The Aotearoa History Show - Episode 7 | Votes, Depressions and Refrigerators
Summary
TLDRThis episode of the Altera History Show, hosted by Lee Madam and William Wright, dives into New Zealand's tumultuous colonial governance, the transition from provincial to central government led by Julius Vogel, and the economic rollercoaster that followed. It highlights Vogel's infrastructure boom and the subsequent long depression, touching on the societal impacts and the contentious debate over his financial decisions. The narrative then explores the revolutionary shift in New Zealand's political landscape, from the establishment of Māori electorates to the landmark achievement of women's suffrage in 1893, and the emergence of New Zealand's first political parties, culminating in a discussion on labor movements and the transformative effect of refrigerated shipping on the economy. The script encapsulates New Zealand's journey through economic despair to prosperity, political strife to reform, and the relentless pursuit of a more inclusive society.
Takeaways
- 😊 Vogel used borrowed money to fund infrastructure projects like roads and railways, lifting NZ's economy but later contributing to a depression
- 😟 The Long Depression of the 1870s caused widespread poverty and unemployment in NZ
- 🏭 Refrigerated shipping, pioneered by William Davidson, enabled large-scale meat and dairy exports from NZ
- 👪 Kate Sheppard and the suffragists campaigned for decades to win voting rights for NZ women in 1893
- 🗳 Property and race-based restrictions on voting rights were gradually relaxed over the 1800s
- ⚖️ Compulsory arbitration courts were set up in 1894 to resolve disputes between workers and employers
- ❌ The Red Feds adopted aggressive tactics to bypass arbitration but lost public support after the Great Strike
- 🎌 Anti-Chinese laws passed in the late 1800s blocked immigrants and their NZ-born descendants from voting
- 🐘 The Liberal Party held power from 1891-1912, passing social reforms but also racist anti-Chinese laws
- 🗳🏛 The NZ Labor Party formed in 1916 to pursue workers' rights through participation in electoral politics
Q & A
What were the two main sides in the debate over how New Zealand should be governed in its early colonial history?
-The two main sides were the provincialists, who thought each province should run itself, and the centralists, who thought there should be one big central government.
How did Julius Vogel help turn around New Zealand's economy in the 1860s?
-As Treasurer, Vogel borrowed millions of pounds to fund large infrastructure projects like roads, railways and telegraph lines. This government spending created jobs and bolstered the economy.
What caused the Long Depression in the 1870s and how did it impact settlers?
-An international banking crisis meant banks stopped lending money. Demand dropped and unemployment rose. Settlers faced grinding poverty and some even begged to leave NZ.
How did refrigerated shipping help revive NZ's economy in the 1880s?
-William Davidson built an effective refrigerated ship to export meat and dairy. This allowed farmers to access lucrative overseas markets and created many new jobs.
Why were voting rights initially restricted to men who owned or rented property?
-The justification was that property ownership gave voters a stake in NZ's future. It also prevented most Māori men voting, since Māori held land communally.
How did the women's suffrage movement convince politicians to grant women the vote?
-Suffrage campaigners like Kate Shepherd gathered signatures from 32,000 women demanding the vote - almost 1/4 of the adult female population. Politicians were forced to listen.
What was the Liberal Party's relationship with labor unions in the 1890s?
-Initially strong supporters, but unions grew angry as arbitration courts refused big wage rises. More radical unions like the 'Red Feds' emerged, alarming conservative NZers.
What lessons did the labour movement take from its defeat in the 1913 Great Strike?
-That most Kiwis rejected radical tactics like mass strikes. Instead labour leaders focused on winning power democratically by forming the Labour Party.
Why did the colonial government restrict Chinese migration and voting rights?
-Racist fears about growing Chinese presence. Rules blocked naturalization and voting rights for people of Chinese descent into the 1950s.
What was the big transformation taking place in NZ society alongside the political changes?
-Huge numbers of European migrants were arriving, desperately wanting land. This set up conflict with Māori over land rights.
