30 with the VC | Distinguished Professor Tony Ballantyne

[00:00:00] Grant Robertson
Kia ora, my name's Grant Robertson. I'm the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Otago, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. Welcome to our podcast series, 30 with the VC. An opportunity for me, as Vice-Chancellor, to have a chat with some of the amazing kaimahi who do our teaching and research at the University of Otago. And I'm delighted today to be joined by Distinguished Professor Tony Ballantyne from the History Programme. Welcome, Tony.

[00:00:25] Tony Ballantyne
Kia ora, nice to see you.

[00:00:27] Grant Robertson
Tony's been with the University of Otago off and on for a very long time, which we'll get into shortly. But today, we've invited him along to talk about something very special. For each of our guests on this show, we invite them to bring in an object. Tony's object's pretty obvious today, but Tony, would you like to tell us about it?

[00:00:44] Tony Ballantyne
Thanks, Grant. It's lovely to have the opportunity to have a chat with you. So the object is my new book, published by Bridget Williams Books, called Captain Cook and the Unsettled Afterlives of Empire. And so it's a book that really explores the ongoing debates and arguments and contestation around Captain Cook, beginning with the moment of his death in February 1779, all the way to the fairly protracted and heated debates we had in 2019, as we mark the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Endeavour in New Zealand. So it's a book that focuses particularly on how people in New Zealand, Pākehā, Māori and Pasifika folks, have made sense of Cook, how they have argued about his significance, his impact, his place in history.

[00:01:41] Tony Ballantyne
But it tells that New Zealand story alongside really what happens in Britain and what happens in Australia and what happens in the Pacific. So we can see what is distinctive about the New Zealand case, but also the commonalities.

[00:01:54] Grant Robertson
Yeah, and look, firstly, congratulations on it. Disclosure of interest, I launched the book for Tony recently and actually had the privilege of reading it. He gave me the option of only reading the introduction and the conclusion, but it is such a readable book that I read the whole thing. And, yeah, huge credit to you for getting it out and for making such a big contribution to New Zealand's historical record. I want to just, for those who are viewing this, take you back a bit. Your speciality is more broadly in colonial history than just New Zealand history. Do you want to maybe explain a little bit about that and kind of how that brings you to Cook?

[00:02:35] Tony Ballantyne
So I was born and raised in Dunedin and I did my first degree here and I was brilliantly taught in the history programme at Otago in the 90s. And I was really lucky to win a scholarship to go off to the UK to do a PhD. And that PhD looked at British colonialism in India and how ideas that the British developed in India travelled across the empire, really. So my early work had India focused, but within the frame of the empire. And then I came back here in 2002 and over my time back here at Otago, my work has felt the gravitational pull of home, really. And I've increasingly focused on New Zealand, but have typically kept New Zealand within that frame of empire. And for me, that's really important because if we want to understand the nature of colonisation in New Zealand, how it worked on the ground, its consequences and its enduring impact, you know, which we still live with.

[00:03:40] Tony Ballantyne
I think we need to understand New Zealand's history and connection with some of those broader contexts, as well as paying really close attention to, you know, local dynamics. So that's why that broader imperial setting was always quite important for me.

[00:03:53] Grant Robertson
For you, taking the work you did with the likes of Hugh McLeod and others here, how has your understanding of empire colonisation changed from Tony Ballantyne, the student at University of Otago, to Distinguished Professor Ballantyne?

[00:04:09] Tony Ballantyne
That's a great question. So what I would say is I was incredibly well taught here and I had a fantastic background because the Otago department was very, very strong in New Zealand history with people like Erik Olssen, of course, Tom Brooking, Barbara Brookes. But I also had these very distinguished historians of India, Professor Hugh McLeod, who you mentioned, and also an amazing historian of Southern Africa, John Omer-Cooper. So I had this fantastic undergraduate and honours degree that gave me a really, really rich background, but actually it was living in England as a graduate student at Cambridge, really gave me a different perspective on the empire. And working in places like the India Office Library and then the New British Library and immersing myself in those archives, really, I think, deepened my understanding of the nature of British history and the British context and the impetus to kind of remake the world, that did remake the world in the 18th and the 19th century.

