Margaret McLure, ‘Auckland region’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated November 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/auckland-region/, accessed 20 June 2013).
100.
Bee Dawson, A History of Gardening in New Zealand, Auckland, 2010, p. 97; Furey, Maori Gardening, p. 111; and Leach, 1,000 Years of Gardening, p. 106.
101.
Dawson, History of Gardening, p. 97.
102.
Furey, Maori Gardening, pp. 111–112; and Dawson, History of Gardening, pp. 97–101.
103.
For example, John Gelding, ‘John Chinaman and his garden’, Horticultural Magazine and Gardener’s Calendar of New South Wales, Vol. IV, no. 44, August 1867, p. 192; and Brisbane Courier, 11 October 1882, p. 2.
104.
Barry McGowan, ‘Chinese market gardens in Southern and Western NSW’, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 36, 2005, n.p.
105.
Desley Drevins, ‘Chinese market gardens and market gardeners on Enoggera Creek and Ithaca Creek’, presentation given to Ashgrove Historical Society, 1 September 2007, pp. 1–4.
106.
Gelding, ‘John Chinaman and his garden’, p. 192.
107.
Argus, 27 August 1862, p. 5.
108.
Andrew Piper, pers. comm., April 2011.
109.
George Lee Kim interviewed by Paul McGregor, 17 May 1994, Australia–China oral history project, National Library of Australia, ORAL TRC 3522/4/4, Tape 1.
110.
Esma Smith interviewed by Rob Willis, 4 September 2009, Forbes, NSW. National Library of Australia, Voices of the Bush oral history project, ORAL TRC 6125/11.
111.
Hawke’s Bay Herald, 13 November 1888, p. 3.
112.
Sydney Morning Herald, 2 March 1865, p. 2, reprinted from the Melbourne Age, 24 February 1865.
113.
Barry McGowan, ‘The economics and organisation of Chinese mining in colonial Australia’, Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 45, Issue 2, 2005, p. 124.
114.
Dunstan Times, 7 December 1877, p. 2.
115.
Bruce Herald, 24 August 1870, p. 7.

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Joanna Boileau

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Boileau, J. (2017). The Human Resource. In: Chinese Market Gardening in Australia and New Zealand. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51871-8_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51871-8_2
Published: 23 May 2017
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