Abstract
Elizabeth Muter (1832–1914) began working on her two-volume Travels and Adventures of an Officer’s Wife in India, China, and New Zealand, while sailing from China to England. She continued drafting the manuscript in New Zealand and completed it ‘on the way from Dunedin to Calcutta’, from where she sent it to be published in London.1 The writing and publication of Travels and Adventures, just as much as its content, speaks volumes to the transitory lives of women like Muter and men like her husband (Figure 10.1) — Colonel Dunbar Douglas Muter (1824–1909) — in the British Empire. The work evinces also the importance of print culture and letter-writing as means of cultivating and giving shape to the imagined space of the British Empire.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
E. Muter (1864), Travels and Adventures of an Officer’s Wife in India, China, and New Zealand, Vol. 1. London: Hurst and Blackett, pp. v–vi.
John M. MacKenzie (1986), Imperialism and Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
E. Muter (1997), Travels and Adventures of an Officer’s Wife in New Zealand. Originally published 1864, facsimile edition Christchurch: Kiwi Publishers, p. 277.
The migration of EIC employees and their families also opened up a raft of other environmental links, not explored in this chapter: from EIC surveying and forest conservation models, to exchanges of personnel and agricultural know-how. James Beattie (2011), Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australia, 1800–1920. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan;
Beattie J. ‘A “shock which … can scarcely be understood”: Health panics, migration and plant exchange between India and Australia post-1857’, in Robert Peckham (ed.) (2014), Panic: Disease, Crisis and Empire. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 87–110.
T. R. Metcalf (2007), Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, p. 1;
T. Ballantyne (2001), Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race; T. Ballantyne (2012), Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand’s Colonial Past. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books;
D. Walker (1999), Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia, 1850–1939. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press;
J. Broadbent, S. Rickard and M. Steven (eds.) (2003), India, China, Australia: Trade and Society, 1788–1850. Glebe, NSW: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.
Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety; J. Beattie (2012), ‘Imperial Landscapes of Health: Place, Plants and People between India and Australia, 1800s–1900s’, Health & History, 14(1): 100–120;
J. Beattie (2007), ‘Tropical Asia and Temperate New Zealand: Health and Conservation Connections, 1840–1920’, in B. Moloughney and H. Johnson (eds.) (2007), Asia in the Making of New Zealand. Auckland: Auckland University Press, pp. 36–57.
C. A. Bayly (1989), Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830. London: Longman;
R. Marks (2002), The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (World Social Change). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Argus, 7 December 1865: 5; 26 February 1866: no page; K. R. Binney, Horsemen of the First Frontier (1788–1900) and the Serpents Legacy. No place: Volcanic Productions; 2005.
Note: S. Rickard (2003), ‘Lifelines from Calcutta’, in Broadbent, Rickard and Steven (eds.), India, China, Australia: Trade and Society, 1788–1850, pp. 64–93.
B. Kingston (1990), ‘The Taste of India’, Australian Cultural History, 9: 39; Beattie Imperial Landscapes of Health.
The EIC permitted whaling in New Zealand waters in 1789: G. A. Knox (ed.) (1969), Natural History of Canterbury. Wellingon: A. H. and A. W. Reed, p. 519.
R. McNab (1909), Murihiku: a History of the South Island of New Zealand and the Islands Adjacent and Lying to the South, from1642 to 1835. Wellington, NZ: Whitcombe & Tombs, pp. 57–8.
See correspondence in British Library, India Office Records F/4/299/6922; T. Ballantyne and B. Moloughney (2006), ‘Asia in Murihiku: Towards a Transnational History of a Colonial Culture’, in T. Ballantyne and B. Moloughney (eds.), Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand’s Pasts. Dunedin: Otago University Press, p. 71.
J. Lee (1997), An Unholy Trinity: Three Hokianga Characters. Russell: Northland Historical Publications Society, p. 69.
J. O. C. Ross (1980), Te Horeke: Pre-Colonial Shipyard and Trading Establishment, The Records of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. Upper Hutt: New Zealand Historic Places Trust, pp. 18–22.
