Forthcoming
Past
|
Closed 20 September 2021
|
Summer Scholarship
1 VUW Summer Scholarships related to this project has received funding for Summer 2021/22. The closing date for applications is 20 September 2021 We welcome applications from students who have completed at least two years of their undergraduate degree and are enrolling in 3rd year, the Honours programme, or the first year of a Masters degree in 2022. See the Summer Scholars Scheme web page for details on how to apply. India to Aotearoa New Zealand: Following the money Explore the fascinating world of late 19th Century connections between India and Aotearoa New Zealand through the archive which links family histories, military service, imperial connections, and philanthropy. This historical project builds research skills and takes you to unexpected places. |
|
20 April 2020
11am |
The 19th century conflicts in New Zealand
Charlotte will be presenting on the British Troops in New Zealand as part of a webinar session hosted by Auckland Libraries:
https://www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/pages/event.aspx?eventid=9834 |
|
27-30 November
|
New Zealand Historical Association Biennial conference
Victoria University of Wellington Charlotte and Rebecca presented on aspects of the project |
|
Closed 16 September 2019
|
Summer Scholarships
2 VUW Summer Scholarships related to this project has received funding for Summer 2019/20. The closing date for applications is 16 September 2019 We welcome applications from students who have completed at least two years of their undergraduate degree and are enrolling in 3rd year, the Honours programme, or the first year of a Masters degree in 2020. See the Summer Scholars Scheme web page for details on how to apply. Glittering temptations: Fortunes and disobedience on the 1860s goldfields (Project 319) Explore the world of glitter and glory with historical research and digital tools to consider temptation, fear and fortune in the 1860's. How did contrasting groups of men, gold-seekers and soldiers sworn to obedience, navigate the risks of wealth and harsh punishment when faced with gold or military service? What remains of this sharply contrasting history: gold in the south, war in the north? The project involves archival research and building a digital map of space and time. Unearthing history's survey pegs (Project 320) Explore the challenge of what ‘settlement’ meant in the aftermath of wars and confiscation in the New Zealand wars of the 1860s. Who got the land and what does that tell us of soldier fates, wealth, and the transfer of power from Māori to settler? Learn skills of archival research and create a digital map to bring this important history to a contemporary public. |
|
Thursday 14 May 2019, 5.30pm
|
Charlotte will be speaking in Whanganui at the Massey University W.H. Oliver Humanities Research Academy/Alexander Heritage and Research Library/Whanganui Regional Museum seminar series on 'Whanganui's Redcoats at the centre of the 19thC world: Subjects but not Citizens'
Davis theatre, Whanganui Regional Museum, Watt Street, Whanganui |
|
15-16 April 2019
|
Charlotte will be speaking about military Auckland at Auckland History symposium, University of Auckland.
