The Evolution of Hawke's Bay Landed Society, 1850-1914.

Abstract

The sheepfarming districts of New Zealand occupy a small but distinctive place in national folklore. For some writers, the pastoral gentry in such districts as Hawke’s Bay, Canterbury and the Wairarapa forms New Zealand’s nearest approach to a landed aristocracy. Alan Mulgan, who regarded the pioneer pastoralists as ‘vigorous, courageous, hardhearted, capable men’, though that if ‘there is a real aristocracy in New Zealand [the squatter] furnishes it.’ For others, the sheepfarmers have appeared as an isolated and reactionary group, sometimes farcically snobbish in social life. Though elements of the truth can be found in both outlooks, it is necessary to see the development of sheepfarming in New Zealand and, with it, that of a distinctive landed society, against economic and social conditions in the wider Western world. In this context, the growth of New Zealand pastoral society becomes part of the transformation of colonial attitudes into an independent New Zealand nationality.