Colonisation, science, and conservation: the development of colonial attitudes toward the native life of New Zealand with particular reference to the career of the colonial scientist Walter Lawry Buller (1838-1906)

Abstract

New Zealand, by the end of the nineteenth century, was well described as a “Britain of the south”: not only were people of British descent dominant but in much of the country the native life had been replaced by European sheep and grass, weeds and sparrows. In this study the attitudes of the British colonists toward the native life of New Zealand are examined through the life and works of the colonial scientist Walter L. Buller (1838-1906). It is argued that British colonisation of New Zealand proceeded under a set of assumptions and attitudes which together led to the expectation among the colonists that the native flora and fauna, as well as the native people, must inevitably be displaced by the European introductions and immigrants. Ideas concerning the native people on the one hand and native plants and animals on the other were closely connected; in scientific discourse the displacement of the native Māori race was expressed in biological metaphors and “explained” by analogy with the displacement of the native vegetation and the native birds -and conversely the displacement of the native plants and birds was “explained” by analogy with that of the Māori race. In the colonists’ ideology this displacement was seen as not merely assured, but pre-ordained -part of the working out of the law of nature. Analysis of the writings of colonial scientists reveals several forms of the “law” displacement; most of which, despite the use of such catch-phrases as “the struggle for survival”, owe little to Darwinian ideas. By the end of the nineteenth century, while displacement of the natives had largely been achieved, at the same time the contrasting and in many ways contradictory view became accepted that native species should be retained and preserved. It is argued that although many of the ideas of preservation or conservation were drawn or modified from American or British precedents, they gained particular acceptance in New Zealand by association with a developing national sentiment. As British colonists became New Zealanders they invested the native New Zealand scenery, flora and fauna with newly patriotic significance, as part of the “heritage” of the New Zealander. Images of native birds, drawn largely from the illustrations of Buller’s scientific treatises, became used for trademarks and other symbols, and some species -especially the Kiwi Apteryx australis -were elevated as emblems of New Zealand identity. As well as analysing colonial attitudes toward native things in New Zealand, especially as articulated by Walter Buller, the study aims to broaden the contextual framework in which these attitudes are understood, by exploring them within the contexts of colonisation, of colonial science, and of the development of a New Zealand identity among the colonists.