Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies, 1833–1880 [1st ed.] 978-3-319-95908-5, 978-3-319-95909-2

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii
Introduction: Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 1-34
‘The Gift of Education’: Emancipation and Government Education in the West Indies, Britain and Beyond (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 35-72
Civilising Spaces: Government, Missionaries and Land in Education in Western Australia (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 73-100
‘Forgotten and Neglected’: Settlers, Government and Africans’ Education in Natal (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 101-129
A Useful Education: Humanitarianism, Settler Colonialism and Industrial Schools in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 131-167
Researching Education: Florence Nightingale, British Imperialism and Colonial Schools (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 169-198
Education and Obligation: Compulsory Schooling, Childhood and the Family (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 199-233
Conclusion: The ‘Chief Blessing of Civilisation, the Benefit of Education’ (Rebecca Swartz)....Pages 235-244
Back Matter ....Pages 245-253

Citation preview

Education and Empire Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies, 1833–1880 Rebecca Swartz

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series Series Editors Richard Drayton Department of History King’s College London London, UK Saul Dubow Magdalene College University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection of studies on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures which emerged from colonialism. It includes both transnational, comparative and connective studies, and studies which address where particular regions or nations participate in global phenomena. While in the past the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, in its current incarnation there is no imperial system, period of human history or part of the world which lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with a strong thematic focus. The series includes work on politics, economics, culture, literature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most exciting new scholarship on world history with an imperial theme. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/13937

Rebecca Swartz

Education and Empire Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies, 1833–1880

Rebecca Swartz Department of History Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch, South Africa

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ISBN 978-3-319-95908-5    ISBN 978-3-319-95909-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950521 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: ‘School at Ekukanyeni’ from Mackenzie, Anne, Seeing and Hearing (Second series,) or, Three years’ experience in Natal. By A. M. (1860) This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my family

Acknowledgements

I owe great debt to a number of people across different institutions and countries. This book began its life when I started my PhD in London, under the supervision of Zoë Laidlaw. Zoë engaged me in challenging dialogue throughout this project. Her perspectives and scholarship have been critical guides in shaping my work. My interest in looking at Australia and South Africa was sparked by the course ‘Southern Crossings’, run by Nigel Worden at the University of Cape Town (UCT) with Kirsten McKenzie at the University of Sydney in 2010. Nigel encouraged me to apply for funding to pursue a PhD.  I am grateful for his support and mentorship throughout the process. My external examiners both provided insightful comments on the dissertation that have shaped my approach to the book. My thanks to the archivists and librarians in London, Oxford, Perth, Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg. During my time in Western Australia, I stayed with Elaine Newton and Phil Hutton in Fremantle. I cannot thank Rachel Mazower enough for putting us in touch. Laura Phillips and her Pink House housemates were fantastic hosts in Johannesburg, and Luke Spiropolous pointed me towards the Anglican Church collection in the Cullen Library when my plans to visit the archives in Pretoria were hindered by a burst pipe in the archives. Thank you Megan Grace for all of the love, food and excellent book recommendations when we were staying in London. Peter Kallaway has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project and has been extremely generous with his knowledge of the field. I am very vii

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grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him and draw on his encyclopaedic understanding of education history in South Africa. Moragh Paxton of the Centre for Higher Education and Development at UCT read and provided comments on a number of the chapters presented here. Thanks to the participants in the Comparative Colonial Education workshop, held at UCT in 2016, for their support and enthusiasm about the project. My thanks also to the convenors and participants in the postgraduate writing workshop at UCT in 2017. My thanks to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, University of London Travel Research fund, the Department of Historical Studies at UCT, and the African Humanities Program for their generous funding which allowed me to complete this project. My friends have put up with many absences and strange distractions with good humour. Sophy Kohler read and commented on a number of these chapters. Her calm support has been invaluable during this process. Other friends and colleagues have provided much needed breaks from the work, shoulders to cry on and sources of amusement. Thank you Nabeelah, Stacy, Asmaa, Laura, Kate, Tim, Maya, Sarah-Jane, Michael, Tammy, Debbie, Chloe, Mariya, Tempest and Chris. During my PhD, Lara Atkin and Hannah Young, who co-convened the Colonial/Post-Colonial New Researchers’ Workshop with me, were hugely supportive of the project and were both influential in my thinking. Thank you to colleagues at Stellenbosch University, particularly Sandra Swart, who has supported me during this fellowship year, when I was able to complete the project. Duane Jethro and Naomi Roux convened a book-writing workshop at UCT that helped me approach this project with a sense of humour and community. My family have been encouraging and supportive of me throughout the process of conceptualising and writing this book. They have been there in the joyful moments when the writing was flowing, and in the difficult ones—where it seemed like I would never finish. My stepmother, Louise, provided a steady voice of reason. My sister, Alison, was completely unfaltering in her faith in me. Alice, I am so lucky to have you in my corner. My father, Leslie, read and commented on the whole book, told me when enough was enough, and reminded me to be practical about it. My mother, Sally, who happened to be writing her own book at the same time as me, read and engaged deeply with my ideas, pushing me into new places. I am so grateful that we could go through this process together, giving each other the support and distractions that we so

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desperately needed. My partner, Gordon, has watched this process unfold from start to finish with his characteristic mix of selflessness, humour and cynicism. Thank you for everything, my love. Some of the material in this book has been used in other publications, although it appears here in significantly altered form. Material used in Chaps. 2 and 4 has appeared in ‘Industrial Education in Natal: The British Imperial Context, 1830–1860’ in Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a Comparative Perspective, ed. by Peter Kallaway and Rebecca Swartz (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 53–80; material relating to Annesfield school has been discussed in ‘Civilisation and Colonial Education: Natal and Western Australia in Comparative Perspective’, History of Education, 47:3 (2018), 368–383 and ‘Educating Emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–1865’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18:2 (2017), n.p. The case of St Helenian children in Natal, discussed in Chap. 7, appeared in ‘“Britishness”, Colonial Governance and Education: St Helenian Children in Colonial Natal in the 1870s’ (with Johan Wassermann), Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 44:6 (2016), 881–899.

Contents

1 Introduction: Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies  1 2 ‘The Gift of Education’: Emancipation and Government Education in the West Indies, Britain and Beyond 35 3 Civilising Spaces: Government, Missionaries and Land in Education in Western Australia 73 4 ‘Forgotten and Neglected’: Settlers, Government and Africans’ Education in Natal101 5 A Useful Education: Humanitarianism, Settler Colonialism and Industrial Schools in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa131 6 Researching Education: Florence Nightingale, British Imperialism and Colonial Schools169

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7 Education and Obligation: Compulsory Schooling, Childhood and the Family199 8 Conclusion: The ‘Chief Blessing of Civilisation, the Benefit of Education’235 Index245

Abbreviations

APS BL CL CMS CO CSO CSR GL KAB PAR RHL SLWA SOAS SPG SROWA TNA WAGG WAPD WMMS

Aborigines’ Protection Society British Library, Manuscripts and archives collection Cullen Library, Witwatersrand University Church Missionary Society Colonial Office Records at The National Archives at Kew Colonial Secretary’s Office Colonial Secretary’s Office, Letters Received, Western Australia Grey Library, New Zealand Cape Archives Repository Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository Rhodes House Library, Oxford State Library, Western Australia School of Oriental and African Studies Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts State Records Office of Western Australia The National Archives at Kew Western Australian Government Gazette Western Australian Parliamentary Debates Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies

The Aborigines’ Protection Society, a metropolitan based humanitarian organisation, which grew out of the Anti-Slavery Society, published its first annual report in May 1838. The report, outlining the history and present activities of the Society and its members, reflected on the gifts of civilisation that should be given to colonised people in the British Empire. Education was central to their vision. ‘The capacity for intellectual, moral, and social improvement in the coloured races cannot be denied’, the report stated. However, they indicated that this capacity needed to be cultivated: ‘with fair means of culture [Aboriginal people] can attain a rank of equality with the other races’.1 This belief spoke of a universal human capacity for change, and ultimately, for civilisation. Arising out of a context of intense humanitarian concern for the impact of colonisation on Indigenous people, the Society believed that education could help to bring the races into peaceful contact with one another. By the 1880s, the close of the period under study here, this belief was increasingly challenged as ideas about race and education became more fixed. The introduction of western education, although only affecting a minority of children directly, had a significant impact on the lives of Indigenous children, families and communities in the British settler colonies. Education was pivotal to the construction of racial difference in the colonies of settlement. Histories of colonial education open up the tensions between humanitarian imperatives of colonial governments, © The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_1

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missionaries and some settlers, on the one hand, and the need for the creation, management or maintenance of a labour force, on the other. Schools were important sites of contact and exchange between different groups of people, and their ideologies. Within classrooms, on playgrounds and in boarding houses, missionaries, local government officials, Indigenous children and their families connected through the politics of children’s education. At schools, and in discussions of education schemes, imperial and local government policies, mission imperatives and Indigenous knowledge systems came into contact and often, conflict. If the ‘civilising mission’ was about the management of difference, then schools and education formed a central part of this process. I argue that histories of colonial education are central to understanding attitudes about difference, whether of class, race, gender or age. Between 1833 and 1880, there were remarkable changes in thinking about education in Britain and the empire. Education was increasingly seen as a government responsibility. At the same time, children’s needs came to be seen as different to those of their parents, and childhood was approached as a time to make interventions into Indigenous people’s lives. This period also saw shifts in thinking about race, from a predominantly cultural to a biological understanding of difference. Members of the public, researchers, missionaries and governments discussed the function of education, considering whether it could be used to further humanitarian or settler colonial aims. Underlying these questions were anxieties regarding the status of Indigenous people in newly colonised territories: the successful education of their children could show their potential for equality. If too successful, this could result in significant challenges to colonialism. Between emancipation and the 1880s, education was increasingly seen as something to be tailored to the needs and capacities of different races. As colonial expansion hastened in the British colonies in the 1830s and 1840s, settlers were increasingly vocal regarding their rights to land and labour. At the same time, humanitarians based in Britain and the colonies called for increased attention to be paid to Indigenous children’s education. In this context, those providing education were faced with a number of challenges. They debated whether education should be a government priority, or whether it should be left in the hands of capable missionaries. Given that government involvement in education was only beginning to take off in the metropolitan context, there were significant concerns about whether government should control schools, the appointment of teachers, the management of curricula or even if it should be involved in

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education at all. The imperial government’s responsibilities were also questioned as local colonial officials stressed the importance of relying on those with local knowledge in the creation of ‘native’ policy. As the century progressed, and settlers gained more power in the colonies, the need to assert their status as the rightful occupants of the land, and to govern ‘their’ Indigenous populations became more pressing. By the end of the period under study, settlers’ views on race and education were increasingly dominant. The imperial government, however, still wanted to appear to be providing adequate protection to Indigenous people in the settler colonies. I argue that to fully understand local educational experiences, we must pursue a comparative and connected approach that highlights the connections and divergences between policy, practice and educational thinking, in different parts of the empire. Colonial education systems and practices were shaped by a number of competing and cooperative discourses. These ranged from the intimately local: experiences of individual pupils and teachers at schools; to broader imperial discourses about race and education. In describing education, governments and missionaries needed to be explicit about what ideal colonial citizens and subjects should look like. I address these questions using material drawn from two primary sites: Natal, South Africa, and Western Australia. These colonies have been seen as more associated with rampant settler colonialism than humanitarianism. However, I show that these ideologies, while seemingly contradictory, actually informed one another. The development of education in these colonies was closely connected to the use of Indigenous people as labourers. I situate the cases of Natal and Western Australia in the context of broader educational change in the British Empire. I do so by referring to the relationship between race, class, education and labour in the Caribbean  immediately after emancipation, metropolitan Britain in the 1830s and the 1870s, and New Zealand and the Cape in the mid-­ nineteenth century.

Education and Colonialism Historians of education have argued that education is never ‘neutral or benign’: as a political project, there is always an agenda in education provision.2 Tracing shifting ideas about education, from government, missionaries, settlers, researchers and Indigenous people shows that education systems, schools, teaching and curricula were deployed in service

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of vastly different aims. Even when missionaries believed that they were providing education for the benefit of Indigenous people, in vernacular languages and within local communities, they were still driven by some ideological principle—often, the desire to convert the ‘heathen’. Similarly, governments that began to speak about the necessity for compulsory education in the middle decades of the nineteenth century were driven by new ideas about childhood. All interventions in education, therefore, need to be seen as a reflection of the social and ideological mores of particular contexts and moments in time. Government, missionaries and settlers deployed competing definitions of education that were related to ideas about race, science, religion, labour and citizenship. Within these groups, and even within individual mission societies, there were differences of opinion regarding what education was, and what it should do for Indigenous children. Thus, the category of ‘education’ was itself subject to debate and discussion—debate that is reflected in the historiography on colonial education as well. While histories of education have often focused on formal schooling, taking place within specialised institutions,3 education in colonial contexts was far broader in its aims. Education involved transforming relationships to land and labour, and shifting religious and ideological positions of children, families and communities in varied social contexts. Education took place within and outside of schools. A significant focus in this book is the relationship between education and labour. Some education policies and practices in colonial contexts have been overlooked in the literature because these were labelled as labour regimes. For example, Native Protector Charles Symmons wrote about the employment of Aboriginal children in Western Australia in the 1840s, arguing that their labour was much desired by Perth residents. It was his view that their training as labourers would ensure their ‘moral conduct’ in future.4 This was as much about educating children and youth into new patterns of behaviour as it was about creating a new labour force. In other parts of the empire, including the Cape, New Zealand, Natal and the Caribbean, industrial education centralised labour as part of young people’s education. Moreover, as I indicate in Chap. 2, this kind of thinking about the civilising potential of labour was as prevalent amongst the Irish poor and children in London’s slums as it was in the colonies. While the South African experience has been explored in relation to the exploitation of labour, this approach is less common in the Australian case, where the focus has more often been on the dispossession of Indigenous land.5 Yet,

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before the introduction of convict labour in 1850, Aboriginal people in Western Australia, a primary site of this study, were looked to as a labour force. I therefore place labour’s relationship to education at the centre of this discussion, showing how the management of labour in relation to education was a central facet of settler colonial expansion in both Natal and Western Australia. Education also included familial, social and cultural arrangements and interactions for adults and children. The conviction that Indigenous people should be clothed, use their bodies, and express intimacy in particular ways was always a subject of interest for colonial educators. Taking a broad view of education shows how education and colonialism as concepts were often inseparable. As Sanjay Seth argues, ‘[F]rom the early decades of the nineteenth century colonialism itself came to be seen as an essentially pedagogic enterprise’.6 However, this was not always recognised by colonisers: as Cohn points out, the British in India understood education as ‘taking place in institutions, meaning buildings with physically divided spaces marking off one class of students from another, as well as teachers from students’.7 Thus, in some cases, colonisers failed to recognise when education was already taking place. While there may have been limited apparatus for the provision of education in the colonies in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, there remained a set of guiding principles, both for how colonisation should take place, and for how it should transform Indigenous people, which underpinned colonial expansion in these settler colonies. If we are to see colonialism as a pedagogic process in which Indigenous people were taught new ways of seeing and being, then we must take seriously the broader contexts in which education took place. Throughout this book, I point out how concepts of education changed over time, and eluded narrow definitions. I therefore examine both formal education in specialised institutions and the broader context of colonial education. Schools were sites for colonial encounters—between missionaries, Indigenous adults and children, researchers and the colonial state. For this reason, it has been important for me to think about the intimate nature of education. Education could be intensely disruptive to children’s lives, and influence relationships between parents, children, family and community. As Ann Laura Stoler argues, schools and education were part of the ‘tense and tender ties’ of colonialism: ‘Such colonial institutions, designed to shape young bodies and minds, were central to imperial policies and their self-fashioned rationalities. Colonial states had an abiding interest in a

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sentimental education, in the rearing of the young and affective politics’.8 Education was as much about the intimate affective ties between adults and children, as it was broader ideas about amalgamation, labour, colour and power that underlined the imperial project. Colonial education could also fundamentally alter the worldview of missionaries and teachers, as I show regarding Bishop John William Colenso in Natal, whose case I discuss in Chap. 5. Thus, in the colonial context, education occurred on both sides of, and between, colonial divides.

Policy and Practice Although education was situated at the interface between intimate, local and personal relationships, and far broader imperial ideas and projects, educational policy was often overlooked by the Colonial Office. British colonial policy on Indigenous children’s education was not addressed in a coherent way in the nineteenth century. While colonial officials agreed that education could ‘civilise’ children in the face of widespread settler land dispossession, education provision was generally directed by non-­ governmental actors. As Clive Whitehead’s significant contributions in this field have shown, there was never a complete set of policies laid out for education systems throughout the British Empire.9 Apart from a few geographically limited interventions during the first half of the nineteenth century, including the West Indies, India, Ireland and the Cape, the Colonial Office did not seek broad control of Indigenous education policy or practices. This perceived lack of interest can only be understood in relation to changing ideas about governance, humanitarian interventions and education in both metropole and colony. Education policies and practices were not simply transported from England to the colonies, although the metropolitan context was often used as a point of comparison with the colonies. Government involvement in English children’s education became more common during the course of the nineteenth century, simultaneous to developments in other parts of the empire. For example, government grants to education in England were extended at the same time as a large grant was made to education in the West Indies, following the emancipation of slaves in 1834. This involvement provoked debate: English religious and voluntary societies were concerned about what this would mean for the independence of schools and their curricula. There were similar concerns in colonial contexts: mission organisations, the primary providers of education in the

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period under study, were suspicious of government involvement in ­education, particularly when this involvement was coupled with government influence on curricula.10 There was no ‘home’ model on how an education system should best be implemented in the colonies, beyond the increased cooperation between religious or voluntary societies and the state that was emerging in the 1830s. In spite of the lack of unified imperial policy on education in the colonies, there were continuities in educational thinking in different colonial contexts.11 The comparative and connected approach used in this book shows that ideas regarding the relationship between race, class, labour and education were as salient in Britain as in Western Australia or Natal. While policies rarely travelled unchanged between colonies, thinking about education certainly crossed colonial boundaries. Sometimes, this was carried through specific doctrines taught by missionaries from the same society in different parts of the world. At other times, colonial officials approached education by drawing on contemporary experience from elsewhere. For example, as Chap. 5 shows, Sir George Grey’s approach to industrial schooling was shaped by his experiences in Western Australia and New Zealand, which he then applied at the Cape. Across the settler colonies, there were common debates about the fate of Indigenous people in the face of settler violence and dispossession. Although schooling might look quite different in these colonies, there were underlying continuities in conceptions of education that informed provision in diverse regions of the empire. Colonial officials, missionaries, teachers and researchers drew on global debates and ideas about education, while adapting them according to the particular circumstances of individual colonies. As recent research on humanitarian colonial governance has shown, local colonial governments were interested in providing ‘protection’, ‘care’ and ‘civilisation’, including the education of children, even in the face of settler colonial expansion.12 However, these imperatives needed to be balanced with providing for growing settler populations. The success of government involvement in education was often short-lived, as funding could depend on personnel stationed in particular colonies, or on the willingness of the Colonial Office to provide funding for broad educational schemes. Following the pioneering work on humanitarian colonial governance by Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, I have examined the ‘ambivalent humanitarianism’ of local government interventions in education. Lester and Dussart argue that ‘humanitarian governmentality is more ambivalent, more multivalent and more personally inflected’ than simple