D. R. Given, E. G. Brockerhoff and J. Palmer (2006), ‘Nationally Networked Plant Collections are a Necessity’, New Zealand Garden Journal, 9(1): 15. In Given’s article the incorrect botanical name is given for Chinese Hill Cherry. Records at the Allan Herbarium, Landcare Research, confirm that Given collected Chinese Hill Cherry at the former site of McDonnell’s garden. See record CHR 420411, collected September 1984, Allan Herbarium, Landcare Research. My gratitude goes to Dr Ines Schönberger for pointing out this error of nomenclature and for searching herbaria records for me. For details on the plant, see Curtis’ Botanical Magazine 1864, 20(3): table 5460.
J. Kilpatrick (2007), Gifts From The Gardens Of China. London: Frances Lincoln;.
F. Fan (2004), British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
J. Beattie (2013), ‘The Empire of the Rhododendron? Re-orienting New Zealand Garden History, 1830s–1920s’, in T. Brooking and E. Pawson (eds.), Environmental Histories of New Zealand. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, pp. 241–257.
P. Mein Smith (2005), A Concise History of New Zealand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 78.
D. C. Thorns (1997), Understanding Aotearoa/New Zealand: Historical Statistics. Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press, p. 32.
J. Beattie (2009), ‘Climate Change, Forest Conservation and Science: A Case Study of New Zealand, 1840–1920’, History of Meteorology, 5: 1–18.
M. Harrison (2002), Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press;
D. Arnold (1996), ‘Introduction: Tropical Medicine before Manson’, in D. Arnold (ed.), Warm Climates and Western Medicine: The Emergence of Tropical Medicine, 1500–1900. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 1–19;
D. Arnold (1993), Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
J. T. Thomson (1865), Sequel to Some Glimpses into Life in the Far East. London: Richardson and Company, p. xii.
Beattie J. ‘The shock which … can scarcely be understood’: Health panics, migration and plant exchange between India and Australasia post-Uprising’. Conference paper. 9–10 December 2012. University of Hong Kong.
Anonymous AA(1852), ‘The Canterbury Colony — Its Site and Prospects’, Saunders’ Monthly Magazine for All India; 1: 357–373, 465–485, 563–587. Republished as: The Canterbury Colony: Its Site and Prospects, Reprinted from Saunders’ Monthly Magazine 1852. Dunedin: Hocken Library, 1976.
J. L. C. Richardson (1854), A Summer’s Excursion in New Zealand: With Gleanings from Other Writers. London: Kerby and Sons.
A. S. Thomson (1851), Climate of New Zealand. Enclosure No. 35, 1850 Oct 16. P.114. In British Parliamentary Papers and Papers relating to native inhabitants; the New Zealand Company and other affairs of the colony, Colonies: New Zealand, p. 55.
J. Beattie (2014), ‘“shock which … can scarcely be understood”: Health panics, migration and plant exchange between India and Australia post-1857’, in Robert Peckham (ed.), Panic: Disease, Crisis and Empire. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 87–110.
Anonymous AA(1976), ‘The Canterbury Colony: Its Site and Prospects’, Reprinted from Saunders’ Monthly Magazine 1852. Dunedin: Hocken Library, p. 4.
J. Beattie (2011), ‘Making Home, Making Identity: Asian Garden-Making in New Zealand, 1850s–1930s’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 31(2): 139–159;
J. McCabe (2008), ‘Letters from Kalimpong: A British Tea Planter’s Journey Towards “Home” with his Anglo-Indian Children’ [Hons. Dissertation]. Dunedin: University of Otago;
H. Drysdale (2006), Strangerland: A Family at War. London: Picador.
P. Star (2011), ‘New Zealand’s Biota Barons: Ecological Transformation in Colonial New Zealand’, Environment and Nature in New Zealand: 6(2): 1.
D. Lambert and A. Lester (2006), ‘Imperial Spaces, Imperial Subjects’, in D. Lambert and A. Lester (eds.), Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2.
M. Jasanoff (2005), Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850. New York: Knopf/Fourth Estate.
T. O. Enticott (1993), Up the Hill: Cashmere Sanatorium and Coronation Hospital, 1910 to 1991. Christchurch: Canterbury Area Health Board.
John M. MacKenzie (1997), The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
M. Campbell-Culver (2004), The Origins of Plants: The People and Plants that have Shaped Britain’s Garden History. London: Eden Project Books, p. 350.
