Taken In: A Migrant’s View of Colonial New Zealand
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'Taken In' is written as a series of letters from 'Hopeful', a new arrival to New Zealand in the late 1800s, to a brother in Canada. She tells of her impressions - and, honestly, they're not good. She doesn't like the weather, she doesn't like the homes, she doesn't like many of the 'colonists' she meets, everything is too expensive and nothing is as good as England.
So far, so...well...whinging pom? But I was intrigued by this book because so much writing of the time paints the tough, hardy attitude of colonists and the wonderful opportunities of a new life. Hopeful, instead, puts forward quite a different view of things, not least how the idea of a new life was sold to potential migrants in England. It made me think about the power of marketing - we might seem to be bombarded with marketing messages now, but it looks like it wasn't actually that different back in the 1800s.
"I am quite prepared for an adverse criticism, as I am well aware it is to the interest of a certain class to be for ever publishing favourable and exaggerated accounts of the prosperity of New Zealand, their great aim being to get people to go out," says Hopeful towards the end of the book and warns against 'dangerous guides' who 'paint all couleur de rose" when it comes to life in New Zealand.
It looks like she was right in predicting the adverse criticism she might get. A review from the Evening Star in 1888, casts doubt on her claims and says she looks on things with a 'jaundiced eye' and thought she had only to go to New Zealand and make a fortune. It also suggests that she 'expected too much from a young community'.
It's an interesting take on the colonial experience.
More books about life in colonial New Zealand
Want to read more about Victorian era migrants to New Zealand? Here are a few suggestions:
Station Life In New Zealand by Lady Barker
Early Victorian New Zealand by John Miller
A Spring In The Canterbury Settlement by C Warren Adams