Charlotte Macdonald, "Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and across the British Empire" (Bridget Williams Books, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Charlotte Macdonald on "Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and Across the British Empire" (Bridget Williams Books, 2025)

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Episode Overview

In this episode of the New Books Network, host Dr. Miranda Melcher interviews Dr. Charlotte Macdonald about her latest book, Garrison World: Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and Across the British Empire. The discussion delves into the complex history of British military presence in colonial New Zealand, its ties across the British Empire, and the wide-ranging impacts—military, economic, social, and cultural—of “redcoat” garrisons from 1840 to 1870. Macdonald’s research sheds new light on the entangled histories of New Zealand, the broader settler colonial world, and imperial violence, challenging the traditional narratives that often isolate these stories.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins and Aims of the Book

• Research Spark: Macdonald was inspired by the intertwined stories of individuals like Henarei Taratoa (a Māori student who later fought and died against the British) and Edward Eyre (later involved in the Morant Bay massacre in Jamaica), prompting her to explore the transformation from intimate colonial interactions to violence across the empire (04:14–05:38).
• Aims:
  • Examine how New Zealand rapidly shifted from a Māori-dominated, treaty-based society to a belligerent settler colony with martial law and a strong garrison presence (06:35–09:58).
  • Reconnect New Zealand’s history to wider imperial events, highlighting links to crises in Jamaica, India, and Australia.
  • Encourage readers—including those not typically interested in military history—to reassess the roles of garrisons and military life in shaping societies, economies, and cultures.

2. Setting the Stage: 1840 as a Focal Point

• Key Events of 1840 (10:25–14:34):
  • Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between British officials and Māori chiefs.
  • New Zealand’s formal annexation to the British Empire.
  • Arrival of New Zealand Company settlers—sometimes before legal agreements, sparking tension.
• Notably, British presence and garrisoning in 1840 were fragile, starting with minimal force in a largely Māori society, contrasting with Australia’s abrupt settlement.

3. Who Were the Redcoat Soldiers?

• Composition (14:57–19:49):
  • 18 regiments served in New Zealand, mostly comprised of poor, laboring-class men—predominantly Irish, with a small officer elite from the middle and upper classes.
  • Harsh discipline and brutal punishments (e.g., flogging, branding).
  • Soldiers were highly mobile, sent wherever needed throughout the Empire, with New Zealand often staffed by regiments from Australia, India, Ireland, or England.

4. Military Actions and Day-to-Day Life

• Early Clashes and Wars (20:16–28:05):

  • First violence in the Wairau incident (1843), then the Northern Wars (1845–46), rooted in land disputes and authority.
  • Māori military resistance proved highly skilled, often outmaneuvering British forces.
  • By the 1860s, large-scale wars (“New Zealand wars”) erupted, with up to 10,000 British troops present at the conflict’s height.
  • The significance lay not just in open conflict but in the garrison’s ongoing, quietly coercive presence (“quiet violence”).

• Non-Combat Roles and Interactions (28:47–34:41):

  • Soldiers built permanent barracks and fortifications, shaping urban landscapes.
  • They provided crucial public works: road-building, water supplies, communications—acting as essential labor in resource-poor settlements.
  • Military social activities included regimental bands, theater, and sports like cricket, interacting with settler society yet also causing tension due to the army’s rougher, masculine culture.
  • Integration was deeper than in many colonies (e.g., India), but ambivalence persisted: settlers relied on soldiers for protection but often resented their disorderly presence.

5. Economic, Social, and Cultural Impacts

• Economic: Garrison spending was a lifeline, bringing cash flow and contracts for supplies, vital for fragile economies (35:03–38:49).

  • Sometimes, local authorities strategically exaggerated threats to retain troops and their economic benefits.
  • Departure of troops could plunge towns into recession (e.g., Auckland after 1865–67).

• Social and Cultural: Soldiers contributed to vibrancy—balls, races, music, theater, sports—yet also brought drunkenness, lawbreaking, and in some cases, sexual violence (39:35–40:37).

6. Empire-Wide Connections and the ‘Decade of Crises’

• Influence of Broader Imperial Events (41:58–47:21):

  • Events like the 1857 Indian Rebellion, New Zealand’s wars, and the 1865 Morant Bay uprising in Jamaica were entwined.
  • Imperial fears of rebellion stoked overreactions, expanding violence and justifying martial law.
  • Soldiers, officers, and language circulated across imperial sites, linking experiences of violence.

• Debates Around Violence and Race (48:59–52:36):

  • The legitimacy of imperial violence exploded into public debate, especially around the Morant Bay atrocities and ensuing legal battles.
  • Notions of race hardened: indigenous resistance was increasingly cast as criminal and racially inferior, contrasting with earlier (if limited) humanitarian arguments.

7. The End of the Garrison Era and Its Legacies

• Why the Garrison Left in 1870 (53:18–57:34):

  • British policy shifted: London decided settler colonies should self-defend, coinciding with army reforms (ending the purchase of commissions, reorganizing deployment).
  • The departure was controversial among settlers; some called for changing allegiances or joining the US.
  • Some soldiers stayed, becoming settlers themselves; others returned home after their service (60:46–62:57).