|
|
8 April 2019
|
Charlotte spoke to Radio New Zealand Nights' Bryan Crump about Spencer P.T. Nicholl 'Shopping for War': https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2018690116/shopping-for-war-in-1863
|
|
29 March 2019
|
Shopping for War: a historian stalks her prey in Victoria’s London
In this historical excursion around London of 1863 (and 2018) we will be following Spencer P. T. Nicholl as he makes preparations to embark for the war in New Zealand as an officer with the 43rd regiment. What do his purchases tell us of the Victorian global supply chain, the multiple spaces of imperial warfare, of coercive sociability and economy, and of the paths pursued by the historian and her subject? Presented to the Victoria University of Wellington History programme seminar. |
|
18 January 2019
|
Charlotte spoke to Radio New Zealand for their Summer Times series about the project: https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/summer-days/audio/2018678767/soldiers-of-empire
|
|
Closed 15 September 2018
|
Summer Scholarship
1 VUW Summer Scholarship related to this project has received funding for Summer 2018/19. The closing date for applications is 15 September 2018 We welcome applications from students who have completed at least two years of their undergraduate degree and are enrolling in 3rd year, the Honours programme, or the first year of a Masters degree in 2019. See the Summer Scholars Scheme web page for details on how to apply. Living dangerously: Deserters in settler colonies (Project 304) The purpose of this research project is to gain a better understanding of the motivations and subsequent lives of soldiers who deserted while stationed in New Zealand with the British Imperial Army in the 1860s and to develop skills of historical research, interpretation and presentation (including digital capacities). You will analyse an existing dataset of deserters to identify patterns and possible reasons for their desertion, before interrogating archival sources to uncover more about the post-army lives of these men. The final products of this project will focus on the potential of digital tools to map both geographical and socio-economic pathways. The precise format of the digital output will be shaped by your discoveries and decided in collaboration with Professor Macdonald and Dr Lenihan. Additionally, you will prepare a blog post for www.soldiersofempire.nz. |
|
4-5 December 2017
|
Garrison Towns in the 19thC Empire - Symposium
A symposium hosted by Soldiers of Empire at Victoria University of Wellington, Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui. Speakers included: Dr Arini Loader, Dr Mike Ross, Kelly Keane-Tuala, Victoria University of Wellington Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui Dr Vincent O’Malley, HistoryWorks, Wellington Professor Douglas Peers, University of Waterloo Professor Penny Russell, University of Sydney Dr Craig Wilcox, Sydney 
|
|
4 October 2017
|
Charlotte and Rebecca presented in the National Library of New Zealand and Ministry for Culture and Heritage public history talk series on 'Counting Redcoats: Who were the imperial soldiers serving in New Zealand in the 1860s?' Talks from this series are available to listen to as podcasts here. This talk specifically is available here.
|
|
Closed 5pm 15 September 2017
|
Summer Scholarships
4 VUW Summer Scholarships related to this project have received funding for Summer 2017/18. The closing date for applications is 15 September 2017 We welcome applications from students who have completed at least two years of their undergraduate degree and are enrolling in 3rd year, the Honours programme, or the first year of a Masters degree in 2018. See the Summer Scholars Scheme web page for details on how to apply. Subaltern traces: mapping the brutal lives of 19th century redcoat soldiers (Project 303) From the moment a man 'took the king's shilling' and was sworn to serve as a soldier in the 19th century British Army, many facts and figures about him were meticulously recorded by the army on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. The quarterly muster rolls (WO12) depict the 1860s wars in New Zealand in all their brutality and routine detail. Delve into these archives, discover the power of databases in historical explorations, and bring your analysis to an audience in a way you might not have done before. Family fortunes and civic destinies: the fall and rise of Victorian Auckland (Project 328) Explore the history of Auckland city and region from its life as a garrison town in the early 1860s, through years of sharp recession to its later emergence as a major colonial city by the late 19th Century. What family fortunes and city fates were won and lost in the unpredictable swirl of colonial New Zealand? How were women involved in this key transformation? The Scholarship provides an opportunity to work at the Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira library, a major national research institution with rich collections. It also enables the Scholar to work with an established research team through the ongoing Marsden-funded research project led by Charlotte Macdonald and Rebecca Lenihan (see www.soldiersofempire.nz). Soldiers of the Queen: Exploring personal narratives in the New Zealand Wars (Project 329) Taranaki Wars Research Opportunity The researcher, supervised by Puke Ariki’s Curator Pictorial Collections, will be tasked with researching and cataloguing amateur photographer and collector William Francis Gordon’s photograph album “Some Soldiers of the Queen”, who served in the New Zealand Wars and other notable persons connected herewith. This remarkable album is a unique historical artefact. Dating from around 1900, the album contains over 450 photographs of soldiers, civilians and Māori involved with the New Zealand Wars. The album is an integral part of Puke Ariki’s collection of Taranaki Wars material, memorialising those who are depicted and bringing their faces/identities into striking contemporary view. This research project would involve a student using a variety of research sources to develop biographical information for people and regiments depicted in the album, conduct some original cataloguing on the heritage database and make the results of their research available online via the Puke Ariki website. There will also be an opportunity for the student to showcase their research to a Puke Ariki staff seminar. From colonial collecting to contemporary assemblage: joining the pieces of the New Zealand Wars together (Project 331) Explore the rich and varied collections of Te Papa through a project to link photographs, archives, objects and other items relating to New Zealand’s nineteenth-century wars. What has the museum collected over the years and how might the varied items in the collection be brought together to tell a larger story of this important aspect of New Zealand’s history? You will be working with experienced curators and museum staff, and a research team at Victoria University. The goal is to build an assemblage from the collections, and to enhance means of public access to Te Papa’s collections. |
|
22 August 2017
|
‘Shooting at History: the military occupation of 19thC New Zealand and its 2017 legacy in big data’.
