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Edward Gibbon Wakefield and an Imperial Utopian Dream Michael England Elsewhere: Edward Gibbon Wakefield and an Imperial Utopian Dream Michael Radzevicius Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Politics Department School of History and Politics University of Adelaide January 2011 Table of Contents Abstract iv Plagiarism Declaration v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 7 Chapter One Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the British Settler Empire 15 Wakefield’s life and works 15 Critical reception 18 Changing views towards emigration 23 The theory of systematic colonization 27 Approach and scope 33 Chapter Two Theories and Definitions of Utopia 36 Western utopian literature: a long tradition 36 Generic distinctions 42 Utopia and practical politics 46 Chapter Three Utopia in the Nineteenth Century 50 Nineteenth century utopias 50 Utopia and Socialism 53 Reform, not revolution 57 Religion and utopia 60 Plans: the stamp of utopia 63 The British Empire and utopia 66 South Australia and New Zealand: imperial utopias? 69 Chapter Four Systematic Colonization: A Perfect Theory? 76 Systematic colonization and colonial troubles 77 An appeal to all classes? 85 ii Solving the domestic crisis 93 Universal applicability: a perfect theory? 95 Chapter Five Utopia in South Australia 99 A Letter from Sydney: the blueprint for utopia? 100 South Australia: a transplanted Britain 107 Ideal Colonists 109 Agriculture, not pastoralism 111 The role of religion 113 Perfect Britains 114 The benefits to Britain 115 Utopian dreams of other colonial promoters 118 Chapter Six 125 New Zealand: Racial Integration and an Anglican Utopia New Zealand: a brighter Britain 126 The British and the Maori 130 Canterbury: an Anglican utopia 135 Utopia in New Zealand: a broad discourse 143 Chapter Seven Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the Western Utopian Tradition 147 Utopia: a new society? 147 Colonies as examples of perfection 150 Radical difference 154 Pragmatism, not idealism 156 Does utopia need to be normatively acceptable? 165 Conclusion 169 Bibliography 173 iii Abstract British colonial reformer Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862) is most widely known in scholarly literature for the role that he played in the planning, promotion, and establishment of the British colonies of South Australia and New Zealand. Always a controversial historical figure, Wakefield’s career as an advocate of British imperial expansion is a subject that continues to challenge modern scholars. Some view him as a contemptible, deluded capitalist visionary who had little practical impact upon the political landscape of his day. Others argue that his advocacy of a regulated, ‘systematic’ form of colonization provided the impetus for the rapid increase in British emigration to Australia and New Zealand in the 1830s and 1840s. What is common to almost all of the scholarship on Wakefield’s life and works, however, is the view that his plans to colonize South Australia and New Zealand were attempts to create an ideal, utopian colonial society. The utopian qualities of Wakefield’s works have been especially recognized in the historical literature of New Zealand. In general, however, his works have been assessed in the context of colonial and imperial history, rather than as an important contribution to Western utopian literature. With its modern genesis in Thomas More’s Utopia of 1516, the canon of Western utopian literature is large and has received extensive scholarly interest and investigation. Although utopian thinking is a multifarious literary and theoretical tradition open to diverse interpretations, there is nonetheless a readily identifiable canon of texts and authors that scholars have categorised as being ‘utopian.’ Wakefield’s works are generally excluded from this canon and it is this gap in the intellectual history of the Western utopian tradition that this thesis addresses. iv Plagiarism Declaration This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution to Michael Radzevicius and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in the University Library, being made available for loan and photocopying, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I also give permission for the digital version of my thesis to be made available on the web, via the University’s digital research repository, the Library catalogue, the Australasian Digital Theses Program (ADTP) and also through web search engines, unless permission has been granted by the University to restrict access for a period of time. Date: Signature: v Acknowledgements Given the size of what is to come, my acknowledgements will be brief but hopefully no less comprehensive for their brevity. Firstly, I would like to thank my primary supervisor Paul Corcoran for his support and guidance throughout my candidature, especially during my increasingly regular ‘paranoid’ moments in 2010 and 2011. The comments that my secondary supervisor, Ian Hall, provided on the thesis as a whole were of great assistance in enabling me to complete my work. None of this would have been possible without my family, and to them I offer as much thanks as 12 point font can provide. My friends and peers at the University of Adelaide and other institutions provided invaluable support and advice over the last four years, and I would like to thank Nathaniel Enright, Nicholas Wilkey, Alan Goldstone, Guy Richardson and Jessie Edwards for their proof reading skills, and patience in listening to my incessant patter. Thanks also to Courtney Guy for dealing with my ‘diva’ moments so effectively in the last months of my candidature. vi INTRODUCTION This thesis conducts an examination of the works of the British colonial reformer and author Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862) with a view to assessing his importance as a utopian thinker. Wakefield was a pivotal figure in the British colonization of South Australia and New Zealand. While his role in these processes has been discussed at length by historians of the colonial era, Wakefield’s place in the modern history of ideas, and in particular utopian theory, has received much less attention. Scholars have addressed the biographical details of Wakefield’s life, acknowledging his contributions, both theoretical and practical, to the British imperial project. A similar amount of attention has been paid to his critiques and proposals of reform in relation to British and European political economy. However, a concise and focused reading of Wakefield’s major works in relation to their status as utopian texts has not been conducted. Such a gap is to the detriment of the scholarly assessment of Britain’s imperial and colonial projects, and reveals an omission in the utopian scholarly literature of a forceful and provocative thinker. A close reading of Wakefield’s major works reveals the distinct outlines and surprisingly expressed utopian motivations that underpinned the British colonization of South Australia and New Zealand. The dual aim of this thesis is thus to address certain lacunae in the contemporary scholarship of Western utopian thought, whilst also broadening the historical and theoretical scope of British imperial and colonial history. This thesis conducts a critical literary assessment of Wakefield’s contribution as a publicist of political and economic reform and a proponent of actual colonial ventures expressed in the unmistakable idiom of utopian thought. Indeed, Wakefield’s work appeared at an early point in the more familiar tradition of British and French nineteenth-century utopian writings and practical experimentation. It follows that the primary research task for this thesis has been to consult a substantial but sharply defined corpus of primary literature, including relevant documents from Wakefield’s contemporaries, as well as a critical analysis and assessment of the scholarly literature pertaining to Wakefield’s place in the history of ideas. Wakefield began writing anonymous newspaper articles on the subject of 7 British imperial expansion in South Australia during his three year internment in Newgate Prison, a punishment he received for illegally absconding to France with his teenage wife Ellen Turner. His first book length publication on this topic appeared in 1829, the final year of his incarceration. This publication, entitled A Letter From Sydney, The Principal Town of Australasia, was compiled from a series of letters Wakefield wrote to the London newspaper The Morning Chronicle during 1829. The book was initially published anonymously due to the fact that Wakefield had only recently completed his prison term. A Letter from Sydney can be best classified as a work of colonial promotional literature whose basis is almost completely fictional. As we shall see in the close reading of A Letter from Sydney in Chapter 5, Wakefield identified some of the sources he used to inform the book’s detailed portrayal of colonial life in early New South Wales. Nevertheless, A Letter from Sydney is largely a work of imaginative speculation, and I will argue that the text forms the basis for all of Wakefield’s subsequent utopian projections. The next major work of Wakefield’s, published in 1834, is the promotional tract The New British Province of South Australia; Or A Description of the Country, Illustrated by Charts and Views; With an Account of the Principles, Objects, Plan, and Prospects of the
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