Samuel D Carpenter

Category: British world

  • Conference paper: Henry Williams’ intellectual formation in English Dissent

    … and his views on the Waitara controversy, c. 1860. The slides and recording below represent a conference paper given at the New Zealand Historical Association Conference last week, at the University of Auckland. (The NZHA conference is the main conference of Aotearoa-NZ historians held biennially.) Abstract of paper: The Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionary…

  • Published article on reconciling the Māori and English language texts of the Treaty-te Tiriti

    Citation: Samuel D. Carpenter, “Reconciling the Treaty/te Tiriti Through the Discourse of Civil Government/Kāwanatanga,” Journal of New Zealand Studies 39 (2025): 44-64, https://doi.org/10.26686/jnzs.iNS39.9892. Link also here: Reconciling the Treaty/te Tiriti Through the Discourse of Civil Government/Kāwanatanga | The Journal of New Zealand Studies Abstract:This essay charts a middle course between the old, basically Pākehā orthodoxy…

  • Marianne Williams and the Missionary Impulse

    In this postcolonial age, many things are said and written concerning missionaries to foreign/ indigenous lands. I have just been reading a source which reveals that in its purest, Christian form, the missionary impulse was, well, pure and Christian. It would also, doubtless, have seemed reckless and ridiculous to many contemporary observers, not to mention…

  • Op-Ed: understanding “the Doctrine of Discovery” in context

    I was recently asked to contribute an opinion piece on the recent discourse surrounding “the Doctrine of Discovery”. I attempted to locate the “doctrine” in context by explaining what it was (and what it wasn’t). I argued that it has little direct relevance to New Zealand history, while also acknowledging that an assertion of sovereignty…