Charlotte presented to the Palmerston North branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Approximately 18,000 soldiers in British Army regiments were stationed in New Zealand between 1842-1870. At their peak in the early 1860s the ‘redcoats’ were engaged in wars fought across the Waikato and other districts of the North Island, conflicts which shifted the balance of power in the colony. The military presence in the ‘settler era’ also shaped commerce, road building, telegraph and postal networks, medicine, music and social life, and connected New Zealand to the global reach of the nineteenth century garrison world of India, the Cape, Sydney, Melbourne, the Caribbean, and North America, as well as Britain. The research on which this discomfiting history rests is seeking to put a face to the men who served with the regiments in New Zealand and to reach beyond the battlefields to the wider impact of the military presence in the settler empire. It draws on the dense archive of the War Office to turn nineteenth-century ‘big data’ into twenty-first understandings of the legacies of a difficult – and sometimes forgotten – history. |
|
9 June 2017
|
Shooting at the Settler State: Connecting soldiers, barracks and brothels across the 19th-century colonial world
Charlotte presented to Le Groupe d'histoire de Montréal, the Montreal History Group, at McGill University. |
|
|
1-4 June 2017
|
Army Wives, Regimental Domesticity and Garrison Culture: difficult conversations across the British Empire, c.1820s-1920s
Charlotte, Erica Wald, and Paul Huddie presented a session at the 2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities. Charlotte's paper was entitled 'Absent, Indigenous and Imagined: army wives and soldier settlers in the 1860s' |
|
30-31 May 2017
|
Lives in the Lines: Nineteenth-century military files
Rebecca attended a workshop on Archival files and Knowledge Production hosted by the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture, University of Otago, presenting a paper co-written with Charlotte. |
|
31 Jan - 3 Feb 2017
|
Soldiers/Settlers: Imperial troops in New Zealand’s immigration stream
Rebecca presented at the first Eric Richards Symposium in British and Australasian History at Flinders University, Adelaide. |
|
13 October 2016
|
Mrs Dowd and the enigma of the nineteenth-century ‘redcoat empire’
Charlotte is giving the Sir Keith Sinclair Memorial Lecture at the University of Auckland. Abstract: Examining a range of sources, including the ceramics unearthed from the Albert Barracks below the University of Auckland campus, Keith Sinclair’s edition of the Bodell diary, and War Office archives, the lecture addresses the centrality of garrison life in colonial New Zealand. How was this world linked to Calcutta, the Cape, Hobart and Montreal? What enigma is contained in Mrs Dowd’s willow pattern? |
|
Closed 5pm 16 September 2016
|
Summer Scholarships
3 VUW Summer Scholarships related to this project have received funding for Summer 2016/17. The closing date for applications was 16 September 2016 We welcome applications from 3rd-year students intending to enrol in the Honours programme in 2017, and from Honours students enrolling in an MA in 2017. See the Summer Scholars Scheme web page for details on how to apply. Lives in the ledger: pensions, health and the state before 1898 (project 105) Before the Old Age Pensions Act of 1898 approximately 3-4000 men, women, and children in New Zealand were receiving a pension on the basis of service in British imperial regiments and the Royal Navy. Who were these people, and what can their pension records tell us about the colonial economy, health, morbidity, and mortality in the late 19th century? Explore these questions and discover the power of relational databases along the way. The project will plot the entries in the 7 large ledger books of the T9 series, analysing the composition of recipients; making an assessment of the range and total sum of funds paid out; plott causes of discharge or grounds for pension entitlement; and compare the health and physique material therein against the arguments made by Johns Hopkins historian Philip Curtin (Death by Migration: Europe’s encounter with the tropical world in the nineteenth century, Cambridge University Press, 1989; Disease and Empire: the health of European troops in the conquest of Africa, Cambridge University Press, 1998) and other nineteenth-century data sets of comparable groups (for example the University of Tasmania (Maxwell-Stewart), University