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Colonial Surveying If the Construction of Cultural Space 1

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Colonial Surveying If the Construction of Cultural Space 1 AFFIXING NAMES TO PLACES Colonial surveying if the construction of cultural space 1 GISELLE M. BYRNES 'ITHAS ALWAYS BEEN THE upon which imperial power could be Monmonier has argued, 'when local acknowledged right of an extended. Naming a place was not only resistance makes political control explorer to affix names to places', the an attempt to legitimise the ownership questionable, relabeling [sic] the map surveyor Charles Douglas wrote in his of that place; it also reinforced the is a convenient way to both assert field book in 1860, 'and unless the said authority of the society that produced and exaggerate the new regime's names are absurd or very inappropriate the name. In this way, place names authority'-' they are allowed to remain'3 Doug­ may be read as expressions of power The naming of New Zealand has las' comment aptly described the way and the means of transforming 'space' occurred in several successive waves, in which language, the ultimate in to 'place': a literal way of construct- from early Polynesian migration instrument of empire, was through to the organised employed as a colonising settlement schemes of the tool in the European latter half of the 19th century. transformation of the New As much as guns and warships, The names given by early Zealand landscape. This maps have been the weapons of imperialism. Maori - inscribed through paper will examine the ways tribal conquest and re - in which colonial surveyors H A R LE'{ , conquest- and the names participated in colonisation 't.1APS, KNOWLEDGE AND POWER '' given by the European through the process of explorers, whalers, surveyors naming. I will argue that by and settlers, were statements 'affixing names to places', the ing cultural space. The Australian of possession and attempts at making European settlers attempted to historian Paul Carter has defined the foreign seem familiar. As each domesticate, tame, and ultimately 'cultural space' as 'the spatial forms colonising group imposed their place possess the new environment. and fa ntasies through which a culture names on the land they did so over Naming is defined here as the act declares its presence'.' Moreover, those of the colonised. The historical of writing over the land. Naming the while the imported nomenclature was landscape of New Zealand may land was an assertion of literal an assertion of European authority, it therefore be read as a cultural acquisition; fixed on maps and in was also a denial - a de-scription - of palimpsest, where the layers of narratives, names incorporated the the existing indigenous landscape systems of nomenclature provide an land into a discourse which had its which was already navigated and index to its history of occupancy and origins beyond New Zealand shores. named. In naming an already known colonisation-' By in scribing European names on the place, European surveyors were In the early period of European land and encoding these places on a therefore writing over and appropri­ settlement in New Zealand, the map, surveyors laid the fo undations ating earlier histories. As Mark inscription of British place names made 22 V o / 8 No 1 March 1998 NEW ZEALAND STUDIES the young colony immediately accessi­ grown out of the soi l rather than urban nomenclature. Chief Surveyor ble to the invading migrant society. planted itself there .. East Anglia is to the Canterbury Association, Captain 'Names of places, too, should be not just arable la nd: it is also joseph Thomas, has Mt Thomas and changed', Edward Gibbon Wakefield Constable country ... Cornwall the Thomas River named after him . advised in his Art of Colonization, connotes Celtic prehistory . Thomas Cass, who succeeded Thomas ' [for] they make part of the moral Hampshire evokes maritime myth as Chief Surveyor, is commemorated atmosphere of a country .. '. 7 It and history; the Midlands are about in a bay, a peak, a river, and street seemed appropriate to transport industrialisation and transport; and names in Canterbury. Streets in the li nguistic fragments of Britain to New so on in a national se miosis that is South Canterbury townships of Zealand: Dunedin, Cheviot, and limited only littorally." Timaru, Temuka and Geraldine, laid Cambridge, for instance, were out in 1856-64 by the government Place names in New Zealand may evocative of places elsewhere, while surveyor, Samuel Hewli ngs, all bear be read as dedications, designations Palmerston, Wellington, and Gis­ the name of their archi tect. In New or descriptions: commemorative of a borne celebrated historic individuals. Plymouth, Liardet Street, Octavius revered individual or deity; referential The map of New Zealand reads like Place and Carrington Road to something or somewhere else; or an inventory of British imperial history; memorialise the early surveyors. On literal and self-referential