Futurity and Epic: William Golder's 'the New Zealand Survey' (1867) and the Formation of British New Zealand (Critical Essay‪)‬

It is a measure of the disjunction between location and knowledge in the experience of the early colonists that William Golder should have begun the composition of his epic poem of New Zealand, 'The New Zealand Survey', which is also an epic of science, 'while assisting in the survey of the Maungaroa Swamp ... after the toils of the day, as I lay in an old native shed, in the corner of the swamp, during the month of April, 1865.' (1) The moment of composition is the moment of settlement, marked out in the physical, technical, imaginative and intellectual work of bringing nature 'into line' with conceptions of human purpose and their social embodiments. Crucial to this process is the pre-human history of nature as Golder observes it in his day-to-day dealings with the Hutt Valley, clearly informed by his awareness of contemporary developments in geology. To argue that Golder's poetry is situated at the foundations of Pakeha culture is to affirm a powerful continuity between his thinking and the discourse of government and business at the beginning of the twenty-first century--with one key difference, that while the ultimate point of reference for this discourse now is the economy, for Golder it is Providence. There is a remarkable consistency in Golder's approach to conceptualising New Zealand. There are a number of poems, the first written on the Bengal Merchant shortly before the ship (one of the first four ships of the New Zealand Company's colonisation effort) arrived in Port Nicholson from Glasgow in 1840, which articulate a powerful conceptual framework which places New Zealand in a scheme of history linking knowledge, human effort, and Divine intention to provide a cognitive map of the future. (2) Poetry, for Golder, provides the medium through which the territory foreshadowed by this map can be described. At the same time it offers a material proof of the theory in its own qualitative achievement as the foundation for a new national literature; the future aesthetic achievement of the literature-to-be to exemplify, express and celebrate the civilised achievements of the nation-to-be. The gap can be readily described: Golder wrote 'The New Zealand Survey' from the 'pristine wilderness' of the swamp, which defines the present moment of composition and experience of the actual state of New Zealand, and towards the prospect of 'the future greatness and power of New Zealand as the second Great Britain of the world.' (3) Furthermore, he envisages a nation oriented towards the Pacific, not Europe, a value-added, manufacturing rather than a primary producer economy, one which is focused on the territories of the 'vast Pacific ocean': 'Standing on this point of view', he writes, 'see not only the naked wants of the Pacific Islanders, but also see the whole range of the western coast of America, far from other manufacturing districts, whose chief occupation is the raising of grain and agricultural pursuits, such Western American states would readily absorb a vast amount of manufactures of the textile class; and, on the other hand, Australia and all the islands lying between that and China, and even China itself,--all on each hand lying on the way direct, without the disadvantage of doubling stormy capes, all lying more natural to the future mart of New Zealand than to any other manufacturing country in the world. Thus the new Great Britain of the South may yet be able to share in the profits of commerce as inward flowing wealth like that of the old Great Britain of the north.' (4)