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explanations allow.13 The authors point out that recent studies of mission activity have equated humanitarianism with missionaries, overlooking the ways in which members of colonial governments, including those associated with violent settler dispossession, might also hold humanitarian beliefs.14 Because of the literal and metaphoric violence of colonial dispossession by settlers at the time, and the turn towards theorising settler colonialism as a specific form of colonial encounter,15 the ways in which members of imperial and colonial governments engaged with humanitarian thinking and programmes have been neglected by historians. Colonial governments used the rhetoric of civilisation and Christian conversion to justify interventions in Indigenous education. To recognise certain humanitarian projects and thinkers does not detract from the immense violence and continued inequality wrought by colonialism. Rather, it allows us to think about some of the ambiguities present in humanitarian projects, where ‘care’ and ‘control’ always informed one another. Education was one such ‘humanitarian’ project. In the 1830s and 1840s, education was seen as the responsibility of a benevolent colonial government, eager to bring newly colonised subjects into their rightful place as children in the Christian family of the British Empire. However, as colonial governments were, in different capacities, responsible for the welfare and protection of both settlers and Indigenous peoples, the needs of settler populations often trumped those of Indigenous colonised subjects. Thus, while education in the colonies might have started as a way to enlighten, protect and reform, it later took on a far more rigid conception of racial difference, which assigned different kinds of children to different schools, based on perceived inherent intellectual differences between groups. Indigenous children were increasingly trained in industrial pursuits, something that was seen as particularly suited to their race. Education was thus used to serve both humanitarian and settler colonial aims. There were multiple ways that government, missionaries and colonial lobbyists drew on the idea of humanitarianism to give meaning and power to their interventions. It is important to keep in mind that while the concept of education might have been discursively aligned with humanitarianism, humanitarianism ‘was always an engagement with the politics of empire and nation’.16 Or, as Michael Barnett puts it, ‘Humanitarianism is a creature of the world it aspires to civilize’.17 Therefore, as Alan Lester and Fae Dussart argue, ‘humanitarianism’ must be thought of as a historical concept, encompassing ‘specific and dynamic geographies’ and ‘different registers, including interpenetration with projects of governmentality’.18

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Humanitarianism and settler colonialism were not distinct ideologies, belonging exclusively to government, missionaries or settlers. What these concepts and ideas came to mean was rooted in particular local, national and imperial contexts. While recognising the agency of colonial government officials in educational thinking and policymaking, it is important to acknowledge that humanitarianism in the period I examine here was deeply bound to the Evangelical revival at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Not only were many of the colonial officials involved in education schemes and the anti-slavery cause Evangelicals, but missionaries were the primary education providers in the colonies. Evangelical doctrine emphasised a personal relationship with God, one that stressed ‘spiritual experience over doctrinal knowledge, and played down denominational distinctions’.19 Evangelicalism, while espousing the equality of all people, remained compatible with settler colonialism as ‘free labour freely entered into…was the only path to personal redemption and salvation’.20 Missionaries often had different goals to government, particularly regarding the religious conversion of Indigenous adults and children. Local governments relied on missionaries to provide education, and on the mission societies’ own grants to subsidise limited government funding for schools. Missionaries needed government support not only to access land and education infrastructure, but also to ward off settler hostilities regarding their role in the colonies.21 Both missionaries and colonial governments were concerned to construct education as beneficial to Indigenous as well as settler communities. Of course, mission work did not occur in a vacuum. Missionaries were deeply affected not only by the constraints of limited colonial government funding, but also by the broader sectarian beliefs of their home societies and British imperial thinking. As Esme Cleall argues, missionary responses to changing racial ideas during the nineteenth century were ‘inconsistent, atomised and ultimately failed to construct a coherent rebuttal to harsher racial theorising’.22 Thus, a simplified reading of missionaries as the only humanitarians in colonial contexts masks their own ambivalences regarding their roles. They might have identified a common humanity with Indigenous people in the colonies, while simultaneously believing in the superiority of British religion and culture. Over the past twenty years, historians of missions and empire have unpacked the many ways in which the ‘civilising mission’ worked to mould and remould Indigenous subjectivities. In the South African context, and

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more broadly, the influential research of John and Jean Comaroff on ­missionary activity amongst Tswana converts set the tone for taking seriously the cultural implications of mission work.23 However, many of these studies have overlooked the centrality of schooling and education in histories of mission activity. A primary role of missionaries in the British colonies was to act as educators—to teach children to read and write, to train them as labourers and convert them into future Christian citizens. There is a good reason for why the earlier literatures have overlooked education: for missionaries at the time, education was not conceptualised as a distinct part of their agenda. Rather, ‘formal’ education—reading, writing, arithmetic—was just one part of a far broader education which included religious conversion, hygiene, changing relationships to land and reforming working habits. Their goal was not only to educate children in schools, but to re-educate communities: to change intimate and sexual relationships and parental bonds and to bring new understandings to intergenerational relationships. For this reason, historians have often situated their studies of civilising missions in this broader context.24 I argue that a focus on education highlights synergies between ideas about race, childhood and labour in metropole and colony, and also reveals specific moments in which formal education and informal education projects aligned. Researchers, settlers and the broad colonial public, too, were interested in what children’s progress in schools said about the success of the civilising mission, and later in the century, about how schools could be used to understand (or indeed to construct) differences in abilities between races. Schools became the sites through which the aptitudes—including the bodily and intellectual capacities—of individuals could be measured. As one of the first points of encounter between Indigenous people and colonisers, these were important sites to both produce and understand newly colonised subjects. The utility of schools as ‘microgeographies’ in which to research Indigenous people and quantify difference was recognised by missionaries, researchers and, less so, by colonial governments.25 This, when coupled with beliefs about children’s greater capacity for civilisation, meant that schemes involving schools as sites of civilisation were, through much of the nineteenth century, attended to with great optimism. It is worth keeping in mind these broad ideological contexts in which schools and education schemes were located, while also paying attention to the connections and chasms between policy and practice. Taking note of the different groups who were interested in education indicates that, rather than education simply being neglected in the nineteenth

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century, there were moments where it was paid a great deal of attention. Uncovering why there were not more comprehensive schemes for education requires attentiveness to different actors’ motivations for their involvement, or lack thereof, in education.

Adults and Children in Colonial Education Nineteenth-century colonial government and missionary interventions in Indigenous people’s lives often focused on the transformation of children from ‘savage’ to ‘civilised’, ‘lazy’ to ‘industrious’, and  ‘heathen’ to ‘Christian’. Focusing on education requires attentiveness to life stage or age as an important marker of experience. As recent histories of childhood have shown, humanitarian interventions in the colonies often focused on the young, as they were believed to be more easily civilisable. The idea that children’s needs might be different to those of their parents emerged during the nineteenth century, and educational endeavours relied upon this concept to justify interventions in children’s lives.26 The reproduction of society rested with children: their enculturation as well as reproductive capabilities as they moved into adulthood were central to their education, both within Indigenous communities and in mission and government schools.27 Although various missionaries sought relationships with adult Indigenous peoples as exemplary civilised figures, children’s education was often approached with particular optimism about their potential for change. They could be taught to read and write more easily, to sing and play musical instruments and, indeed, to worship a new God. More importantly, in some cases, they could be converted from ‘wild heathens’ into docile labourers, ready and willing to work for Europeans. Their successful education, most effective in their earliest years, could transform their emotional and psychic worlds, their relationships to land and labour and their religious ties. If children were sent (or taken) to schools, removed from the influence of their families, and exposed to ‘civilisation’, whether Christianity, literacy, or practical training, it was possible for them to avoid contamination from their environment. But who counted as a child and who as an adult? Although historians have turned to legal definitions of children—including in labour legislation, in Masters and Servants Acts, for example28—to distinguish childhood and adulthood as distinct phases of life, in reality, there were always multiple definitions of who counted as adults and children, which were influenced by ideas about race, class and gender in particular. There was an

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underlying tension in plans to educate Indigenous children in colonial contexts, which heightened as the century progressed. Adult Indigenous people were often understood as perpetual children. Just as children needed to be guided through the stages of development leading them from savagery to civilisation, so too did Indigenous people, with their ‘total absence of forethought, self-denial and self-government’.29 Catherine Hall argues that colonisers saw themselves as ‘parents [who] had to guide their colonised children, raise up their dependents in the hope that one day they would walk alone’.30 However, from the 1850s onwards, there was a growing belief that there was something ‘innate’ about race, that could not be unlearnt or overcome. As race was connected with ideas of biological difference, the opportunity for Indigenous people to enter ‘white’ society was circumscribed. Indigenous adults’ perceived inability to change contradicted the conception of Indigenous childhoods as particularly malleable and susceptible to civilisation. Arguments against the provision of education were often contradictory: some settlers and colonial officials argued that Indigenous adults did not have the capacity to use education. However, others argued that education would be essentially emancipatory for Indigenous people, and would lead them to question the injustices of colonial contexts.31 As I argue in Chap. 7, life stage and its relationship to race was contested in the context of compulsory education legislation. While some officials believed that children should remain with their families, others argued that Indigenous adults’ perceived childishness justified attempts to intervene in the life of the family. Throughout this book, I pay attention to discussions about the relationship between age and educability, showing how these concepts were related to shifting ideas about race.

Writing Connected and Comparative Histories of Colonial Education My approach in this book is to use connected and comparative approaches to understand how ideas about education were both informed by local contexts and broader metropolitan and imperial ideas. The focus on education policies, drawn up by imperial and local colonial governments, and the practices of educators working on the ground in different parts of the empire addresses some gaps in the literature on Indigenous people’s education in the nineteenth-century settler colonies. The first is the tendency

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of historians of education to conduct studies with the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis.32 There have been a number of excellent studies of Indigenous education at the local or national level. For example, Anna Haebich’s study of Aboriginal policies in Australia, and her earlier work on South Western Australia, took seriously the ways in which colonialism affected children.33 In South Africa, studies of education, including the seminal work of historian of education EG Malherbe, have tended to overlook the broader strategies of colonial governments regarding the education of Indigenous people, and the similarities between policies and practices in different parts of the empire.34 I argue that in order to make sense of local particularities in education provision and practice, we need to situate them in the broader context of educational change in both Britain and its colonies. To focus on only one nation means losing sight of far broader ideas about race, labour, humanitarianism and settler colonialism that came to inform education provision in different parts of the empire. I draw on diverse case studies from a number of colonial contexts in this book: from the Caribbean, New Zealand, the Cape and Natal. I do not attempt to provide a comprehensive picture of education in each place, as this has been covered in national educational histories. Rather, I widen the scope of analysis to situate local cases within their global context, showing how this elucidates the particularity of the local and the connections to the global. Thus, chapters in this book focus either on a single colony, on comparative cases, or broader imperial contexts. The broad geography covered in this book takes inspiration from new imperial histories of the 1990s and early 2000s that pioneered networked and connected approaches to imperial histories.35 These works asked readers to think beyond the nation, and the metropole in particular, as the centre of empire. Challenging centre-periphery models in this way was central to writing more textured histories of empire that did not privilege British ways of seeing as the norm.36 I use cases here that are particularly illustrative of the centrality of education to the production and maintenance of racial difference in the colonies of settlement. ‘Solutions’ to Indigenous ‘problems’ often had their roots in connected thinking from different policymakers and actors in widely separate parts of the British imperial world. Ideas about race, educability, labour and civilisation were not unique to individual locations, but rather, were reflected in distinct ways in different parts of the empire, and often referenced ideas that held currency in Britain. Tracing the movement of people through the networks of empire, but more importantly, the movement of discourses about

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the relationship between race, labour and education through both space and time, highlights continuities in policy and practice in different parts of the empire. The approach of new imperial historians, or transnational historians, has, however, been criticised for losing sight of the fine-grained, local and intimate aspects of colonial encounters.37 New comparative literature in the British imperial history canon, however, has started to elucidate novel approaches to bringing the local, national and global into the same frame of analysis.38 Recent studies by Penelope Edmonds and Lisa Ford respectively have shown how reading two or more colonial cases in parallel can open up new explanatory frameworks—ones that take seriously the relationship between different scales of analysis from colony to empire. Thus, an idea or discourse could work on both an imperial level—legitimating particular power relations between settlers and Indigenous people, for example—while also having a profound impact on the ‘daily struggles of indigenous peoples’.39 ‘Tracing similarity through difference’, Ford argues, can reconfigure insular national or state-based histories.40 In this study, I have taken seriously both the local experiences of colonies and nations, and have situated these within the broader context of changing education provision in the British Empire. I have also sought to destabilise the ‘centre’ as a normative site against which the colonial experiences can be measured. As I show in Chap. 2, education provision in England changed rapidly in the nineteenth century, and did not provide a neat blueprint for education provision elsewhere. Comparisons need not be made between like and like—rather, they should be used to provide a way to think about the unique textures of colonialism, taking seriously the ever-present imperial in the local. We need to be as attentive to local contexts and to disconnections as to global trends and continuities.41 A focus on connections and comparisons can address this tendency to reify sites by linking them to local histories and placing them within broader chronologies. The comparative approach throws light on peculiarities of colonial sites and highlights continuities between them. As Stoler argues, comparative histories can ‘identify unexpected points of congruence and similarities of discourse in seemingly disparate sites’.42 Rather than thinking about a place as primarily shaped by local or national policy and practice, comparisons can open up ‘more general explanatory models’ for what might at first glance seem like local phenomena.43 On the face of it, colonial education practices diverged greatly in different parts of the empire. For example, Australia’s policies

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regarding child removal were attempted in some parts of South Africa, but never with the scale and support from colonial officials that they received in Australia. These differences should not be seen as a reason not to compare. I show that there were similar debates about the status of Indigenous people in these settler colonies. By juxtaposing these cases, reading them alongside and in conversation with one another, I show that there were broader webs of ideas informing colonial policy and practice. A focus on these scales—the broad imperial discourses about the future of ‘native’ races and the use of their education, the colonial contexts in which education schemes were thought up, experimented with, and abandoned, and the individual schools and classrooms where children met teachers, other pupils and new forms of knowledge—requires us to be attentive to the impact of place and space on colonial encounters. The comparative and connected approaches I use here show that places were shaped by multiple forces—in Lambert and Lester’s words, ‘constellations of multiple trajectories’—ranging from local to broad colonial discourses.44 The local and the global were, therefore, constantly in conversation with each other. The perception that places are static entities that ideas penetrate overlooks the ways in which they are constantly colliding with multiple actors, interpretations and meanings, as ‘rich and complex intersections of components with varying trajectories and mobilities’.45 Schools, and education more broadly, acted as frontiers in colonial contexts. Often associated with the violence of colonisation, the frontier has been reconceptualised in important ways in the past decade by historians of colonialism. Wolfe argues for a more nuanced, and porous construction of the frontier that is particularly useful in my analysis. Referring to the Australian context, he argues the frontier should be seen as ‘shifting, contextual, negotiated, move in and out of and suspended’.46 As Penelope Edmonds has shown, colonial frontiers existed in urban areas as much as in rural landscapes, and were ‘mosaic-like, mercurial, transactional, and, importantly, intimate and gendered’.47 These readings of frontiers as sites of encounter challenge the idea of frontiers as static, linear structures, unaffected by changes in time and space. Recent work in the history of childhood has used the concept of the ‘emotional frontier’ to describe children’s changing worlds.48 As Olsen argues, emotional frontiers were those places where ‘cultural friction and transfer take place’.49 Examining education at these scales of analysis provokes different kinds of questions to the historian, and imposes some challenging limitations to traditional narratives that take a single policy or institution as the site for analysis.

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Shifting focus from the broad level to the micro, intimate relationships does, however, give a more accurate account of how an education system—always a dynamic, evolving thing—came into being, and was experienced by those involved with it on all sides. My focus on spatiality is particularly evident in Chap. 3, where I discuss the ways in which ideas about civilisation were often spatially located. Missionaries, government officials and researchers argued about whether schools should be located in urban or rural areas, and what this might mean for children’s progress. Paying attention to these discussions, particularly in the settler colonies where settlers competed with Indigenous people for land, shows that place was central to children’s education.

The Colonial Education Archive My approach in this book has also been shaped by my reading of the colonial education archive. There are many ways in which I might have read ‘education’ in the archives. Given the co-dependence of missionaries and colonial governments in education provision, records are stored between local and national archives, in Colonial Office records at Kew, and in individual mission society records, now scattered throughout the world. Within governmental archives, records relating to Indigenous children’s education are more often than not filed with records relating to ‘Native’ or ‘Aboriginal’ people. This seemingly inconsequential bureaucratic organising tells us something about the ideological position of these education programmes—these were, as much as many labour schemes, reserve systems and penal records—about the management and reformation of Indigenous populations. Within missionaries’ records and personal papers, there are some personal reflections on education schemes, and in rare cases, traces of lives and opinions of children themselves. Moreover, if one takes seriously the nature of Indigenous education as a project that settlers, researchers and members of the colonial public were interested in, then the archive becomes even broader, encompassing letters to the press, newspaper articles and research publications in scientific journals. The approach taken in this book is to incorporate as many of these kinds of material as possible, showing how each group or set of groups interacted with concepts of race, labour and education. If we begin to think of education as something that can be found outside of school records relating to particular institutions, we find that the education of Indigenous people was subject to debate, discussion and a significant amount of research

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during the nineteenth century. I have also shown that using diverse sources in conversation with each other—for example, comparing legislation with a local case study reported to the Colonial Office, as in Chap. 7—provides a richly textured picture of the position of education in different societies. The source material from each place under study here is not symmetrical: there is an abundance of missionary source material for Natal, but by contrast, in Western Australia, where mission activity was limited, missionary sources are limited as well, particularly for English-speaking historians.50 Reading the cases in parallel, however, makes the silences or ‘gaps’ in the archive more visible. When writing about children’s education, as historians of childhood have noted, we are challenged by the lack of children’s voices and perspectives in the archives. Moreover, there is an asymmetry regarding whose perspective the archive represents. I am aware that the colonial archive must be read as both a ‘source’ and a ‘subject’: containing information about Indigenous education and reflecting ‘political energies and expertise’.51 I am interested in the way that education became a site of contestation over racial policy and discriminatory practice in both Natal and Western Australia. Wherever possible, I have included the words of children who were receiving education and have tried to indicate what their perceptions of education were. This by no means offers a comprehensive picture of the effects of education on Indigenous children and their families. Missionaries often directed children’s writing, asking for particular kinds of ‘products’ from pupils as proof of their success or motivations for increased funding. In spite of these challenges, these traces are included in the book wherever possible, to maintain the reader’s awareness of the individuals that education affected.

