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The Making of the White New Zealand Policy

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The Making of the White New Zealand Policy he aking 0 . White ew ealan oliey: ationalism, itizenship an the xclusion of the hinese, 1880-1920 A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the University of Canterbury by Philip Ferguson University of Canterbury, January,2003 TE T ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABBREVIATIONS iv ABSTRACT v INTRODUCTION vi PART ONE: HISTORIOGRAPHY, THEORY AND METHOD 1 Chapter 1: Arrested development: the historiography of White New Zealand 2 Chapter 2: Towards a theoretical framework 44 PART TWO: SOCIAL RELATIONS, THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONALIST DISCOURSE, THE RACIALISATION OF THE CHINESE AND THE ORIGINS OF EXCLUSION 68 Chapter 3: Colonial social relations, the Chinese and the beginnings of New Zealand nationalist discourse 70 Chapter 4: Subordination, racialisation and the first exclusionary legislation 95 PART THREE: THE 18908: THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF WHITE NEW ZEALAND 118 Chapter 5: The 'Data': (re)presenting the parliamentary debate: the early 1890s 122 Chapter 6: The 'Data': (re)presenting the parliamentary debate: the late 1890s 141 Chapter 7: Contextualising and analysing the parliamentary debates over White New Zealand in the 1890s 163 PART FOUR: WHITE NEW ZEALAND BECOMES SUPREME, 1900-1920 193 Chapter 8: The Consolidation of White New Zealand: the social, political and intellectual context, 1900-1910 194 Chapter 9: White New Zealand Entrenched, 1910-1920 225 CONCLUSION 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 11 AC NOWLE GME T This thesis is dedicated to all those who have struggled against the borders which divide humanity artificially along national and ethnic lines, including people currently campaigning for the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and people in general from Third World countries who wish to live in the West. Hopefully, uncovering the history of past exclusion will help undermine present-day policies of exclusion, whether based on criteria of 'race' or economic status. PhD theses are notoriously lonely work, especially when they take as long as this one, which ended up taking up a much longer part of my life than I ever intended. Having other interests and friends helps a great deal in terms of maintaining one's sanity even if such pleasant distractions also lengthen the time it takes to do the work. I have been very fortunate in having a great circle of mates and would especially like to mention Paul and Carol, James and Maria, John, Bryce, Troy, Sam, Lee, Jared, Daphna and Mark, Lyn, Andy, Owen, Jackie, ChrIstine and Steph. Additionally, thanks to Rachel and Jolyon. I have also been fortunate in the support of Gloria, Laurie, Lindsay, Julia and Veronica Ferguson. On top of this, a whole string of friends in Ireland, England, Australia and the United States have provided me with intellectual stimulation, lots of laughs and support. The History Department provided me with an office for the course of the thesis and also enabled me to attend an Australian-Chinese history conference in Melbourne in July 2000. Particular thanks is extended to my superviser, Peter Hempenstall, for facilitating this and for being both patient (which I liked) and prodding (which I needed) during the course of this thesis. Peter took on the task of supervision part way through the thesis, when he was barely off the plane from Australia to take up his new position in the Dept, and his role is especially appreciated by me. I would also like to thank Miles Fairburn, who acted as second superviser and whose final reading over of the thesis was particularly helpful. In the History Department, I would also particularly like to thank the secretaries: Rosemary Russo and Pauline Wedlake and Judy Robertson. Thanks to Katie Pickles who told me about the Valverde book, which opened up an important new vista for my research. Several fellow students provided lots of good cheer and laughs, especially Megan Woods, Annie Stuart and Andrew Conway. I would also like to thank Ian Campbell, who has been a source of encouragement to me as a postgraduate student despite, I'm sure, some significant differences in our world-view. I would finally like to acknowledge the help provided by staff at the National Archives in Wellington and Christchurch, the Alexander Turnbull library, and at Macmillan Brown, the Law Library and the Central Library here at Canterbury University. III ABBREVIATIONS AJHR Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives MHR Member of the House of Representatives MLC Member of the Legislative Council NZJH New Zealand Journal of History NZPD New Zealand Parliamentary Debates lV ABSTRACT In the last two decades of the nineteenth century and first two of the twentieth century NZ passed a series of increasingly restrictive Acts directed primarily at the Chinese. By the early 1900s this exclusionist policy was specifically referred to as constituting a 'White New Zealand' policy. To this day, not one book, or even thesis, has been written covering