Outlines
😎 The provincialists vs the centralists - how to govern New Zealand
Paragraph 1 discusses the debate between the provincialists, who wanted each province to govern itself, and the centralists, who wanted one central government. It introduces Julius Vogel, who shifted from being a provincialist to a centralist after realizing the country needed to borrow money for infrastructure, which required a unified central government. His policies drove economic growth but also debt that contributed to an economic depression in the late 1870s.
🚢 William Davidson invents the refrigerated shipping industry
Paragraph 2 covers how William Davidson created the first viable refrigerated shipping vessel to export meat and dairy. This transformed New Zealand's economy by enabling the export of meat, created jobs, and rescued the country from economic depression. Refrigerated exports are still critical to NZ's economy today.
👩🎓 Kate Sheppard leads the women's suffrage movement
Paragraph 3 discusses the movement to give women voting rights, led by Kate Sheppard of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. She argued women voters could support prohibitionist policies and provide a moral voice in politics. Māori women like Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia also campaigned for women's suffrage rights. In 1893, NZ became the first self-governing country to grant women voting rights.
👷 The rise and fall of the Liberal Party
Paragraph 4 covers the surge in popularity of the Liberal Party, which won elections for 21 years starting in 1891. Backed by unions and workers, they passed progressive social reforms but also anti-Chinese discriminatory laws. The party declined due to inflation and the growth of more radical labor unions that sparked violent clashes. This led to the formation of the modern Labour Party.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡suffragists
💡Liberal Party
💡economic boom and bust
💡voting rights
💡political instability
💡prohibition movement
💡refrigerated shipping
💡long depression
💡freezing works
💡sheep carcasses
Highlights
Vogel used borrowed money to fund infrastructure projects like roads, railways and telegraphs, boosting the economy but contributing to a worse crash later.
The Long Depression lasted over 10 years after an international banking crisis, causing unemployment and poverty in NZ.
Refrigerated shipping allowed large-scale meat and dairy exports, revolutionizing NZ's economy.
Voting rights were initially limited to property-owning men, largely excluding Māori.
Special Māori parliamentary seats were created, but still limited Māori power.
Women campaigned for suffrage rights using petitions, leading NZ to grant women the vote in 1893.
The Liberal Party held power for 21 years, passing social reforms but also anti-Chinese laws.
Compulsory arbitration courts were created to resolve disputes between workers and employers.
The Great Strike of 1913 was defeated, leading unions to focus more on elections than revolution.
The NZ Labor Party formed after the strike, starting a new political era.
Huge numbers of European colonists migrated to NZ, desperately wanting land.
Vogel started as a provincialist arguing for North and South islands to be separate, but switched to promote central government.
Giving Māori parliamentary seats in 1867 was political cover to limit Māori power.
Nearly half of convictions in early colonial NZ were for drunkenness, spurring calls for prohibition.
Chinese migrants faced racist laws like poll taxes and bans on citizenship until the 1950s.