descriptions. Wellington, Nelson, Napier and the west coast of the South Island the The urban topography of New Zealand Hastings are designations which Harper Saddle honours a West Coast tends to dedicate and memorialise recall other times and places. Indeed, surveyor, while the surveyors founding figures . The street map of European New Zealanders (not unlike Brunner, Lewis and Dobson are New Plymouth, for example, reads like Maori) seem to have defined their recalled in Brunnertown, the Lewis the minutes of a meeting of the New environment in terms of legends of Pass and Arthur's Pass. In this way, Zealand and Plymouth Companies. arrival, conquest and permanence. place names were records of particu­ When Frederick Alonzo Carrington, For the early British colonists, place lar moments and expressions of surveyor to the New Zealand names were the most tangible, easily personal presences. Company, drew up his map of the transportable (and inexpensive) Place names also functioned to proposed New Plymouth settlement memoir of Britain that they could domesticate the envir onment. in 1841, he d id not fail to acknowl­ transplant in the colony. European- especial ly British - names edge his financial mentors. The The colonising impact of system­ held a particular nostalgia for streets Vivian, St Aubyn, Buller, atic inscription is most obvious where surveyors. While exploring the Devon, Leach, Lemon, Pendarves, 'little Englands' have been replicated Waitaki and Clutha river region in Gilbert, Eliot and Cutfield Roads on New Zealand soil. The name 'New 1857, John Turn bull Thomson honour the Directors of the Plymouth Plymouth' is a case in point. As if the renamed the Ahahuri Pass the Company; in Wellington, Young, language itself could impart some­ 'Lindis', after Lindisfarne, near his Currie, Wakefield, Fillis, Molesworth, thing of the old world onto the 'new', English home-" At his survey camp in and Courtenay Streets and Wooll­ British place names (and personal December 1885, he wrote: combe Terrace the Directors of the names) were transported wholesale New Zealand Company. The choice We have a new home now on the to the colony; in Taranaki, for instance, of the name of Auckland was also a ITlargin of a very beautiful la ke called there is Stratford, Inglewood, Carlyle, semantic form of patronage. The Lake Tennyson. Some people say it Raleigh, Eltham, Midhurst and settlement was named, according to was named after a man in England Egmont. Felton Mathew, 'after Lord Auckland, who used to 'invent' poetry. Others In contrast to the consciously at the time Governor-General of say after old Bill Tennyson the created colonial society, it is assumed India, and an old friend and patron of Bullock driver, who used to cart up to that England and its society simply is. Governor Hobson's' ' Jollie's Pass, but I should hope not; it As Ross Gibson has explain ed: Colonial surveyors have received would take away the charm of this English society .. appears to have particular attention in both rural and beautiful place'. " V o I 8 No 1 Marc IT 1 9 9 8 23 NEW Z_EALAND STUD I ES At Great Barrier Island in 1885-86, his explorations of the Tuapeka colonised the country li nguistically, the surveyor Sidney Weetman wrote country. The Castor and Pollux Peaks and in doing so, created their own a description of the island peaks: were suggested to him 'by the 2 geographical reality. McKerrow brother stars in the constellation of 'possessed' the southern landscape The lowest of these Pinnacles I Gimini [sic]', whil e the Minaret Peaks by naming and mapping it. christened General Cordon, because were so named as they reminded Naming also expressed the efforts looked at from some positions it McKerrow of 'a Mohammedan of the European settler society to resembles the figure of a colossal Mosque'. fashion a particular colonial identity. man, standing with his arms behind Th e streams running from Mt Pi sa Like the maps of New Zealand, him, lookin g out over the sea, and, as to the Clutha river- the Socher Burn, littered with names derivative of my visi t took place shortly after the Tinwald Burn, Amisfield Burn, Park Britain and reflective of the local fall of Khartourn, this rock suggested Burn, Small Burn and Lowburn -are environment, the identity of the to my mind the lo nely figure of all Scottish names, chosen by colonial settl er was mimetic and Cordon, as one might imagine him McKerrow at the request of Robert hybridised. Place names were looking out from the palace-roof fo r Wilkin, who was the holder of the Mt therefore not simply words imposed th e relief expedition which never Pisa run in 1861. McKerrow's names on a blank space, but provisional and came'. 1 ~ In providing the island with of Mt Alba, Glacier Dome, Turret occasional historic events which a historicised genealogy, Weetman's Peaks, Mt Triplet, Terrace Peak, Teat recorded the in tentions - as well as naming brought the island- in Ridge, Sentinel Peak, Isthmus Peak, the actions- of the namer.
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