this 40-year period. A range of postgraduate work deals instead with particular pieces of legislation or, at most, covers segments of the period. Moreover, existing analyses tend heavily towards the descriptive and narrative. This thesis adds to knowledge, then, in several ways. Firstly, it provides an account of the whole period in which the exclusionary legislation is enacted and intensified, until it becomes a coherent racial and nationalist policy aimed at securing a 'White New Zealand'. Secondly, while existing explanations for the White New Zealand policy are both rather scanty and tend to fall between explaining it as a result of either economic competition or racism, this thesis suggests neither of these explanations is adequate. Instead this thesis draws upon historical and sociological theories to suggest a framework for analysis, rooting the development of the policy in a combination of social, political, economic and ideological factors. In particular it sees the development of the New Zealand nation state and the emergence of nationalism and concepts of citizenship as critically important. Nationalism and citizenship defined idealised types and sought to exclude those who were not, or could not be made into, such types. This in turn showed the impact of racialised thinking, eugenics, moral reform and other inter-related ideologies and social movements on the development of nationalism and citizenship. The thesis also investigates how and why, among the disapproved of types, the Chinese became the particular focus of attention and exclusion. Thirdly, rather than seeing the development of the policy as being merely cumulative, with early hostility to the Chinese naturally expanding until they were the object of a rigorous racially­ exclusive policy, the thesis suggests two rather different periods. The first, from the arrival of the Chinese until the 1881 legislation, sees periodic, localised and unsuccessful anti-Chinese campaigns which are incidental to the political life of the new country. The period from the early 1890s onwards sees a clearly identifiable politics of White New Zealand coming into existence as a national and hegemonic ideology and set of legislation. The 1880s is the decade of transition between the two. Material from the labour movement, middle class groups, the upper class represented in the Legislative Council, the parliamentary debates, major intellectual figures (Reeves, Macmillan Brown and Stout), newspapers of the period, and a wide range of secondary sources are drawn upon. v Introduction The question of immigration, particularly Asian immigration, is hotly debated today in New Zealand. This modem debate is part of a history of dispute over questions of race and immigration which can be traced back to the early 1850s in this country, when Chinese migrant labour was first considered as a means to overcome the shortage of workers here. Racial thinking in general also emerged around this time and was brought to New Zealand through British colonialism.1 While Victorian Britain provided the framework for racial thinking here, such thinking in New Zealand and Australia also took on particularities derived from local conditions. Moreover, the development of forms of racial thinking in New Zealand, as in Australia and North America, appears to have been bound up with the formation of the nation state and the development of national identity and nationalism. As Malcolm McKinnon has noted, New Zealand could be said to be "a country in which nationality and citizenship are indistinguishable", with the nationality being viewed as an "ethnic nationalism" which gives greater standing to Anglo-New Zealanders than to Maori, Asian and Pacific Island inhabitants of this country.2 Thus racial thinking formed a . part of the development of the New Zealand national identity. As a nation-state and nationalism cohered in the last decades of the nineteenth century, legislative controls began to be imposed on who could and could not enter New Zealand and become citizens. These controls involved selecting for a variety of characteristics which were deemed desirable and therefore wanted in the citizenry. While various groups were subject to various controls, the Chinese were particularly targeted by what came to be called, by its advocates at the time, the "White New Zealand" policy. How and why this came to be is the particular focus of this thesis. The thesis is divided into four sections, of two chapters each. The first section considers historiography and theory. The opening chapter explores the existing historiography in New Zealand and compares it with work on anti-Chinese exclusion in other countries. The New Zealand work is found to be notably underdeveloped. Among the deficiencies are its largely narrative and unreflective character. Little use is made of a substantial body of theoretical work which has been developed abroad and which could offer valuable tools 1 An initial account of the development of racial ideas in New Zealand has been made in James Belich's as yet unpublished 1994 MacMillan Brown lectures, a copy of which is held in the Canterbury University library.
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