On William Wilson, see C. Challenger (1978), ‘Studies on Pioneer Canterbury Nurserymen: (1) William Wilson’, Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture Annual Journal, 6: 139–162.
T. R. O. Field (1990), ‘Ford MB. Effects of Climate Warming on the Distribution of C4 Grasses in New Zealand’, Proceedings of the New Zealand Grasslands Association, 51: 48.
T. R. Dunlap (1999), Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Studies in Environment and History). New York: Cambridge University Press.
R. C. Lamb (1964), Birds, Beasts & Fishes: The First Hundred Years of the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society. Christchurch, NZ: The Society, pp. 17, 27, 29, 60, 91, 96.
G. Oglivie (1991), The Port Hills of Christchuch. Christchurch and Dunedin: Philip King Bookseller, pp. 162–168.
Only in a footnote to the second edition of Ecological Imperialism does Crosby acknowledge the introduction of eucalyptus throughout the world. A. W. Crosby (2004), Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Studies in Environment and History). 2nd ed. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
H. H. Allan (1937), The Origin and Distribution of the Naturalized Plants of New Zealand, Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London, 150th Session, Part 1: 32.
Beattie, ‘“Empire of the Rhododendron?”’. On other introductions, see A. Grey (1984), ‘North American Influences on the Development of New Zealand Landscapes, 1800–1935’, New Zealand Geographer, 40: 66–77;
J. Beattie, M. Heinzen and J. P. Adam (2008), ‘Japanese Gardens and Plants in New Zealand, 1850–1950: Transculturation and Transmission’, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 28(2): 219–236.
On their popularity in India, see the superb book by E. W. Herbert (2011), Flora’s Empire: British Gardens in India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania State Press.
T. Parker (1987), And Not to Yield: The Story of a New Zealand Family, 1840–1940. Auckland: David Bateman, p. 26.
William Martin & Son (1880), Catalogue of Plants Cultivated for Sale by William Martin & Son, Nurseryman and Seedsman, ‘Fairfi eld’. Dunedin: Mills, Dick and Co., p. 10.
H. Cleghorn (1861), The Forests and Gardens of South India. London: W. H. Allen & Co., pp. 330–334.
A. H. Clark (1949), The Invasion of New Zealand by People, Plants and Animals: The South Island. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, p. 278.
J. Drummond lists the following dates for introductions of the mynah. ‘Awakino, South Auckland, about 1893; Brightwater, Nelson, 1880; Cape Egmont, about 1882; Carnarvon, about 1893; Christchurch, 1879; Dunedin, 1875; Havelock North, about 1885; Hawke’s Bay, 1877; Kimbolton, about 1902; Marton, 1895; Motu, Poverty Bay, about 1890; Ngatimaru Survey District, 1895; Patutahi, Poverty Bay, about 1890; Rongomai, 1900; Te Rangitumau, 1895; Upper Wangaetu, 1900; Waituna, 1899; Waiapu, 1889; Waikouaiti, about 1885; Waverley, about 1883; Weber County, Hawke’s Bay, about 1896.’ J. Drummond (1906), ‘Dates on which Introduced Birds have been liberated, or have appeared, in different Districts of New Zealand.’ Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, 39: 507.
W. W. Smith (1910), Notes on the Saddleback of New Zealand (Creadion carunculatus). Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, 43: 168.
D. Arnold (2005), The Tropics and the Travelling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856. Delhi: Permanent Black;
J. Beattie (2011), ‘Wilderness Found, Lost and Restored: The Sublime and Picturesque in New Zealand, 1830s–2000s’, in R. Reeve and M. Abbott (eds.) (2011), The Future of Wilderness in Aotearoa New Zealand. Dunedin: Otago University Press, pp. 91–105.
J. D. Hooker (1854), Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, The Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, The Khasia Mountains, &c. [Internet resource]. [updated 2 November 2002; accessed 15 October 2012]. Available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6478/pg6478.txt
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 James Beattie
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Beattie, J. (2015). Plants, Animals and Environmental Transformation: Indian-New Zealand Biological and Landscape Connections, 1830s–1890s. In: Damodaran, V., Winterbottom, A., Lester, A. (eds) The East India Company and the Natural World. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49109-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-42727-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)