• Lasting Impacts (63:24–65:42):

  • The garrison’s legacy: lasting marginalization and dispossession of Māori; the escalation of settler dominance post-1870.
  • Physical traces (barrack walls, fort names) remain, though often unrecognized.
  • The book urges greater acknowledgment of the garrison era to address ongoing legacies of colonial violence and injustice.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “How had this transformation occurred? … This took me to the world of soldiers and the politics around the deployment of redcoat soldiers.”
  — Dr. Charlotte Macdonald, on the origins of her research (05:38)

• “The significance is not just in the fighting moments, but in the continuous presence of the military across all three decades.”
  — Dr. Charlotte Macdonald, on the concept of “quiet violence” (28:05)

• “The military and the Royal Navy … performed such a diverse series of functions. Yes, they were there to be the sharp force of empire, the coercive force, but they did all sorts of other things economically, socially and culturally.”
  — Dr. Charlotte Macdonald (08:50)

• “We see a sharpening and hardening of what race itself stands for through these violent episodes. … That thinking then rationalises the violence that's exercised against them.”
  — Dr. Charlotte Macdonald, on the evolution of racial attitudes (50:07–51:29)

• “1870 proved to be that moment of separation and of putting defence back as a colonial responsibility … what it also marked was a time of radical reform in the army itself.”
  — Dr. Charlotte Macdonald, on why the garrison era ended (54:38–57:34)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Project Origins and Initial Inspiration: 02:59–05:38
• Aims and Who Should Read the Book: 06:35–09:58
• Why Start in 1840? The Treaty & Early British Presence: 10:25–14:34
• Who Were the Redcoat Soldiers?: 14:57–19:49
• Soldiers’ Daily Lives, Discipline, and Deployments: 19:49–28:05
• Garrison Roles Beyond Fighting: 28:47–34:41
• Economic & Social Effects of Garrison Towns: 35:03–40:37
• Empire-Wide Connections (India, Jamaica, etc.): 41:58–47:21
• Imperial Violence & Racial Attitudes: 48:59–52:36
• Departure of the Garrison & Army Reform: 53:18–57:34
• What Became of the Soldiers: 60:46–62:57
• Legacies and Lasting Impacts: 63:24–65:42

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Tone and Style

The conversation is thoughtful, reflective, and exploratory, inviting listeners to reconsider assumptions about colonial history, the military, and the empire’s lasting influence. Macdonald emphasizes nuance, complexity, and the need for connecting local and global histories, while Dr. Melcher prompts with curiosity and a focus on contemporary relevance.

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Closing

The episode concludes with Macdonald reflecting on future projects—potential microhistorical studies of individual lives from imperial archives—and a mutual hope that greater knowledge of the garrison era will enrich understanding and reckoning with New Zealand’s colonial past.

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Recommended for listeners interested in:

• Colonial and imperial history
• Military history beyond battlefields
• Connections between local and global histories
• Enduring impacts of empire and settler colonialism on society and race relations

Transcript

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Rules and restrictions may apply. Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Charlotte MacDonald about her book titled Garrison Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and Across the British Empire, published by Bridget Williams Books in 2025. Now, as the subtitle of the book suggests, we are going to be focusing on New Zealand, but in the context of the wider British Empire, because as we're going to be talking about the soldiers of the British Empire, coming from a whole bunch of places with a whole bunch of backgrounds is directly relevant to what happened in New Zealand over some pretty key decades in the 1800s here. So it is a story about New Zealand, but it's a story about the British Empire. It's a story about how those things are related to each other, even if that's not the way that we often tell these stories until now, really. So we clearly have a lot to talk about. Charlotte, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

Thank you very much. Miranda, and it's a great pleasure to be talking with you tonight, my time morning for me.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

I'm very pleased we get to do this. Can you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book? What sorts of interventions and contributions are you making to the history as we sort of traditionally tell it?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So, I'm Charlotte MacDonald, I'm Professor Emerita at Tehering Awoka Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. And why I wrote this book, there are a number of reasons. I've long worked in the mid 19th century, that sort of period from the 1840s through to the 1860s, 70s. So it's long been a time period I've been interested in, but not from the point of view of soldiers or the British military at all. And why this came onto my research radar about 10 years ago was because I had been reading the diaries of Sarah Selwyn, married to Bishop George Selwyn, who became the leader of the African Church in New Zealand in 1841 or so. And Selwyn had set up St John's College, a theological college for Mori and Pkehamin in Auckland. And one of the students at the college was a young Ngaitirani man from the area of Tauranga in the north island of New Zealand, named Henarei Tarataoa. He was a successful scholar, he was a thoughtful person.

He was around the same dining table as Sarah Selwyn. It was actually all quite a sort of intimate, close relationship. He was married by the bishop in the Chapel of St. John's in 1850 in a joint ceremony with Edward Eyre, who was lieutenant governor in New Zealand at that same time. So, you know, you can see the intimacy of the relationship 14 years later. Henare Tarotaua, this young student, was taking up arms against an enormous collection of assemblage of soldiers and navy men in Tauranga in the midst of what we come to know as the New Zealand wars. And he lost his life in those battles. Edward Eyre, as many listeners might be familiar, was just a year later, in 1865, Governor of Jamaica at the time of the massacre of Morant Bay and the great controversies that followed that. So I found this transition from meeting, talking.

Being really close and on congenial terms to this point of violence and bloodshed just 14 years later in two different but connected parts of empire.

Extremely intriguing and troubling. So my question was, how had this transformation occurred? And this took me to the world of soldiers and the politics around the deployment of redcoat soldiers. Across the Empire and out of that has come Garrison World, the book.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