Transcripts
okay so you're a Parker politician and
the late 18-hundreds
you've just tipped the balance of power
away from through net the fina way into
your hands
what are you do next what kind of
society do you live in how do you pay
for the roads and railways what happens
if there's a global economic crash and
of course do you let anyone other than
rich white guys make these decisions
chaotic oh so I'm Lee madam and
McLaughlin and I'm William right and
this is the Altera history show
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it's not easy setting up a new nation in
early on in our colonial history it was
a big fight among Parker over how New
Zealand should be governed there were
two sides the provincial ascend the
centralist the Preventionist thought
each province should run itself in the
centralist thought there should be one
big central government one of the
leading centrists was a guy called
Julius Vogel funnily enough Vogel
started his career as a hardcore
provincial astana Tago it even argued
the North and South Islands to become
different countries some South Island
has still won their to happen one of the
things which convinced Vogel to become a
centralist was money the New Zealand
Wars who left the government badly
indeed and banks would only lend money
to a strong central government in 1869
Vogel's essentialist smashed the
provincial ists he was made treasurer
and promised to borrow six million
pounds over ten years Vogel used that
money to launch what they called the
grand go-ahead policy building roads
bridges railways and telegraph lines
government spending bolstered a flagging
economy local factories started building
things like railway wagons on government
contracts unemployment fell average
wages rose it also helped that wall
prices were skyrocketing with the end of
the American Civil War
Keamy growing wall was no longer
undercut by cheap slave made cotton the
centralist had won the argument the new
railways and telegraph lines broke down
some of the barriers of distance
it made central government more workable
in 1876 the provincial governments were
officially abolished by this point the
government owed more than 18 million
pounds but Vogel wasn't worried the
economy was booming I'd be able to pay
back their money soon all the spending
was about to come back to bite us it was
the beginning of the long addition the
long depression is called long because
it lasted more than 10 years in 1878
there was an international credit crisis
it was a little bit like the 2008 global
financial crisis banks stopped lending
money demand for goods and services
dropped before the crash the New Zealand
government had directly employed a lot
of people through
work programs but now there was no money
to fund those programs so the work dried
up families got desperate women and
children worked long hours and sweet
shops for tiny wages people saw their
wedding rings in tools some mothers
sewed clothes from flour bags for their
kids in some kids even slipped in the
streets under old sacks some settlers
sent petitions to Australia in the
United States begin for help to leave
one of the petitions seed we the
undersigned being in every sense of the
word genuine working men having been
miserably betrayed by false
representations of New Zealand
immigration agents lecturers and printed
pamphlets are now facing the better
reality of parading the streets hungry
and ill shod with no prospect of a
better future the settlers were in shock
that come to New Zealand to escape
grinding poverty in the UK now it had
followed them here
Vogl got a lot of blame for this and
people were writing to the newspaper
saying he should be strung up by the
heels for his life okay so here's a
question was it good or bad that the
Vogel administration spent so much money
on infrastructure I mean on one hand
that spending lifted New Zealand out of
an economic slump but on the other hand
it contributed to a much worse economic
slump a few years later on the other
hand we still use a lot of that
infrastructure today it's contributed
billions upon billions of dollars to the
New Zealand economy but on the other
other other hand it helped accelerate
the destructions of the New Zealand's
natural environment but on the other
other other other William no stop stop
stop stop okay the good news at this
point in the story is that a historical
hero is on the horizon a savior of the
New Zealand economy a champion which
beats at you annoyingly when you leave
its door open the fridge people had
experimented transporting meat and dairy
overseas using refrigerated ships for a
long time but they were either too
expensive or too unreliable that is
until a meager landowner called William
Davidson gave it a try Davidson looked
at these failed experiments made some
improvements in
virtually concluded a whole ship into a
giant sailing refrigerator that's right
we invented a floating fridge
a freezing frigate an icy arc on the
15:53 1882 the Dunedin sit sailed from
Port charmers with a cargo of nearly
5,000 sheep carcasses 250 kings of
butter here pheasant turkey chicken in
two thousand two hundred and twenty six
sheep tons hmm sheep tongues it worked
perfectly the first voyage turned a
profit of four thousand seven hundred
pounds the meat export business
revolutionized New Zealand's economy
sheep farmers had a totally new income