[00:05:19] Tony Ballantyne
So that time in Britain and my PhD research in India also provided a different angle on those questions, spending time doing research there, but interacting with folks from India, researchers, but everyday folks too. Many of them actually have very strong and well thought out opinions about the British and their legacies. But for me, the most important thing that I think has enriched my understanding of empire is actually teaching and being in the classroom where students ask you questions and you have to explain how things actually worked, explain why people thought in particular ways, why the British felt that they had the right and the ability to build empires and what that meant for colonised people and slave populations. So actually, being in the classroom is fantastic for shaping my thought and sharpening my ideas because you have to explain and take students through the sources and the scholarship and the cultural dynamics to make sense of these processes that really did remake the world.

[00:06:33] Grant Robertson
It's a fantastic example of research-informed teaching, which is what we do here at the University of Otago. To start to bring us more towards Cook, there might be some people watching this who think, well, the empire has faded, the British empire has faded. Why are we still talking about it? Why is it still relevant?

[00:06:53] Tony Ballantyne
Well, the title of the book kind of points to that. So Captain Cook and the Unsettled Afterlives of Empire. And there are kind of two dimensions to this. The first is in the word unsettled. And, you know, one of the things we do in New Zealand is we often talk about colonists as settlers. But actually, they weren't settlers.

[00:07:12] Grant Robertson
Yeah.

[00:07:12] Tony Ballantyne
They were very unsettled people. They had come halfway around the world to here. And then many of them were actually very mobile when they were here. And they were often very restless people, very ambitious people. Of course, they were motivated by aspirations for themselves and for their families to seize opportunities, to have greater economic security, to make money, to have land. But they were unsettled people by their nature and their presence was unsettling, unsettling for Tangata Whenua, for the indigenous people of this place. So that is, you know, a crucial context for understanding Cook in. Because Cook, of course, comes much earlier. He's here in the late 1760s, 1770s. Formal colonisation doesn't begin to the 1840s.

[00:08:08] Tony Ballantyne
But the knowledge that he brings back to Britain and shapes through his journals and through his, you know, amazing maritime surveying actually enables New Zealand to be conceived of as a colony.

[00:08:20] Grant Robertson
A potential colony.

[00:08:21] Tony Ballantyne
Yeah. And Cook himself is very explicit about that. And then we have settlers and whalers and missionaries who follow. And then, of course, people like the New Zealand Company, who are instrumental in New Zealand's colonisation, look back to Cook. So that's one part of it, is that kind of unsettling nature of empire. But the second bit, the afterlives of empire, really is stressing that Cook continues to trouble us because New Zealanders live in the shadow of empire. We live in a society and a set of economic structures and inherited ways of cultural acting and thinking that are really moulded by that process of colonisation and the really unequal economic and social formations that emerge out of that. And those present really troubling and difficult things for all of us, Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika, more recent migrants as well, to deal with.

[00:09:25] Tony Ballantyne
And I just say, you know, the afterlives thing reminds us that figures like Cook, or it could be Governor Grey or Samuel Marsden, they continue to return to trouble us because each new generation, as they grow up, rediscovers some of the violence, some of the dispossession, some of the inequalities that come from those histories, and they have to reprocess this.

[00:09:52] Grant Robertson
Yeah, it's a great way of explaining it. And that concept of them being, I hadn't really thought about the unsettled being also about their own statuses, not actually being settlers. Of course, when Captain Cook arrived here, he did find people who were already settled. And one of the things that struck me about reading the book, some of the extraordinary figures of history who he entangled with, to use that phrase immediately, who were the figures of history that you learned about in this book, who you think more New Zealanders need to know about?

[00:10:25] Tony Ballantyne
Yeah, so I would highlight two in particular. One is a figure that has become much more prominent in the last couple of decades, and that's Tupaia. Tupaia is a ritual expert from Rai'atea, who joins Cook's first voyage on the Endeavour, and then comes to New Zealand, and is a critical player in Cook's circumnavigation of Te Ika-a-Māui and Te Waipounamu, acting really as a key cultural intermediary and translator, and a kind of diplomat between worlds. And in many ways, those engagements and encounters that go more constructively in that first voyage owe a lot to him. And the ones that play out violently tended to be occasions where, for whatever reason, he had a less central role. But for many Māori communities of Tangata Whenua, Tupaia was a very kind of magnetic figure.