I always find it really fascinating to hear kind of how projects start, because it is often something that seems really small, like an individual piece of one person's life. And then you start to poke at it and you're like, well, hang on a second. There's actually, I mean, in this case, a whole world to unveil from it. So what do you hope people take from this? I mean, for example, who are you hoping reads the book, both who are in New Zealand or familiar with New Zealand history and those maybe who are less familiar with it? What are kind of the key things that you want people to understand from the contribution you're making here?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So there are a couple of things, Miranda, that I particularly hope people pick up from the book and are intrigued and start thinking about a little bit more, as I did in the research journey. One is how did a place, a colony like New Zealand, a settler colony that begins with a treaty in 1840 with a still mori dominant population, becomes in less than three decades, a place of FA shai, a place where martial law is declared, a place where that becomes a very, if you like, belligerent settler population and government, which is accompanied by this large garrison presence. So somewhere where we might have thought something different might happen than just the sheer imposition of colonial force, how does it turn into something else? So thinking some more about that very difficult question, which is a very abiding question in our society at present within Aotearoa, New Zealand, but is also, of course, replicated in many other parts of empire. So that's one thing I want people to be thinking about. Secondly, to be thinking about if this happened in New Zealand from the British point of view, the furthest distant colony and one of the smallest in some ways, how was what happened there connected to the empire at large? And I've made mention of the connection with Jamaica, but there was connection with what happens in India in 1857. There's what happens in the policing of the colonial frontier across the Australian colonies and in other parts of the imperial world. So reconnecting that imperial history, which was very connected in its enactment and its life in the mid 19th century, but which we have sort of lost the connections between. And I suppose, thirdly, I'm interested and hope the book reaches people who don't think that they're interested in soldiers in the military. And I certainly didn't have that background at all myself, and I'm far from being a military historian, but the military and The Royal Navy. So the Blue Jackets and the Red Coats performed such a diverse series of functions. Yes, they were there to be the sharp force of empire, the coercive force, but they did all sorts of other things economically, socially and culturally. And recognizing that much larger impact is the other big thing that I want the book to say and for people to pick it up and understand that. So readers who, yes, are interested in history. Yes. Are interested in the current post colonial reckonings that are going on. People who aren't military historians, but might be intrigued by what the military was in the mid 19th century, which is a very different thing than the soldier citizens of the 20th century, for instance.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's a whole bunch of things to discuss for us today, obviously in less detail than the book, because I cannot keep you here for 12 hours, but we'll do our best to give listeners a sense of how you have accomplished those goals in the book. So we obviously have to then start at the beginning and you start the book in 1840. So what is key about this moment as a starting point?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So it's a crucial and very obvious starting point for the New Zealand story. In 1843, things happen. One, there's a Treaty of Waitangi negotiated and signed on the 6th of February in the Bay of Islands at a place called Waitang, which is.

An agreement between the representative of the Queen Victoria, who's Captain Hobson, naval captain at the time, and the chiefs of Rangatira of Aotearoa. And this is a. The negotiation goes on over several days. It's quite a simple document that ends up being signed. It's got three articles. It's signed by over 50 chiefs at Waitangi itself on the 6th of February. And then over the next nearly 12 months, that document is taken all around the country and at different places it's debated and other chiefs signed. So it ends up with having over 500 signatures. The document exists now in our National Archives. It's on display in our National Library foyer here in Wellington. And you'll see there's much discussion about the significance and importance of the treaty historically, but in the current constitution and life of Aotearoa, New Zealand. So that's number one. Number two, New Zealand is annexed as a formal part of the British Empire in 1840. And thirdly, the New Zealand Company, the creation inspiration, if you like, of Edward Gibbon Wakefield sends its first group of organized settlers to Wellington as its first organized settlement. And the New Zealand Company actually sort of jumps the gun on these things because they already have shiploads of immigrants on their way to New Zealand before the treaty is signed. And there is, of course, great tension between the Colonial Office and the New Zealand Company, ambitious adventurers there. So those three things all happen in 1840. And so we have the beginning of a formal presence of a governor. Hobson becomes governor, and it's a very tiny entourage of soldiers who accompany him. So that's the beginning of the military story, if you like. What's interesting, Miranda, about that date is that although 1840 is the beginning of New Zealand as a British colony, formally, there has been already more than 50 years of informal exchange. Traders, missionaries from 1814, Mori traveling to other parts of the world. All kinds of trade, economic, religious, other sorts of exchange between Mori and Europeans, mostly British, around New Zealand before that. Which is in very great contrast, let's say, to the history of Australian settlement, where in 1788, the convict colony begins in New South Wales, just very abruptly, there hasn't been any or very, very little prior exchange. Whereas here, formal British colonization and governance begins after a long period of interchange. And in 1840, New Zealand was still very much a Mori dominant place, both demographically, economically and politically. So the British governance, if you like, is a very sort of fragile and frail structure at the beginning. So it starts in 1840. Because of that, a very tiny number of soldiers accompany Hobson and his naval officers, but the larger numbers of soldiers begin to arrive just a few years later, and they're here for the next three decades. So that's the. The story I'm telling, really, is the 1840-1870 picture.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I mean, explained that way. It's very clear why you would start there. But I want to talk more about these soldiers who are deployed by the British Empire to New Zealand. Like, who are they? Where do they come from, how do they enlist? How do they end up in New Zealand? Is there an officer enlisted thing going on here? Like, who actually are these men that turn up?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So there are 18 different regiments that serve in New Zealand for varying periods of time over this 1840, 1870 period. And the British army at this point was the regiment sort of ruled. Yes, there was something broadly we talk about as the British army, but regiments, it was really a whole series of regiments that operated kind of in conjunction with each other, but quite a lot of autonomy. So here they are, all spread across the world. More than half of the British army through most of the 19th century is serving outside Britain and its empire. It's an imperial service, really, more than anything else.

Who are they most of the regiments, great majority of the infantry regiments who are the ones that are serving in this imperial domain, comprised of.

Poor men from the laboring classes, a great proportion of whom are Irish. So, you know, the British army is in fact made up of very large majority of poor rural Irish men and then others drawn from laboring classes and sort of pretty. It is pretty much a life of last resort for the majority of men who were the rank and file soldiers. And if you had a regiment of, let's say 800 or 1,000 people men, maybe 730 of those or so were the rank and file, with a very tiny number of officers making up the rest of that regiment. And they were from the middle and upper classes, the younger sons of the aristocracy kind of story. And they just existed in a whole different sort of world than the rank and file men. The officers had to buy their own equipment, their own uniforms, their own horses, their own arms, et cetera. And they enjoyed a very different quality of life. And their commands were absolutely to be obeyed utterly. So the discipline within the army was extraordinarily harsh and pretty brutal at this point. Flogging was still the standard form of punishment. Being branded if you were deserted, you know, being marked on the skin was still practiced through this period. So the regiments that get sent to New Zealand, as they get sent elsewhere in Empire, are sort of on a. They're supposed to be in a kind of rotation. So if you were in the, let's say, 40th Regiment, you might spend eight years in India and then eight years in New South Wales and then eight years back at headquarters. But it never really kind of worked out as evenly as that because they were sent where they were needed. And so a regiment was ordered to be here or there. So in New Zealand, for instance, when the conflict breaks out first in the mid-1840s in the Bay of Islands in the north of the north island.

