Abstract
This chapter addresses how intimate bonds played a direct role in the practice of statecraft through the example of George Thomas Wilkinson (1846–1906), a native agent and interpreter within New Zealand’s Native Department. Encouraged to build close working relationships with local elites, resident officials like Wilkinson actively engaged in the work of colonialism on a personal level. Drawing on private sources, the chapter materialises the grounds upon which Wilkinson’s cross-cultural relationships were forged to address the relationship between affective worlds and dispossession on one colonial frontier. It argues that relationships were as affective as they were strategic, that useful knowledge gained was a by-product as much as a goal of such relationships, and that officials were sometimes as open to manipulation as they were able to control those whom they administered.
Initial research for this chapter was enabled by a Royal Society Te Āparangi Marsden Fast-Start Grant and completed with the assistance of a New Zealand Government-funded Rutherford Discovery Fellowship.
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Notes
- 1.
Surveyors in New Zealand have been explored in more depth, but they were mobile colonial agents. We are interested in government employees with responsibility for carrying out state policies and who lived in close proximity to Indigenous communities. For an example, see Cathleen Cahill, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
- 2.
Judith Binney, ‘“In-Between Lives”: Studies From Within a Colonial Society’, in Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand’s Pasts, ed. Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006), 93–118; Damon I. Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Angela Wanhalla, Matters of the Heart: A History of Interracial Intimacy in New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013).
- 3.
Christopher Hilliard, ‘Licensed Native Interpreter: The Land Purchaser as Ethnographer in Early-20th-Century New Zealand’, Journal of Pacific History 45, no. 2 (2010), 230.
- 4.
Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘Colonial Protection and the Intimacies of Governance’, History Australia 14, no. 1 (2017), 34.
- 5.
Waitangi Tribunal, The Hauraki Report, vol. 2 (Wellington: Waitangi Tribunal, 2006), 441.
- 6.
G.T. Wilkinson Diary, 1881: G.T. Wilkinson Papers, 98-026, Hocken Collections, Dunedin (hereafter HCD); Letters to Te Piki from Whakatangi, 13 September 1882–16 December 1883: MS-2512, HCD. All translations of the letters are by Lachy Paterson.
- 7.
Danilyn Rutherford, ‘Sympathy, State Building and the Experience of Empire’, Cultural Anthropology 24, no. 1 (2009), 4.
- 8.
‘The Late Mr. G.T. Wilkinson’, Taranaki Herald, 8 February 1906, 6.
- 9.
Thomas W. Gudgeon, Reminiscences of the War in New Zealand (London: Samson Low, Marston and Company, 1879), 145–148; Thomas W. Gudgeon, The Defenders of New Zealand: Being a Short Biography of Colonists who Distinguished Themselves in Upholding Her Majesty’s Supremacy in these Islands (Auckland: H. Brett, 1887), 197–198.
- 10.
New Zealand Gazette, 5 March 1874, 179.
- 11.
Donald McLean to G.T. Wilkinson, 24 February 1875, Folder 1, MS 613, Wilkinson Papers, Auckland Museum, Auckland (hereafter AM).
- 12.
T.W. Lewis to G.T. Wilkinson, 4 June 1878: Folder 1, MS 613, Wilkinson Papers, AM.
- 13.
See Maori Affairs Department, Register of Service, 1863–1885: MA 25/1 Archives New Zealand, Wellington (hereafter ANZW).
- 14.
Waitangi Tribunal, The Hauraki Report, vol. 1 (Wellington: Waitangi Tribunal, 2006), xxix.
- 15.
‘Native Disturbance at Ohinemuri’, Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives (hereafter AJHR), G-6, 1879, 5.
- 16.
‘Reports from Officers in Native Districts’, AJHR, G-8, 1881, 8.
- 17.
‘Reports from Officers in Native Districts’, AJHR, G-1, 1882, 3.
- 18.
Thames Star, 2 September 1879, 2.
