CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Érudit Article "Between religion and empire: Sarah Selwyn’s Aotearoa/New Zealand, Eton and Lichfield, England, c.1840s-1900" Charlotte MacDonald Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada, vol. 19, n° 2, 2008, p. 43-75. Pour citer cet article, utiliser l'information suivante : URI: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/037748ar DOI: 10.7202/037748ar Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir. Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit : [email protected] Document téléchargé le 12 février 2017 03:59 Between religion and empire: Sarah Selwyn’s Aotearoa/New Zealand, Eton and Lichfield, England, c.1840s-1900* CHARLOTTE MACDONALD Abstract Taking the life of Sarah Selwyn (1809-1907), wife of the first Anglican bishop to New Zealand, the article plots the dynamics of geographic movement and varying communities of connection through which the mid-19thC imperial world was constituted. Negotiating empire and religion, mission and church, high church and evangelical, European and indigenous Maori and Melanesian, Sarah’s life illuminates the intricate networks underpinning – and at times undermining – colonial governance and religious authority. Sarah embarked for New Zealand in late 1841 at a high point of English mission and humani- tarian idealism, arriving into a hierarchical and substantially Christianised majority Maori society. By the time she departed, in 1868, the colonial church and society, now European-dominated, had largely taken a position of support for a settler-led government taking up arms against “rebellious” Maori in a battle for sovereignty. In later life Sarah Selwyn became a reluctant narrator of her earlier “colonial” life while witnessing the emergence of a more secular empire from the close of Lichfield cathedral. The personal networks of empire are traced within wider metropolitan and colonial communities, the shifting ground from the idealistic 1840s to the more punitive later 19thC. The discus- sion traces the larger contexts through which a life was marked by the shifting ambiguities of what it was to be Christian in the colonial world: an agent of empire at the same time as a fierce critic of imperial policy, an upper class high church believer in the midst of evangelical missionaries, someone for whom life in New Zealand was both a profound disjuncture and a defining narrative. * My thanks to co-panellists at the Canadian Historical Association Conference June 2008, Patricia Grimshaw, Cecilia Morgan and Peggy Brock, and chair Adele Perry. Also to Kathryn Hunter, C.R. Cherrie and the two anonymous readers for useful comments on earlier drafts of this article. JOURNAL OF THE CHA 2008 / REVUE DE LA S.H.C. New Series, Vol. 19, issue 2/Nouvelle Série, Vol. 19, numéro 2 43 JOURNAL OF THE CHA 2008 / REVUE DE LA S.H.C. Résumé À partir de la biographie de Sarah Selwyn (1809-1907), femme du premier évêque anglican de Nouvelle-Zélande, cet article étudie les forces dynamiques qui sous-tendent les déplacements géographiques et les communautés de rela- tions variables grâce auxquelles le monde impérial du milieu du XIXe siècle a pu se constituer. Tiraillée entre les forces en jeu (Empire et religion, mission et Église, High Church et évangélisme, Européens et Maoris ou Mélanésiens), la vie de Sarah illustre les réseaux complexes qui soutiennent (et parfois con- tribuent à saper) l’autorité coloniale et l’autorité religieuse. Sarah s’était embarquée pour la Nouvelle-Zélande à la fin 1841, à l’apogée d’un mouvement d’idéalisme missionnaire et humanitaire anglais, pour arriver dans une société maorie hiérarchique et dans l’ensemble christianisée. Au moment de son retour en Angleterre, en 1868, l’Église et la société coloniales, désormais sous emprise européenne, s’étaient ralliées à l’idée d’un gouvernement dirigé par les colons qui allaient s’armer contre les Maoris « rebelles » dans une lutte pour la souveraineté. Plus tard dans sa vie, Sarah Selwyn s’est faite la narra- trice réticente de sa vie « coloniale », au moment où elle était témoin de l’émergence d’un Empire plus séculier, dans l’enceinte de la cathédrale Lichfield où son mari était évêque. L’auteure reconstitue ici les réseaux per- sonnels de l’Empire dans le cadre de communautés métropolitaines et coloniales larges et changeantes, qui sont passées de l’idéalisme des années 1840 à un climat plus punitif à la fin du XIXe siècle. L’analyse évoque le con- texte général dans lequel une vie s’est vue marquée par les ambiguïtés liées à l’affirmation d’une identité chrétienne