[00:11:26] Tony Ballantyne
Here was a person whose language they could actually understand, who had come from across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, back across from the Pacific Ocean, but shared knowledge and whakapapa, and a kind of cultural outlook that was recognisable and was, of course, the inheritance that Tangata Whenua themselves had brought to these islands. So he's one figure. I think he's hugely relevant for us thinking about these islands and their connections in the Pacific world. The other one is a man called Te Maro, who is a tūpuna of Ngāti Oneone, iwi on the east coast of the North Island at Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, or Gisborne. And Te Maro was a kaitiaki, he was a person who had immense knowledge of the natural world, a very skilled gardener, and a very important leader for that community.

[00:12:25] Tony Ballantyne
We often know him now through the last couple of minutes of his life, because he was the first Māori person killed by Cook in his officers and men when they arrived in October 1769. But as Nick Tūpara, the historian and artist from Ngāti Oneone, reminds us, actually, those last couple of minutes don't define his life. Rather, it is that knowledge and his leadership of the community that is crucial. And Nick has crafted an amazing memorial to Te Maro that sits over Cook's Landing Place and sits over Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, Gisborne, and it's a really powerful statement about the mana of Ngāti Oneone, but also the cultural importance of Te Maro for all people there, but I also think for all New Zealanders.

[00:13:23] Tony Ballantyne
We should know his story.

[00:13:24] Grant Robertson
Absolutely, and in reading the book, for me, it was a massive education into those leaders and how important they were. A couple of thoughts arising from that. The first is, how did it feel for you? You spent time in Gisborne. How did it feel for you working with Ngāti Oneone? And what does that mean for the way we tell the story? Like you say, not just the last two minutes of someone's life, but actually their whole life. How did that impact the way you told the story?

[00:13:52] Tony Ballantyne
So a couple of things. For me, you know, I grew up here, I'm based here, and I think often these stories, particularly about Cook, because most of his landing sites are in te ao Māori, these might be stories that we know, but they don't necessarily carry the same emotional weight. And I think one of the things that was very powerful

[00:14:16] Grant Robertson
at the launch of the book was not just your...

[00:14:20] Tony Ballantyne
Obviously my speech was, but in addition to that. Well, Nick came down and spoke, and I think he really communicated the enduring weight of these histories. And for me, that is something that really struck me while doing the research, but engaging with Nick over the five or six years I've known him and been repeatedly going up to do research up there. But I also think, for me, in terms of writing the book, it meant that I had to also avoid defining Te Maro through those last couple of minutes. And in the last couple of chapters of the book, give space to him and space to Nick's voice. So one of the things that I do throughout the book is use a lot of block quotes. So it's just not my voice you're hearing, but you're hearing the voice and the perspective of a whole range of people. You know, rangatira, tribal historians,

[00:15:19] Tony Ballantyne
artists from a range of backgrounds, politicians, social media people. And so you get the texture and those competing perspectives coming through.

[00:15:27] Grant Robertson
Interesting for me, on a timescale perspective, the book covers the bicentenary in 1969, Cook's arrival in Gisborne. And then also you devoted quite a lot of time to 2019. I wonder if you could give us a little flavour of how New Zealand's journey has gone from the bicentenary to 2019. Because I think they mark two really important points in the book that describe how New Zealand has changed over that time.

[00:15:56] Tony Ballantyne
Yeah, and it's quite a remarkable transformation.

[00:15:59] Grant Robertson
Almost in our lifetimes, not quite.

[00:16:00] Tony Ballantyne
Yeah, almost, almost. So 1969 is really the peak celebration of Cook. So there were government-sponsored programmes throughout the year, culminating in what was called Cook Week, focused in Gisborne, Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. And that had, Cook Week had a whole range of different components, you know, a lot of speeches, a lot of visiting naval presence, delegations from a whole range of nations around the Commonwealth, diplomatic representation, and so on. But I think, for me, the kind of emblematic moment is the massive public parade. More than 100 floats, massive crowds in the streets, on the awnings of the shops, on the buildings, roofs in central Gisborne. At the head of that parade,

[00:16:56] Tony Ballantyne
literally is Captain Cook's head. It is a massive float of the Endeavour and then a gigantic papier-mâché head of Captain Cook. And it is a massive celebration of Cook, Cook the man. And in those events in Gisborne, there was little space for iwi or hapū. There were a few Māori voices. Arnold Reedy did give a very important and quite subtle speech, I think, that kind of reframed the whole thing. But he was really the only prominent Māori voice.

