A Rare Account Of Class And Conflict In Colonial New Zealand

In the latest book in the acclaimed BWB Texts series, historian Jared Davidson recounts a pivotal struggle in the settlement of Nelson, and sheds light on working-class lives often overlooked in traditional histories.

In 1843, the New Zealand Company’s Nelson settlement was rocked by the revolt of its emigrant labourers. Over 70 gang-men and their wives collectively resisted their poor working conditions and unfair pay through petitions, strikes and, ultimately, violence.

The History of a Riot uncovers those at the heart of the revolt for the first time. Who were they? Where were they from? And how did their experience of popular protest and class power influence their struggle in a new homeland?

‘Confronting the possibility of failure, starvation, or worse would have stirred deep emotional responses. Fear, disappointment, anger, pride, hopelessness, hope – a range of feelings were folded into the fabric of the gang-men’s revolt, woven together with the moral support of their wives and the desire to make meaning of their situation.’

The rioters’ repertoire of tactics prevailed, eventually forcing the New Zealand Company to offer the labourers land, scuppering founder Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s plans – dreamed up during a stint in Newgate Prison – for a class-based settlement with an orderly division of capitalists and labourers.

Land acquisition provided many gang-men and their families a pathway out of poverty as farmers, bakers, hoteliers, teachers and business owners, in doing so embedding the idealised notion of pioneering men and women who ‘made good’ in their new homeland.

In bringing to light this little-known narrative of settler life, however, The History of a Riot challenges the national myth of settler egalitarianism in colonial New Zealand. The struggle of the gang-men and their wives illustrates not only how ordinary, working-class people contributed to the development of Nelson, but the role of protest and violence in how it was shaped.

Published at a time of heightened interest in New Zealand history, The History of a Riot shows the colonial project as being deeply intertwined with questions of power and class. It also begs the question: what does the Nelson story say about other events taken for granted in the historiography of nineteenth-century New Zealand?

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