au sein du monde colonial, Sarah représentant l’Empire tout en étant une critique acharnée de la politique impériale, étant une croyante de la haute société se rattachant à la High Church tout en vivant aux côtés de missionnaires évangéliques, et étant une personne pour qui la vie en Nouvelle-Zélande représentait tout à la fois une profonde disjonction et un récit déterminant. y the time Sarah Selwyn reached Aotearoa/New Zealand in June 1842, reli- Bgion, empire and gender had been entangled in a local history for nearly three decades.1 Sarah, wife of the first Church of England bishop to New 1 The first CMS mission was established by Reverend Samuel Marsden at Rangihoua, Bay of Islands, in 1814. G.W. Rice, ed, Oxford History of New Zealand, 2nd ed. (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1992); Michael King, Penguin History of New Zealand (Auckland: Penguin, 2003); Judith Binney, Judith Bassett and Erik Olssen, The People and the Land: an illustrated history of New Zealand 1820-1920 (Wellington: Allen & Unwin, 1990). Imperial historian W. P. Morrell opened his history of the Anglican Church in New Zealand with the sentence: “The Church preceded the State in New Zealand.”; W.P. Morrell, The Anglican Church in New Zealand (Dunedin: Anglican Church of the Province of New Zealand, 1973), 1. 44 BETWEEN RELIGION AND EMPIRE: SARAH SELWYN’S AOTEAROA/ NEW ZEALAND, ETON AND LICHFIELD, ENGLAND, C. 1840s-1900 Zealand, was greeted by a largely christianised Maori crowd calling to her “Haere mai, haere mai Mata Pihopa” – welcome, welcome Mother Bishop. After much shaking of hands, and what she describes as her own shy words of greeting using “her Maori language”2 Sarah was invited to tea in the house of the leaders of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) station and residents in the Bay of Islands for almost twenty years, Marianne and Henry Williams (with eight of their eleven children). The preceding ten months had taken Sarah from the heart of English elite institutions to the newest and most distant of the British Empire’s formal possessions,3 six months spent at sea, the preceding three in rapid elevation from curate to bishop’s wife and preparations for what some of her friends clearly considered her impending exile. She had been liv- ing at Eton College where husband George was both tutor and curate at nearby St George’s chapel, Windsor. Sarah Selwyn was to live in New Zealand for twenty-five years, 1842 – 68, from the age of thirty-two to fifty-nine years. She returned permanently to England when George was recalled, reluctantly, to take up the position as Bishop of Lichfield. He died in 1878. Sarah, despite being known for her frail health, lived on in the close of Lichfield Cathedral until 1907, when she died at the age of ninety-eight.4 Like other women for whom marriage in the mid-nineteenth century brought a life spanning the imperial world, Sarah Selwyn wrote intensely about place. 2 Reminiscences by Mrs. S.H. Selwyn, 1809-1867, with an introduction and notes by Enid A. Evans (Auckland: Auckland War Memorial Museum, 1961), 17 (hereafter Reminiscences). Other copies of the Reminiscences, with varying pagination, can be found at qMS-1782, and MS-Papers-7188-10 and MS-Papers-7188-11, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (here- after ATL). Sarah, along with the rest of the bishop’s party travelling to New Zealand on the Tomatin, had daily lessons learning Maori, including pronunciation instruction from George Rupai, a young Maori man returning home from England, Sarah Selwyn to her cousins, Mary and Caroline Palmer, 14 April 1842, MS-Papers-7188-05, ATL. 3 New Zealand was annexed in February 1840. 4 June Starke, “Sarah Selwyn 1809-1907”, Charlotte Macdonald, Merimeri Penfold and Bridget Williams, eds, The Book of New Zealand Women/Ko Kui Ma te Kaupapa (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 1991), 595-9; June Starke, “’I must write a pamphlet, or I shall burst’”, Turnbull Library Record, 19, no.1 (May 1986): 37-46; Charlotte Macdonald, ed, Women Writing Home, 1700-1920. Female Correspondence across the British Empire, Volume 5 New Zealand (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006), 1-95; Alison Drummond, Married and Gone to New Zealand (Hamilton and Auckland: Paul’s Book Arcade; London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 97-138; H. W. Tucker, Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn, D.D., 2 vols (London: William Wells Gardner, 1879); G.H. Curteis, Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand, and of Lichfield (London: K.