Colonial Geographies of Settlement: Vegetation, Towns, Disease and Well-Being In Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1830s-1930s

Abstract

A fruitful new area of environmental history research can be undertaken on the relationship between plants and health in colonial societies. By using New Zealand as a case study, I demonstrate the strength of settler beliefs in the connections between existing environments, environmental transformation, and their own health. I attempt to reconnect the historiographies of medical and environmental history by arguing that urban settlements-as much as rural areas-were important sites for debates about environmental change and human health. I adopt a broad perspective in order to sketch out the contours of a new field, demonstrating the complicated connections between health, aesthetic appreciation, medicine and garden history. Furthermore, I argue that many environmental-health ideas associated with miasmic theories became incorporated into the microbial ʻrevolutionʼ taking place from the late nineteenth century. Finally, I note that a close study of settler environmental-health ideas reveals a far more ambiguous-a far more anxious-history of European engagement with temperate colonies than the existing historiography on the topic posits. Rather than wholly confident and arrogant agents of environmental exploitation, it reveals that great anxieties about health existed side-by-side with confidence in the environmentally transformative potential of colonisation.

Histories of climate, science, and colonization in Australia and New Zealand, 1800–1945

“…Settlers, for instance, worried about the effects of unknown climates on their own constitution and their family's. For example, some writers in Australia and New Zealand feared the effects of hot winds on women and children, whose constitutions they regarded as being weaker than males and thus particularly susceptible to dramatic changes in temperature or exposure to heat and humidity . Still others expressed anxiety about certain kinds of climates.…”

“…[66][67][68] In addition, because of belief in diseases' environmental origins, many settlers believed that a knowledge of climate and its effects on health was vitally important. 69,70 Settlers did not necessarily agree, however, on how it either affected health, agriculture, or human society.…”

“…Notwithstanding its hyperbole and sometimes outright lies, this literature proved remarkably effective, as many thousands migrated in the name of health. 69,73,74 Yet the reality of their new life often did not match promises. Settlers, for instance, worried about the effects of unknown climates on their own constitution and their family's.…”

New perspectives on methodology in garden history: Approaches towards writing about imported medicinal plants in colonial New Zealand

“…Indeed, in nineteenth-century New Zealand, 'urban settlements-as much as rural areas-were important sites for debates about environmental change and human health'. 10 The desire to stay healthy and create healthy environments in the young colony was among the motivations for introducing plants to New Zealand during European colonisation. 11 But, with the exception of scholarship by James Beattie and the author, despite its importance, examination of medicinal plants or plants considered by colonists to be conducive to health is largely absent from garden historical scholarship.…”

“…11 But, with the exception of scholarship by James Beattie and the author, despite its importance, examination of medicinal plants or plants considered by colonists to be conducive to health is largely absent from garden historical scholarship. 12 A focus on medicinal plants brings health-related motivations into clarity and demonstrates how, as Beattie notes, 'in nineteenth-century settler culture, landscape and vegetation figured as more than simply backdrops to human affairs'. 13 Up till now, New Zealand garden and environmental historians have concentrated on the themes of making home, of reshaping the land, and of colonisation in general.…”