Immediately the first closest British soldiers that are sent for to assist are those that are already in New South Wales. And so there are urgent orders sent to Sydney. You know, we've got a conflict happening here. Send what soldiers you have. So the 58th and the 65th regiments are there. And so they are the ones that get sent at speed to New Zealand at that point.

But over the course of the 1840s to 1870s, the soldiers that are serving in New Zealand, some come from Australia, some come from India, some come direct from Ireland or England. They're really being sent and ordered all around the world. And that. That was the Picture of the army in the mid 19th century.

Sent wherever they were needed, right across the globe. So it was a very mobile group of people, a very mobile set of languages, arms, equipment, all of those things. He was being set and moving constantly around the globe. And the people who made up those regiments were, one day they might be in the middle of Ireland and then the next thing they're being sent off to perhaps the other side of the world to land in Auckland here. So extraordinarily mobile, but being ordered from place to place where their regiment was required.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's very helpful to understand why they were there and a bit about who they are and what their lives were like in terms of the discipline. That's definitely key to emphasise.

In terms of kind of day to day, what they were up to once they were deployed. How much of their time was actually fighting or using violence. What were some of the kind of early military clashes that we're talking about with these deployments?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So the story as it unfolds in New Zealand is we have the treaty in 1840, which is this written, spoken and then written agreement between Mori and representative of the British Crown.

And it sets out the three clauses by which this set of relationships is supposed to proceed. But within three years, violence has broken out and it's violence. At the Wairau, which is in the northern part of the south island, settlers were arriving, New Zealand Company settlers in Wellington and Nelson. And what they were immediately seeking was land, good, cultivable land. But the New Zealand Company was fairly unscrupulous in how it negotiated that land, and indeed, often just completely discarding Mori assertions that this land was not for sale and it was in fact already occupied. They were the inhabitants and owners of the land. So in Wairao in 1843, there is the first violent encounter between a group of settlers and leaders of the Nelson Colony and Ngti Toa, the tribe that asserted that this land indeed was theirs and they occupied it, in which over 20 people died, Mori and Pkeh. So the tiny number of troops were not at that encounter, but there was a sense that violence was close to hand. So there was a sort of rise in tension around different parts of the colony where land was being sought in the north. In 1845, 46, the first of the Northern wars, as they're known, broke out. And again, this was about land and about authority. So the people of the Ngpuhi tribe in the north there resented and were indignant about the loss of authority that came and was being asserted by the British presence. And at first they tried to talk to Hobson and his successor, Governor FitzRoy, about the loss of authority, which they felt breached what the treaty had been promised in terms of a shared authority or a recognizable authority of existing MORI leaders. And so at first, what NPUHI chiefs did was cut down the flagpole as a symbol of authority to say, look, we are not happy about what's happening here. We're going to cut down your flagpole to indicate that. And Hone Heke, who was the leader of that action, did that on four occasions. But the governor of the time was just implacable in not listening, not negotiating. And so this is where then violence broke out with the burning of a settlement and the use of violence. So we get first, that's where troops come from New South Wales in their hundreds. So we then get sort of larger scale warfare in the north between several regiments, large, organized, if you like, campaigns and battles of that more formal kind. And MORI fighters who prove themselves very skillful against the British soldiers who sort of bring a rather rigid form of fighting against an opponent and a sort of sense of superiority that how could they be sort of literally outgunned by people who had a lot fewer weapons and a lot less powerful war machine behind them. So the British didn't necessarily come out of those battles very well. There are also conflicts that happen around the Wellington and Whanganui area at the same time. And again, the British regiments find themselves often sort of outmaneuvered by their MORI opponents. But by the end of the 1840s, Governor George Grey, who by then is in the office of Leading, if you like, in charge of the. The British presence in New Zealand has persuaded the Colonial Office and the War Office in London that he needs two whole regiments to be permanently garrisoned in New Zealand. And this is when the total European population is about 15,000 people scattered around the country. MORI population still probably about 80,000. So two garrisons, two regiments garrisoned in Wellington and Auckland, he has. And he also persuades them to send out 800 fencibles, pensioned veteran soldiers and their families to settle around the southern part of Auckland. So this is when, from the late 1840s through to 1860, there's no actual war as such, but there's a presence of soldiers to kind of be something of a deterrent, a presence of British authority that can be mobilized. And then in 1860, the First Taranaki War breaks out when Governor Gore Brown insists on this, on the purchase of a piece of land that's very strongly contested by its Mori owners and through 1860-66. This is a series of the really big campaigns, wars fought across the north island, in Taranaki, Waikato and across the Tauranga area. In the main, and at the height of that, there are, what, 10,000 or so soldiers concentrated in New Zealand, the biggest deployment of soldiers anywhere in the empire apart from India. So it's a sort of massive presence of soldiers, regiments and a large number of naval ships and their crews in this very distant and still relatively small colony. So those are the main bits of sort of, if you like, hot fighting, are in the mid-1840s and then again in the first half of the 1860s. But in between, there's this constant garrison presence, which I describe in the book as a kind of quiet violence, the reminder and the demonstration and the performance of power, and always at the ready and always able to call on the supplies that such garrisons require, and further regiments to arrive to be called for from other parts of empire that have arrived when there's been fighting, as we saw in the 1840s and again in a smaller way in Taranaki in 1860, and then in a much larger way in the years that followed. So those fighting moments in the 1840s and in the 1860s are now generally referred to as the New Zealand wars or the Colonial wars. Some people call them the land wars. And there has been recent and important work highlighting those events, and that's important. But my point is really to say.