Chronology and Contexts During the course of the nineteenth century, a number of shifts in ideas about race and education impacted on the way that education was provided in colonial contexts. In the immediate post-emancipation era, education began to be seen as the responsibility of the government to those in need, whether these were freed slaves in the West Indies, Indigenous peoples in the colonies of settlement, or poor and working-class children in Britain. Poor children, like Indigenous ones in the colonies, could overcome the limitations of their upbringing by being introduced to the civilising effects of education. The Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines,

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published between 1836 and 1837, made it clear that education was part of a humanitarian colonial government’s responsibility, something that could be given to Indigenous people in the colonies, which would ease some of the violence wrought by settler dispossession in the preceding decades.52 Although the late 1830s saw a period of increased interest in education both ‘at home’ and in the colonies, by the mid-1840s, the interest in education in the settler colonies was beginning to wane. As ideas about race became increasingly rigid, the hope that had been placed in education as a means of achieving equality began to be abandoned.53 As the century progressed, and scientific ‘advancements’ pushed racial theories in more fixed directions, education and educability were increasingly tied to race. By the 1870s, ideas about the inherent capability of different types were increasingly persuasive. As the Elementary Education Act was passed in Britain in 1870, formalising compulsory education for children, there were a series of debates about the role of the state in the lives of Indigenous children as well. By the close of the period under discussion here, the 1880s, settlers were increasingly vocal about their rights to superior resources and education. This saw education provision devolving to local governments, and after the granting of responsible government in the last of the settler colonies, Natal and Western Australia, in the 1890s, government acceptance of highly stratified education systems. Particularly notable as a high point of humanitarian intervention in the British Empire was the emancipation of slaves in 1834. In Chap. 2, I examine the West Indian context, showing how education came to be positioned as a central humanitarian imperative in the colonies. The Negro Education Grant of 1835 to 1845 was given by the imperial government to the West Indian colonies specifically for the ‘moral and religious education’ of the freed population. The first government grants to education in Britain were made in 1833, in the same session of parliament that slavery was abolished. The chapter shows that the changes in the structure of metropolitan education funding occurred at the same time as broader changes in education in the British West Indian colonies. However, by the mid-1840s, the Negro Education Grant had been terminated and local legislatures increasingly favoured industrial education. Similar debates were occurring contemporaneously in the settler colonies. Understanding a colonial context where the use of labour was a matter of serious concern for the local government deepens our understanding of the settler colonial contexts discussed later in the book, where Indigenous people were also viewed as a source of labour. This chapter contributes to recent

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historiography that seeks to bring histories of colonialism and settler colonialism together, by discussing emancipation within the broader context of settler colonialism.54 It also shows how metropolitan educational thinking influenced and was influenced by colonial expansion, particularly in the discussion of the memorandum on industrial education written by James Kay-Shuttleworth, Secretary of the metropolitan Committee of Privy Council on Education. This memorandum, based on evidence about education in the West Indies, was used to make a series of suggestions regarding industrial education for the ‘coloured races’ of the British colonies. This document highlights the connections between metropolitan and colonial education policies and practices. The sense that the government should have at least partial involvement in education of colonised people began to gain ground at the end of the 1830s. This was influenced by developments in England, Ireland and in the West Indies, as Ch.1 shows. In India, too, the colonial government became increasingly involved in education during this period. The 1813 Charter Act, which allowed missionaries into British India for the first time, bound the East India Company to spend £10,000 annually on Indian education.55 This intervention in Indian education arose long before similar government involvement in education in England. Initially, this grant was to promote a blended curriculum of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ knowledge.56 Allender argues that this government involvement in education in India in the early decades of the nineteenth century was a chance to test out ways of ‘establishing systemic schooling’, which would only later be used in the metropolitan context.57 In the 1830s, Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote possibly the most famous document in colonial education, the 1835 Education Minute that dismissed Indian knowledge as inferior to English civilisation and values. This document typifies the ambiguities associated with colonial education projects in different parts of the empire—the immense cultural chauvinism of British thinkers who dismissed Indian knowledge, with an unintended recognition of Indian people’s capacity for thought and civilisation.58 In the Cape, there was a far more radical experiment being attempted in the 1830s. Under the watchful eye of Sir John Herschel, astronomer and educationalist, Cape officials began a government system of education. The New System, as it was known, aimed at providing what they termed a secular education to children of all races, colours and religions in government schools across the Colony. The Cape’s education department was founded in 1839, and the free schools ran from 1839 to the 1860s.59

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As Helen Ludlow’s meticulous work shows, these schools were pioneering but riddled with tensions: by the 1860s, the schools generally catered to white children, and teachers were left unsupported by the inspector whose job simply involved far too much travel for the system to be effectively managed by a single person.60 This system was different to those pursued in the other settler colonies—the explicit call for government schools to cater to all classes and races ran counter to developments elsewhere, where missionaries were relied upon to provide the majority of education to Indigenous children. In spite of the liberal and civilising goals behind the New System, there was also a vast network of mission schools, and these generally catered to the African population. While the development of education in India and the Cape followed different lines to those of the West Indies and other settler colonies, it is worth noting that discussions of the role of the government in education were occurring in Britain, Ireland, the Cape, India and the West Indies simultaneously, and would have been well known to those who were making decisions about education elsewhere in the empire. However, these attempts at large-scale education programmes were relatively isolated in scope and timeframe and did not translate into widespread policies for the education of Indigenous children. Indeed, despite the Select Committee on Aborigines identifying education as a key imperative for local colonial officials, missionaries remained the primary promoters of education. This played out in different ways across the colonies. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on Western Australia and Natal, respectively. The chapters build on one another, with similar themes regarding the nature of education in settler colonial contexts. My focus in these two chapters is on places where the process of providing education was intensely conflicted. These chapters highlight how education policies worked to serve the needs of colonists and settlers, who needed land and labour in order to consolidate power in young settler colonies. Chapter 3 focuses on Western Australia, inhabited by Noongar Aboriginal people and where European settlement in Western Australia began.61 A British military garrison had been established at King George’s Sound (later Albany) in 1826. The Swan River Colony, as it was initially known, was proclaimed a British territory in 1829.62 The British government refused to sponsor immigration to the colony, and until 1850, did not send convicts there. Thus, between 1829 and 1850, Aboriginal people outnumbered Europeans in the colony.63 In spite of the fact that Western Australia had been sold to settlers as comprising vast tracts of fertile land,

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settlers in the 1830s were soon frustrated in their efforts at cultivation.64 This meant that settlement in the 1830s was slow. From the late 1840s, as settlement continued northwards, struggles over land heightened racial tensions.65 In 1850, the white population was 5,886 people: 3,576 men and 2,310 women. The labour shortage in the early years of the colony meant that the Aboriginal population was approached as a potential source of labour.66 The need for Indigenous labour makes for an interesting parallel with Natal, where Africans’ labour was seen as central to the future of the colony. Western Australia, unlike the other Australian colonies that received responsible government in the 1850s, was granted representative government in 1870. This gave the colony a one-third nominated and two-­ thirds-­ elected Legislative Council.67 Representative government was delayed because Western Australians had wanted to keep high property qualifications on voting, and because of the late introduction of convict labour. Ann Curthoys and Jessie Mitchell show that self-government had a ‘shadow-side: Aboriginal dispossession, loss of self-government and enforced dependence on colonial charity’.68 In Chap. 3, I focus on the relationship between land, education and space, drawing primarily on material from Western Australia. As the previous chapter showed, there was increased interest in Indigenous people’s education at the time of emancipation. However, in the settler colonies, this period was also one of intense settlement, coupled with widespread colonial violence. In this chapter, I indicate how this humanitarian sentiment translated into schemes for education in the settler colonies. I argue that there were shifting ideas about the relationships between morality, urban space and civilisation. Missionaries and colonial officials debated the significance of the location of schools either in urban or rural space. Missionaries were reliant on governments for land grants and funding for their schools. While some missionaries believed that urban life could provide a model of European civilisation to Indigenous children, others argued that, due to their particular childhood vulnerability, they should be protected from the corruption of contact with immoral settlers. The chapter refers briefly to the Port Phillip Protectorate, where recently appointed Aboriginal Protectors were given the mandate of educating Aboriginal children in moral and religious principles. This was to be done in a ‘protected’ environment, a ‘humanitarian space’ that ensured safety from settler encroachment.69 Then, using the case of the Smithies’ Wesleyan School in colonial Perth, the chapter shows how this missionary aimed to

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control the movement of children within public space. Their ability to move freely within and between settler homes was a central part of their education, but was also potentially damaging to their development. Many missionaries argued that the separation of children from the encroachment of the wrong kind of European influence would be beneficial to their education and civilisation. Thus, education programmes were used to both seclude Indigenous children from European civilisation, but also to display these children as ‘ocular proof’ of civilisation’s successes.70 The chapter also introduces theories of racial amalgamation that colonial officials, settlers and missionaries drew on in the colonies under discussion. While keeping the dispossession of Indigenous land in focus, I also highlight the centrality of the exploitation of Indigenous labour in Natal and Western Australia. Chapter 4 focuses on colonial Natal and, in particular, on how settler anxieties about Africans’ education, and the need for labour, shaped the progression of education in that context. I argue that aspects of the settler colonial endeavour, particularly changing work patterns and land use, were refashioned as teaching opportunities for Indigenous people. The area that is present day KwaZulu-Natal was occupied by a number of different African groups during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. These were not unified under one chieftainship but, from the late eighteenth century, they began to consolidate into a larger group known as the Zulu. The Zulu kingdom, led by Shaka, had increased control over the smaller chieftains in what became the Natal area in the 1820s. Historians have debated the level of dispersal and violence during the mfecane in the early nineteenth century, with Julian Cobbing arguing that the idea was an ‘alibi’ used by liberal historians to divert attention from white colonisation.71 Regardless, settlers constructed the area that came to be known as Natal as newly settled by Nguni-speakers, who did not have a legitimate right to it. The British annexed Natal in 1843, taking over the Boer republic of Natalia. By the mid-nineteenth century, the African population of Natal was about half a million people. The Byrne Emigration Scheme had brought about five thousand British and Irish settlers to the colony between 1849 and 1852.72 Early settlers developed a ‘parasitic relationship’ with African suppliers of produce, labour, and revenue through taxes.73 Settler labour needs, and their growing understanding that Africans were not flocking to white employment, led to the decision to import indentured labourers from India, which continued from 1860 to 1911.74 Natal was granted representative government in 1856, separating the colony’s administra-

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tion from the Cape, which had gained representative government in 1853. Natal’s constitution allowed for an elected majority in a unicameral legislature. The Legislative Council consisted of four officials and twelve representatives elected on a property qualification. The Crown, concerned about the treatment of Africans, refused to give the Legislative Council control of a reserve fund of £5,000, specifically for ‘native purposes’ and administered at the discretion of the governor. Conflicts over the fund meant that the Council was dissolved twice, in 1858 and 1861 respectively. In 1856, the first legislation for African education was passed. Missionaries were compelled to provide industrial training in their schools in order to receive government funding for education. Chapter 4 draws attention to settler anxieties regarding the education of Indigenous people in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Settlers were concerned that education might be emancipatory for Indigenous people, and thus, were eager to curtail government involvement in education. As settler representation in local governments grew, so too did their influence over educational or ‘native’ policy. When education projects were attempted in the colonies, it was often with the primary intention of transforming Indigenous people’s relationships to labour. The correct use of land was a central part of settler pedagogy. Schemes for racial amalgamation were woven into education programmes in both places. This version of amalgamation was premised on the construction of Indigenous people as either invisible or as workers. In spite of the imperial government’s drive to appear to be making humanitarian interventions in the colonies of settlement, by the mid-­ 1840s, there was a ‘marked shift in the discursive terrain’ which led to an ‘increasing turn to the language of race to explain and justify the inequalities and persistent differences between people’.75 This had a significant impact on the education given to Indigenous children. The growth of a ‘scientific’ racial lexicon also served to entrench racial difference in the 1840s and 1850s. Nancy Stepan argues that by the late 1860s, following the immense impact of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, ‘evolutionary thought was compatible with the idea of fixity, antiquity, and hierarchy of human races’.76 Biological understandings of race began to have greater influence on both missionaries and government. These theories used a ‘more explicit language of race, forged in frontier conflict as well as in the academic libraries of Europe, [which] was increasingly widely used to maintain boundaries between colonised and colonisers’.77 This meant that there were particular things that certain races were believed capable of,

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and others that would always be out of their reach. The idea that African people could be civilised and incorporated into settler society, ‘became quite quickly suffused with notions of the innate inferiority of Africans once the initial flush of humanitarian enthusiasm had worn off’.78 Conveniently, African races were constructed as particularly suited to labour. Aboriginal people in Australia, by contrast, were ‘dying out’, and their education could do little more than convert them to ease the consciences of colonial politicians and missionaries. Perceived differences between races also influenced their education: in New Zealand, Maori people, with their superior law, customs, and language, were thought more susceptible to conversion and civilisation than nomadic, irreligious Aboriginal Australians.79 Building on the previous chapter, Chap. 5 discusses how labour became a central part of education for Indigenous children by the mid-nineteenth century. Education was used as a humanitarian intervention even in the face of widespread colonial violence. The language of civilisation was used as a way to justify discriminatory policies that saw Indigenous children in schools that emphasised manual labour over literary training. I show how the concept of ‘industrial’ education was used to refer to a variety of different kinds of education, from factory work in the metropolitan context to basket-weaving in the Cape. The chapter shows that movements of colonial administrators within the empire and between settler colonies had important impacts on the creation of industrial education policies and practices. Experience in one colony could successfully translate across colonies. However, these broader imperial discourses about race, education and civilisation were embedded in  local contexts and therefore were shaped to specific local concerns. The material drawn on in this chapter is primarily connected to the imperial career of Sir George Grey, who took a keen interest not only in ethnography but also in education in the different colonies where he worked. He believed that ideas about industrial training from New Zealand could be applied at the Cape and in Natal. I use material relating to Bishop Colenso’s Ekukhanyeni school in Natal, sponsored by Grey, to illustrate how broader ideas about industrial training played out in practice, often in unexpected ways. Ideas about education and empire were not confined by national boundaries, and for this reason, this chapter focuses on connections drawn between education systems in different colonies. Grey based his 1852 scheme for Indigenous people’s industrial training in the Cape on his experience in Australia and New Zealand.

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It was not only missionaries and governments who were interested in education. In Chap. 6, I focus on debates about education and civilisation that were advanced by researchers, including Florence Nightingale, and other organisations, including the Aborigines’ Protection Society. I show how schools could be both a source of knowledge about Indigenous peoples, and a place where knowledge could be imparted to Indigenous people. The chapter argues that these sites were always shaped by multidirectional transfers of knowledge. I begin by discussing the survey conducted by Florence Nightingale in the 1860s regarding native colonial schools and hospitals.80 In this survey, Nightingale wanted to measure the effects of civilisation on Indigenous children. She did this by conducting a broad survey of schools specifically for Indigenous children—143 schools across five colonies: Sierra-Leone, Ceylon, Western Australia, Natal and Canada. Although the results of the survey were incomplete, this survey is significant as the only attempted empire-wide survey of Indigenous schools in this period. It highlights both the slipperiness of the concept of ‘civilisation’, and the haphazard way in which information about Indigenous schools was being collected. The chapter moves on to discuss correspondence between Anne Camfield, a teacher in Western Australia, and Florence Nightingale. Camfield argued that Nightingale had read the Western Australian data out of context. She argued for a locally sensitive approach to studying the effects of education. Finally, the chapter discusses the writing of Natal’s Native Education Inspector, Robert James Mann. Mann had come to the colony as a missionary at Colenso’s Ekukhanyeni station, but soon, frustrated by Colenso’s approach to mission work, left and was appointed to this government position. During his time as inspector, he drew on his knowledge of mission teaching, and his experience as inspector, to produce a series of articles about the educability of South African ‘natives’, published in the Intellectual Observer. This case study indicates how schools could be used to conduct research that was then generalised to speak for entire groups of people. The cases show a desire to engage with new forms of knowledge about race, including through social statistics and scientific publications, that were growing in popularity and influence during the 1860s. Chapter 7 traces the emergence of debates about compulsory education in Britain and the settler colonies. By the 1870s, the idea of the government taking an increasingly active role in the life of the family was more common. This translated into policies that sought to educate all children in the metropolitan context. In colonial contexts, however, this translated

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into different policies for white and Indigenous children. A series of settler colonies put versions of the metropolitan 1870s Elementary Education Act into place in this decade, but these were generally understood to apply only to white children. For Indigenous children, increased government involvement in education did not necessarily result in more education being provided. Although missionaries discussed the possibility of compulsory education, for example, in the Cape colony, this was not a uniform aim, many believing that education for white children should be made compulsory first.81 Rather, the decade saw a series of measures passed that sought to control the interracial mixing of children in schools, and to ‘manage’ Indigenous families. In Australia, child removal was increasingly accepted as the best policy for Aboriginal children, whose parents were construed as morally corrupting. In Natal, there were fears about the purity of the white race, and therefore, there was a drive towards segregation in government schools. These arguments followed similar lines to those of compulsory education for white children: that a benevolent government knew what was best for children. However, the outcomes of these policies constructed Indigenous families as inherently immoral, corrupting and unable to care for children. Colonial governments, in this case, acted as ‘caregivers’ to less desirable parts of their populations. There was a changing conception of children and childhood over the course of the nineteenth century, which led to children’s welfare being conceptualised as different to the welfare of the family as a unit. For example, it was no longer seen as acceptable for children to act as labourers for their families. In colonial contexts, this resulted in intense disruption and dislocation of Indigenous children and families. The chapter concludes by arguing that this kind of thinking, particularly about the needs of children being separated from their parents, resulted in the construction of Indigenous adults as children themselves. The argument that adults were childlike, and therefore needed the intervention of the guiding hand of government, justified interventions in Indigenous families. The period covered in this book was one of substantial change in both Britain and the colonies. European settlement began in earnest in Western Australia in the 1830s, and Natal in the 1840s. Elsewhere, too, colonies grew, and settlers sought representation within local governments, which they believed should represent their needs over those of Indigenous people. In the metropolitan case, the period I consider is delimited by the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 in England. These Acts transformed ideas about the relationship between the state and individuals and called into question notions

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of who counted as ‘citizens’, and by what measure. As political rights were negotiated, the issue of mass education came up in the metropolitan context. The first government grants were made to voluntary societies for education in 1833. In 1870, Forster’s Elementary Education Act made education compulsory for all children between the ages of five and twelve who lived in a school board district. These examples indicate the ways in which political rights and education were connected. By the 1880s, when this study concludes, the idea that race determined both intellect and educability was more firmly entrenched. ‘The empire and its inhabitants were divided into ever more rigidly demarcated categories, with each thought amenable to particular forms of colonial rule, which in turn determined future opportunities’.82 This book both confirms and complicates a narrative of increasing racialisation over the course of the nineteenth century, drawing attention to how education could both produce racial difference in the settler colonies, and provide a space for racial ideas to be challenged.

Note on Terminology I have chosen to use the term ‘Indigenous’ to refer to Aboriginal Australians, Africans in Southern Africa, and to the original inhabitants of other places mentioned in the book.83 I have also used the terminology that appears in the sources. In the Australian case, Aboriginal people were generally referred to as ‘aboriginal’ or ‘aborigines’. In Natal, the term ‘native’ was often used, as was ‘Kafir’ or ‘Kaffir’ which has a particularly violent legacy in South Africa. I have also used the term ‘colonised’ peoples. I have chosen not to use inverted commas around these words, or the concepts ‘race’, ‘class’, ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’, but use them with the understanding that these categories were and are socially and contextually constructed. I use these terms with an awareness of their historical connotations and legacies.

Notes 1. Annual Report of the Aborigines’ Protection Society (London: Printed by Order of the Society, 1838), 6. 2. Sarah De Leeuw and Margo Greenwood, ‘Foreword: History Lessons: What Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods Teaches Us’, in Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods: Nineteenth-Century Missionary Infant Schools in Three British Colonies, by Helen May, Baljit Kaur and Larry Prochner (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2014), xv–xxii, xvi.

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3. Linda McCoy, ‘Education for Labour: Social Problems of Nationhood’, in Forming Nation, Framing Welfare, ed. by Gail Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 93–138, 96. 4. Native Protector Charles Symmons Annual Report, 31.12.1840, Western Australia Government Gazette, 8.01.1841. 5. A notable exception is Shirleene Robinson, ‘Resistance and Race: Aboriginal Child Workers in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Australia’, in Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World, ed. by Shirleene Robinson and Simon Sleight (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 129–143. On settler colonialism see Patrick Wolfe, ‘Land, Labour and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race’, The American Historical Review, 106 (2001), 866–905.  See also Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 6. Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 2. Emph. in original. 7. Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 48. 8. Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies’, Journal of American History, 88 (2001), 829–865, 850; Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (London: University of California Press, 2002), esp. Chap. 5. 9. See Clive Whitehead, Colonial Educators: The British Indian and Colonial Education Service, 1858–1983 (London: I.B.  Tauris, 2003); ‘The Historiography of British Imperial Education Policy, Part I: India’, History of Education, 34 (2005), 315–329; ‘The Historiography of British Imperial Education Policy, Part II: Africa and the Rest of the Colonial Empire’, History of Education, 34 (2005), 441–454; ‘The Concept of British Education Policy in the Colonies 1850–1960’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 39 (2007), 161–173. 10. Clayton Mackenzie, ‘Demythologising the Missionaries: A Reassessment of the Functions and Relationships of Christian Missionary Education under Colonialism’, Comparative Education, 29 (1993), 45–66, 52. 11. I have argued for the importance of the connected and comparative approach in Rebecca Swartz and Peter Kallaway, ‘Editorial: Imperial, Global and Local in Histories of Colonial Education’, History of Education, 47 (2018), 362–367. 12. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-­Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 13. Ibid., 273.

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14. Ibid., 14. 15. Veracini, Settler Colonialism, 4; Wolfe, ‘Land, Labour and Difference’, 868; see also the journal Settler Colonial Studies, first published 2011. 16. Rob Skinner and Alan Lester, ‘Humanitarianism and Empire: New Research Agendas’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40 (2012), 729–747, 731. 17. Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011), 9. Barnett urges us to think of humanitarianisms rather than humanitarianism, 10, 21. 18. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 7. 19. Timothy Keegan, Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (London: Leicester University Press, 1996), 75. 20. Ibid., 76. 21. Felicity Jensz, ‘Missionaries and Indigenous Education in the 19th-­ Century British Empire. Part I: Church-State Relations and Indigenous Actions and Reactions’, History Compass, 10 (2012), 294–305, 296. 22. Esme Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 1840–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 163. 23. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, Volume 1 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African frontier, Volume 2 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 24. See Rebecca Swartz, ‘Civilisation and Colonial Education: Natal and Western Australia in the 1860s in Comparative Perspective’, History of Education, 47 (2018), 368–383, on the relationship between the concepts of ‘education’ and ‘civilisation’ for educators. Norman Etherington’s notable work on missionaries and education should be acknowledged for its contribution to the field. He remarked that he was unable to find contributors to write on ‘Missions and Education’ or ‘Missions and Medicine’ for his companion volume to the Oxford History of the British Empire. Thus, ‘Education and Medicine’ appeared as one chapter, authored by Etherington in Missions and Empire, ed. by Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 261–284. Norman Etherington, ‘Missions and Empire Revisited’, Social Sciences and Missions, 24 (2011), 171–189, 176. 25. Megan Watkins, ‘Teachers’ Tears and the Affective Geography of the Classroom’, Emotion, Space and Society, 4 (2011), 137–143, 137.

