German plan to colonize the Chatham islands

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The German plan to colonize the Chatham Islands was pursued in the 1840s by interested merchants and investors from Hamburg in order to found a German colony on the Chatham Islands , a good 650 km southeast of New Zealand's North Island , with settlers willing to leave .

background

Inspired by Edward Gibbon Wakefield's colonization theories, under his opinion leadership a new interest in the colonization of New Zealand by British investors developed in the mid-1830s . The reasons that finally led to the founding of the second New Zealand Company from 1825 after several unsuccessful attempts in 1838 were diverse and ranged from pure capital interests to the idea of ​​a solution to some of the social problems by resettling unemployed people to New Zealand Britain to have found.

But the New Zealand Company's plan to make quick money by selling land to British immigrants did not work out, and the Waitangi Treaty concluded on February 6, 1840 between the Māori chiefs and the British crown prevented trade with Māori land. The members of the New Zealand Company therefore switched to the Chatham Islands. Finally, in order to be able to avoid financial bottlenecks, at the beginning of the 1840s they looked around on the European continent for suitable investors and workers willing to settle.

As a scientific companion on an expedition of the New Zealand Company to New Zealand from 1839 to 1841, the physician and naturalist Ernst Dieffenbach wrote numerous reports on the prospects in agriculture and trade, which were also read in Germany. Lectures such as that of the respected geographer Carl Ritter on "The Colonization of New Zealand" created a positive mood among interested companies.

The good trade relations between northern Germany and the British Isles helped to establish contacts between the New Zealand Company and northern German merchants and to arouse their interest in settlement projects in New Zealand.

history

Leading the negotiations between Hamburg merchants and the New Zealand Company, which in turn had bought the islands in July 1840 from the conquerors of the islands, the Māori- Iwi from Port Nicholson , was Karl Sieveking , Senate Syndicus in Hamburg. He signed on September 12, 1841 a letter of intent to purchase the entire archipelago of the Chatham Islands for 10,000 pounds sterling . The contract of sale was to be ratified by the "German Colonization Society", which had yet to be founded, by March 12, 1842 in London . It was jointly assumed that the islands were not under the British Empire, as an official annexation had not been declared up to that point. On October 15, 1841, Joseph Somes , director of the New Zealand Company, informed Colonial Secretary Lord Stanley of the project. This made the sale public and took on a political dimension that forced the British Crown to make an official decision on the Chatham Islands .

John Nicholas Beit , who, as a representative of the New Zealand Company, gave his lecture to the provisional committee of the previously founded German Colonization Society in February 1842, tried with his pamphlet by all means to emphasize the advantages of settlement by German settlers and thus the Hamburg merchants and To convince investors of the advantages of the colonization project. But the end of the establishment of a German colony on the Chatham Islands came on April 4, 1842. In a royal letters patent , signed by Queen Victoria , the British crown moved the eastern border of New Zealand beyond 177 degrees of longitude, which the Chatham Islands with included, making the islands part of the New Zealand colony under British sovereignty . The claim to the archipelago was derived from the landing of Lieutenant William Robert Broughton in 1791 on the main island of Chatham Island ( Moriori : Rekohu ; Māori : Wharekauri ) and their possession in the name of King George III .

The majority of the authors in the newspaper articles spoke out against the project.

It is not known exactly when the German Colonization Society gave up its colonization project. However , at the latest after the Hamburg fire in May 1842, in which the company suffered considerable damage to property, there was a lack of funds for further engagements.

Primary sources

  • Heinrich Sieveking : Hamburg colonization plans 1840–42. In: Hans Delbrück (Ed.): Preussische Jahrbücher , 86th Volume, Georg Stilke, Berlin 1896, pp. 149–170.
  • The projected Hanseatic Colony on Chatham Island . In August von Binzer : General organ for trade and commerce and related objects , 7th year (Cologne 1841) and 8th year (Cologne 1842)
    • ( I. ), December 16, 1841, (vol. 7), p. 645, digitized
    • The colony on Chatham Island , December 23, 1841, (Vol. 7) p. 658 Digitized
    • ( II. ), January 1, 1842, (8th year), p. 1, digitized
    • ( III. ) British Sovereign Law , February 14, 1842, (8th year), p. 91, digitized
  • John Nicholas Beit : Emigration and Colonization - with special regard to the establishment of their first Colony on the Chatham Islands intended by the German Colonization Society - together with the latest chart of the same and a view of the Waitangui Bay - with an appendix containing the development of the Wakefield's system, the New Zealand Company's balances, and a scheme of the necessary diets for emigrants . Ed .: Perthes-Besser and Mauke. Hamburg 1842 (71-page pamphlet).
  • Wilhelm Hocker : Warrekauri the island of bliss rediscovered by Syndic Sieveking in Hamburg (mocking poem), in poetic writings of political and non-political content . Chr. Bünsow, Kiel 1844 ( google.de ). P. 281.
  • Warrekauri . In: General Prussian State = newspaper . No. 96 , April 7, 1842, p. 407 , col. 1–3 ( online [accessed November 15, 2016]).
  • Great Britain . In: Bayreuther Zeitung . Nro 5. In the publishing house of the Geheime Kammer-Rath Hagen'schen Erben, January 7th 1842, p. 23-24 , col. 2 and 1 ( online [accessed November 15, 2016]).
  • (Prussia) Elberfeld 19 Dec. From a reliable source we get the following communication of: . In: New Würzburger Zeitung . Nro. 355, December 23, 1841, p. 1 , col. 1–2 ( online [accessed November 15, 2016]).

literature

  • Rhys Richards : Plans for a German Colony on the Chatham Islands . In: James N. Bade (Ed.): The German Connection - New Zealand and the German-speaking Europe in the Nineteenth Century . Chapter 5 . Oxford University Press , Auckland 1993, ISBN 0-19-558283-7 , pp. 46-51 (English).
  • Malina Emmerink: Hamburg colonization plans 1840-1842: Karl Sieveking's dream of a “German antipodal colony ” in the South Pacific . Allitera, Munich 2014.

Web links

  • Angela Hachmeister: From Hamburg to the end of the world. In: Culture / History. NDR.de, December 25, 2012, accessed on November 16, 2016 (report on the settlement in Nelson instead of the Chatham Islands.).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ulrike Kirchberger: Aspects of German-British expansion: the overseas interests of German migrants in Great Britain in the middle of the 19th century. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07439-2 , p. 334, digitized .
  2. ↑ Held in the scientific association in Berlin on January 22, 1842.
  3. ^ A b Arthur Saunders Thomson : History of the Discovery of New Zealand by Europeans - Chapter V. Commencement of Colonization, 1839 to 1842 . In: John Murray (Ed.): The Story of New Zealand . Volume II, Part II . London 1859, p.  35 (English, online [accessed June 30, 2011]).
  4. ^ English Extracts - Settlement of the Chatham Islands . In: Samuel Revans (Ed.): New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator . Volume III, Issue 139 . Wellington May 7, 1842, p.  2 (English, online [accessed June 30, 2011]).
  5. ^ Elsewhere, Johann Beit
  6. ↑ The Chatham Islands . In: Samuel Revans (eds.): New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser . Volume I, Issue 72 . Wellington April 7, 1843, p.  3 (English, online [accessed June 30, 2011]).
  7. ^ John Nicholas Beit : Emigration and Colonization . 1842 (see references).