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Events In History

Articles

Taming the frontier

  • Taming the frontier

    In 1832 James Busby was appointed as the official British Resident to New Zealand. After arriving in the Bay of Islands in May 1833 he took steps to tame what he saw as a chaotic frontier society.

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  • Page 2 - New South Wales and New ZealandBy the early 1830s humanitarians were encouraging the British government to take a more active role in New Zealand

Missionaries

  • Missionaries

    The Christian missionaries of the pre-1840s have been described as the 'agents of virtue in a world of vice', although they were not immune to moral blemish themselves.

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  • Page 3 – Men of vice or virtue?

    Thomas Kendall established the first mission school, but he was later suspended after admitting an adulterous affair with a Maori woman.

  • Page 4 – Fixing God's house

    Henry Williams, who had been ordained a priest in 1822 'for the cure of souls in his majesty's foreign possessions', inherited a mission beset by problems.

  • Page 5 – Wesleyans and Catholics

    How Maori responded to the arrival of Wesleyan and Catholic missionaries in the Bay of Islands

  • Page 6 – Printing the word of God

    From the mid-1830s the printed word became a new weapon in the campaign to bring Christianity to Maori.

Biographies

  • Grace, Thomas Samuel

    Thomas Grace was a deacon of the Church Missionary society. He set up a mission station in Pūkawa, Taupō, but had to leave Pūkawa less than a decade later. He, along with Carl Völkner, were captured by Pai Mārire members, but Grace was released unharmed while Völkner was killed.

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  • Hadfield, Octavius

    Octavius Hadfield, member of the Church Missionary Society, was, in 1838, the first priest to be ordained in New Zealand. He became Bishop of Wellington in 1870.

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  • Taylor, Richard

    Anglican priest Richard Taylor had a great influence on Māori in the Whanganui region, and by the early 1850s as many as two-thirds of the Māori population in his district.

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  • Kendall, Thomas

    Thomas Kendall was one of New Zealand’s first Christian missionaries. He pioneered the transcription of the Māori language, and also investigated how Māori understood the universe.

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