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26. Shurlee Swain, ‘But the Children... Indigenous Child Removal Policies Compared’, in Writing Colonial Histories: Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Tracey Banivanua Mar and Julie Evans (Victoria: University of Melbourne, Department of History, 2002), 133–143, 134. 27. Sarah de Leeuw, ‘“If Anything Is to Be Done with the Indian, We Must Catch Him Very Young”: Colonial Constructions of Aboriginal Children and the Geographies of Indian Residential Schooling in British Columbia, Canada’, Children’s Geographies, 7 (2009), 123–140, 130. 28. See, for example, Beverly Grier, ‘Invisible Hands: The Political Economy of Child Labour in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890–1930’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 20 (1994), 27–52. 29. Hugh Cunningham, The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood since the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 128. 30. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (London: Yale University Press, 2012), 204. 31. Etherington, ‘Education and Medicine’, 269. 32. For calls to rethink this nation-state focus, see António Nóvoa, ‘Empires Overseas and Empires at Home’, Paedagogica Historica, 45 (2009), 817–821; Felicity Jensz, ‘Missionaries and Indigenous Education in the 19th-Century British Empire. Part II: Race, Class, and Gender’, History Compass, 10 (2012), 306–317, 311. See also the special issue of Paedagogica Historica in 2009, especially Joyce Goodman, Gary McCulloch and William Richardson, ‘“Empires Overseas” and “Empires at Home”: Postcolonial and Transnational Perspectives on Social Change in the History of Education’, Paedagogica Historica, 45 (2009), 695–706; Eckhardt Fuchs, ‘History of Education beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and Educational Scholarship’, in Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post-)Colonial Education, ed. by Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt Fuchs and Kate Rousmaniere (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014), 11–26; Swartz and Kallaway, ‘Editorial’. 33. Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia, 2nd edn (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1992), and Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800–2000 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000). For colonial education policy in the Western Australia, see John Brown, ‘Policies in Aboriginal Education in Western Australia, 1829–1897’ (M.Ed thesis, University of Western Australia, 1979); Neville Green, ‘Access, Equality and Opportunity? The Education of Aboriginal Children in Western Australia, 1840–1978’ (PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004). 34. The most comprehensive study on colonial policy regarding ‘native’ education in Natal remains Oscar Emanuelson’s ‘A History of Native Education

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in Natal, between 1835 and 1927’ (M.Ed thesis, University of South Africa, 1927). 35. Zoë Laidlaw, Colonial Connections 1815–1845: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 2005); Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001). 36. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Oxford: Polity, 2002), 16. 37. Tim Allender and Stephanie Spencer, ‘Travelling across National, Paradigmatic and Archival Divides: New Work for the Historian of Education’, History of Education, 38 (2009), 721–727, 722. 38. Clare Anderson, ‘After Emancipation: Empires and Imperial Formations’, in Emancipation and the Remaking of the British Imperial World, ed. by Catherine Hall, Nick Draper and Keith McClelland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 113–127, 122. 39. Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous Peoples in America and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 4. 40. Ibid., 10. 41. Catherine Hall, Nick Draper and Keith McClelland, ‘Introduction’, in Emancipation and the Remaking of the British Imperial World, ed. by Catherine Hall, Nick Draper and Keith McClelland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 1–16, 7. 42. Stoler, ‘Tense and Tender Ties’, 847. 43. Ford, Settler Sovereignty, 10. 44. David Lambert and Alan Lester, ‘Introduction: Imperial Spaces, Imperial Subjects’, in Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. by David Lambert and Alan Lester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–31, 13. 45. Alan Lester, ‘Spatial Concepts and the Historical Geographies of British Colonialism’, in Writing Imperial Histories (Studies in Imperialism), ed. by Andrew Thompson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 118–142, 129. 46. Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology (London: Cassell, 1999), 165. 47. Penelope Edmonds, Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 5, 6. 48. Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander and Stephanie Olsen, ‘Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood’ in Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History, ed. by Stephanie Olsen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,

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2015), 22–26. I draw on the concept of the ‘emotional frontier’ in Rebecca Swartz, ‘Educating emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–1865’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18 (2017), n.p. 49. Stephanie Olsen, ‘Introduction’, in Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History, ed. by Stephanie Olsen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 10. 50. Much of the source material from the New Norcia mission is written in Spanish. 51. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 22. 52. Lester and Dussart, Colonization. 53. Ibid., 227. 54. See Zoë Laidlaw, ‘Heathens, Slaves and Aborigines: Thomas Hodgkin’s Critique of Missions and Anti-Slavery’, History Workshop Journal, 64 (2007), 133–161, 136, and ‘Imperial Complicity: Indigenous Dispossession in British History and History Writing’, in Emancipation and the Remaking of the British Imperial World, ed. by Catherine Hall, Nick Draper and Keith McClelland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 131–148. See also Catherine Hall, ‘The Slave-Owner and the Settler’, in Indigenous Networks: Mobility, Connections and Exchange, ed. by Jane Carey and Jane Lydon (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 29–49. 55. Jana Tschurenev, ‘Diffusing Useful Knowledge: The Monitorial System of Education in Madras, London and Bengal, 1789–1840’, Paedagogica Historica, 44 (2008), 245–264, 252. 56. Tim Allender, Ruling through Education: The Politics of Schooling in the Colonial Punjab (Delhi: New Dawn Press, 2006), 2; Lyn Zastoupil and Martin Moir (eds.), The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843 (Surrey: Curzon, 1999), 7. 57. Tim Allender, ‘Learning Abroad: The Colonial Educational Experiment in India, 1813–1919’, Paedagogica Historica, 45 (2009), 727–741, 728. 58. ‘Minute recorded in the General Department by Thomas Babington Macaulay, law member of the governor-general’s council, dated 2 February 1835’, in The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843, ed. by Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir (Surrey: Curzon, 1999), 161–173. 59. Helen Ludlow, ‘Examining the Government Teacher: State Schooling and Scandal in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cape Village’, South African Historical Journal, 62 (2010), 534–560, 534.

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60. Helen Ludlow, ‘The Government Teacher Who Resolved to Do What He Could Himself’, South African Review of Education, 19 (2013), 25–47, 34; Helen Ludlow, ‘Shaping Colonial Subjects through Government Education: Policy, Implementation and Reception at the Cape of Good Hope, 1839–1862’ in Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a Comparative Perspective, ed. by Peter Kallaway and Rebecca Swartz (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 81–109. 61. Sometimes also spelled Nyungar, Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah or Noonga. 62. On first encounters between the Aboriginal population and Europeans, see Tiffany Shellam, Shaking Hands on the Fringe: Negotiating the Aboriginal World at King George’s Sound (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2009). 63. Francis Crowley, Australia’s Western Third: A History of Western Australia from the First Settlements to Modern Times (London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1960), vii. 64. Ann Hunter, A Different Kind of ‘Subject’: Colonial Law in Aboriginal-­ European Relations in Western Australia 1829–61 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2012), xvi. 65. Neville Green, ‘Aborigines and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century’, in A New History of Western Australia, ed. by Charles Tom Stannage (Redlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1981), 72–123, 95; Peter Biskup, ‘The Royal Commission that Never Was: A Chapter in Government-Missions Relations in Western Australia’, University Studies in WA History, 5 (1967), 89–113, 97. 66. Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, Servants & Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2002), 101; Penelope Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children as a Potential Labour Force in Swan River Colony, 1829–1850’, Journal of Australian Studies, 16 (1992), 41–55, 47. 67. Ann Curthoys and Jeremy Martens, ‘Serious Collisions: Settlers, Indigenous People, and Imperial Policy in Western Australia and Natal’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, 15 (2013), 121–144, 130. 68. Ann Curthoys and Jessie Mitchell, ‘The Advent of Self-Government, 1840s–90’, in The Cambridge History of Australia: Volume 1: Indigenous and Colonial Australia (Victoria and New  York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 149–169, 149. 69. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 115. 70. Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill University Press, 2002), 288.

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71. Academics continue to debate the significance of the mfecane, particularly regarding the role of Shaka and the broader socio-political changes in the early nineteenth century. See Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cape Town: David Philip, 1998), 15–16; Julian Cobbing, ‘The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo’, The Journal of African History, 29 (1988), 487–519. 72. John Lambert, Betrayed Trust, Africans and the State in Colonial Natal (Pinetown: University of Natal Press, 1995), 8, 10. 73. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, 207. 74. Keletso Atkins, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900 (London: James Currey Ltd., 1993), 2. 75. Hall, Civilising Subjects, 338. 76. Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), 49. 77. Elbourne, Blood Ground, 378. 78. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, 283. 79. Damen Ward, ‘The Politics of Jurisdiction: British Law, Indigenous Peoples and Colonial Government in South Australia and New Zealand, c.1834–1860’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2003), 38. 80. Tiffany Shellam has written about this survey in “‘A Mystery to the Medical World”: Florence Nightingale, Rosendo Salvado and the Risk of Civilisation’, History Australia, 9 (2012), 109–134. 81. See Kaffir Express, 04.08.1873, 2. 82. Zoë Laidlaw, ‘Slavery, Settlers and Indigenous Dispossession: Britain’s Empire through the Lens of Liberia’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 13 (2012), n.p. 83. See Carey and Lydon, ‘Notes on Text’, for a discussion of the term ‘Indigenous’, in Indigenous Networks, n.p.

CHAPTER 2

‘The Gift of Education’: Emancipation and Government Education in the West Indies, Britain and Beyond

In the wake of emancipation, the imperial government provided the Negro Education Grant of £20,000 to the West Indies, Mauritius and the Cape, between 1835 and 1845.1 The Grant was specifically for the ‘religious and moral education of the negro population to be emancipated’, and to ‘train’ apprentices and their children for freedom.2 In 1837, Charles La Trobe, who would go on to be the Superintendent of the Port Phillip Protectorate, and later, Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria, Australia, was appointed Inspector of Negro Education. He set out on a tour of inspection of the British West Indian colonies, producing three detailed reports on the use of the Grant there. In his report on British Guiana and Trinidad, he explained the thinking behind the Grant: he wrote that the ‘gift of education is what the Negro must claim, now that this of complete political freedom has been bestowed’.3 In the 1830s and 1840s, there were remarkable changes in both Britain and the colonies that impacted on ideas about citizenship, race, civilisation and education. This chapter focuses on connections between education in Britain, the West Indies and the settler colonies between 1833 and 1847. This period was foundational in shaping thinking about education for Indigenous children in the settler colonies. In the period leading up to and immediately after emancipation, education came to be seen as the responsibility of a humanitarian colonial government, and as central to social reform in Britain and the colonies. Ideas about what education © The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_2

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should enable—who should access it, and how—changed in relation to these developments. At the same time, teaching and inspection began to professionalise. The ways in which the imperial government came to see education as a legitimate arena for government involvement is central to an understanding of the development of education in Britain’s settler colonies. Changing social and political circumstances—connected to industrialisation in Britain, emancipation and apprenticeship in the slave colonies, and colonial expansion more broadly—saw increased government involvement in education funding in the 1830s.4 The Negro Education Grant promoted moral and religious education as a means of improving the children of freed people. Emphasising basic numeracy and literacy, the system aimed to reform the characters of those subjected to the immoral system of slavery. At the same time, and in fact, in the same parliamentary session as slavery was abolished, the recently elected Whig government voted for the introduction of a grant of £20,000 per year, later raised to £30,000, to provide schoolhouses for the children of Britain’s poorer classes.5 Many of the campaigners for increased education in the colonies were involved with education causes in Britain and Ireland. In their minds, these contexts were connected: as Catherine Hall’s work has shown, children in the slums of England’s rapidly urbanising cities were often described in the same terms as Indigenous children abroad. Evangelical humanitarian thinking of the early nineteenth century connected Britain with the colonies.6 Susan Thorne suggests that missionaries understood the conversion of the poor at home and of ‘heathens’ in the colonies as ‘two fronts of the same war’.7 And, as Alison Twells argues, in the early nineteenth-century missionary philanthropy ‘combined an impressive and astonishingly ambitious array of concerns’, which included making ‘loyal, moral and industrious subjects out of the working classes at home’, ending slavery and the slave trade, and promoting ‘civilisation’ in the empire.8 Thus, there is merit in considering Britain, the West Indies and the settler colonies together since these operated as frames of reference for each other at the time. The Negro Education Grant was not a blueprint for colonial education policies elsewhere in the empire—and is particularly unusual because of the imperial government’s role in the working of the Grant. It is an indication of how central education was to conceptions of humanitarian governance. In spite of the success of humanitarian campaigning for emancipation, and increased provision of education for poor and working

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children in Britain, the relationship between labour and education was still subject to negotiation. In both metropolitan and colonial contexts, the need to ensure a steady supply of labour informed educational change. By the end of the 1840s however, a shifting understanding of race and a changing relationship between the imperial and local West Indian governments, led to a divergence in education policy in the two places, and a rethinking of colonial education more broadly. The imperial government began to reduce their Grant to West Indian education by twenty per cent annually from 1840, before withdrawing it altogether in 1845. This gave increased power to local legislatures, representing the needs of planters. As slaves were freed, planters were concerned about maintaining a labour force. In opposition, freed slaves were wary of attending schools that dressed up labour as education. Planters often expressed harsh attitudes towards race, believing in the inherent inferiority of previously enslaved people, and seeing their lower status as morally sanctioned. In the colonies of settlement, settlers expressed similar views about Indigenous people. The emphasis on education for labour arose out of a need to justify a highly stratified social order in which some people would be—and would remain—workers, while others would have access to literacy and education with a far broader scope for advancement. As this and the following chapters will show, the emphasis on education for labour, and industrial education in particular, arose out of the need to justify a social order based on different relationships to labour and, therefore, different relationships to education. The final part of this chapter outlines the implications of emancipation and apprenticeship for the language of ‘civilisation’ in the settler colonies. The histories of, and literature surrounding, emancipation and (settler) colonialism have often been dealt with separately, but this chapter shows that there are good reasons for considering their connections as well as divergences, particularly when paying attention to education.9 As education was often a part of humanitarian efforts in the colonies, or at least fell under the guise of ‘civilising’ Indigenous people, it is worth considering the way that it was positioned in relation to slavery and anti-slavery cases, often seen as the central arenas for humanitarian lobbying in the 1820s and 1830s. As Zoë Laidlaw recently argued, ‘[b]ringing colonialism and settler colonialism into the same frame could help us to better understand imperial violence and indigenous dispossession, as well as slavery and labour exploitation’.10

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This chapter elucidates a series of tensions in the development of education in Britain and the colonies. There were tensions between religious and secular education in the first instance. Should missionaries or religious organisations have full control over curriculum, and what would it mean for them to take government grants towards schools? Did governments know what kind of education was needed? Second, there were tensions about how exactly schools should operate. Did working-class children really need to be educated in day schools, or would Sunday and evening schools suffice? How did this translate to children of freed people in the colonies? Third, how should class factor into the kind of education that poor or working-class children received? Would education arouse political opposition to a lower status in society, or would it keep people ‘in their place’? Fourth, could a humanitarian stance from the imperial government translate into policies on the ground, where local settlers or planters had different views to those of the imperial and sometimes, local government? And perhaps most tenuously, what was the relationship between race and class when it came to education provision? Were children of freed slaves the same as poor or working-class children? Could experiences in the metropolitan context inform policies for education abroad? In this chapter, I briefly explore the educational milieu in Britain and Ireland from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the 1840s, before turning to the West Indian context, and discussing the operation of the Negro Education Grant in detail. I highlight the similarities, connections and divergences between conceptions of education in Britain and the West Indies directly after emancipation. Finally, I show that discussions about education in Britain and the West Indies were connected to other British colonies, by considering James Kay-Shuttleworth’s memorandum on education for the ‘coloured races’ in the British colonies. Written after the Negro Education Grant terminated, and based on British and continental education models, I highlight the  linked contexts of Britain, the West Indies, Europe and the colonies of settlement. I show that there was a shift in thinking about the use of education in the colonies between the 1830s and the end of the 1840s, with increased emphasis being put on industrial training. I argue that while the categories of race and class certainly informed each other, with policies from metropolitan contexts being adapted in the colonies, there was a gradual hardening of attitudes about race in the 1840s. This had implications for the kinds of education given to colonised people in other parts of the world.

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Education and the State in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland Until the 1830s, voluntary societies and religious groups were largely responsible for the education of the poor in England. The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales (the National Society) was set up in 1811. The National Society schools used the monitorial system, pioneered by Andrew Bell, who had worked as a chaplain in India.11 Associated with the Established Church, the society promoted religious teaching as a central facet of the education of the poor. The other major society providing education to the poor was the British and Foreign School Society, associated with nonconformists, and started as the Lancasterian Society in 1808, renamed in 1813. These schools also used the monitorial system, relying on older students teaching younger ones, which required less expertise and teacher training.12 Apart from monitorial schools, many working-class children were educated in Sunday Schools. Between 1800 and the 1830s, the number of children attending Sunday Schools in England and Wales rose from 200,000 to 1,400,000.13 These schools provided Christian lessons, and some basic numeracy and literacy. Working people were motivated to become literate in order to engage with new political movements. The growth of Evangelical Christianity, too, bolstered the need to read the Bible, raising levels of literacy in England, Scotland and Wales.14 Following the Reform Act in 1832, the status of education in Britain changed. With the new government grant from 1833, education was increasingly positioned as a government responsibility, and something that more children should have access to, albeit in different forms. The education system was stratified along lines of class. Workhouse schools began to be opened for pauper children, industrial schools for the very poor or orphans, and reform schools for the criminal.15 These schools combined lessons in morality, industry and Christianity. Since the poor were seen to lack discipline, education would show them the advantages of hard work. The schools worked on the premise that if children could learn to work at a young age, and perform the correct gender roles, they could be incorporated into good Christian families, and be better British citizens. Increasingly, society looked to self-made men as the epitome of ‘true manhood’,16 and thus, labour became ever more important as a moral virtue.

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As the Reform Act opened up greater political representation, so too was there an increasing push from government to educate a more enfranchised population. The Poor Laws of the 1830s also shifted the position of children and childhood in Britain: from 1834, children in workhouses received some education, although the quality was substandard and was often associated with harsh working conditions. The Factory Acts in the 1830s and 1840s limited the number of hours children could work in a day, making the problem of ‘idle’ children more visible, as more time was spent on the streets, rather than in employment.17 The 1844 Factory Acts ensured that no child under eight could be employed, while children who were eight to fourteen years old could only be employed for a limited number of hours, on three days per week. From 1844, the formation of district schools separated children from the negative influence of adult paupers, seen as potential corrupters of innocent children.18 This was similar to developments in the lives of Indigenous people in the settler colonies, where adult Indigenous people were increasingly seen as corrupting of their children. A central tension in educating poor and working children was about the longer-term consequences of education provision. Middle- and upper-­ class commentators were concerned that access to education would upset the class hierarchy in Britain. Literacy, equally, was treated in early nineteenth-­century England as ‘at best a dubious and at worst a nefarious development’.19 While education could be used as a means of social control—teaching children to be loyal, respectable citizens, aspiring to middle-­class status—it could also be potentially damaging—giving educated people the wrong idea about their place within a (rapidly changing) social hierarchy. Education could ‘civilise’ morally depraved children and train them into docility and acceptance of their class positions, but also raise awareness of social inequalities. As May, Kaur and Prochner point out, ‘Motives for educating the poor were a mix of the practical need for literate workers, philanthropic idealism, and, for some, an insurance against revolution by the poor’.20 These changing ideas about intervention in the lives of the poor were ‘driven both by a sense of danger to the social order and by an Enlightenment confidence that, given the appropriate environment, people’s lives could be reshaped’.21 This same anxiety pervaded education provision in the colonies, where Indigenous children’s education was constructed as morally redeeming of the savage soul, but also a process to be carefully managed, lest this benefit of civilisation be used to question the system.