of Melbourne (McCalman), ANU (Downes) and Oxford University (Oxley) studies of nineteenth century convicts and soldiers). It offers the student the opportunity to work with archival materials; to develop digital skills; to explore materials and themes that can be further developed for a HIST489 research essay or Masters thesis; and to work with an established research team. Life, Death and Disease in 1860s Wartime Auckland (project 134) Alone among sites of 19th century European warfare, British troops in New Zealand in the 1860s were more likely to succumb to death in battle or in an accident than by disease. What factors contributed to this unique morbidity and mortality profile at the Albert Barracks and surrounding military camps? What was the impact of the military presence in Auckland in the 1850s-60s on the life and growth of the city? Explore this topic while exploring the collections, working onsite at the Auckland War Memorial Museum this summer. The project will identify relevant sources and items in the collections; analyse the material around the key themes above; link the individuals identified with extant data sources; cross-reference findings to Online Cenotaph entries and draft new entries for individuals not yet in the database. The scholar will also present the analysis in a report, drawing upon relevant secondary materials to put the findings in context. A presentation to Museum staff at the conclusion of the project will also be desirable. It offers the student the opportunity to work with archival and artefact materials; to contribute to a biographical resource of national significance; to work in a major public history institution with expert museum curatorial and research staff with experience in the management and interpretation of collection items; to explore materials and themes that can be further developed for a BA (Hons) HIST489 Research Essay or Masters thesis; and to work with an established historical Marsden Fund supported research team. External supervisor: Michaela O'Donovan, Head of Information Library & Enquiry Services, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Tamaki Paenga Hira War by post and bullet: bringing a philatelic collection to history and screen (project 135) Thousands of miles from ‘home’ British troops serving in New Zealand in the 1860s nevertheless maintained networks with friends and family via letters, photographs and sketches sent by post. Who was writing, to whom, and what were they writing about? What does the material reveal about literacy by age, nationality or rank? What kinds of networks were maintained by post? Find the answers to these questions and more while gaining experience working in a public history institution, and learning the processes involved in the digitisation and online publication and description of museum items. The project will digitise the Ellott collection, making the collection accessible and available online; transcribe a selection of items; analyse the material, linking the men writing or receiving the letters with extant data sources; and present the analysis in a suitable format. It offers the student the opportunity to work with archival materials; to develop digital and digitisation skills; to work in a major public history institution with expert museum curatorial and research staff with experience in the management and interpretation of collection items; to explore materials and themes that can be further developed for a HIST489 research essay or Masters thesis; and to work with an established historical research team. External supervisor: Dr Bronwyn Labrum, Curator, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Head of New Zealand and Pacific Cultures |
|
14 July 2016
|
Charlotte and Rebecca presented an overview of the project to the Hutt Valley branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists
|
|
23 June 2016
|
Charlotte presented at the Digital Panopticon conference 'Penal History in a Digital Age' in Hobart, Australia (22-24 June) on 'The Global Reach of the Nineteenth Century ‘Redcoat Empire’: mobility, individuality and coercion'
|
|
4 May 2016
|
‘The fateful world of the 1860s: women in the south, men in the north’
Charlotte presented to the Kilbirnie branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, comparing single women migrants and imperial troops arriving in New Zealand in the 1860s. |
|
13 April 2016
5.30pm |
'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Settler: Garrison and Empire in the 19th Century
