This book examines the emergence and growth of cricket in relation to diverse patterns of European settlement in New Zealand - such as the systematic colonization schemes of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the gold discoveries of the 1860s.

At once notorious and visionary, Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his brothers played a key but controversial role in the early British settlement of New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Once famed as New Zealand's 'Founding Fathers', they have since become the arch-villains of all post-colonial scenarios of the past. In stitching together a net of letters and documents, Temple has produced the most comprehensive account yet of the Wakefield family's role in colonial development and self-government across the old Commonwealth.

"Edward Jerningham Wakefield was the wild-child of the Wakefield family that set up the New Zealand Company to bring the first settlers to this country. His story is told through the eyes of bookkeeper Arthur Lugg, who is tasked by Colonel William Wakefield to keep tabs on his brilliant but unstable nephew. As trouble brews between settlers, government, missionaries and Māori over land and souls and rights, Jerningham is at the heart of it, blurring the line between friendship and exploitation and spinning the hapless Lugg in his wake. Alive with historical detail, Jerningham tells a vivid story of Wellington's colonial beginnings and of a charismatic young man's rise and inevitable fall"--Back cover.

The history of the Shrigley abduction

How did those responsible for creating Britain's nineteenth-century settler empire render colonization compatible with humanitarianism? Avoiding a cynical or celebratory response, this book takes seriously the humane disposition of colonial officials, examining the relationship between humanitarian governance and empire. The story of 'humane' colonial governance connects projects of emancipation, amelioration, conciliation, protection and development in sites ranging from British Honduras through Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales, New Zealand and Canada to India. It is seen in the lives of governors like George Arthur and George Grey, whose careers saw the violent and destructive colonization of indigenous peoples at the hands of British emigrants. The story challenges the exclusion of officials' humanitarian sensibilities from colonial history and places the settler colonies within the larger historical context of Western humanitarianism.

An outstanding and ambitious contribution to New Zealand and imperial history... Barnes’ analysis of the dynamic relationship between colony and metropolis is compelling and sophisticated... A thoughtful reconsideration of a cultural past New Zealanders have often disowned . . . - History Australia, Vol 12, 1, 2015 A major contribution to scholarship that should remain a touchstone for years to come. Its success is both a testament to the potential of an expertly executed doctoral study and evidence of a significant emerging voice in Australasian cultural history. - Australian Historical Studies, 44, 2, 2013 An ambitious book, tackling large questions across two hemispheres and a long century. Felicity Barnes pulls it off. - Journal of NZ Studies, June 2014 Antipodean soldiers and writers, meat carcasses and moa, British films and Kiwi tourists: over the last 150 years, all of these people, things and ideas have gone back and forth from New Zealand to London to help define, and redefine, the relationship between this country and the colonial centre. In New Zealand’s London, expanded from an award-winning PhD thesis from the University of Auckland, Felicity Barnes explores ‘a colony and its metropolis’ from Wakefield to The Wombles. By focusing on particular themes - from agricultural marketing to expatriate writers - Barnes develops a larger story about colonial and national identity. New Zealand’s London is already being hailed as a landmark work of historical writing on the development of our culture.

A transnational study of how settler colonialism remade the Victorian novel and political economy by challenging ideas of British identity.