- 19.
Thames Advertiser, 8 September 1879, 3.
- 20.
Thames Star, 14 February 1883, 2. For an official account of the 1879 events, see ‘Native Disturbance’, AJHR, G-6, 1879. For a narrative of the affair, see Philip Hart, The Daldy McWilliams ‘Outrage’ of 1879, Te Aroha Mining District Working papers, No. 16 (Hamilton: University of Waikato, Historical Research Unit, 2016).
- 21.
Tribunal, Hauraki Report, vol. 2, 433–435, 464.
- 22.
‘Reports from Officers in Native Districts’, AJHR, G-8, 1881, 9–10.
- 23.
19 January 1881.
- 24.
For example, 5 February 1881.
- 25.
Tribunal, Hauraki Report, vol. 2, 424.
- 26.
Tribunal, Hauraki Report, vol. 2, 476.
- 27.
Miles Fairburn, Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer’s Diary (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1995), 3.
- 28.
Fairburn, Nearly Out of Heart and Hope, 4
- 29.
Fairburn, Nearly Out of Heart and Hope, 4.
- 30.
8 May and 15 May 1881.
- 31.
11 August 1881.
- 32.
20 February 1881; 22 May 1881; 18 December 1881.
- 33.
Anna Clark, ‘James Hinton and Victorian Individuality: Polygamy and the Sacrifice of the Self’, Victorian Studies 45, no. 1 (2011), 35–36.
- 34.
Hilliard, ‘Licensed Native Interpreter’, 229.
- 35.
Fairburn, Nearly Out of Heart and Hope, 5.
- 36.
G.V. Butterworth and H.R. Young, Maori Affairs: Nga Take Maori (Wellington: GP Books, 1990), 45.
- 37.
Bryce was Native Minister from October 1879 to January 1881; Rolleston served from January 1881 to October 1881, with Bryce reappointed from October 1881 to August 1884.
- 38.
24 January 1881.
- 39.
His private papers held at Auckland Museum include reference to a private letterbook, but it no longer appears to exist and may have been lost in a fire at his Pirongia office in 1888: Morpeth to Wilkinson, 8 October 1888: Folder 1, MS613, AM.
- 40.
These words were, as recorded by Wilkinson: ‘Pa-ti-ti, to splinter; reo tiwarawara, shrill voice; pukikikiki, tangled up; hutetetete, tangled up, curled up; hungenengene (similar).’
- 41.
G.T. Wilkinson to P. Sheridan, Land Purchase Department, 25 September 1896: J1 596 1898/674, ANZW.
- 42.
See, for instance, entries for 15 January; 5 February; 4 April; 1 May 1881. The colonial oven was installed on 15 March 1881.
- 43.
7 February; 9 February, 10 February, 15 February, 1881.
- 44.
Makiwi and Wairingiringi were remembered by Wilkinson and Raurau in the naming of their children.
- 45.
15 May 1881; Thames Advertiser, 16 January 1878, 2.
- 46.
See, for example, the entries for 16 January; 5 February; and 23 February 1881.
- 47.
21 May 1881.
- 48.
24 May 1881.
- 49.
28 May 1881.
- 50.
8 and 9 June 1881.
- 51.
15 June 1881.
- 52.
18 June 1881.
- 53.
11 August 1881.
- 54.
28 October 1881.
- 55.
30 September 1881.
- 56.
6 October 1881.
- 57.
See, for example, the entries for 24–31 December 1881.
- 58.
For instance, she joined him at Ōhinemuri on 4 March 1881, and they stayed at Bennett’s hotel.
- 59.
See 28 February 1881; 11 April 1881; 13 May 1881; 20 December 1881. He ‘Bought 2 silk handkerchiefs for Merea’ on 28 January; sent Merea £1 on 2 April 1881, oysters on 20 May, two bundles of fish on 11 July, and many other items, including flour, sugar, soap, a tent, and candles.
