settlement (1848) carried a utopian vision that reflected the evangelical polit-
ical economy of Thomas Chalmers (Hilton 1985), architect of the 1843 Dis-
ruption of the Presbyterian Church. These Free Church founders of Dunedin
(Edinburgh in Gaelic) likened themselves to the Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed to
New England in theMayflowertwo centuries earlier (Brooking 1984).^5
Thefive planned settlements of Wellington (1840),^6 New Plymouth (1841),
Nelson (1842), Otago/Dunedin (1848), and Canterbury/Christchurch (1850),
along with Auckland and its estuarine hinterland, defined what would
become in effect a federal system of government. Following what the
Crown understood as the Maˉori cession of sovereignty through the Treaty of
Waitangi and a brief period as a dependency of NSW, New Zealand’s venture
into quasi-federalism began in 1841 with a division‘by Royal Charter’of the
North, Middle, and Stewart Islands into the notional provinces of New Ulster,
New Munster, and New Leinster (Moon 2010, p. 66; Paterson 1966).^7 As a
colonial project, New Zealand was visualized from afar as New Ireland, a sea
passage from NSW.^8
In 1846, with the actualization of the provincial system, New Leinster was
discarded and Wellington joined New Munster. Auckland remained the seat of
colonial government. Two provincial superintendents were appointed. The
New Ulster Assembly never sat; and New Munster only once. When New
Zealand became a self-governing colony in 1853 (Moon 2010, p. 74), the
governance of New Zealand was restructured around six‘fishing village’settle-
ments (Palenski 2012, p. 17).^9 These provinces had by 1873 become ten
(Lenihan 2015, p. 24), with the additions of Southland, Marlborough, Hawkes
Bay, and,finally, Westland. Whereas the Tasman Sea connected Westland
with eastern Australia during the 1860s gold rush, the Southern Alps divided it
from its own provincial capital of Christchurch.
Between 1853 and 1876 New Zealand was, then, an effective Federation,
with hands-on government taking place at the provincial level, and a quasi-
federal colonial government in Auckland, functioning as the political conduit
with London. This was a sub-imperial administration which negotiated the
(^5) This may form an exceptional founder basis for‘a particularly virulent form of Puritanism’
widely depicted by‘fiction writers in the middle decades of the twentieth century’(Fairburn 2008,
p. 30). 6
The eight-hour working day was introduced in Wellington in October 1840, thanks to
advocacy on this issue by Samuel Parnell. Labour Day wasfirst celebratedfifty years later in
1890, and became a public holiday in 1899. 7
8 Middle Island officially became South Island only in 1907.
The names New Britain and New Ireland were already gazetted as islands in Melanesia by
British navigators William Dampier in 1700, and Philip Carteret in 1767 (Encyclopaedia Britannica;
Old Maps Online; 1826 Map, http://www.oldmapsonline.org/map/rumsey/0096.049 (accessed
20 November 2015)). 9
Belich (1996, p. 188) reports that these were sometimes known as the‘six colonies of New
Zealand’.
Australia and New Zealand