Friends of the Turnbull Library National Library of New Zealand, Aitken Street Free admission (although donations are welcome) "Well-known Wellington historian and author Charlotte Macdonald will be discussing her latest research project, which explores the British army and navy presence in 19th century New Zealand. Should we think of New Zealand as a garrison colony rather than a settler colony? Charlotte takes a fresh look at our colonial origins and focusses especially on the 12,000 men from the British imperial regiments who found in the wars in New Zealand ca1860-70. Where did they go and what was the 'garrison culture'?" |
|
2 March 2016
|
Charlotte and Rebecca presented some preliminary findings and key research questions to Te Papa's curators and research team
|
|
24 February 2016 |
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Settler: a research overview
Puke Ariki, New Plymouth Charlotte and Samantha Hunt, a Summer Scholar on the project, presented some research findings to date. |
|
27 January 2015
|
'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Settler: tracking the 12,000 or so imperial soldiers in New Zealand and across the British empire c.1850s-1870'
Charlotte presented some preliminary findings and outlined the project's aims and objectives to the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists. |
|
2-4 December 2015
|
Rethinking New Zealand within the 'redcoat' empire
Charlotte and Rebecca presented papers on aspects of the project at the New Zealand Historical Association conference, University of Canterbury Charlotte Macdonald, 'Rethinking settler colonialism' Abstract: Settler colonialism has long framed New Zealand’s post-1840 history. As imperative, characteristic and idea, ‘settler colonialism’ has operated to explain and differentiate foundation patterns and global empire. This paper takes an alternative view exploring the ways in which New Zealand might be seen as a garrison colony. Coercion, transience and formal rank replace the notions of volition, settlement and opportunity. Tracking between New Plymouth, Auckland, Hobart, Calcutta, the Caribbean and London’s War Office, largely in the period c.1840s-70s, the paper follows the men, a few women, and the many materials despatched to enforce British authority. Is the ‘redcoat’ presence a cold ghost of settler colonies or simply a minor shadow? The paper is part of a larger Marsden-funded project on nineteenth-century soldiers, garrison and empire. Rebecca Lenihan, 'Redcoats' in the 1860s settler stream Abstract: In the 1860s over 100,000 people arrived on New Zealand’s shores, 45,000 in 1863 alone, a figure that would not be beaten until the 1960s. Many of these were men in search of their fortunes on the goldfields of the South Island, others single men and women, or families, enticed by provincial government schemes of assisted migration. In recent years various research projects have produced detailed depictions of those who constituted this flow of people. Concurrent with this high volume of immigrants were the 12,000+ men arriving in New Zealand as British Imperial troops, at least 3,500 of whom took their discharge in the colony. Though the large number of soldiers represents a significant proportion of the inwards flow of individuals in this decade, to date we know very little about these men as individuals or as a group. This paper, as part of a larger project on nineteenth-century soldiers, garrison, and empire, offers a preliminary profile of these men, comparing this influx to the general settler flow, considering some of the factors that differentiated the ‘redcoats’ from New Zealand’s wider migrant group. This session was chaired by Dr Angela Wanhalla, History, University of Otago |
|
12 November 2015
|
Unsettling: Art and the New Zealand Wars
Gordon H. Brown Lecture 2015 City Gallery, Wellington, Civic Square, 6pm Lecture, Rebecca Rice, Curator Historical New Zealand Art, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa This lecture revisits institutional practices of collecting and exhibiting, past and present, to reflect upon the histories of remembering and forgetting embodied by art from the time of the New Zealand Wars. Free admission, Bookings not required. |
William Francis Gordon, Maori rebel flag: Aotearoa, 1913, watercolour, pen and ink. Purchased 1916 (Te Papa: 1992-0035-1631/10)
|
|
Closed 1 November 2015
|