- 60.
See entries for 26 and 27 April 1881.
- 61.
20 June 1881.
- 62.
On 10 September, he posted a ‘private letter’ to Johnson, and another on 20 October 1881.
- 63.
31 October 1881.
- 64.
See entries for 14 and 27 November 1881.
- 65.
Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and Post (Colonial) Studies’, Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001), 829–865; Damon Salesa, ‘Samoa’s Half-Castes and Some Frontiers of Comparison’, in Haunted By Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. A.L. Stoler (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 71–93.
- 66.
Salesa, ‘Samoa’s Half-Castes’, 72.
- 67.
Nettelbeck, ‘Colonial Protection’, 32.
- 68.
Tony Ballantyne, ‘Strategic Intimacies: Knowledge and Colonization in Southern New Zealand’, Journal of New Zealand Studies 14 (2013), 4–18.
- 69.
Lynn Zastoupil, ‘Intimacy and Colonial Knowledge’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 3, no. 2 (2002), paragraph 11.
- 70.
For a discussion of cases in the Bay of Plenty, see Binney, ‘“In-Between Lives”’.
- 71.
See discussion of the family in Wanhalla, Matters of the Heart.
- 72.
As Sara Ahmed argues, emotions ‘do things’: ‘Affective Economies’, Social Text 22, no. 4 (2004), 117.
- 73.
5 January 1881.
- 74.
28 February 1881.
- 75.
Tribunal, Hauraki Report, vol. 2, 837.
- 76.
25 April 1881.
- 77.
Tribunal, Hauraki Report, vol. 2, 441, 476.
- 78.
T.W. Lewis to G.T. Wilkinson, 21 August 1882: Folder 1, MS 613, AM.
- 79.
Vincent O’Malley, The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016), 353.
- 80.
See Carmen Kirkwood, Tawhiao: King or Prophet? (Huntly: MAI Systems, 2000), 133–137; Michael Belgrave, Dancing with the King: The Rise and Fall of the King Country, 1864–1885 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2017).
- 81.
O’Malley, The Great War for New Zealand, 508.
- 82.
Telegram, T.W. Lewis to Wilkinson, 20 November 1879: Folder 1, MS 613, AM.
- 83.
Telegram, Lewis to Wilkinson, 5 May 1884: Folder 1, MS 613, AM.
- 84.
Wilkinson to Piki and Raurau, 5 November 1882: MS-2512, HCD.
- 85.
Wilkinson to Piki, 5 July 1883: MS-2512, HCD.
- 86.
Wilkinson to Piki and Raurau, 11 March 1883: MS-2152, HCD.
- 87.
Wilkinson to Piki and Raurau, 11 March 1883: MS-2152, HCD.
- 88.
T.W. Lewis to Wilkinson, 21 August 1882: Folder 1, MS 613, AM.
- 89.
Wilkinson to Piki and Raurau, 4 June 1883: MS-2512, HCD.
- 90.
Wilkinson to Piki, 11 June 1883: MS-2152, HCD.
- 91.
Wilkinson to Piki, 29 July 1883: MS-2152, HCD.
- 92.
Wilkinson to Piki, 4 November 1883: MS-2152, HCD.
- 93.
Merea to Piki, 27 October [1883], MS-2512: MS-2152, HCD.
- 94.
Wilkinson to Piki, 18 November 1883: MS-2152, HCD.
- 95.
Wilkinson to Piki, 25 November 1883: MS-2152, HCD.
- 96.
His 1904 and 1906 diaries attest to these relationships. These form part of the G.T. Wilkinson Papers at the Hocken Collections, Dunedin. Although there were eight children in total, Raurau and Merea each lost a child in infancy.
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Wanhalla, A., Paterson, L. (2018). ‘Tangled Up’: Intimacy, Emotion, and Dispossession in Colonial New Zealand. In: Edmonds, P., Nettelbeck, A. (eds) Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76231-9_9
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