André Siegfried in New Zealand: A racialist vision of social progress

New Zealand at the turn of the nineteenth century appeared as a social laboratory in the eyes of the world. A small British self-governing colony, soon to become a dominion, New Zealand, together with some of the Australian states, had attracted the attention of a number of intellectuals beyond the borders of the British Empire. In a troubled international context of mounting challenges to the established order, New Zealand appeared as a fascinating compromise: a paradise for the workers, without class struggle; a laboratory of socialist ideas, in the guise of a liberal regime; a loyal colonial society but in the process of maturing and developing its own national identity. André Siegfried, considered to this day the father of French political science, crossed over to the Antipodes to analyze the ‘social laboratory’ of the western world. This was fieldwork that would give him the material for a first Ph.D.

Siegfried had every intention to be objective and to follow a scientific method that would eventually lead to the recognition of political science as a proper discipline. However, he also came to New Zealand with his own bias and was very much influenced by emerging discourses on race and national identity conveyed by certain French intellectuals of the time. This article focuses on the racial assumptions on which Siegfried based his analysis of the New Zealand democracy. It seeks to demonstrate that Siegfried’s vision of progress in New Zealand was not so much based on facts as on an intense preoccupation to do with the future of the so-called white race. Far from supporting progress, Siegfried takes us on a path that sees any social advancement as the natural outcome of superior inherited traits. This article tries to shed light on the discrepancies between this racialist vision and the then dominant ideology in New Zealand. Although notions of a hierarchy between races were common at the time and shared by all colonial powers, Siegfried’s own brand differed and led to a flawed interpretation of the situation in New Zealand, in particular in the field of race relations.