The significance is not just in the fighting moments, but in the continuous presence of the military across all three decades. So that's where the fighting and war part fits with the longer garrison significance.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I definitely think that that's important to emphasise. So I want to talk, obviously, about the fighting stuff. We've started that. We'll talk more, I think, as we go through the period. But what else were they doing with this presence? Like, they weren't fighting 24 7, so what else were they doing? Where were they living? Were they allowed to interact with locals? I mean, obviously we often look for this in records with, like, marriages. What sorts of presence do we see in these senses that are beyond violence?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So once we have vigilance here on a permanent basis. So this is mid-1840s on one of the very first things they do is build quite elaborate barracks. So rather than saying, oh, we're just here for a short while, while this might be an emergency, in which case they might live in camps and tents, as the military do, they built very substantial Stone barracks and in Auckland. The Auckland barracks occupied over 20 acres in a very prominent central part of the city.

And this was replicated in Wellington and Whanganui and New Plymouth, Napier elsewhere. So very permanent structures were set up which had a dual purpose. Obviously, they provided barracks for the soldiers to live in, to parade in, to have the magazine for arms, etc. And. But they also operated as very strong and powerful and conspicuous signs of a military and coercive presence. So there was a lot of.

Building of fortifications, stockades, barracks, et cetera.

The military did exactly what they were doing everywhere else, which had a very rigid day. You got up, you put the flag up, paraded, went through all the motions of the set military day. In some places they were employed building roads.

Putting in water supplies because they needed them, but they were also valuable in small colonial towns that had very little by way of resource and very little by way of money to build those things which became important. So they acted a little bit as a sort of public works department in many places. And there were Royal Engineers here from the beginning. And again, they did a lot of the sort of road building, bridge building.

Flag staffs, communications of an early kind were very much military created. The men themselves, yes, did live in barracks right in the center of colonial towns. So they became, in effect, garrison towns. Although.

Auckland and Wellington and the other towns were very loath to actually see themselves as garrison towns, they thought that that was not a reputation they wanted, that was something that places like Sydney or Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, were places that were built on convict settlements. And New Zealand absolutely saw itself as the opposite, built on free, organized, selecting the best kind of settlements. So it was a very ambivalent kind of attitude and relationship between the settler colonial towns and the military presence. Unlike in some other parts of the world, let's say India, where the soldiers were sort of cantoned and kept apart from the local society. In New Zealand, the soldiers lived, although they were in barracks, they lived alongside a growing settler community. And that had its both porous nature.

Which was good or desired, but also its tensions. So on the one hand, you had the regimental bands playing for the general public. On Sunday afternoons, you had regimental cricket teams, civilians versus soldiers. Many cricket clubs in New Zealand owe their origins to military teams that started after you had all of that kind of interaction that went back and forth between the army and the locals. Garrison theatre as well, which was popular and was open to the public to attend. But on the other hand, colonial settler colonies such as New Zealand especially tried to make themselves places of family settlement where there were equal numbers of men and women, where it was orderly and reputable and armies and regiments were principally male, drank a lot, often were quite rough and ready in both the men who comprised them and the kind of habits that an army life encouraged or allowed. So there was again ambivalence and tension between the sort of culture of a military life and settlement and what an orderly, well organized.

If you like, church going kind of settlements that New Zealand prized itself on, was trying to create at the same time. So it's an odd mixture. I describe it in the book as sort of sometimes a jangling, jostling.

Uneven kind of connection between a reliance, on the one hand on the military to keep order against Mori insurgency and potential violence that was feared by a settler community. And on the other hand, a dislike for the roughness and the masculinity of the military.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I think ambivalence is a really key word here in terms of these concerns about kind of order and both creating it and also messing it up at the same time. Right, but what about kind of impacts beyond that, economic impacts or social impacts? What sorts of effects did the garrisons have on the people they were living amongst in those senses?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So economically that the garrisons were a great bonus. So the military chess, the commissariat brought hard cash to very fragile colonial economies. So the fact that he was a regular form of money coming into the colony. Contracts for the supply of meat for the men to eat, for instance.

Contracts for the supply of alcohol, contracts for the supply of anything that you might imagine were immensely sought out. So as well as the small amounts of pay that the ordinary men got. And of course, the officers were spending at a different level altogether. And you can see they were very important customers to the businesses that were around in the small towns and cities that were growing up. So the economic impact was colossal. And indeed, Colonel Mundy, who visits New Zealand in the late 1850s and writes an informative, at times amusing, but he's quite a keen observer, says really some of these towns wouldn't exist and would survive if it was not for the military in their midst. And then later, he and others.

Observe, as the wars start in the 1840s subside and then start again in the 1860s, is he does observe and say, well, you know, governors have reason to write back to London and ask for more troops, saying, you know, we need them because we're under threat, because they know that that will bring the garrison and the money that goes with it. So there was a sort of self interest that was recognized in, if you like, starting a little war. I think it's the term he uses in order to bring the garrisons and their income. So economically they were incredibly important. And when most of the soldiers are ordered to leave New Zealand and Auckland in Alien 65 67, the town which has previously really thrived and been very economically prosperous plunges into a really desperate recession. And that's directly resulted with the departure of the troops. Socially, the garrisons bring a lot of life to these small colonial societies. Whether that's at the officer a leap level, whether these upper class officers in their dress uniforms are remarked on. You know, there they are at balls and there they are at the horse races and there they are at the leading regattas, adding a touch of sort of style and class to towns that are sort of lost.