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Government involvement in education was treated with some circumspection from those in voluntary societies who worried about the implications for teaching and curricula. The 1833 grant provided only for building new classrooms, for fear that the voluntary societies would withdraw their subscriptions when they received government funding. The National Society, providing primarily for Anglican pupils, received eighty per cent of this funding.22 It came on the condition that schools would be inspected by a government appointee, a condition that would be applied in the West Indies as well. The first education inspectors were appointed in England in 1839, and began work in 1840.23 Inspectors were to ensure that voluntary contributions to schools remained steady by pointing out where money from these associations or private benefactors might best be used. They were not permitted to ‘interfere with the instruction, management or discipline of the school’.24 Education was increasingly positioned as the responsibility of a benevolent government: as an 1835 pamphlet produced by the British and Foreign Bible Society proclaimed, ‘[p]opular ignorance is a national calamity; the means of instruction must therefore be afforded to all sects and parties in the nation’.25 Here was one of the tensions in government involvement in education: religious societies worried about what inspections and funding would mean for their autonomy. It took several years before the 1833 education grants were successfully administered. In 1839, in a debate proposing the appointment of a Committee of Privy Council on Education, Lord John Russell, then Home Secretary, stated that ‘[a]ll the inquiries which have been made show a deficiency in the general Education of the People which is not in accordance with the character of a Civilized and Christian Nation’.26 In the broader context of colonial expansion in the empire, the need to have a ‘civilised and Christian’ nation was ever more pronounced—Britons needed to set themselves apart from uneducated, uncivilised and irreligious colonised peoples. In April 1839, the Committee on Education was officially appointed with James Kay, later Kay-Shuttleworth, as its permanent secretary. Its members included Thomas Spring Rice, a liberal Irish reformer, who was influential in the creation of policy regarding the Negro Education Grant and a close ally of Thomas Fowell Buxton, a prominent anti-slavery campaigner and member of parliament. Russell was another member, who had experience as vice-president of the British and Foreign School Society since 1824.27 The Committee emphasised the link between morality, industry and religion in education. Religious teaching was to remain central to the schools receiving government aid. It was to ‘be

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combined with the whole matter of instruction, and to regulate the entire system of discipline’.28 ‘Morally corrupt’ working parents had the power to contaminate their children, and the role of both church and government was to watch over these children as their own responsibility.29 The government, in particular, was to regulate labour, and to ‘care’ for children whose parents were constructed as unfit to do so.30 These changes in English education were matched by changes elsewhere. In England’s closest colony, Ireland, there was an increasing push for government involvement in education as well. Many of those who campaigned for education in the West Indies, and the colonies more broadly, had advocated for education for Irish children in the years before. Spring Rice, for example, was involved in the Irish education system, and argued in the 1820s that education for Catholics and Protestants in Ireland should be provided by one government-funded scheme, and that a combination of secular and religious education was essential to Irish ‘moral improvement’.31 Lord Stanley, then Chief Secretary to Ireland, was one of the foremost promoters of the Irish National School system. He believed that a national system of education that combined moral and literary education, while providing space for religious teaching for Catholics and Protestants, was integral to success of the system.32 Russell, too, had written about Catholic emancipation through education in Ireland. Thomas Wyse, Irish Catholic MP and supporter of Catholic emancipation, proposed a state funded education system in 1830—he wanted schools to be open to all children, with separate religious education for Protestant and Catholic pupils. This argument was connected to changing political circumstances in Ireland: referring to the Roman Catholic emancipation in 1829, he argued, ‘Constitutions were good and necessary, but a good Constitution might be long in giving a good education: it was scarcely in the nature of moral things that a good national education should not, ere long, render necessary and certain a good Constitution’.33 This argument was echoed in the West Indies as well: if slaves were to be freed, they needed to be prepared for this freedom and for their position in a civilised British system. An educated population would require a different kind of government. The Irish National School system started in 1831, with a government grant of £30,000 for both Catholic and Protestant schools. The questions raised in the Irish case, particularly regarding the connections between morality, religion and education, were formative in the creation of the British education system, as well as in state funded education plans in other colonial contexts.34

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James Kay also wrote about education in Ireland. He argued for a combination of labour, industry and religious training for the children of ‘vicious’ Irish parents. His comments in the 1840s on education for the ‘coloured races’ in the British colonies, that I discuss later, echoed these ideas. The issue of ‘vocational’ or ‘domestic’ training was as salient with the Irish poor as it was for racial others elsewhere: the Commissioners of Education in Ireland argued that most Irish people would go on to be labourers, and that their education should thus be tailored to these circumstances.35 The Irish language, already seen as in decline, was not deemed appropriate for the widespread instruction of children.36 The Irish National School books, written by the Commissioners of the Board of Education in Ireland, were designed to foster a loyalty to Britain, and stayed away from any promotion of a unique or distinct Irish identity. These books were used across the empire.37 The connections between debates about education and its function in colonial contexts were clearly connected in the minds of those promoting education—from Kay, to Spring Rice and Stanley. The context of government involvement in education was changing rapidly in this early nineteenth-century British imperial context, fostered not only by changes ‘at home’ but also by a shifting set of ideas about empire and humanitarianism abroad. Education, once seen as elite, or at least as the responsibility of religious societies, was increasingly positioned as a government responsibility. The 1830s saw rapid educational change, from government grants to education in England and the West Indies, to the Irish National School System and the New System of education at the Cape.

Emancipation and Education in the West Indies It was in this context of educational and political change in the British imperial context that education became a matter of urgency in the West Indies. As the Anti-Slavery Society—the London-based humanitarian lobby group—campaigned for emancipation, they also began to articulate a vision of what post-emancipation societies should look like. The provision of ‘moral and religious instruction of the Colonies, upon liberal and comprehensive principles’ was central to these new societies.38 The immoral system of slavery had undoubtedly corrupted the minds of slaves, and parliamentarians and colonial lobbyists sought to remedy this through the application of a moral education. In 1832, ahead of emancipation the following year, Buxton sent a circular to the mission societies working in

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the West Indies, emphasising the importance of a ‘plan of religious Instruction upon a scale far more extensive and more efficient than any which has hitherto been established on any part of the Globe by any Mission body’. Buxton was clear that religious societies would be asked to provide religious instruction, and that ‘school-masters & houses will, we hope, be provided from another quarter’.39 He asked about the societies’ willingness to cooperate in such a scheme, and whether they would be inclined to recruit suitable missionaries and train local teachers. Buxton’s connection to friend and ally, Spring Rice, by then colonial secretary, aided the promotion of this project. Stanley, then Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, also pushed for this reform, likely influenced by his involvement in education in Ireland in the 1820s and 1830s. The contexts of educational change in Ireland and England informed decisions about educational change in the West Indies, and also provided fuel for the argument that education was the responsibility of this humanitarian government. Likewise, the West Indian Grant was held up as an example of the centrality of education to the success of British colonisation. Extra-parliamentary lobbyists and parliamentarians agreed that education should be prioritised, but were concerned about the model for providing grants, given that there was no ‘home’ model to follow. Aberdeen, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies from December 1834 to April 1835, said that since his term in office had begun, he had been ‘actively engaged in devising a general scheme of education throughout the Colonies’, but that before any decisions were made, the religious societies and local legislatures needed to be asked how much they were able to contribute to the cause.40 The imperial government therefore approached various ‘experts’ for advice on how best to implement the Negro Education Grant. These advisors, missionaries and metropolitan pressure groups were key players in defining what a colonial education system could look like. The information was then passed on to the Reverend James Sterling, appointed to report on the best way to administer the Grant. As Parlia­mentary Under-Secretary Sir George Grey put it, Sterling’s ‘practical acquaintance with the state of the Negro population’, gained when he had lived for a brief period in the West Indies, as well as his knowledge of educational changes in Britain and Europe, made him a suitable candidate for this role.41 Sterling gathered information from the London representatives of mission societies and interested members of the government and Treasury, submitting his report on the Grant’s administration in 1835. Missionaries

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were asked how they would allocate the new Grant for education, and about their experiences of the West Indies. The role of voluntary societies in the provision of education was central to the imperial government’s plan for education in the Caribbean, similar to the extension of funding in Britain itself. The secretaries of the Church Missionary Society, Moravian Mission Society, Baptist Missionary Society, London Missionary Society and Wesleyan Mission Society held a meeting in London and passed their suggestions on to Buxton. The report of the meeting was then given to Sterling. It expressed some concern that the Grant would cause a proliferation of schools in specific areas, which might lead to the ‘collision of the different Societies’. The Secretaries hoped that requiring government sanction for plans to build schools would help to overcome this issue.42 Government funding was met with some ‘apathy and suspicion’ from the mission bodies, but their cooperation, in spite of these concerns, indicates their awareness of the evangelising potential of schools.43 There was no sense that a secular system of education might be suitable in the West Indies. Rather, as Patricia Rooke has argued, missionaries working in that context, as in many others, believed that civilisation could only be achieved in relation to Christianity, and that religious education would improve not only individual morality and wellbeing, but the health of the society at large.44 This was similar to the metropolitan context, where inculcating Christian morality was a central pillar of education. Moreover, the tensions between religious societies in the West Indies were likely informed by long standing concerns about favouritism towards the Established Church in England. Here, the imperial government had the opportunity, through their oversight of the system, to relieve some of the tensions between mission groups. While the British context certainly informed the provision of education in the West Indies, there was not a linear relationship between the extension of education in England and the West Indies. The ambitious Negro Education Grant was constructed with some awareness of differences between contexts. Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, well-known ally of the humanitarian cause and acquaintance of Buxton, suggested that the West Indian Grant might be administered in the same way as grants to the voluntary societies in Britain. However, he acknowledged that the contexts were not the same: there were differences between the families of working people and those of freed slaves and apprentices. Writing to Jamaican Governor Sligo in 1835, Glenelg urged Sligo to promote compulsory education for children there, something that would

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only happen in Britain later in the nineteenth century. ‘Whatever objection may exist, in more advanced societies, to the principle of compulsory education, they can have no place in reference to a colony where the great mass of the people have just emerged from Slavery…’45 This is particularly interesting in light of similar conversations in Britain, where compulsory education was seen as an unnecessary and unwanted intervention in the life of the working family. British Dissenters were suspicious of compulsory education as they thought it would involve the imposition of an Anglican curriculum. This kind of argument against compulsory education was certainly moderated in the West Indian context. Many planters refused to allow their slaves to practice Christianity.46 Freed slaves were therefore seen as incapable of seeing the benefits of education for their children. By contrast, in England, working-class and poor people had access to Christianity, and therefore had more autonomy regarding their offspring. Thus, while the categories of ‘race’ and ‘class’ informed each other in the immediate post-emancipation era, they were not understood as synonymous. Sterling’s primary recommendation was that the Grant should be administered through mission societies already working in the West Indies.47 The education system should take into account that emancipated slaves had only recently gained their freedom, and thus, they needed to learn that ‘they are & are meant to be anything else than elder brothers of the lower animals’.48 Increased access to schools would help children overcome ‘ignorance and idleness’, twin evils in a society transitioning from bonded to free labour. The homes of freed slaves and apprentices were bad environments for young children: these were places where children learnt bad habits of ‘fraudulence & licentiousness’ and ‘the practice of craft & falsehood’.49 Education had the potential to correct all this, creating a space for children to be reformed, taught the moral value of hard work, and civilised through Christian teaching. Sterling thought that England’s treatment of the children of the working classes could provide a good model for the education of freed people. Regarding living conditions in the West Indies, he said that ‘here we might proceed with a tacit knowledge of the average condition of the children of the [British] poor, & not perhaps on the whole go very far wrong’.50 Once again, the children of the working poor provided a useful point of comparison with children of slaves, who were also growing up in immoral homes and needed to learn the value of Christianity and hard work.

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Sterling’s awareness of educational change in England informed his report for the extension of the Negro Education Grant. As education came to be seen as an arena for government funding and intervention, Sterling speculated about the political expediency of seeing similar measures carried out in the West Indies. He wrote that while the ‘peace and prosperity of the empire at large may not be remotely influenced by their [the recently emancipated] moral condition…the opinion of the public in Britain earnestly requires a systematic provision for their mental improvement’.51 Widespread support for the anti-slavery cause was central to the Grant for education being made, as the project was closely tied to ideas about freedom. Slavery was understood as a moral stain on the British character, and religious education could go some way towards improving people so degraded by their circumstances. Sterling’s argument about the public opinion regarding freed people’s education points to a shifting idea about the role of the British government in humanitarian projects in the colonies. Education was not simply a way to civilise free people and create a Christian population. British parliamentarians argued that education  also  had the potential to create a docile and loyal labour force. Aberdeen, speaking in the House of Lords in 1835, said that if no provision for religious education was made to the now emancipated slaves, ‘those persons at the end of their apprenticeship would be free in body, but slaves in mind, and instead of a blessing their freedom would be a curse’.52 Freedom, in this argument, was not a natural state. Rather, it required a certain level of cultivation. Without Christian values and moral training, freed people would have no tools to manage their new positions in society. On Sterling’s recommendation, each mission society was given a portion of government funding of one-third, to the society’s contribution of two-thirds. Sterling imagined that university-educated missionaries could live in communities of emancipated slaves, providing a good example of education and piousness. In some cases, the government Grant was supplemented by grants made by local legislatures for education.53 However, as I discuss below, local legislatures often had different ideas to missionaries and the imperial government about how education should be provided, and what it should entail. For the duration of the Grant, the imperial government administered it and inspected schools, but was not permitted to appoint teachers or manage curricula.54 The inspections were intended to ensure that the funds from the Grant were being successfully allocated and were not being used for building costs. The government took a deliberately

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non-sectarian position regarding the Grant, making sure that  funding was  equally disbursed amongst different congregations. This followed largely from the principle that the education system that was rolled out in the colonies should follow ‘liberal and comprehensive principles’, which Buxton argued would involve the government sharing ‘their support between the Church and Dissenters’.55 While deeply reliant on missionaries for teaching and expertise, the government needed to balance these with the broader aim of ‘civilising’ an entire group of people. Thus, they could not allow sectarian differences, so heightened in Britain, to slow down the management of the system in the colonies. While the Grant was in place, between 1835 and 1845, there was a proliferation of schools in the West Indies. During 1835, one hundred and twenty-four schools across the West Indian colonies served approximately 18,665 pupils. The £20,000 parliamentary Grant had been matched by £11,318 in voluntary spending by the mission societies.56 The Grant was raised to £30,000 in 1837, with an additional £5,000 for normal schools (for teacher training), as had been done in the metropolitan context. Between 1833 and 1841, imperial government spending on education in the West Indies matched that spent on education at ‘home’, even though the Caribbean population was far smaller, at around a twentieth of the British population.57 This represents a massive intervention in education, unparalleled in the settler colonies throughout the nineteenth century. As Governor Sligo reported to the Jamaican Assembly in January 1836, the Grant showed the deep interest of the British nation in the welfare of this large class of the community, in which measure the proprietors of land in this colony are so immediately concerned, as by infusing amongst the labouring class the principles of religious instruction, good order, and a right discharge of their social duties must be affected.58

Sligo’s language is worth noting here: he spoke not of the missionaries, but of the proprietors of land—the planters whose interests he served— and not of civilisation, but ‘order’ and appropriate ‘social duties’. The involvement of experts, missionaries and lobbyists in the creation of a policy of widespread education for emancipated slaves was the first step towards a coherent education system. The next step was to monitor the shape of the system—who would be part of it? What kind of education

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would be offered? Would mission societies cooperate? In 1835, a circular from Sir George Grey to the mission societies working in the West Indies reminded them that a condition of the Grant was that the schools would be inspected by ‘an officer appointed by His Majesty’s Government for that purpose, who will report on their state and efficiency’.59 Shortly afterwards, a metropolitan inspector was appointed to answer these questions. The early discussions of the Grant highlighted a number of tensions in colonial education provision. There was the issue of religious teaching and involvement. There was the desire to control the outcomes of education, and to ensure that educated children would understand their place in ­society. There were also questions about the relationship between race and class, in an era in which humanitarian campaigning had stressed the common humanity of all people.

Inspecting Education: Charles La Trobe in the West Indies Charles La Trobe was appointed as Inspector of Negro Education in 1837, and set off for Jamaica, the first colony under inspection, that year. Born in 1801 to a Moravian family that was closely involved with anti-slavery campaigns as active members of the Clapham sect, La Trobe’s personal connections saw him recommended for the job. As Buxton pointed out, his ‘character and connections’ made him a suitable appointee.60 He was given the instruction to investigate the ‘state of education in those colonies at the present time, especially with reference to the Negro population’.61 His role was clearly outlined to quell suspicion from missionaries: he was not to ‘exercise any control over the religious instruction given in the Schools’, but was to ensure that the societies were operating as reported to the government.62 All societies except the SPG raised concerns about the inspections and were eager to protect their autonomy, citing their societies’ contributions to education as a reason for continued independence.63 Concerns about the role of the government in education inspections meant that sub-inspectors, recruited and selected by the missionary societies themselves, were often involved in collecting information that went into La Trobe’s parliamentary reports. A resident missionary of their parent societies inspected the Baptist Missionary and London Missionary Society schools, and the Church Missionary Society and Wesleyans appointed their own inspectors.64 This must be taken into account when

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reading La Trobe’s reports on the system—as eager as the imperial government may have been to monitor the use of the Grant, mission societies maintained control over what was ultimately reported to the inspector. The results of La Trobe’s enquiries were published in three Parliamentary reports on ‘Negro Education’—the first on Jamaica, the second on the Windward and Leeward Islands, and the third on British Guiana and Trinidad.65 As Laidlaw points out, from the 1820s, there was a proliferation of information collected by the Colonial Office, and by the end of the 1830s, ‘a new era of information collection and centralisation was ushered in’.66 La Trobe’s reports indicate this drive to collect and rationalise information about the colonies, and also point to the professionalisation of teaching and education. La Trobe collected information about the number of schools of each mission society supported by the Grant, as well as projected building costs and dimensions for any schools to be added in the next year. Included in the statistical returns was information about which populations the schools catered to: ‘free children of apprentices’, ‘children of free townspeople’, ‘children and adults’, children of emigrants, ‘adult apprentices’, ‘children of Maroons’, and, in one case ‘children of free settlers and of apprentices’. Freed children younger than seven generally attended day schools. Older working children and adults were more often educated in the Sunday and evening schools. In Jamaica in 1836, there were 12,580 children on the books across the island attending day schools run by the different denominations, and a further 20,870 attending Sunday Schools and 5,304  in evening schools. In the Windward and Leeward Islands in 1837, 38,947 children attended day, Sunday and evening schools. Out of a population of 583,725, almost fifty thousand, or roughly ten per cent of apprentices and free children in Jamaica, Antigua and British Guiana, received some form of education in 1839.67 The reports also described the kind of education the children, and some adults, received. Many schools employed monitorial systems as used by the National Society or the British and Foreign School Society. Curricula generally included the ‘common branches’ of instruction: reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar and catechisation. For the duration of the Grant, education focused on literary rather than practical skills—while some schools reported that children did some garden work, this was the exception rather than the rule.68 By the end of the 1830s, however, there was mounting opposition to this kind of teaching that focused on the ‘liberal and comprehensive principles’ set out by the British government. While missionaries welcomed literary education, which