stream it used to be that farmers with
too many sheep would literally drive
them off a cliff in unto the sea now
they could sell sheep to the meatworks
for money and those meatworks created
thousands of new jobs for unemployed
workers theory farm started to become
more common - which opened up another
new stream of exports and jobs
refrigeration single-handedly saved our
economy it's still really important
today we export about a hundred thousand
tons of chilled meat every year
plus another eight hundred thousand tons
of butter and cheese okay so
economically we've gone from boom to
bust and back to boom and it's gonna be
a bit of a theme in New Zealand's
economy on the political front there was
also a whole lot of instability New
Zealand's first election was an 1853 and
from the start voting rights were based
on two things one you have to be a man
because you know patriarchy - you have
to be a householder that first rules
pretty straightforward but the second
one gets a bit tricky a householder was
someone who either owned or rented a
place to live and that property had to
be worth something it couldn't just be a
random tent on a beach the justification
was that this rule ensured voters had a
stake in the future of New Zealand if
people owned or rented a home it
suggested they were putting down roots
they weren't just travelling workers or
sailors this rule also prevented
virtually all Maori mean from voting
that's because Maori did an only lam
privately
owned it communally as part of the Erie
your habbo this was at least partially
deliberate Maori outnumbered Europeans
and lots of voting districts in the
colonial government didn't want to give
those Maori too much political power
particularly given they were still
trying to strong-arm Maori into handing
over the land we'll be talking more
about that in the next episode the first
change to New Zealand's voting system
came when gold was discovered in New
Zealand and the late 1850s gold miners
weren't householders so they couldn't
vote but they still had to pay quite a
lot of taxes over in Australia - had
rioted over this injustice and the New
Zealand government was worried the same
thing might happen here so in 1860 they
granted voting rights to any man with a
prospecting or business licence but they
created a new problem most of the gold
mining was happening in the South
Ireland which means the South now had a
lot more votes and a lot more political
power people in the North Island weren't
happy about that so in 1867 Parliament
set up for special Maori electorates 3
in the north and one in the South they
granted all Maori men the right to vote
for in peace and those electorates the
new muddy fix dealt with that
north-south power imbalance plus there
was one more reason to give multi voting
rights back in Britain the authorities
were a bit unhappy with the colonial
governments confiscation of Maori land
and its plans to obtain more land
through legislation giving martí seats
in parliament was kind of political
cover because look you know we can't be
oppressing the natives we've given them
seats in parliament but they're only
weak so far based on the population
numbers they should have been 15 Maori
MPs limiting Maori to four seats was a
deliberate move to restrict their power
so in 1889 that property restrictions
were completely abolished pretty much
all men could vote Maori and pocky are
the rich and the poor but in the minds
of a lot of Kiwis this created another
kind of problem a lot of the men who
could now vote were very heavy drinkers
alcohol was a big problem in colonial
New Zealand nearly half of all convert
actions between 1855 and 1870 were for
drunkenness heavy drinking seems to go
hand in hand with a frontier society you
see very similar concerns in Australia
and the United States around the same
time lots of women in a fairly big chunk
of me wanted alcohol completely bent in
this political alliance helped in New
Zealand become the first country in the
world where women could vote one of the
leaders of the alcohol prohibition
movement was Kate Shepard the New
Zealand head of the women's Christian
Temperance Union Temperance is just an
old-timey word meaning no drinking
Kate chip had argued that if women got
the vote they could help elect
prohibitionists MPs who could then pass
laws restricting the sale of alcohol and
alcohol was just part of it
Shepherd and their fellow suffragists
argued that woman could be a voice for
morality in parliament cleansing the
corruption which many believed had
infected New Zealand politics meanwhile
Maori women like me tt-time Monica had
lobbied for women to vote and stand in
Te Kotahitanga a national pan tribal
Maori parliament which had sprung up in
the wake of the New Zealand Wars people
like meat eater time Monica hear argued
that why he near Modi should also have
voting rights in the New Zealand
Parliament given they owned land just
like Maori men she in other way he near
joined forces with the peracare
suffragists but the ante suffragists
argued giving women the vote was
dangerous like here's a typical
anti-surface cartoon we've got a man in
a dress he's looking all sad dinners
burning the cat's got unto the milk jug
the kids are fighting the whole fabric
of societies falling to pieces the nd
suffragists argued women didn't even
want the vote it was just a radical
