Samuel D Carpenter

Tag: New Zealand

  • Do we need the English text of the treaty too?

    An imagined conversation: Yes, we need the English text, because the Māori text came from the English text… Hang on, the English text says Māori ceded sovereignty – but they didn’t! This confuses people visiting Te Papa museum. They didn’t cede their hapū rangatiratanga, yes, but they ceded to the Crown the kāwanantanga (government) of…

  • Reading… Thomas Babington Macaulay

    If any Briton represents the image of the statesman-scholar of the nineteenth century, it is Thomas Babington (“T B”) Macaulay. Son of the anti-slave trade campaigner, Zachery Macaulay, he was a pre-eminent man of letters of the Victorian age, a parliamentarian and orator acclaimed by many, a Cabinet minister, and for a time an administrator…