Or didn't have a kind of sense of established hierarchy or status. Here was officers absolutely demonstrating that. And then at the level of the rank and file, here are men who were customers for hotels and for all kinds of other rough trades that might be going on around the place. So they brought numbers, business, social life, vivacity to places. And culturally, I mentioned the theatre, music, you know, regimental bands were enormously important.

Things like sports, cricket and horse racing in particular. They brought these.

Teams, interest games, sports days to the life of towns where people spent most of their time struggling just to get by in immediate livelihoods. And here was a group of people who didn't have to earn their own livelihood, who had time to do these other pursuits. So, you know, they were an important part of the social life. And as I sort of hinted at before, sometimes that life they brought was not welcome. So they were rough, they were drunken, they were often foul mouthed, they were often destructive.

As they went into the field. They often stole from settlers, whether it was chickens, whether it was crockery, whether it was other sorts of things. So there was quite a harsh side to that soldiering presence. And what we also see, and the records of course are very difficult to find, but there are signs there of a degree of sexual violence that went on within these settler communities as well, in which military men were the perpetrators against both Europeans and Mori women. And it's very harsh and chilling aspect of the story that I cover to some extent in the book. But again, we just have a very tiny layer of record that gives us some indication of something that clearly was much more pervasive.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, no, all sorts of things do and don't show up in the records. So all we can do is kind of piece them together as best we can. But now that we have a better picture of kind of the many ambivalences of the life within the garrison and the impact of the garrisons with the places around them, I want to come back to what you mentioned earlier. Around, kind of, as we move forward in this period, there is definitely a moment where kind of the violence gets much more significant and is kind of often where the focus is. And of course, there's many reasons for violence to break out. Like in any instance in the world, there's never kind of one cause for it. But I wonder if we can talk about a particular strand of what's happening in New Zealand and the fact that, at least from the book, some of what caused the violence to increase in the 1860s is things that are. You've already been telling us about some of it, though, is coming from wider British Empire events, things that are not in New Zealand. So, for example, events in India in 1857 that may not seem to be related at all, but you show really very much are. So what role do events outside of New Zealand in the wider imperial context play into the violence that increases in the 1860s in New Zealand?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So it seems to, I think those wider events, what I call the decade of crises from 1857 to 1867, are very closely linked. So the Ocho wars, if you like, in New Zealand, the armed conflicts are all about land and about authority. So who has the power to dictate and determine who is going to govern this country, this place and its peoples? But what makes it a additionally significant and what I think has been sort of underplayed so far, and what I'm arguing for in Garrison World is that the response to those disputes about land or governance, which are highly local within New Zealand and within certain places, get amplified because of what's happened in India in 1857, 58, and what happens in India in 1857-58 at the time of the rebellion, what happens in New Zealand and what gets called at the time and since the wars in the early 1860s and then what happens in Jamaica in 1865 and the response to that are all connected. So.

The enormous shock and sensation that the rebellion in India created sent waves across the whole of the globe. It's been discussed in New Zealand in the papers all the time. And a settler, a fairly prominent settler in Taranaki in 1858, complains to one of the key government officials about what's happening around him and she describes the local Mori as being sepoys at heart. That is, they're hostile to us, they're thinking badly about us. And so what William Halson saying that is indicating is he's highly aware of what's happening in India as everybody around him, and what he's saying to this government official who's a highly influential person, is, you know, we need to prepare for what might happen if something like what happened in India happens here. And indeed, the reaction to the dispute which breaks out in 1860, which sets off the war, is reacted to in a much larger form. So all these regiments, a whole group of them, are urgently ordered to New Zealand and the Taranaki war becomes much larger than it might have been been, and then amplifies even more in the Waikato when General Cameron actually launches this much bigger campaign under George Grey's leadership as well as governor in 1863. 64. So the sense that.

Any sense of resistance by indigenous people, in this case Mori, holding onto their own land and challenging British authority.

Or being perceived to be challenging authorities, authority and being called rebels, justifies the use of violence and justifies the declaration of martial law. And so that sense that violence, a greater violence, is threatening us, US settlers, us the British governments here, and requires a wider and stronger exercise of force in order to contain it. And then once we get to Jamaica in 1865 and Edward Eyre suppressing what he sees as a rebellion with utter brutality and the deaths of over 400 people and flogging and the burning of property.

Again, was he overreacting or was he acting in justification of maintaining order? And that, of course, becomes the crucial question and the huge controversy that then goes through the law courts and across a Royal Commission for the next two to three years, in Debard's opinion, within Britain, very deeply, but also cross empire. So, you know, was Eyre right or wrong in what she did in Jamaica is being debated in Auckland and New Zealand newspapers. And parallels are being made with, well, should something similar have been done in New Zealand in recent years? So their argument about what violence is justified or what violence crosses the line and is completely unjustified, not fitting with a proper British rule of law. If you have martial law, you've really suspended any rule of law. How does such use of violence fit with the Treaty of Waitangi that was signed in 1840, you know, within people's living memories. So those.

Some of the soldiers also fight in all of those places. So they are connected both by people, but by this exercise of violence and the debates that occur around its justification or its illegitimacy for those who are critical of it. And there are a number, even though the majority opinion in the British realm and British political and public opinion, certainly in settler opinion, is that that violence is justified. So I think there is a great linkage across the empire in that Decade of Crisis, 1857-67.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I think this is a really key aspect to emphasize that these debates are happening in many places and the kind of crises that are happening in New Zealand, there's also crises happening in other parts of the empire, like one opening a newspaper. It sounds like kind of anywhere in the British Empire at this point would be like, oh no, what's going on? Sort of things seemed to be kicking off kind of everywhere and lots of things were needing to be debated and raising these sorts of questions. So I wasn't particularly surprised then to understand in your book that all of these debates and discussions and kind of continuous, you know, what were being perceived as revolts or rebellions raised a lot of concern around kind of what's happening with the empire. So how do we see big ideas like the role of violence in imperialism or how race works? How are those sorts of things changing amidst these decades of crisis?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So in relation to violence, obviously in terms of British public opinion, it really bursts open most conspicuously and most controversially in the response to Jamaica. The legal cases that went through the courts to try and prosecute Eyre for murder for what he did, all of which fail, but nonetheless bring that question very much to the fore and the enormous divisiveness that happens. So it's never really resolved because the debate goes on and none of the court cases actually resolve that question. So it sort of hangs there, but it's burst open to being a difficult question.