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allowed children to engage with the Bible from a young age, planters were concerned about the effects of this kind of education on their future ability to attract labourers. As I show below, the need for a steady supply of labour saw a shift towards industrial training in the 1840s. This would influence thinking about education for Indigenous children in the settler colonies as well. In spite of the apparent alignment between the goals of government and missionaries, La Trobe’s reports identified a number of difficulties facing the mission societies. Some of the societies, with the prospect of being afforded government funding for the first time, had applied for grants based on ‘ill-digested or sanguine plans’ that were never enacted. Missionaries also struggled to get access to land to build schools, a problem that would be repeated in the settler colonies.69 Sectarian rivalries meant mission societies applied for grants to build schools in close proximity to one another, which was impractical. Instructions about the Grant’s uses were unclear, which meant it had been used in a variety of ways. La Trobe also struggled to get accurate information from the different mission societies.70 Children’s attendance at schools was more sporadic than he had hoped, and there were too few well-trained teachers.71 However, he remembered that the main objective of the Grant was the ‘moral and religious improvement of the Negro population, and that provided that was attained, the precise manner was of secondary importance’.72 La Trobe’s report on the Windward and Leeward Islands raised a further concern about the development of uniform education policy throughout the West Indies, which had implications for the development of colonial education systems elsewhere. ‘There are no two islands in which the social, political, and physical features precisely coincide; and these must all have their influence on education’.73 In Barbados, for example, the education of poor white children raised some concerns. There had been ‘manifest repugnance in the parents of coloured children to send them to schools frequented by the poor whites’.74 In British Guiana, many of the apprentices and free people spoke Dutch rather than English, which posed its own set of challenges for English-speaking missionaries.75 La Trobe’s reports stressed the importance of context to education provision: the children of freed people in Jamaica or apprentices in Barbados, or those of the working poor in Britain, might require different kinds of education, and the circumstances of each context needed to be taken into account by educators and those setting up education systems. In later

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chapters, I indicate just how the local circumstances of colonies were used by both settlers and humanitarian thinkers to justify different educational policies for Indigenous people. The fact that there were so many differences between colonies, whether these were of societal organisation of Indigenous people, the mission societies working in an area, or the crops that were farmed, meant that the extension of an education system across multiple territories would always be complex. The Grant saw the broadening of widespread education in the West Indies. However, local colonial legislatures and the powerful planter lobby did not think that it had sufficiently addressed the need for a steady supply of labour in the years immediately after emancipation. In their eyes, an education system without a significant proportion of manual training was impractical and misleading for newly freed people. This was a central problem at the time of emancipation: the enslaved workforce needed to be transformed into free labourers.76 At the same time, those who had been involved in developing the Grant were concerned that the system should ‘benefit the Negroes and not the Planters’.77 La Trobe himself was suspicious about the feelings of planters towards the education schemes. ‘It is only just to remark’, he wrote, of faltering educational progress in Barbados and Antigua that this may spring, less from a narrow-minded dislike to see the Negro mind cultivated, than from a mistrust as to the sound views or judgment of many of the advocates of the cause; an undecided opinion as to the quality and the measure of the instruction to be given; and doubt as to the effect which education, unaccompanied by lessons of industry, may exercise over the prosperity of the colony.78

La Trobe’s comments, as later chapters show, resonated with the misgivings that were expressed by settlers in Natal, Western Australia and elsewhere about Indigenous people’s education. Where the labour of colonised people was central to building or maintaining the economies of the colonies, education schemes that focused on reading and writing at the expense of work and manual skills were seen as irrelevant at best, and dangerous at worst. La Trobe pointed out that none of the West Indian colonies had an adequate education system that combined literary and industrial training. In Barbados, for example, there was ‘distrust on the part of the Negro, with reference to the employment of his children on the estates in agricultural labour…’79 Planters’ fears over losing their

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labour force were met with suspicion from the apprentice and free population, who did not want to see their children enslaved.80 However, La Trobe was also keenly aware that the majority of the free children would end up performing manual labour. He doubted the wisdom or real kindness of any system or mode of instruction which would lead either the parent or the child to reason falsely on the subject, by not strongly impressing upon the mind the necessity of submitting to labour, not only as it yields the means of satisfying brute nature, but as it is conducive to social order, morality, and happiness.81

Here, labour was positioned as an economic and moral good. La Trobe was aware of planters’ influence in shaping the education of free and apprenticed children, although he remained optimistic that the opinions of planters were no longer ‘tinctured with the prejudices of the old time’. He acknowledged the ‘doubt and suspicion as to the policy of the m ­ easures in favour of universal instruction, and of its ultimate effect upon the labouring population, and consequently upon their own fortunes, than one which would urge them to open hostility’.82 The promotion of education as a project of emancipation was riddled with tensions. Education was constructed as part of an apparatus of social reform, and moral and religious education was a way of ‘improving’ freed slaves and their children. However, evangelical ideas about the connection between industry and religion also shaped La Trobe’s interpretation of how education was best given. Further, the colonies’ economic and material conditions required education to be framed in a way that would promote ‘social order’. This meant justifying a system in which some would be, and remain, workers, while others would be educated in order to rise in society. As the nineteenth century progressed, these divisions were increasingly based on colour. La Trobe’s remarks also show how the meaning of humanitarianism was circumscribed by the desire to maintain a labour force in the West Indian colonies. While there was a recognition that free people should be educated in the post-emancipation era, and that as a civilised government, Britain should be the ones to ensure this occurred, the practicalities of putting this humanitarian intervention into practice had not been adequately considered. While humanitarian thinking might have been influential for the imperial government, it did not necessarily reflect the views of planters and settlers in the West Indies and the settler colonies, respectively.

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La Trobe’s concluding remarks, in his final report on British Guiana and Trinidad, at the end of his tour of inspection in 1839, spoke to the perceived benefit of education for all society, particularly if structured around ‘the wants of all classes of the population’.83 Education, he wrote, should be ‘suited to the necessities and probable prospects of the class to whom it is presented’.84 It must never be forgotten what the Negro has been in these colonies. If he is considered by many to rank, in his natural state, low on the scale of human intellect, he has been certainly placed in circumstances to depress him yet lower; and now that the main cause of pressure is happily removed, no ­surprise need be excited, if, with animal powers largely developed, while his mental energies are but half roused and without improvement, he should show a disposition rather to imitate the vices and the frivolities of a superior state of society, than, discriminating at once between good and evil, to attach himself to the culture of that which is really solid, praiseworthy and excellent.85

The planters were not at risk of forgetting what the slaves had been. Planters’ anxiety over labour shaped their views of education. ‘Active industry’ and ‘useful education’ were to be promoted above all else.86 Planters did not want local legislatures to make recurring grants for education. This arose partly from the belief that there was no need for mass education, but also from fears that education would lead to social unrest, similar to conversations about education for the working classes in Britain.87 As I show in later chapters, there were parallel concerns about Indigenous people in other colonies interacting with settlers of the wrong sort, picking up their ‘frivolities’ and ‘vices’. However, from the beginning of the Grant, Sterling had noted that the apprentices and free people would be cautious of education that focused too much on practical over literary skills.88 La Trobe believed the missions, and the schools in particular, could keep people with a ‘restless or an enterprising character’ within the ‘influence of society and of the laws’.89 This resonates with metropolitan views of using education to dampen working-class protests in Britain. Yet, La Trobe reported that there were some complaints about the evening schools encouraging ‘immorality among the young and vicious’.90 Here was another tension about education provision—would it ‘calm’ or ‘excite’ immorality and political consciousness? La Trobe knew that a good education for free children might look different for the imperial government and local legislatures, respectively. As

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the grants were administered directly by the heads of mission societies, it was possible for those in local legislatures to claim that they were in a state of total ignorance of the mode in which the mother country was fulfilling her pledge to further the education of the Negro race; and [were] ready to appeal to this ignorance, as an apology for the delay or neglect which it had evinced in forwarding measures proposed to this end or, perhaps, for withholding colonial aid altogether…91

In Britain’s settler colonies, too, colonial legislatures increasingly represented settlers. Requests for grants for education were typically met either with open hostility, or, as in the West Indies, ‘granted in a manner which rendered it productive of but little good’.92 As the 1830s concluded, these debates about education continued, and developed a form that would echo through the British Empire during the mid- to late nineteenth century. Murmurings of discontent from planters about the education of children of apprentices and emancipated labourers would come to shape debates about education in the 1840s. In 1840, the Colonial Office began reducing the Negro Education Grant by twenty per cent annually, until the imperial government aid stopped altogether and responsibility was handed over to local governments and mission bodies in 1845.93 In his circular to all of the societies receiving aid for education, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord John Russell, painted the Grant as a success, for having prepared the freed population to ‘provide for the Education of their Children without the aid which is now specially voted by Parliament for that purpose’.94 This left charitable societies and mission bodies in a precarious position: newly opened schools had proliferated during the period of the Grant and now faced financial shortfalls. Many schools closed in the early 1840s as funding dried up. As the Grant reduced, local legislatures placed more emphasis on manual and industrial training, which led to poorer quality education across the board, as many missionaries were not trained to teach industrial skills.95 ‘Industrial education’, as it came to be known, fitted perfectly with what Thomas Holt has referred to as the ‘themes of the age’: ‘innovation, enterprise, practical education, self-reliance, the mutuality and interdependence of the different social classes’.96 From this point onwards, industrial education was actively promoted as a means of maintaining social order within a servile, labouring population. Giving children industrial

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education would instil respect for manual labour. They would see that farming was not ‘a debasing occupation’. As Jamaican Governor Lord Elgin put it in correspondence with Stanley, industrial education married ‘the material interest of one class and the moral interests of another, the recognition of which is an indispensable condition to the social progress in these communities’. The moral reasons for promoting agricultural and industrial training—to instil the civilised habits of ‘perseverance’, ‘regularity’, and ‘steadiness’—justified a shift from literary to manual training.97 Jamaica’s progress relied on the labour of freed people, and from this labour would spring their ‘desire to excel’.98 While apprentices had looked to the moral and religious training given during the Grant as a way to achieve political status, they now realised that their hope of social advancement would remain an unfulfilled dream.99

‘A System of Education for the Coloured Races of the British Colonies’ The shift from a more literary-based religious education to explicitly labour-intensive schooling is epitomised in a document produced by James Kay-Shuttleworth in 1847. The Negro Education Grant terminated in 1845, and the imperial government, still hoping to appear interested in the fate of freed people in the colonies, sought to promote a new system of education. This new system would reinforce the morality of manual labour for freed people, while supplying planters with a stable labour force. The task of drawing up a plan for ‘a system of education for the coloured races of the British Colonies’ was not given to someone based in the colonies, but rather, to the Permanent Secretary of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, Kay-Shuttleworth. In order to draw up this memorandum, the imperial government drew on their ‘home’ resources, using personnel and apparatus already available to them. The resulting circular was the first comprehensive set of principles for industrial education set out for the West Indies, or any other region in the British Empire.100 Although Kay-Shuttleworth’s recommendations were never fully implemented, they indicate how ideas about the relationship between colour, class, labour and education were changing towards the end of the 1840s. Kay-Shuttleworth had been appointed as Secretary of the Education Committee in 1839, a position he held for a decade. He was asked to use his experience of English education to articulate a set of principles on

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industrial education in the colonies.101 Kay-Shuttleworth trained as a medical doctor and published extensively on the moral condition of working-­ class people. He believed that individuals should be held accountable for their own misfortunes and that evil bred evil: in other words, that poor families and those subjected to hard labour needed to understand these conditions as part of their own moral failures. Particularly dangerous were the Irish, a distinct race of ‘barbarians and savages’ with the power to corrupt the English people.102 These ideas were central to his thinking on education. Labour could make working people virtuous and, combined with moral and religious training, would open their minds to understanding why they found themselves in difficult circumstances. Labour would turn orphans or illegitimate children into ‘efficient and virtuous members of society’.103 Industrial education, in particular, would teach children the value of hard work, and thus ‘promote the growth of a truly Christian civilization’.104 When Kay-Shuttleworth was approached to write the memorandum on education for the ‘coloured races’ in the British colonies, the third Earl Grey had been recently appointed as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. He was optimistic about education in the colonies, saying that English industrial schools that provided intellectual and practical training were ‘eminently useful, and a desire is very generally entertained by the most judicious friends of the working classes, that such schools be greatly extended [in Britain]’.105 Industrial schools were, according to Benjamin Hawes, Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, ‘peculiarly well adapted to the West India colonies’.106 In fact, introducing ex-slaves to the best new modes of agriculture could raise them above the ‘rudest modes’ of labour used under slavery.107 In this vision, these new ways of working were not akin to slavery—in fact, they could be emancipatory and provide an entrance into the middle classes.108 The West Indian governors sent Kay-Shuttleworth information about education in their respective colonies. They were asked to comment on the applicability of industrial training there, and on whether local funding could be found to support the proposal. While Sterling had written his 1835 report on the basis of information from missionaries, Kay-­ Shuttleworth’s 1847 memorandum was based almost exclusively on ‘official’ correspondence from representatives of the British government in the colonies. Many of the responses claimed that missionary groups had failed to work together, hindering the progress of government funded ‘secular education’.109 However, the governors generally stated that it was ‘most

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important to instil into the young, what neither they nor their parents possess at present, habits of quiet industry, and some degree of intelligence and knowledge respecting the common processes of cultivation’.110 Industrial education could reinforce the existing social order by benefiting not only the emancipated worker, but also those dependent on their labour.111 Here, there was a shift in thinking about the purpose of education, but also about who should be involved in its implementation. In 1847, the results of the enquiry were published.112 Kay-­ Shuttleworth proposed three types of schools: industrial schools; model farm schools to be run as ‘a large Christian family, assembled for mutual benefit, and conducted by a well-ordered domestic economy’; and normal schools for training teachers.113 Normal schools were particularly important in a context where missionaries were the primary educators, and were generally untrained in mechanical arts. Kay-Shuttleworth had faith in this mode of education, saying it would teach children religion, morality, hygiene and discipline. He also thought the use of children’s labour would offset the cost of opening schools. The schools should be taught in English, the ‘most important agent of civilization’.114 Kay-Shuttleworth drew on his metropolitan experiences to write his memorandum. He also referred to his travels to the Hofwyl school in Switzerland, where manual and industrial training were being promoted for children of all classes. Although he did not argue that ‘race’ and ‘class’ were exactly the same, he did think that there were some general principles that could be drawn from the metropolitan context to inform the colonial one. He knew that he was no expert on the ‘peculiarities of a race which readily abandons itself to excitement, and perhaps needs amusements which would seem unsuitable for the peasantry of a civilized community’.115 However, he supplied general suggestions regarding the practical elements of education. For Kay-Shuttleworth, the benefits of an education based on the ‘mutual dependence of moral and physical teaching’ could be the ‘transforming agency, by which the negro could be led, within a generation, materially to improve his habits’. There is a parallel here with Kay-­ Shuttleworth’s writing about the working classes, who were responsible for their own circumstances and needed to work their way out of them. Freed people needed to work to improve their own habits—this was not something that would, in his view, come naturally to them. Education should be differentiated according to gender, with girls learning ‘cottage economy’ and boys, manual labour. In combination with the syllabus on

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health and ‘means of procuring Comfort’, this would prepare them for Christian family life, and ultimately, a transition to middle-class status.116 The information from West Indian governors shaped Kay-Shuttleworth’s approach to all of the ‘coloured races’.117 Earl Grey circulated Kay-­ Shuttleworth’s suggestions on industrial education throughout the British colonies, saying that he had taken every ‘opportunity of rendering experience obtained at home available in the West Indies’. Industrial education, according to Grey, should be promoted in the colonies for two reasons: first, it brought ‘moral and spiritual enlightenment’, and second, industrial education ‘[created] new wants and desires, new activities, a love of employment, and an increased alacrity both of the body and mind’. Industrial education would be ‘the most certain of all methods for equalizing the supply of labour with the demand’; it would lead to ‘scientific and mechanical improvements’. Promoting this system of education would encourage a ‘cultivated and intelligent race of proprietors’ to remain in the West Indies, and this would ‘assist civil order and the advancement of all classes’.118 The connection between labour and education was clear: education would promote morality, but ultimately would create labourers. Children would be trained to work in agriculture so that they would be prepared for employment in that area as adults.119 This version of emancipatory education emphasised the morality of hard work, the mutual dependence of different classes of people, and the status anxiety of planters in the years after slavery. While the Colonial Office had called for the preparation of the memorandum, and saw to its dissemination, their funding for industrial education schemes was less forthcoming.120 They had hoped that local legislatures would provide funding for these schools. Andre Du Toit argued that Earl Grey ‘failed to realise that these struggling colonial communities had insufficient funds and lacked men of enlightened vision to undertake such radical educational reforms’.121 However, La Trobe’s reports at the end of the 1830s predicted this lack of local interest in providing education.122 It is unlikely that Earl Grey was unaware of the negligence of educational spending in the colonies. The tension between the need for labour, a set of guiding ‘humanitarian’ principles on education, and the planter lobby’s promotion of their own needs above those of freed people made the funding of education particularly fraught. This was similar in the settler colonies, where white settlers complained about the negligence of their education by the Colonial Office, and local legislatures were increasingly wary of providing education to Indigenous people.

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In Jamaica, Kay-Shuttleworth’s industrial education proposal raised some concern. Amongst one Baptist congregation, parents worried that their children were ‘about to be made slaves’. The congregation was told that ‘the proposal, whatever it may be or tend to, comes from the British Government and that this country has nothing to do with it…’123 Apart from the immense cost of setting up day schools of industry, model farm schools and normal agricultural schools, there was widespread suspicion from ex-slaves that industrial education would only prepare their children for servitude.124 We can see the indirect impact of the memorandum in the Cape and New Zealand. The document was favourably received there, and later in the century, plans for industrial education were put into place.125 Sir George Grey, whose promotion of industrial education in those colonies I discuss in Chap. 5, certainly knew about the memorandum, having forwarded it to missionaries in New Zealand in the late 1840s. However, he never credited the memorandum in his writing about industrial education.126 Arguments regarding the memorandum as a ‘testing’ ground for ‘ways of educating/controlling the working class in England’ do not take into account the fact that Kay-Shuttleworth was working on metropolitan and colonial education and, in particular, on promoting industrial schooling, simultaneously.127 The memorandum was sent to La Trobe, by then Superintendent of the Port Phillip Protectorate, and Chief Protector of Aborigines George Augustus Robinson. The Merri Creek school, as Michael Christie points out, did provide some industrial training.128 Close by, then Captain (later Sir) George Grey’s memorandum on Aboriginal civilisation, based on his tour of South Western Australia, had argued that training children in practical pursuits would not only provide labour, but also improve their moral and physical condition.129 The ideas expressed in the memorandum were not unique, and the fact that there were industrial schools for Indigenous children in the colonies cannot be directly traced to the memorandum. Rather, in the 1840s and 1850s, ideas about industrial training were ‘circulating in missionary and government circles within the Empire’.130 The ideas about labour, education and morality that Kay-Shuttleworth discussed in the contexts of British, Irish and West Indian education were born out of a context in which labour was being advocated as a means of civilisation for Indigenous or previously enslaved people, whose labour was central to the economic prosperity of the British colonies. Indeed, in the same year as Kay-­

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Shuttleworth’s memorandum was published, a similar report was prepared by Egerton Ryerson, Superintendent of Schools in Upper Canada. Ryerson was asked to prepare a report on industrial schools for Aboriginal Indians. The 1847 Report on Industrial Schools, like Kay-Shuttleworth’s memorandum, drew on experience from Ryerson’s visit to the Hofwyl school. Ryerson argued that Aboriginal people should be educated in industrial schools where they would be taught a combination of manual or practical skills, English and common branches of education. All this would be overseen by missionaries, as education without Christianity was considered futile.131 Ryerson argued that, in contrast to manual labour schools which promoted labour as ‘recreation [rather] than as employment’, industrial schools for Aboriginal children should focus on making the children into farmers rather than building a broader education.132 Ryerson also advocated practical education as a remedy and preventative of pauperism.133 His arguments about education for working-class children, including promoting agricultural training, were similar to those promoted for children elsewhere in the empire. The increased emphasis on industrial training for colonised people was thus prevalent across different parts of the empire, including the settler colonies.

