The peaceable kingdom of nineteenth century humanitarianism : the Aborigines Protection Society and New Zealand.

摘要

This thesis reconsiders the Aborigines Protection Society - the leading philanthropicbody that advocated for the 'rights of aborigines' in the early Victorian period - from theperspective of intellectual history. Founded in 1837 when the annexation of NewZealand was being discussed, the Aborigines Protection Society has particular relevancefor New Zealand, though it is a concern of the thesis to explore these connections interms of humanitarian thought and political culture, rather than from the perspective ofNew Zealand history. Above all, while previous historical treatments have emphasizedthe importance of an evangelical humanitarianism in the reform of imperial policy duringthe 1830s-40s, the ideas of the 'aborigines protection movement' have been poorlyunderstood due to an anti-intellectual portrait of religion. Approaching religion as a siteof intellectual culture and complexity, this thesis emphasizes the dynamics ofevangelicalism and Quaker-nonconformity - the two threads that characterized the weaveof much early Victorian philanthropy.If the general approach of the thesis is different from previous studies, so too is thematerials it focuses on. The thesis constructs an intellectual history from severaldiscursive but ignored 'humanitarian' texts, including a moral and political philosophy,more general religious and colonial histories, anthropological articles, and a legal treatisewritten specifically on 'the New Zealand question and the rights of aborigines'.Although this humanitarian sub-culture is diverse and inchoate, the thesis argues it isunified by a particular religious revisioning of the political. Humanitarian thought in thisperiod was most significantly structured by doctrines of atonement (the redeemingsacrifice of Christ), and eschatology (the theology of last things, and more broadly of thecourse and fulfilment of the historical process).Beginning with early nineteenth century antecedents, the exemplary history ofQuakerism, the elaboration of a radical Christian moralism, and a general 'age ofatonement' are highlighted as prefiguring and informing the aborigines protectionmovement. The thesis then traces the emergence of 'the cause of the aborigines' in thepost-emancipation, humanitarian context of the 1830s. What Thomas Fowell Buxton, theleader of the British humanitarian movement, called the 'Great Colonial and AboriginalMovement', is identified as a 'politics of atonement' in the antislavery tradition. Thetrope of atonement, the most important doctrine of the evangelical era, is argued tosubtend the humanitarian historical consciousness and approach to imperial reform. Theneed to atone for past sins not only informed the humanitarian sense of the historicalpresent, but also structured its writing of the past. The thesis therefore looks at somehumanitarian histories of aboriginal and colonial relations written in the late 1830s, andobserves the creative and critical ways in which these re-present history. In thesewritings, binaries of savage and civilized, pagan and Christian, and self and other becomesubverted in the confession of moral evil. The regeneration of savagery - in both itsaboriginal and British forms - turned on such confession, this being the initial acttowards the conversion and rededication of the individual and nation towards a Christianfuture.