[00:17:29] Grant Robertson
An amazing thing, looking back from here.

[00:17:31] Tony Ballantyne
Absolutely. And for many New Zealanders, this was the kind of moment of celebrating a British inheritance, but celebrating Cook as a foundational national figure. And those two things in 1969 could still coexist. And, of course, they kind of coexisted through the idea that New Zealand had exemplary race relations, which could be traced back to Cook. Of course, we know that in that following decade, the 1970s, those ideas came under pressure. If we think about a new generation of younger Māori activists, Ngā Tamatoa, a great example, but also the ongoing work of iwi leaders, but also the critical work of historians who began to interrogate the work of earlier generations of scholars and began to question whether New Zealand's race relations were all that exemplary.

[00:18:27] Tony Ballantyne
So, you know, from the 70s on, we've had these ongoing debates about our history and our identity, and historical scholarship has moved on a great deal. And we have, I think, a much greater appreciation of the enduring consequences of colonisation. And in part, that is because many Māori have also taken and leading a role in the public production of historical knowledge that's shared in the public domain in New Zealand. Hapū and iwi, we have always known these things, but often held that knowledge close within an environment where colonisation was celebrated, right? So, when we get to 2019, it's a very different environment where those Māori voices, but also many Pacific voices, are also becoming much more confident. And, of course, from the announcement in 2017 that these events were going to be held,

[00:19:22] Tony Ballantyne
a range of Māori perspectives emerge. Some commentators are very critical about the idea of celebrating or commemorating Cook at all. Others see, you know, some hapū and iwi see it as an opportunity to tell their stories rather than the stories focused on Cook and to engage in a really powerful reframing of their own history. So, 2019 is fundamentally different.

[00:19:48] Grant Robertson
Hugely.

[00:19:48] Tony Ballantyne
Because a figure like Tupaia, this key person who connects to the Pacific and te ao Māori, who's completely at the margins in 1969, now becomes a key figure. And, also, in many cases, it's Māori scholars, community leaders, activists, social media people who are at the forefront of shaping those debates. So, someone like Tina Ngata is absolutely critical in shaping the contours of the media and political response to the whole event.

[00:20:22] Grant Robertson
And I can tell you, as someone who was in government, as we were trying to manage that, we walked in and discovered this thing was underway, the planning for it was underway. And our big fear was that it would be a divisive thing rather than something that offered opportunity for people to get some understanding and develop some more kind of cohesion. So, the fact that it did turn out to provide those different voices is great. I actually think that's what your book does in so many ways. Anyone who knows you will know what your voice is coming through, but the ability you give for other voices to be heard is terrific. I just want to note something that Bridget Williams Books, who published this book with Tony, the trust that sits behind there, Bridget Williams Books, has donated a copy of this book to every high school in New Zealand, which I think is brilliant,

[00:21:17] Grant Robertson
a testament to how good it is. When students are picking this book up in schools and they're studying New Zealand's histories in schools, what do you think matters to make that as useful and as worthwhile as it can be?

[00:21:33] Tony Ballantyne
Right. So, I think, you know, if we think about the book and its connection to that, I think three things, and, you know, a couple of them recapitulate what we've covered. One, that empires actually remade worlds in profound ways. Secondly, that those transformations have enduring consequences and we're still working through them. And we live in those unsettled afterlives of empire and that's an uncomfortable place to be. And thirdly, coming out of that is exactly what we've been talking about, that there are a range of perspectives on these histories, depending on your background, depending where you live, depending what the historical experience of your kin group has been. And then for historians, depending on what archives you work in and what kind of questions you're grappling with, that New Zealand's history

[00:22:29] Tony Ballantyne
is rich, diverse, but profoundly contested. And that contestation can be uncomfortable, but actually through the process of making the arguments, but especially in listening to each other, I think we can increase our shared understanding. So for young people to be introduced to those perspectives and having to grapple with them, I think is an incredibly important thing.