Conclusion The transition from voluntary to state-aided education occurred simultaneously, if partially and hesitantly, in Britain and the West Indies during the 1830s. Both societies were undergoing unprecedented change, and education emerged as central to projects of social reform in each sphere. Several factors connected the metropolitan and colonial contexts. First, it was the duty of the benevolent, humanitarian government in both places to improve conditions for poor or colonised subjects. The extension of funding specifically for education in Britain, Ireland and the West Indies highlights the centrality of education as an element of social reform. Second, the evangelical belief that each person could have a personal relationship to God helped education to be positioned as something that should be available to all. Once the poor and emancipated had been saved, their ability to read the Bible would transform their character. Importantly, improvement and civilisation were possible for the poor in Britain, or racial others in the colonies. Through education, they could be incorporated into civilised, middle-class society. For Britain’s working poor, secular education was offered as an antidote to inferior living conditions.134

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Training the mind and training the body were inseparable, and through engaging with the many new educational institutions springing up in urban centres, working people could overcome their environment, and be trained into members of the growing middle class. If freed slaves were given ‘moral and religious’ education, they too could overcome their exposure to the immoral system of slavery, and become useful and productive members of West Indian society. Another set of beliefs gaining traction at this time saw scientific advancements as markers of a progressing society. The formation of state bureaucracies to deal with education marked education off as a professional space. Inspectors were appointed to create and collect information about education. This was despite the fact that education was largely administered through voluntary organisations, often by untrained personnel. The content of education was negotiated in the relationship between government-­ appointed inspectors and missionaries, or voluntary organisations. However, while funding for education in Britain continued in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the imperial government intervention in West Indian education was short-lived. By 1857, the education budget in Britain amounted to over £800,000.135 There was increased focus on teacher training, as the education sector continued to grow increasingly professional. School was not yet compulsory, however, and in 1861, only an estimated one in seven children attended school.136 By contrast, in the West Indies, despite the successful expansion of schools between 1835 and 1845, imperial funding was withdrawn beginning in 1840, and responsibility was passed on to local governments. This shows a changing conception of the relationship between the imperial and local government, but also of the meaning of race by the end of the 1840s. During the 1830s, there was a real belief that education could help people overcome the negative effects of social environment, and thus, ‘civilise’ them. In the 1840s, ‘belief in natural inequality coexisted with a more humanist, universalist tradition drawn from the Enlightenment’.137 To highlight connections between these concepts and contexts is not to erase very real differences between the categories of class and race, in particular, nor between ways of belonging in different colonies. Bringing them into the same framework, however, does allow us to consider some of the broader imperial formations that underlined education provision in the settler colonies. The government grant for education in the West Indies was unique to this post-emancipation context. The case of the West Indies was a significant point of reference for education in the settler colo-

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nies. Understanding other metropolitan and colonial contexts in which the control and maintenance of a labour force was being debated sheds light on the provision of education in the settler colonies. Early attempts at ‘civilising’ Indigenous people in the settler colonies were contingent upon similar ideas about the role of the government in ‘humanitarian’ projects. However, just as they had encountered opposition from planters in the West Indies, humanitarian ideals came up against settlers’ land hunger in the settler colonies. While planters were increasingly vocal in the West Indies about the necessity of education for labour, settlers also wanted to create and retain a labour force in Natal, Western Australia and elsewhere. The discourses and anxieties about labour and education that emerged in 1830s Britain and the West Indies, and were shaped by race in the Caribbean, were also articulated in a series of policies in different settler colonies, as the following chapters will show. Although the policies that were pursued in different settler colonial contexts were quite different, both from one another, and from the West Indian and metropolitan cases, broader understandings about the role of education and its relationship to labour were shifting in the 1830s and 1840s. The tensions that have been raised in this chapter: between religious and secular education, between literary and practical skills, between the needs of colonised people and planters or settlers, and about the purpose of education, were common to the colonies of settlement as well. The following chapters show how these issues played out across a number of settler colonial contexts.

Notes 1. The Grant was not taken up in the Cape, and prompted less activity in Mauritius than the West Indies. Nigel Worden states that there was ‘no equivalent’ of the activity surrounding the Grant in the West Indies, at the Cape. See Nigel Worden, ‘Between Slavery and Freedom: The Apprenticeship Period, 1834 to 1838’, in Breaking the Chains: Freedom and Its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, ed. by Nigel Worden and Clifton Crais (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), 117–144, 121n. The extensive correspondence between missionary John Philip and Thomas Fowell Buxton during this period does suggest that missionaries at the Cape would have known about the Grant. Many freed slaves at the Cape did end up on mission stations, where it is likely that they received some literary training, although not under the auspices of the Grant. Wayne Dooling, Slavery, Emancipation

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and Colonial Rule in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2007), 117–118. I have discussed the Grant in the British imperial context, particularly in relation to industrial education in Natal in Rebecca Swartz, ‘Industrial Education in Natal: The British Imperial Context, 1830–1860’, in Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a Comparative Perspective, ed. by Peter Kallaway and Rebecca Swartz (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 53–80. 2. Patricia Rooke, ‘A Scramble for Souls: The Impact of the Negro Education Grant on Evangelical Missionaries in the British West Indies’, History of Education Quarterly, 21 (1981), 429–447, 429. See Abolition of Slavery. Papers in explanation of the measures adopted by His Majesty’s government, for giving effect to the act for the abolition of slavery throughout the British colonies: Part 1—Jamaica, 1833–1835, HC 177 (1835), 5. 3. Negro Education, British Guiana & Trinidad, 14 August 1838, HC 35 (1839), [Hereafter British Guiana and Trinidad Report], 11. 4. Apprenticeship was the period in which previously enslaved people remained bound to work for former masters for three quarters of their time. Initially planned to last ten years from the date of emancipation, the system was abolished in 1838, after it became clear that it was essentially slavery by another name. 5. J. Alexander and D.G. Paz, ‘The Treasury Grants, 1833–1839’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 22 (1974), 78–92, 78. The abolition of slavery was debated in the House of Commons on 03.06.1833. The education debates took place on 14.03.1833 and 17.08.1833. See HC Deb 03.06.1833, vol. 18 cc308–60 and HC Deb 17.08.1833, vol. 20 cc732–6 and HL Deb 14.03.1833, vol. 16 cc632–9 for Commons and Lords debates about the Grant. 6. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Oxford: Polity, 2002), 88. 7. Susan Thorne, ‘“The Conversion of Englishmen and the Conversion of the World Inseparable”: Missionary Imperialism and the Language of Class in Early Industrial Britain’, in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. by Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 238–262, 238, 240. 8. Alison Twells, The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792– 1850: The “Heathen” at Home and Overseas (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 2. 9. See Zoë Laidlaw, ‘Heathens, Slaves and Aborigines: Thomas Hodgkin’s Critique of Missions and Anti-Slavery’, History Workshop Journal, 64 (2007), 133–161, 136, and ‘Imperial Complicity: Indigenous Dispossession in British History and History Writing’, in Emancipation and the Remaking of the British Imperial World, ed. by Catherine Hall,

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Nick Draper and Keith McClelland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 131–148; Catherine Hall, ‘The Slave-Owner and the Settler’, in Indigenous Networks: Mobility, Connections and Exchange, ed. by Jane Carey and Jane Lydon (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 29–49. 10. Laidlaw, ‘Imperial Complicity’, 144. 11. Jana Tschurenev, ‘Diffusing Useful Knowledge: The Monitorial System of Education in Madras, London and Bengal, 1789–1840’, Paedagogica Historica, 44 (2008), 245–264, 247. 12. Jana Tschurenev, ‘Incorporation and Differentiation: Popular Education and the Imperial Civilizing Mission in Early Nineteenth Century India’, in Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: From Improvement to Development, ed. by Carey A.  Watt and Michael Mann (London and New York: Anthem Press, 2011), 93–124, 99. See Twells, The Civilising Mission, 64–69 on the monitorial system. 13. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992, repr. 2009), 231. 14. Norman Etherington, ‘Education and Medicine’ in Missions and Empire, ed. by Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 261–284, 261. 15. Anne Digby and Peter Searby, Children, School and Society in Nineteenth Century England (London: Macmillan Press, 1981), 27. 16. Hall, Civilising Subjects, 27. 17. Linda McCoy, ‘Education for Labour: Social Problems of Nationhood’, in Forming Nation, Framing Welfare, ed. by Gail Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 93–138, 109. 18. M.  A. Crowther, The Workhouse System 1834–1929: The History of an English Social Institution (London: Routledge, 1981), 202. 19. Patrick Brantlinger, ‘The Case of the Poisonous Book: Mass Literacy as Threat in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction’, Victorian Review, 20 (1994), 117–133, 119. 20. Helen May, Baljit Kaur, and Larry Prochner, Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods: Nineteenth-Century Missionary Infant Schools in Three British Colonies (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2014), 28. 21. Hugh Cunningham, ‘Introduction’, in Charity, Philanthropy and Reform: From the 1690s to 1850, ed. by Hugh Cunningham and Joanna Innes (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998), 1–14, 4. 22. John Doheny, ‘Bureaucracy and the Education of the Poor in Nineteenth Century Britain’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 39 (1991), 325– 339, 336. 23. Minutes of Committee of Privy Council on Education, 13.04.1839, HC 177 (1839), 3. It is noteworthy that the first education inspectors were

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appointed in the Cape in the same year. This shows that education policy was not emanating from a well-established centre, but rather, was responding to both local and global changes in thinking about education. In fact, as Helen Ludlow points out, the Cape had the first system of national free schools open to all of its population anywhere in the British Empire, which lasted from 1839 until the 1860s. Helen Ludlow, ‘Examining the Government Teacher: State Schooling and Scandal in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cape Village’, South African Historical Journal, 62 (2010), 534–560, 534. 24. Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, 24.09.1839, HC 18 (1840), 11. 25. Brief account of the British and Foreign School Society 1835, The National Archives at Kew (TNA) CO 318/122. Hereafter all CO references are from TNA. 26. Lord John Russell to the Lord President of the Council, 4.02.1839, Papers on Education, HC 16 (1839), 1. 27. Ian Newbould, ‘The Whigs, the Church, and Education, 1839’, Journal of British Studies, 26 (1987), 332–346, 341. 28. Minutes of Proceedings of Committee of Privy Council on Education, 13.04.1839, 1. 29. Paul Sedra, ‘Exposure to the Eyes of God: Monitorial Schools and Evangelicals in Early Nineteenth-century England’, Paedagogica Historica, 47 (2011), 263–281, 266. 30. See Swartz, ‘Industrial Education in Natal’. 31. Jennifer Ridden, ‘“Making Good Citizens”: National Identity, Religion, and Liberalism among the Irish Elite, c.1800–1850’ (PhD thesis, King’s College London, 1998), 91, 98. 32. J.M. Goldstrom, The Social Content of Education, 1808–1870: A Study of the Working Class School Reader in England and Ireland (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972), 62. 33. Thomas Wyse, HC Deb 19.05.1835, vol. 27 cc1199–233. 34. Ridden, ‘“Making Good Citizens”’, 91, 98. 35. Goldstrom, The Social Content of Education, 76. 36. John Coolahan, ‘Imperialism and the Irish National School System’ in Benefits bestowed: Education and British Imperialism, ed. by James Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 76–93, 80. 37. Patrick Walsh, ‘Education and the “Universalist” Idiom of Empire: Irish National School Books in Ireland and Ontario’, History of Education, 37 (2008), 645–660. 38. Committee on Slavery Minute Book, 15.05.1835, Records of the AntiSlavery Society, RHL [Hereafter ASS Papers], E2/4, 92.

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39. Thomas Fowell Buxton circular to the Secretaries of the Mission Societies, 28.11.1832, Mss. Br. Emp. S.444, vol. 3, RHL [Hereafter Buxton Correspondence]. Amanda Barry refers to Buxton’s interest in West Indian education, although she does not refer to the Negro Education Grant. Amanda Barry, ‘Broken Promises: Aboriginal Education in SouthEastern Australia, 1837–1937’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2008), 45. 40. Aberdeen, HL Deb 27.02.1835, vol. 26 cc416–23. 41. Treasury Correspondence, 21.07.1835, CO 318/122; Carl Campbell, ‘Towards an Imperial Policy for the Education of Negroes in the West Indies After Emancipation’ (University of the West Indies, Department of History, 1967), 1–53, 32, 35; Shirley Gordon, ‘The Negro Education Grant 1835–1845: Its Application in Jamaica’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 6 (1958), 140–150, 143. 42. D Coates (CMS) to T. Fowell Buxton, 3.12.1834, CO 318/122, fol. 82. 43. Wallbridge Report, 21.08.1841, ASS papers, RHL, E1/13; Rooke, ‘A Scramble for Souls’, 442. 44. Patricia Rooke, ‘Slavery, Social Death and Imperialism: The Formation of a Christian Black Elite in the West Indies, 1800–1845’, in Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism, ed. by James Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 23–45, 24. 45. Glenelg to Sligo, 15.10.1835, CO 318/126. 46. It is worth noting that from 1823, when amelioration conditions were promoted in the West Indies, increased education was provided to enslaved people, in Sunday Schools or day schools. However, as Olwyn Blouet notes, it is difficult to estimate the exact figures of children in school as planters often kept limited or incomplete records. See Olwyn Blouet, ‘Slavery and Freedom in the British West Indies, 1823–33: The Role of Education’, History of Education Quarterly, 30 (1990), 625–643, especially 627–637. 47. At the time that the Grant was applied, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Church Missionary Society, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, Moravian Missionary Society, Baptist Missionary Society, London Missionary Society, Scottish Missionary Society, Ladies Negro Education Society and the Mico Charity were working in the West Indies. 48. Sterling Memorandum, CO 318/122, 11.05.1836. 49. Memorandum on the continued necessity of Stipendiary Magistrates in West Indies and Mauritius, 20.11.1838, CO 318/141. 50. Sterling Memorandum. 51. Ibid. 52. HL Deb 27.02.1835, vol. 26 cc416–23.

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53. For example, the Grenada Legislature voted £1,000 for education in 1837, Negro Education, Windward & Leeward Islands, 14 April 1838, HC 520 (1837–1838) [Hereafter Windward and Leeward Islands Report], 48. 54. Campbell, ‘Towards an Imperial Policy’, 4. 55. Priscilla Johnston to Sarah Buxton, 09.03.1835, Buxton Correspondence, vol. 13, 350. See also Rooke, ‘A Scramble for Souls’, 432. 56. Enclosures of Report of Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship in the Colonies, No. 14. in CO 318/126, vol. 3. 57. Carl Campbell, ‘Social and Economic Obstacles to the Development of Popular Education in Post-Emancipation Jamaica, 1834–1863’ (University of the West Indies, Department of History, n.d.), 7; William Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment 1830–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 336. 58. Sligo to Jamaica Assembly, 26.01.1836, Report from the Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship in the Colonies; together with the minutes of evidence, appendix and index, HC 560 (1836), Appendix 8, 106. 59. Circular from George Grey to various mission societies, 10.09.1835, in Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship, Appendix 17, 220. 60. Thomas Fowell Buxton to Sir George Grey, 1.02.1837, CO 318/130, fol. 7. 61. Appointment of Charles La Trobe, CO 318/130, fol. 1–2. 62. Ibid. 63. Campbell, ‘Towards an Imperial Policy’, 3. 64. Patritica Rooke, ‘The Christianization and Education of Slaves and Apprentices in the British West Indies: The Impact of Evangelical Missionaries (1800–1838)’ (PhD thesis, University of Alberta, 1977), 241. 65. Reports on Negro Education. Negro Education, Jamaica, 19 October 1837, HC 113 (1837–1838) [Hereafter Jamaica Report], Windward and Leeward Islands Report, British Guiana & Trinidad Report. 66. Zoë Laidlaw, Colonial Connections 1815–1845: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 2005), 46, 169. 67. Rooke, ‘The Christianization and Education of Slaves’, 258. 68. Schedule A—Report of Sligoville School, St Catherine’s, run by Baptist  Mission Society. Jamaica Report, 40. 69. Jamaica Report, 5. 70. Rooke, ‘The Christianization and Education of Slaves’, 237. 71. Ibid., 12. 72. Jamaica Report, 7. 73. Windward and Leeward Islands Report, 7. 74. Ibid., 8. I pick this theme up in Chap. 7. 75. British Guiana and Trinidad Report, 4.

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76. See Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labour, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33–34. 77. Buxton to Trew, 15.n.d.1836, Buxton Correspondence, vol. 3, 89. 78. Windward and Leeward Islands Report, 13. 79. Ibid., 9. 80. See my discussion of the reception of Kay-Shuttleworth’s memorandum below. 81. Ibid., 13. 82. Jamaica Report, 11. 83. British Guiana and Trinidad Report, 7. 84. Ibid., 11. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid., 15, 94. 87. M.  Kazim Bacchus, ‘Consensus and Conflict over the Provision of Elementary Education’, in Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present: A Student Reader, ed. by Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd (London: James Currey and Kingston: Ian Randle Press, 1993), 296–312, 302. 88. M.  Kazim Bacchus, Education As and For Legitimacy: Developments in West Indian Education between 1846 and 1895 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1994), 122. 89. British Guiana and Trinidad Report, 2. 90. Ibid., 10. 91. Ibid., 7. 92. Ibid., 8. 93. Green, British Slave Emancipation, 336. 94. Circular from Smith to all of the Societies receiving aid, 18.03.1841, Copies of letters received by the Sec State on Negro Education, 1840– 1845, CO 319/42. 95. Rooke, ‘The Christianization and Education of Slaves’, 247. 96. Holt, The Problem of Freedom, 182. 97. Elgin to Stanley, 23.10.1844, CO 137/280, No. 119. 98. Elgin to Stanley, 20.04.1843, CO 137/273. 99. Report of the Jamaican Board of Education, 1846, CO 137/293, 14. 100. Bacchus, Education as and for Legitimacy, 12. 101. Ibid. James Kay-Shuttleworth was born James Phillips Kay in 1804, in a middle-class household in Rochdale. He trained as a doctor, and began work in Manchester. He took his wife, Janet Shuttleworth’s, name when they married in 1842. Richard Selleck, ‘Shuttleworth, Sir James Phillips Kay-, first baronet (1804–1877)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/15199, accessed 27.03.2015].

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102. Richard Selleck, James Kay-Shuttleworth: Journey of an Outsider (Newbury Park: Woburn Press, 1994), 71; Catherine Hall, ‘The Nation Within and Without’, in Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867, ed. by Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland and Jane Rendall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 179–233, 210; Mary Poovey, Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation, 1830– 1864 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 67. 103. James Kay, Recent Measures for the Promotion of Education in England (London: Ridgeway, 1839), 19. 104. James Kay-Shuttleworth, The School in Its Relations to the State, the Church, and the Congregation: Being an Explanation of the Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, in August and December, 1846 (London: John Murray, 1847), 57. 105. Green, British Slave Emancipation, 339; Earl Grey to Governor of Antigua, 16.10.1846, Labour (colonies). (West Indies and Mauritius.) Immigration of labourers into the West India colonies and the Mauritius. State of the labouring population, &c., HC 325 (1847), 6. 106. Hawes to Kay-Shuttleworth, 30.11.1846 in ibid., 5. 107. Ibid. 108. Swartz, ‘Industrial Education in Natal’, 62–63. 109. Governor Lord Harris to Gladstone, 31.07.1846, in ibid., 101. 110. Ibid., 102. 111. Stanley to Governor Fitzroy, 26.08.1845, British colonies (West Indies and Mauritius). Returns relating to Labouring Populations in British colonies; Orders in Council respecting supply of labour in colonies. Part I.  State of Labouring Population in W. Indies and Mauritius; Part II. Immigration of Labourers; Part III. Stipendiary Magistrates; Laws of Masters and Servants; Courts of Appeal; Tariffs, HC 691-I; 691-II; 691-III (1846), 254. 112. James Kay-Shuttleworth, ‘Brief Practical Suggestions on the Mode of Organising and Conducting Day-Schools of Industry, Model FarmSchools and Normal Schools, as Part of a System of Education for the Coloured Races of the British Colonies’, Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, with appendices, HC 866 (1847), 30–37. A copy of this paper is included in Anthonie Eduard Du Toit, ‘The Earliest British Document on Education for the Coloured Races’ (Pretoria: Communications of the University of South Africa, 1962). 113. Ibid., 31. 114. Ibid., 30–31. 115. Ibid., 30. 116. Ibid., 30, 33. 117. Amanda Barry, ‘“Equal to Children of European Origin”: Educability and the Civilising Mission in Early Colonial Australia’, History Australia,

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5 (2008), 41.1–41.16, 41.8. Barry claims that Kay-Shuttleworth’s plan was aimed at African society, when in fact it was aimed at the West Indies. 118. Earl Grey circular, 26.01.1847, in Kay-Shuttleworth, ‘Brief Practical Suggestions’, 37. 119. Ibid. 120. There is evidence that the memo was received in the colonies. See MS15/524, WMMS, South Africa, Cory Library, Rhodes University, and Colonial Office Despatches, Circulars, Con. 41/19, State Records Office Western Australia. 121. Du Toit, ‘The Earliest British Document on Education for the Coloured Races’, 14. 122. British Guiana and Trinidad Report, 8. 123. John Salmon to Pilgrim, Enclosure in Charles Edward Grey to Earl Grey, 20.09.1847, CO 137/293. 124. Bacchus, Education As and For Legitimacy, 143. 125. Du Toit, ‘The Earliest British Document on Education for the Coloured Races’, 13. 126. Ibid., 15. 127. David Johnson, ‘Starting Positions: The Social Function of Literature in the Cape’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19 (1993), 615–633, 624. 128. Michael Christie, ‘Educating Bungalene: A Case of Educational Colonialism’, History of Education Review, 23 (1994), 46–54, 49, 54, n11. 129. George Grey, ‘Report on the best Means of Promoting the Civilization of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Australia’, Enclosure Russell to Gipps, 08.10.1840, in Aborigines (Australian colonies). Return to an address of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 5 August 1844;—for, copies or extracts from the despatches of the governors of the Australian colonies, with the reports of the protectors of aborigines, and any other correspondence to illustrate the condition of the aboriginal population of the said colonies, from the date of the last papers laid before Parliament on the subject, (papers ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12 August 1839, no. 526), HC 627 (1844), No. 23, 101–102. 130. R. Hunt Davis, ‘1855–1863: A Dividing Point in the Early Development of African Education in South Africa’ (Unpublished seminar paper, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 18, 1975), 1–15, 6. 131. Egerton Ryerson, Report by Dr. Ryerson on industrial schools, 1847, Appendix A in Statistics respecting Indian schools (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1898), 73. 132. Ibid.

