New Zealand in Great Famine Era Irish politics: The strange case of A Narrative of the Sufferings of Maria Bennett | Intellect Skip to content
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New Scholarship in New Zealand and Pacific Studies Part 2
  • ISSN: 2050-4039
  • E-ISSN: 2050-4047

Abstract

, a crudely printed, eight-page pamphlet, was published in Dublin in spring 1846. It has been interpreted as an early fiction concerning New Zealand, or alternatively as a New Zealand ‘captivity narrative’, possibly based on the author’s own experiences. Against these readings, it is argued here that , more concerned with Ireland than New Zealand, is a piece of pro-British propaganda hurried out in connection with the British Government’s ‘Protection of Life (Ireland) Bill’ – generally referred to simply as the ‘Coercion Bill’ – first debated on 23 February 1846. The Great Famine had begun with the substantial failure of Ireland’s staple potato crop in autumn 1845. This led to an increase in lawlessness, and the Government planned to combine its relief measures with draconian new security regulations. The story of Maria Bennett, a fictional young Irishwoman transported to Australia but shipwrecked in New Zealand, was designed to advertise the humanity of British law. Having escaped from the Māori, she manages to get to London, where she is pardoned by Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, the man responsible for the Coercion Bill. New Zealand, imagined at the very beginning of the British colonial era, functions in the text as a dark analogy to Ireland, a sort of pristine example of the ‘savage’ conditions making British rule necessary and desirable in the first place. A hungry, lawless Ireland could descend to that level of uncivilization, unless, the propagandist urges, it accepts more British law.

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New Zealand in Great Famine Era Irish politics: The strange case of A Narrative of the Sufferings of Maria Bennett
Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies 9, 215 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00068_1
/content/journals/10.1386/nzps_00068_1
/content/journals/10.1386/nzps_00068_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): British rule; Coercion Bill; colonization; Great Famine; Ireland; James Graham; propaganda literature

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