Samuel D Carpenter

Tag: New Zealand history

  • Te Rauparaha & Son.

    I’m doing some work on the correspondence and recorded speeches of Tamihana Te Rauparaha, son of Ngāti Toa rangatira, Te Rauparaha. The father has the more historical fame (or infamy) attached to his name – in part for conquering deeds of the 1820s-30s in the Kāpiti Coast region and in Te Wai Pounamu. However the…

  • Thesis writing … and ‘the romance of the archive’

    Well it’s been some considerable time since I’ve posted. A principal reason for this is that I’ve been focussed on writing this past year, and will be for the forseeable future… But I continue to make fascinating discoveries archivally. I  sighted properly for the first time today the draft version of He Wakaputanga o Te…

  • Review of Andrew Sharp – Samuel Marsden bio

    I recently had published a review of Andrew Sharp’s significantly-proportioned appraisal of Samuel Marsden’s life and ‘opinions’: in the New Zealand Journal of History, vol 51, no 1 (2017), pp 216-217: Carpenter – review of A Sharp – Samuel Marsden (Auckland, 2016)  

  • Alfred Brown’s library – Te Papa, Tauranga

    I recently spent a couple of days in the library of this important Church Missionary Society missionary in New Zealand. What I was struck by: the striking aesthetic of this nineteenth century missionary’s book collection; the way in which prayer books, hymnals, and bibles – including Maori language versions of these – were given as gifts between close friends and…

  • Review of new Samuel Marsden biography

    My short review of Andrew Sharp’s intellectual biography of Marsden was published this week on the NZ Listener’s webpage, see here. A longer (academic) review will be published soon in the next New Zealand Journal of History.

  • Just a few light reference works…

    … as I begin some focussed writing. I stripped the NZ history shelf at my local. Good times.  

  • New faith, new law

    I was in Ōtaki recently. One of the aims of my thesis is to explore the origins of the Kīngitanga on the Kāpiti coast. At Ōtaki is one of New Zealand’s oldest churches, Rangiātea. In wandering around the urupā there, I came upon the memorial to Matene Te Whiwhi-o-te-Rangi who, with Te Rauparaha’s son, Tamihana,…

  • Conversations about land, war, etc

    H T Kemp was a native interpreter and Crown purchase agent in the 1840s and 50s. He was a son of early missionary James Kemp. His 1870 English and Māori grammar fascinated me, including the way he starts with enumerating the various ‘tribes of the North Island’ from the 1870 census, and his ‘conversations’ including…

  • From the Archives…

    My MA thesis of 2007-08 on New Zealand parliamentary debates of the 1850s-60s emphasized the way history imbued the consciousness of the Victorians. In particular, when conceptualizing the history of the indigenous people Victorian New Zealanders encountered, they placed them in their own civilizational history: as Europe’s history had once been peopled by savages and barbarians who were…