And remains of course, a question that underlies how an empire is held together.

In relation to race, which the idea about race or the understanding of race which runs through all of these events and the debates that surround them. I think.

It'S quite clear that what we see is a sharpening and hardening of what race itself stands for through these violent episodes. So it's non white opponents of British authority or resistors to it, or.

Exercises of what some argue as counter violence to the monopoly of violence that the British Empire has in its places of governance are regarded as not just illegitimate exercises of violence or force, but ones that are exercised by people who are inherently dissent and unable to be seen as equals or equivalence to white British, including white British settler. So that hardening of Difference becomes apparent and manifest in these exercises of violence. And in the New Zealand case, it's a very stark contrast with what has been the thinking and influence, let's say, in the Colonial Office right up to and around 1840 with the treaty, where abolitionist humanitarian ideas were much more prevalent. And although they were expressed in kind of protectionist notions, we need to protect Mori from the harsh impacts of ruthless Europeans doing one sort or another, where we see much evidence of the damage that's caused to indigenous peoples by European interference and the desire in New Zealand to protect Mori from that, which is where, to some extent, the treaty came from. The thinking around that has shifted very starkly by the time we get to the 1860s, in which Mori opposing the British militarily and polliciply regarded as enemies to be defeated and an opponent that is racially different and inferior, and that thinking then rationalises the violence that's exercised against them.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, these things definitely feed into each other. Right. They're not happening in isolation. So that's definitely important to understand.

Given this hardening of thought then and the practice, the violence that comes out of that. I was really sort of intrigued to read then about kind of the next big stage that comes up in the chronology. You mentioned earlier that the book goes from 1840 to 1870. And as I was reading, I quickly realized why 1870 was chosen, because the garrisons leave at that point. Why do they leave at that point? And what happens to all of those people, the soldiers, the sailors, the women they've ended up marrying? Like, what. What happens to them?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So it's really crucial moment, Randa, and it might seem like a very sharp moment, but it is. So in 1870, the last of the British regiments are ordered to leave New Zealand and they sail out of Watta harbor in Auckland.

Sort of half mourned and half sort of cheered all at once. Again, this is deep ambivalence at that point of departure. But they do so under the orders issued from London, from the War Office and the Colonial Office.

Saying, when the Liberal government, led by Gladstone at the time, says we should no longer be supporting and paying for regiments to be garrisoned in settler colonies, and so they order the troops to leave New Zealand, but they also order them to leave Australia and most parts of North America, Canada as we now know it, essentially saying, you know, we have spent a great deal of money, effort, lives, et cetera, keeping garrisons in these places. Why are we doing that now when the settler populations are larger and more established.

When, if there is fighting to be done then surely it's for you settler communities to defend yourself, not for us British to continue to do that. So this is a point at which there's an interesting separation between, if you like, British national interests being defined in those more national terms as against its imperial interests, which up until then it had seen itself maintaining order and empire. But the succession of crises in India, New Zealand, Jamaica and elsewhere had raised this question, why are we're using violence in all these places?

What is the justification for that? Is it simply for land hungry settlers in New Zealand to get land it, rather than buying it legitimately, that they're fighting for it and confiscating it?

These questions about violence were part of the, if you like, undermining of the argument or the justification for British governments to maintain an armed force in settler colonies. So colonial governments in Australia, New Zealand and Canada by this point were self governing. So they had their own representative parliaments which they had fought quite ferociously for. So. And yet they had the garrison still there to do the defence and fighting side of things. So in a way.

Gladstone's government said, well, you know, if you want to be self governing, you can also be self defending, pay for it yourself. So 1870 proved to be that moment of separation and of putting defence back as a colonial responsibility. Of course, what it also marked was a time of radical reform in the army itself. So Edward Cardwell, the Minister of Secretary of State for War in that same government, was bringing in what we now refer to as the Cardinal Reforms, perhaps best known for abolishing the purchase of commissions by officers. So no longer could people buy themselves an officer ship, but they had to apply and be qualified, if you like, in some way to become a military officer. But there were other big reforms within the army, so it marked a big shift within both what the army was and how it operated, but also where it was to be deployed across the globe. So 1870 was a really.

Sharp marker and change and there was enormous outcry in the settler colonies about that sort of abdication of responsibility by Britain for that. And to the point that people in New Zealand and elsewhere said, well, why do, why should we stay with Britain anymore? We should join the United States. You know, they are a better federation. That's a. They will be more interested in us than Britain. That's sending us off to who knows, who knows what, who's no longer interested in our interests, our protection, our future. So it's a very sharp dividing off point. What happens in New Zealand once those last British soldiers do Leave is that there's already just recently established, late 1860s, an armed constabulary which is sort of both a police and military, a mixed function force that then operates the sort of local defence force and a great proliferation of volunteer associations in local communities which don't do a great deal, although they are brought out at particular moments. And the one that's most.

Infamous, if you like, is at Parihaka in 1881 where a peaceful Mori community is surrounded, taken, siege and many of its occupants taken prisoner and exiled.