[00:22:52] Grant Robertson
Is that essentially the value of history, is trying to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, in New Zealand's case?

[00:22:59] Tony Ballantyne
I think so. I think that's the case for any history in a society that's been shaped by colonisation or enslavement or any of these other traumatic processes that have made the modern world. So yeah, I think finding ways to have conversations about these pasts that are difficult, uncomfortable, and unsettling is hugely important. But to go back to politics, you know, there's a real connection here too to the political life of a nation. You know, democracy is underpinned by talk. It's underpinned by conversation. If we think about what a parliament is, literally it's a house of speech. So I think, you know, history alongside many of our disciplines, but I think history in particular, has a really important contribution to make to the culture

[00:23:55] Tony Ballantyne
of a democratic society. It enriches and makes possible conversations about the past, critical reflections on the present, and informed visions of what the future might look like.

[00:24:09] Grant Robertson
And that's the critical point, is if we're not prepared to have those uncomfortable conversations, we run the risk of repeating all of the mistakes of the past or the things that have, in the case of colonisation, created the circumstances we're in now, is, I mean, I think, I think from a political perspective, getting that understanding is incredibly important. What are the, other than people reading your book, what are the key ways you think historians can influence society?

[00:24:44] Tony Ballantyne
So I think, you know, obviously through the research and writing, but being prepared to engage in public debate, occasionally to take up the challenge when politicians lay it down. So we had the recent announcement around ferry names, for example, which was framed in a way that was provocative. The idea that snivelling wokesters would be the people that would be upset by naming one ferry after Cook while the other one's after Kupe. I took that bait and pointed out just that actually Cook has been a contentious figure from the moment of his death. I'm not sure quite how contentious it is to name a ferry Cook that goes on the Cook Strait.

[00:25:33] Grant Robertson
No, well again, actually to give the minister some credit, of course there are strong historical connections between both those names and that place.

[00:25:40] Tony Ballantyne
But I think being prepared to engage in those public conversations is critical. But actually I come back to what the meat and drink in my job is if you like and that's teaching. And actually it's in the classroom and working through these issues with students whether you're a university lecturer —a kaimahi here in an institution like this or if you're a teacher teaching high school history or social studies at a lower level in our education system. You're equipping students importantly, but actually also hopefully modelling for them some ways in which we can ask questions explore these histories and listen to each other.

[00:26:28] Grant Robertson
A couple of rapid fire things to finish. 60 seconds on why New Zealanders should care about Captain Cook.

[00:26:34] Tony Ballantyne
New Zealanders should care about Captain Cook because his three Pacific voyages made colonisation possible. His presence as a symbolic figure as an image as a name as an abiding presence and his legacies remain deeply troubling for New Zealanders today. Some people remain very invested in him as a great hero some people are somewhat more sceptical and see him as the embodiment of a set of processes that disempowered their people. So that's why we should care.

[00:27:16] Grant Robertson
Finally, in this series we offer the opportunities for the great academics we have at Otago to tell the Vice-Chancellor something so you also get about 60 seconds to tell the VC anything you like.

[00:27:27] Tony Ballantyne
Okay. So I'm going to tell you something you already know that one of the amazing riches of our institution both in its internal life and its outward engagement with the community is Hocken Collections and that the riches of its archival and documentary collections its published works its visual culture materials painting photography all the arts is incredibly rich and valuable it's a vital gateway for not only our professional researchers but for local people connecting to the past so that's hugely important for us as a university but I would say more generally and I know this is something close to your heart that the work of our archivists librarians curators are you know just critical to the cultural life

[00:28:23] Tony Ballantyne
of institutions like ours to the life of our city which of course is the UNESCO City of Literature and to our nation.

[00:28:30] Grant Robertson
Indeed and I know Tony's credited the archivists and the curators and researchers who've helped him produce this terrific book. Tony congratulations it is a brilliant book Captain Cook and the Unsettled Afterlives of Empire available at any good bookstore near you. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for sharing with us everything that you have today.

[00:28:52] Tony Ballantyne
No worries.

[00:28:52] Grant Robertson
So that's 30 with the VC I'm Grant Robertson Vice Chancellor of the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. Please join us next time for more interesting conversations with our kaimahi here at the University.