'A Loyal, United, and Happy People': Irish Protestant Migrants to Wellington Province 1840-1930: Aspects of Migration, Settlement and Community

Abstract

At its peak in 1886 the Irish-born population of New Zealand comprised over 50,000 men and women and children. Together with offspring born in the colony, the New Zealand Irish represented a distinctive component of the European settler body, with a particular set of cultural, political and, for many, denominational traditions. Recent systematic and statistical studies of migration to New Zealand from Britain and Ireland, based on passenger lists, immigration records and death registers, have engendered a growing understanding that there were clearly defined groups within New Zealand's nineteenth-century settler population, but to date there has been limited closer examination of the dynamics of the groups. This fine-grained study reveals ethnic and religious diversity even within one such national group, with Ireland's minority Protestant population providing an unexpectedly high proportion of New Zealand's Irish immigrants. Focussing on Irish Protestants in the south of New Zealand's North Island, the work draws on a variety of sources, including quantitative biographical data and traditional historical material, such as official documentation and previously unexamined records of local Orange lodges, to demonstrate this diversity. In doing so, it examines three aspects of Irish Protestant migrant experiences: the process of migration itself, their settlement in and adaptation to life in New Zealand, and their incorporation into a wider pan-British culture. The study highlights the importance of connections between specific locales in Ireland and the southern North Island, it examines the persistence of Irish Protestant social networks based on old world affinities and it offers a re-interpretation of the process of integration with wider settler culture and identity.