Because it was feared that they were a sort of hostile or resistant group or place from which resistance of a violent kind might stem. In fact, the leaders of that community were advocates of peaceful resistance. So it was a particularly unequal and deeply unjust action. But it was the armed constabulary and volunteers who were mobilised for that action. And then slightly later, once we get to the Anglo, South African or Boer War, 1898, 99 or so, it becomes a volunteer, you know, immensely patriotic volunteer force of 6,000 or so new Zealanders who sign up to, you know, defend empires interests by going off to South Africa and fighting in that war. So it's a different story that unfolds by the end of the century in wars fought not inside New Zealand but as defences of British interests elsewhere in Empire.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, no, that is a pretty big change when we're talking about this 1870 moment. The outcry amongst the settlers in New Zealand, the fact that it's such a change in policy from London. What did the garrison itself in New Zealand, do we have any idea of what they thought about it or did they just kind of go okay, well we were deployed here, now we're off to be deployed somewhere else. I mean, do we know anything about what happened to the members of the garrison once they left?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So they don't have any say in where they're going to be deployed. So I'm sure that they all had views of one sort or another, particularly the officers, but they are sent where they're ordered. The last regiment to leave was the 70th Regiment, which was the Royal Irish Regiment ironically enough. So they.

They go first. Well one of the contingents is by then in Victoria, Australia. So they amalgamate there, reassemble and then they go back to headquarters in Ireland. But.

At the time regiments leave New Zealand or Australia.

Some of the soldiers apply for their discharge from the army, whether because they've done their allotted time, whether it's 12 years, the shorter term that was introduced, or the 21 years, or they pay their way out of the last few years of their service, or they apply on the basis of ill health that they're no longer healthy enough to act as soldiers. And about one in five of the 18,000 total or so British soldiers that served in New Zealand in these decades take their discharge from the army and stay in the colony, becoming effectively soldier settlers. Some of them do well, some of them don't. They become sort of destitute road labourers at best, but they have many different kind of fates. But some of them take that moment to actually leave the army and become part of the settler community. Others of them, and I can think of several individuals.

End up back in England or in Ireland, having done their 12 or 21 years and go back to live in the very same house on the very same street from which they enlisted 10, 12 or so years before. So they've been all around the world in different places and they go back to point zero from where they started.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, no, very interesting, all those cases there with the garrison leaving, though. I mean, from what you have already told us, it's clear that that's not sort of magically, therefore the end of settler colonial violence. Right. That was not the reason really that the garrison left.

So are there any other sort of continuing legacies of this garrison world that we want to discuss to close out our conversation about the book?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

Absolutely right. Of course, violence and tension between mori and pkeh does not come to an end in 1870.

What has happened by then is that the wars and the military presence has effectively.

Marginalized Mori. So land has been confiscated, lives have been lost. So there is.

A military impact which has had a very detrimental effect on most Mori communities. So it's a decisive and catastrophic impact.

However, Mori can survive, mobilize, start new political movements thereafter with difficulty. This is the point of resetting relationship of power. The legacies are multiple. That big military presence is quite quickly, if you like, dismantled both literally. Forts and barracks are taken down, camps and huts are sold, et cetera.

But.

There'S an attempt to, if you like, if not, sort of forget that that violent phase did happen. And the 1870s in fact, saw a huge influx of new immigrants and settlers. So the colonial parliament thinks that this is the point to push New Zealand's development as a colony forward. And they have a very ambitious public works and immigration scheme which brings nearly 100,000 new settlers into New Zealand in that decade of the 1870s. So it's a kind of assertion by, again, demography and pushing those people across the country, occupying it really by this ambitious new phase of occupation and settlement to really assert the colonial presence and the legacies of that violence and injustice that occurs through the confiscation of land, etc. Is deep and.

Does stain relations between Mori and PKEH thereafter, out of which the last 30 or 40 years of trying to address these things and find some reckoning and justice through our Waitangi tribunal process is one of the outcomes of that. It doesn't take away the injustice and the violence of what occurred, but at least it is now understood, better recognized, and some compensation and reckoning is underway. So the legacies are there. There are tiny bits of material remnant of this period. So one of them, right in the middle of the University of Auckland campus, there's one remaining part of the huge stone Albert barracks wall that was built in the late 1840s and stood there all the time to 1870. And what's fascinating is that many people spend all their student life on that campus and have no idea what that piece of stone wall is. So if this book go some sense to educating or informing people what that is, that would be useful. Similarly, the names of places, Blockhouse, Bay, Winyard, Mercer, Grierson, these are all places named after military officers. And yet that's often totally unrecognized. So again, it's just bringing that military era to people's attention in the present and saying, look, this past is actually quite close to us. It's something we need to know about rather than not. Because not knowing about it does not help.

Mend the relations that got so terribly severed in this point. Got our past?

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

No. History is incredibly important in and of itself and for the present and future. So thank you for giving us a sense of the many things that the book is is doing. I do have a final question to ask, which is what you might be working on now that this book is out in the world. Whether or not it's a book, whether or not it's related, maybe the answer is a nap. What might you be up to these days?

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

So the book's just come out in the last few weeks, so it's just fresh out into the world. I have got some other projects I'd like to turn to, but it might just be a month or two before I start on those. They are.

Probably projects that still take me into the 19th century.

The Gore Browns, who were governors that followed George Gray were governor through the 1850s have a very interesting life across Empire, and I'm kind of intrigued with what happens to their fate in this similar sort of imperial world. And there are other projects that sort of emerge from this about the individual lives which, you know, the War Office records at Kew in the National Archives are absolutely extraordinarily immense and they leave a record of very humble people to a much greater extent than one would ever find. So I have got a few sort of smaller projects to take the individual or small groups of lives and perhaps look at those at sort of the micro scale, whereas Garrison World sort of looks at the macro scale.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, that certainly sounds interesting. So best of luck with those various projects. And, of course, while you are pursuing them, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Garrison Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and Across the British Empire, published by Bridget Williams Books in 2025. Charlotte, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[Dr. Charlotte MacDonald]

Thank you, Miranda. It's been fun to talk.