Colonial Intimacies, Intimate Colonialism: Interracial Marriage in New Zealand, 1769-1969

Dr Angela Wanhalla
Marsden Fast Start Project, 2008-2009

This is a two-year project on a topic that has received very little attention in New Zealand despite the fact that historians of colonialism and post-colonialism have identified interracial marriage and hybridity as key themes in the field. In contrast to previous published research my project offers the first comprehensive historical survey of interracial relationships in New Zealand, broadening the scholarship beyond the traditional focus on Maori-Pakeha encounters to showcase the diverse range of actors engaged in interracial relationships from 1769 to the mid-twentieth-century. The project looks at the extent of interracial relationships over this period, and investigates the variety of relationships across race that emerged, encompassing violence, prostitution, as well as tender and affective ties. The project also explores the implications of interracial marriage for families and communities. Several issues related to cross-cultural relationships will be highlighted. To what degree to interracial intimacy forge a distinctive New Zealand family or identity, for instance? And what was the position of mixed descent children in nineteenth-century New Zealand? Nothing is known, for instance, about white women who ‘married out’, very little is understood about the internal dynamics of interracial relationships between Maori and ‘newcomers’, nor is there a great deal known about the way in which the state attempted to manage and intervene in these relationships, or how the wider community reacted to the presence of interracial couples in New Zealand. ‘Colonial Intimacies, Intimate Colonialism’ introduces a wider range of actors into New Zealand history and offers an opportunity to examine the social world in which newcomers entered, as well as the world created out of sustained interracial contact, during specific historical moments and within certain spaces, like the mission station, the battle zone, on ships and near whaling and trading stations, within urban homes, on the gumfields, goldfields and market gardens, and in sociological and anthropological literature. It will re-interpret New Zealand’s colonial history in light of a significant international literature that unites intimate experiences with colonial practices and imperial policies.

Conference presentations and public lectures

• ‘Taking ‘improper liberties’: William White and the politics of sex in early New Zealand’, Aspects of Maori Christianity and Mission: Historical, Theological and Contemporary Perspectives Symposium, University of Otago, 18-19 November 2009.
• ‘Intimate, Tactile and Affective Moments, Antipodes: New Directions in History and Culture’, Aotearoa New Zealand Conference, Stout Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, 3-5 September 2009
• ‘An Intimate History of Interracial Violence: reconsidering New Zealand’s colonial past’, Carl Smith Research Medal Lecture, University of Otago, 18 June 2009.
• ‘Race, Patronage and Family Networks’, Donald McLean Symposium, Victoria University of Wellington, 17 April 2009.
• ‘The meaning of ‘colour’: representing Robert Brown/Paapu Paraone,’ Re-Orientating Whiteness Conference, University of Melbourne, 3-5 December 2008.
• ‘Visual Histories Across Colonial Boundaries’, Western History Association Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, 22-25 October 2008.
• ‘The ‘Founding Families’ of Southern New Zealand’, Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 12-15 June 2008.

Symposium

An ‘Interracial Intimacies: New Zealand Histories’ symposium was held at the Otago Museum, 19-20 June 2009. This event will result in an edited collection (co-edited with Dr Rani Kerin) detailing the history of interracial intimacy in Australasia. The North American experience has dominated the field, and several important edited collections have been produced on interracial intimacy in that part of the world. In general, the Australian and New Zealand experience has not received similar attention. This collection will offer the opportunity to bring together leading scholars of intimacy and colonialism working on Australia and New Zealand, and to engage in a substantial international scholarship from a new and refreshing perspective.

Publications

• In/visible sight: the mixed descent families of southern New Zealand (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2009).
• Interracial Intimacies: New Zealand Histories (contracted to Auckland University Press).
• ‘The “natives uncivilize me”: missionaries and interracial intimacy in early New Zealand’ in Patricia Grimshaw and Andrew May, eds., Missions, Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Exchange (Sussex Academic Press, forthcoming 2009).
• ‘Re-thinking ‘Squaw Men’ and ‘Pakeha-Maori’: Legislating white masculinity in New Zealand and Canada, 1860-1900’, in Jane Carey, Leigh Boucher, and Kat Ellinghaus, eds., Re-Orienting Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the History of an Identity (New York: Palgrave, forthcoming November 2009).