“The finest race of savages the world has seen”: How Empire Turned Out Differently in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

In Australia and New Zealand throughout the colonial period a common corpus of racial aversions was unashamedly expressed by progressives and conservatives, colonial nationalists and empire loyalists, balladeers in the Sydney Bulletin and pro-labour politicians in New Zealand. Asians, Kanaka, Lascars, and Aborigines were routinely denigrated in newspaper, journal, union bulletin, novel, and story.¹ There were, however, distinctions made in respect of the indigenous races in each country: although both Maori and Aborigines were held to be fated victims of the collision between Saxonry and savagery, the former were regarded as more advanced than Aborigines and were exempted from much of the extreme antagonism evinced by white colonials towards colored races. This exemption applied in both Australia and New Zealand. Maori were even held in New Zealand to be fit subjects for amalgamation with the white race and, in Australia, to be worthy of admission to the white fortress of unionism (which did have curious breaches).²