Redcoats and Bluejackets: Garrison Culture in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Applications are now open for an MA scholarship working on an aspect of garrison culture in the period c.1850s-1870s within this project. Taking the imperial soldiers and sailors deployed in New Zealand in the period c.1860-65 as its starting point the research will focus on an aspect of the ‘redcoats’ and ‘bluejackets’ cultural world. Potential areas of investigation include the movement of soldiers across the empire (especially Crimea-India-New Zealand-Australia); the nature and mobility of materials worn and used by soldiers and sailors (uniforms, arms, ammunition, music and musical instruments, boots, tents, cards and dice, tobacco, sporting equipment, pet animals, books, print, pen and paper, objects of adornment and decoration); activities including camp drill and barrack routine; sports; gambling and drinking; codes of honour; literacy and belief; punishment and obedience. For more information on the scholarship and details as to how to apply, see http://www.fis.org.nz/BreakOut/vuw/schols.phtml?detail+500925 |
|
Closed 16 September 2015
|
Summer Scholarships
3 VUW Summer Scholarships related to this project have received funding for Summer 2015/16. The closing date for applications is 16 September 2015 We welcome applications from 3rd-year students intending to enrol in the Honours programme in 2016, and from Honours students enroling in an MA in 2016. See the Summer Scholars Scheme web page for details on how to apply. 'The Stomach at War' c.1860-1866 (project 324) Soldiers of the imperial regiments in New Zealand at the height of the land wars c.1860-66 received weekly rations of bread, rum and meat. Where did these rations come from? How well was the army fed and ‘watered’? Is it true, as some have argued, that imperial soldiers serving in New Zealand enjoyed the best conditions across the mid-19th century empire? Explore these questions in order to produce an infographic, bringing 21st century tools to a 19th century problem. An opportunity to be part of a Marsden-supported research project. Tasks and skills:
Developing digital history narratives (project 335) In 1863 Nicholl is a young man, 23 years, a young officer sent to fight in New Zealand against Maori opponents. He is in love with his sweetheart in England (but can't afford to marry her), he is also involved in some of the most bloody fighting in New Zealand at Gate Pa-Pukehinahina. He has enough education and position to be highly literate and to attend balls with the Auckland social elite, but he is also sufficiently junior to be candid and sometimes scathing of his seniors. The Alexander Turnbull Library holds the diary Nicholl wrote between 1863 and 1864. This project is a wonderful opportunity to delve into New Zealand's documentary heritage and to unlock it using digital tools to develop narratives. Tasks:
External supervisor: Rachel Esson, Associate Chief Librarian Research Collections Military Vantage Point: A Taranaki Perspective (project 336) Taranaki Wars Research Opportunity: The researcher, supervised by Puke Ariki’s curator archives, will be tasked with researching and recording the details of detailed analysis of the New Plymouth Garrison Order book of the 57th Regiment of the British Army. This book, covering the period 9 January to 18 October 1864 includes many fascinating details of the daily life of the garrison and the town, during the tumultuous Taranaki Wars period. Included in the book are details of crime and punishment, troop movements and various general orders, capturing valuable historical snapshots of the town from the viewpoint of the British Imperial Army. This research project would involve a student, analysing the content of the book and cataloguing and recording portions of it to make the information it contained freely available online via the Puke Ariki website. There will also be an opportunity for the student to showcase their research through a small physical display at Puke Ariki and through a presentation near the conclusion of the project. External supervisor: Andrew Moffat |
|
17 July 2015
|
'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Settler: Garrison and Empire in the Nineteenth Century'
Charlotte and Rebecca presented some preliminary findings and outlined the project as well as aims and objectives to the Victoria University of Wellington History programme seminar. |
|
5 June 2015
|
'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Settler'
Charlotte and Rebecca presented an overview of the project to the staff of the Alexander Turnbull Library. |