fringe it was stirring up trouble but
that was an argument Kate Shepherd knew
how to win she and her fellow activists
gathered signatures from women all
around the country demanding the vote in
1891 the first petition had 9,000
signatures there more than doubled the
next year and finally in 1893 they
collected 32,000 signatures almost a
quarter of the adult pakkir women living
in New Zealand signed it the male
politician
were forced to listen on September the
19th 1893 New Zealand became the first a
self-governing country in the world
where women could vote it's one of the
greatest moments of our history a moment
where we genuinely live the world but we
still had a big chunk of the population
who were blocked from voting Chinese New
Zealanders the Gold Rush has brought a
lot of Chinese miners to New Zealand and
the colonial government was not at all
happy about that
all through the late 1800s politicians
passed racist laws aimed at stopping
more Chinese people from coming to New
Zealand
there were poll taxes and reading tests
and rules blocking people of Chinese
descent from getting pensions and just
keep in mind these laws didn't just
affect Chinese migrants they often
affected Chinese New Zealanders whose
families had lived in this country for
multiple generations rules which blocked
people of Chinese descent being
naturalized as New Zealand citizens
stayed in force until the 1950s there
was only then that most Chinese Kiwis
got the right to vote
opening up voting to more people in the
late 18-hundreds wheat hand in hand with
the rise of New Zealand's first
organized political party the Liberal
Party the Liberal Party formed under the
leadership of a guy called Richard Sidon
or as he was better known King dick not
a joke that was his actual real nick
name sidan was a hardcore populist and
the Liberals were heavily supported by
unionized workers unions had seen a big
boost during the long depression as they
fought for better working conditions and
pay the support of unions helped the
Liberal Party win elections all the way
from 1891 to 1912 21 years they were the
longest serving government in New
Zealand history the Liberals passed laws
for shorter working hours in old-age
pensions they cracked down on child
labour reform tax laws and expanded
local industry but also some of them
were hardcore racists
was the Liberals who passed a lot of
those nasty anti Chinese laws the
Liberals goal was to support work
but discourage class conflict they were
particularly keen to avoid huge strikes
which were crippling entire industries
in the UK and USA leading to violent
government crackdowns so in 1894 the
Liberals created compulsory arbitration
courts to handle disputes between
employers and workers but in the early
nineteen hundred's
those courts refused to raise wages too
much inflation workers pays a stop
keeping pace with the rising costs of
food in housing this make those workers
pretty angry so they started to join a
more aggressive organisation than you
Zealand Federation of Labor the red
fence the red feeds refused to accept
the rulings of the arbitration courts
instead they got their members to strike
illegally hoping to force employers to
meet their demands a lot of red fed
leaders were full-on revolutionaries
they wanted the labor unions to seize
power from the capitalists oppressors
and finally give true freedom to the
working man but for most New Zealand
voters the revolutionary rhetoric of the
red feeds was a step too far by 1912
some voters had abandoned the Liberals
in the Reform Party came to power reform
was a conservative anti-union party
which had crystallized around a farmer
turned politician called William se
Macy's administration cracked down on
the red feeds in the red feeds responded
by launching the biggest strike New
Zealand had ever seen the great strike
of 1913 15,000 men walked off the job
the ports of New Zealand's largest city
shut down trade ground to a halt mines
closed all over the country violence
fights broke out between special
constables and angry strikers but the
read feeds didn't have the money or the
political support to keep the strike
going and by the end of 1913 that
petered out this was a massive defeat
for the labour movement but it taught
them an important lesson most New
Zealanders were put off by the hardcore
tactics and rhetoric of the red feeds
they thought workers should win rights
through elections and negotiation not
through violence or revolution the
leaders of the early labor movement took
the
listen on board from now on that focus
on winning power through politics three
years out of the great strike of 1913
those leaders formed the New Zealand
Labor Party and began a new era of New
Zealand politics so while all this
wrangling was going on around voting and
economics and politics
there was another huge shift taking
place all Tarawa was being transformed
huge numbers of Europeans were migrating
to the new colony of New Zealand and
there was one thing all those colonists
desperately wanted led next episode
we'll be talking about those colonists
and how they got hold of their land
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thanks for joining us on the altered or
history show produced by R&Z and made
possible by the Aaron seared New Zeeland
only a digital Innovation Fund
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