Reading Darwin during the New Zealand wars: Science, religion, politics and race, 1835–1900

Abstract

The first copies of the Origin of Species arrived in Britain's southernmost colony during the early 1860s, just as the government went to war against Māori in Taranaki province. The longest and most consequential phase of the New Zealand wars saw several North Island tribes battle British and colonial troops and their Māori allies until 1872. Historians Adrian Desmond and James R. Moore argued in Darwin's Sacred Cause (2009) that the humanitarianism fuelling the anti-slavery movement of the early nineteenth century inspired Darwin's evolutionary theorizing. In Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection (2017), by contrast, Evelleen Richards argued that Darwin built a strong sense of racial distinctions, hierarchy, and the extinction of ‘lower’ races into his thinking about human evolution from the beginning. Weaving together Darwin's use of New Zealand evidence and informants, and David Livingstone's argument about the significance of local contexts in shaping engagements with evolution, this essay argues that many settlers, politicians and some scientific leaders read Darwin during and after the wars to naturalize racial conflict, British triumph and the defeat and probable extinction of the Māori. This colonial context supports Richards' racial ‘othering’ interpretation more than the ‘brothering’ thesis of Desmond and Moore.