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133. Egerton Ryerson, Report on a System of Public Elementary Instruction for Upper Canada (Montreal: Lovell and Gibson, 1847), 10. 134. Twells, The Civilising Mission, 172. 135. Doheny, ‘Bureaucracy and the Education of the Poor’, 337. 136. Ibid., 338. 137. Keenan Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society (New York: NYU Press, 1996), 90.

CHAPTER 3

Civilising Spaces: Government, Missionaries and Land in Education in Western Australia

The humanitarian fervour of the 1830s was not confined to the slave colonies. The period also saw increased humanitarian lobbying on behalf of colonised people in other parts of the British Empire. The Select Committee on Aborigines (1835–1837), chaired by Thomas Fowell Buxton, an influential proponent of the Negro Education Grant, drew heavily on evidence from Australia and the Cape. The Report emphasised education as a key responsibility of the imperial government in recently colonised territories.1 Published between 1836 and 1837, it gathered information relating to the colonisation of the Canadas, Newfoundland, North and South America, New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand, South Africa, the Caribs and the Pacific Islands, and suggested measures for the better treatment and protection of Indigenous people. It advocated for greater imperial government intervention in Aboriginal people’s protection from settler violence.2 The Committee was aware of the didactic function of interracial meetings on the colonial frontier, both urban and rural, and sought ways to control this mixing in order to ‘protect’ and ‘improve’ Indigenous people. It carefully balanced the economic imperative of colonisation with the humanitarian rhetoric of civilisation. The Committee argued that since land was a valuable resource, It requires no argument to show that we thus owe to the natives a debt, which will be but imperfectly paid by charging the Land Revenue of each of

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these Provinces with whatever expenditure is necessary for the instruction of the adults, the education of their youth, and the protection of them all.3

The proposal, therefore, was not to halt colonisation, but to provide adults and children in the settler colonies with a way to enter ‘civilised’ society. Central to this vision was the extension of mission activity and the promotion of moral and religious education. If Indigenous people adopted Christianity, worked according to the colonisers’ rhythms and gave up nomadic habits, they could be brought into settler society. Education was therefore related to particular ideas about the use of colonised space. Indigenous adults and children alike needed to be educated into the correct relationship to land. Part of this could happen through situating schools in particular locations that would lead to children’s civilisation. These locations were shaped by both broad ideas about the function of education in colonised territories as well as local understandings of the relationships between education, protection and civilisation. This chapter shows that in spite of the imperial government’s call for local legislatures to provide funding for education, this was hardly ever achieved, and if it was, this was done hesitantly, as local legislatures were concerned about spending on education. In the settler colonies, the humanitarian ideas that allowed for the development of education in the West Indies were substantially challenged by settler colonialism and its associated ideologies. The idea of the link between land, labour and (Christian) morality was not unique, but rather, arose out of connected metropolitan and colonial contexts, shaped by industrial change and the rise of Evangelical Christianity. Comaroff and Comaroff argue that, for missionaries, there was a romanticisation of the rural lifestyle of pre-Industrial England: ‘the idealized past was situated in a pristine countryside’.4 The ‘idealized ­countryside represented not only innocence lost, nature defiled; it also stood for the possibility of paradise regained’.5 In the metropolitan context, the formation of district schools in rural areas underlined the belief that children would be safer in rural locations, far from the depravity associated with urban living. In the colonies, these ideas were fundamental to attempts to reshape land into something colonisers saw as productive. For some thinkers, including Western Australian Governor John Hutt, the protection of Indigenous people meant their location within towns, where they could be under government ‘care’. This applied particularly to children, who were perceived to be particularly vulnerable to

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their parents’ bad influence. For others, including those behind the Port Phillip protectorate, for example, it could also mean Aboriginal people’s seclusion in places apart from the corruption of European settlers, particularly those of the ‘wrong sort’. Ideas about land were also central to the ways that Aboriginal children’s education was imagined—their education should teach them the correct relationship to land, while breaking any attachments to land that were seen as too strong by colonisers. In the Australian case, settlers and the local government emphasised the superiority of agriculture and pastoralism over Aboriginal nomadic lifestyles. As Veracini has argued, settlers often believe their use of land for settled living and agriculture is superior to Indigenous’ people’s use of land.6 Patrick Wolfe also points out that agriculture is particularly attractive in settler societies because it is ‘inherently sedentary and, therefore, permanent’.7 This chapter focuses on the processes of ‘protecting’ and ‘civilising’ Indigenous people through education, using case material drawn primarily from Western Australia. Western Australia was settled by Europeans in 1829, some years after the settlement of New South Wales by Europeans. Those involved with the colonisation of the new territory had plans about colonising in a different, more humane way, as opposed to the disastrously violent settlement of New South Wales.8 Coupled with ideas about humanitarian colonial governance at the time, schemes for settlement emphasised the coexistence of Aboriginal and European people. Underlying these ideas, however, was a discursive construction of the land as empty. It was a space where new ideas about civilisation could be tested out without the historical legacies of earlier ‘failed’ attempts at civilisation plaguing this optimistic vision. In parallel with the idea of ‘empty’ lands, children were also imagined as empty, permeable and open to influences from their environment. The ideas of emptiness were based on a fantasy of untroubled settlement, and belied the fact that, from the early years of settlement in Western Australia, there had been widespread violence between settlers and Indigenous people. As I show below, attempts to provide education to Aboriginal children continuously came up against these contradictory narratives—of emptiness on the one hand, and of the presence of Aboriginal people and families on the other. This raised a series of tensions about how schools should function and where they should be located, that were fundamentally connected to settlers’ demands for land, ownership of urban space and a denial of Aboriginal presence there. These two ideas, first of the land being empty and available, and

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second, of children being empty and open to new influences, had a profound effect on schemes for Aboriginal children’s education in the 1830s and 1840s. This chapter draws upon the work of Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, who conceive of ‘humanitarian space’ as both symbolic and literal: often, land set aside for the use of Indigenous people, and their protection, these spaces also made room for criticism of settler colonial practices.9 In other words, the physical land was a humanitarian space, but it also opened up a space for  discursive critiques of settler colonialism and articulation of humanitarian discourses. Policies relating to the use of land at the highest level often included elements regarding Indigenous people’s education. Individual missionaries used their positions to voice humanitarian critiques of the settler colonial contexts where they were based. I examine the formation of ‘humanitarian space’ at a number of levels—from the broad discourses on protection, civilisation and education to the ­‘microgeographies’ of schools.10 Meghan Watkins writes of classrooms as microgeographies, confined or contained spaces with a specific interiority where teachers and students are grouped together, interacting for sustained periods of time. Although confined this does not mean classrooms are sealed sites. The spatiality of classrooms, like any space, is porous.11

Although Watkins is writing about contemporary education spaces, this idea of the classroom and school as space set apart, with a unique set of rules and registers, and as a space profoundly influenced by its surroundings, applies equally to the colonial context. In this case, microgeographies were more than schools. They included the ways that schools remoulded and recreated ties between individuals and opened up and closed down possibilities for different kinds of interactions between Indigenous people, missionaries, government and settlers. My approach here—scaling from the broad colonial policy to the level of the individual school—indicates how policies were put into practice. It draws attention to the fact that educational policies impacted on the experience of the everyday for teachers and their pupils. This chapter maps the relationships between space, land and education. It begins by briefly discussing the broader context of ideas regarding racial amalgamation in the 1840s. This provides critical context to the discussion of interventions in the settler colonies. Ideas about racial amalgama-

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tion were fundamentally tied to ideas about the appropriate use of space by settlers and Indigenous people. It then moves onto discussing some of the debates regarding the location of schools in the Western Australian context. Colonial education was closely tied to ideas about the correct use of space, urban or rural, and connected with the need for labour in the settler colonies. Using the example of one mission school in Western Australia, I show how the settler colonial context impacted on the use of space, and ultimately, on Indigenous children’s education.

Insulation and Isolation: Amalgamation in the 1830s and 1840s Herman Merivale, Oxford professor of political economy and, later, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, argued in a series of lectures published in 1842 that there were three possible outcomes to the meeting of civilised people with the uncivilised races: first, that the uncivilised races would be ‘exterminated’; second, ‘their insulation, complete or partial, by retaining them as insulated bodies of men, carefully removed, during the civilising process, from the injury of European contact’ and finally, that they could be ‘amalgamated’ with settler society.12 Merivale believed that racial amalgamation was the only policy that would succeed: while insulation might protect Indigenous people in the short term, colonisation would continue nonetheless, and Indigenous people would be ill-equipped to deal with life in European societies if they had lived only amongst their own people.13 Racial amalgamation, through the incorporation of Indigenous people into settler society, as labourers, servants and sometimes through controlled sexual mixing, was seen as a way to ‘protect’ and ‘civilise’ Indigenous people. Amalgamation had to do with carefully managing the interaction of Indigenous people with settlers, and bringing Indigenous people into ‘civilised’ society through introducing them to work, settled patterns of life, and western education. As Damon Salesa has shown, racial amalgamation was a ‘particular form of racial crossing, one to be guided and controlled by a colonial government’; it used ‘processes of inclusion as ways of classifying and managing populations unequally’.14 In short, racial amalgamation could ‘civilize natives by making civilization accessible’.15 Amalgamation and insulation were perhaps less opposed than Merivale made them out to be—they presupposed similar outcomes and

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occupied the same analytical space. Both assumed the destruction of Indigenous societies in the forms in which  they currently existed, and privileged British notions of civilisation and protection. They also assumed settler violence. The definition of ‘amalgamation’ varied according to speaker and context. The idea of settling Indigenous people for their own civilisation, and using labour as part of this process, was common in different parts of the empire. In the Canadian colonies, the 1842 Bagot Commission concluded that the only way for Indigenous Canadians to be civilised was through assimilation and industrial training. The policy implemented in the wake of the Commission focused on residential—rather than day—schooling, to remove children from their families’ influences and settle them in agricultural communities.16 While in the New Zealand case, as Salesa has shown, amalgamation was taken, at times, to mean sexual mixing, this concept of amalgamation was not pursued in Western Australia.17 For example, in Western Australia, debates about the status of Aboriginal people as British subjects surfaced in 1847, as the Legislative Council proposed that it would not only save money, but it would also be less degrading, for Aboriginal people to be flogged rather than tried under British law.18 Merivale’s response was that there was not ‘any reasonable chance of fusion, either in blood or society between the settlers and the poor creatures who wander over that continent’. The most important thing the imperial government could do was to protect Indigenous people ‘under a kind of tutelage or guardianship’. He said that if this was the case, then exceptional Laws, marking them, as no doubt they do, as inferiors, are, nonetheless, consistent with the whole policy being pursued towards them. They seem a natural part of it. You may treat men as equals—you may treat them as children—but to protect them as children and subject them to the same Laws with their Protectors as equals, seems somewhat anomalous.19

Merivale raised the inherent contradiction involved in amalgamation: amalgamation had to do with managing the interaction of different races, by bringing Indigenous people into ‘civilised’ settler society. However, to do this, there needed to be a construction and, indeed, maintenance, of racial difference. The idea of amalgamation was not about ‘dissolving’ racial difference, but of controlled racial mixing through hierarchical relationships between masters and servants, landholders and occupants. With this in mind, I turn to Western Australia in the 1830s.

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Civilising Spaces: Land and Education in Western Australia Western Australia was a difficult colony for the British to manage from the time of first European settlement. After an initial wave of colonisation in the early 1830s, the colony struggled to attract new settlers. Investment in the colony soon gave way to an economic depression in the 1830s, and many of the first settlers left for other Australian territories. The price of land made it possible for labourers to become landholders relatively quickly, which meant that the desired balance between colonisers of different classes was unattainable, and went against the popular Wakefieldian ideas about colonisation at the time. Edward Gibbon Wakefield had proposed that, in newly colonised territories, settler populations should be managed to ‘ensure a better balance between capital and labour, foster concentration of settlement, nurture stable institutions in which respectable free subjects would flourish, and avoid the moral disorder that occurred on frontiers’.20 Wakefield’s theory of colonisation had two primary aims: first, land in the colonies should be sold, rather than granted, and second, the proceeds of these land sales should go towards encouraging further emigration, particularly to supply labour to landowners.21 Proponents of systematic colonisation often saw their cause as connected with ‘reform’ at home. They imagined that experience in the colonies could provide solutions to social problems in the metropole, particularly urban poverty.22 However, because of the lack of European labour in Western Australia in the 1830s and 1840s, Aboriginal Australians were approached as a labour force, marking a significant departure from strategies for Aboriginal amalgamation elsewhere on the continent, where convicts supplied labour.23 During the 1840s, there were an ‘astonishing’ number of Aboriginal people in the employ of settlers.24 As Shirleene Robinson has recently argued, the ‘use of young Aboriginal workers across Australia met economic needs, but was also presented as a means of reforming a population that was designated a “problem” under colonialism’.25 The twin issues of settler occupation of Aboriginal lands, and their demands for labour, shaped the approaches to Aboriginal education in this context. John Hutt arrived to serve as governor in 1839, a position he held until 1846. Like other colonial governors at the time, he was issued a list of instructions on his arrival in the colony, including his responsibility to the Aboriginal population. It was his role to ‘promote Religion and Education

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among the native Inhabitants of our said Territory’, to protect them from violence, and to ‘take such measures as may appear … to be necessary for their conversion to the Christian Faith and for their advancement in civilization’.26 He arrived in the context of widespread violence against Aboriginal people in the colony, including the Pinjarra Massacre, a punitive expedition led by the previous governor of the colony, Stirling, in which between fifteen and thirty Aboriginal men were killed, along with police Captain Ellis.27 Hutt was eager to promote a different, more humane, face of colonialism, by promoting policies for the protection of Aboriginal people. One way to do this was to support mission activity in the colony. This activity, as the discussion below shows, had an important spatial element. Hutt believed that the best way for Aboriginal people to be civilised was for them to live in towns. He argued against a reserve system like that being used in New South Wales by the Church Missionary Society in the Wellington Valley. These reserves isolated Aboriginal people from settlers, protecting Aboriginal people from violence and providing the necessary space for them to be introduced to ‘civilised’ habits. As the next chapter shows, these discussions about the location of native peoples in reserves were occurring simultaneously in other parts of the empire, including Natal. Hutt argued that Western Australia was different from New South Wales: in Western Australia, he claimed—with apparent blindness towards the widespread violence in the colony—settlers had always treated Aboriginal people well, and any conflict that had previously existed between the races was disappearing. He hoped Western Australia would become the first colony where ‘the curse which hitherto has seemed to attend the meetings of civilized and uncivilized people, will have lost its force’.28 In noting the colony’s exceptional status as a place where settlers and Aboriginal people lived peacefully together, Hutt made a similar claim to those made about the colonisation of South Australia in the 1830s, the Port Phillip protectorate, and New Zealand in the 1830s.29 In fact, Captain (later Sir) George Grey had made a similar argument about Western Australia in his 1840 Report on the best means of Promoting the Civilization of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Australia. He argued that ‘[i]n modern times, with the exception of the new settlement of South Australia, no colony has been established upon principles apparently so favourable for the development of the better qualities of the Aborigines, and with so fair a chance of their ultimate civilization’.30 In the picture he painted of friendly relations between the races, Hutt emphasised how settlers’ kindness had led not only to less violence, but

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also to the reshaping of Aboriginal mentalities, where Aboriginal people learnt to ‘appreciate and seek after the commonest necessaries of life which we possess’.31 Thus, colonisation itself was a useful part of educating Aboriginal people. Aboriginal adults and children would learn to become ‘useful’ members of European society through constant, government-­ controlled, interactions between the races. Hutt constructed the settled districts, and with them, the interactions between Europeans and Aboriginal people, as educational centres. Settled living in towns would promote peaceful interactions between Aboriginal and European people, and lead to the moral improvement of Aboriginal people. Apart from the civilising effects of urban living, Hutt also argued that Aboriginal isolation would have detrimental consequences. Native reserves would be of little use to a people who, in his opinion, knew ‘nothing of tillage, not even in the rudest form’. He continued, Long before the aborigines have made much progress in the career of improvement, before they have learned or cared to cultivate the ground, the colonists will have closed round them, and the outcry against such extensive wastes being left, will compel the Government to break them up and to transplant the dwellers upon them to some other spot, as has been the case in other countries where this experiment has been already made.32

By removing Aboriginal people to reserves, they would not be able to mix freely with settlers, which would help ‘some portions of their original savage rudeness to be worn away’. Working for wages and buying their own land would be the best form of ‘practical education’ for them.33 Moreover, if missionaries were moved to isolated reserves, they would not be able to minister to the European population. Settlers, in spite of being characterised as irreligious, were eager to have their spiritual needs seen to, and were sensitive to perceived favouritism towards the Aboriginal population. In Hutt’s view, the entire Aboriginal population could be educated through labour. Hutt promoted schemes that would integrate Aboriginal adults as workers. Settlers would be granted land if they could prove that they had trained an adult Aboriginal person in their home. This policy, initially suggested by Grey in his 1840 Report, indicates how Aboriginal ‘improvement’ could be balanced against settler needs for land and labour. As convict labour had not yet been introduced in Western Australia, Grey proposed that Aboriginal people should be encouraged to work, which

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would benefit both them and the settlers. Grey suggested a scheme where settlers would receive a grant of land if they could prove that they had had an Aboriginal man in their employ for a continuous period of six months.34 He argued that the scheme was most appropriate for the outskirts of settled areas, but could be equally useful in towns.35 Hutt put Grey’s proposal into place with some minor changes. If a settler could prove that an Aboriginal employee had been in service for a period of two years, the employer would be given a grant of £18 towards land, and if the Aboriginal worker had been taught ‘any trade, calling, or handicraft, of such a nature as is usually taught under the system of apprenticeship’, this grant would be raised to £36. As Hutt pointed out, the government gave £18 for labourers to emigrate to the colony, and ‘to teach one of the aborigines to be a useful servant or assistant, is to introduce a fresh labourer, and the benefit conferred upon the community has been considered in both cases equal and worthy of similar reward’.36 This mathematical understanding of people’s worth rendered individuals economic units, who could add ‘value’ to the settler colony. Trained Aboriginal workers would be entitled to certificates to prove their status as journeymen.37 The scheme was initially designed with only Aboriginal men in mind, but was later extended to include women who learnt to be cooks, domestic labourers, seamstresses, laundresses or bonnet makers.38 Hutt’s thinking about the civilising potential of urban living was epitomised when Native Protectors were appointed in 1840.39 Hutt believed it was essential for Protectors to be based in towns, rather than in the rural parts of the colony.40 This kind of thinking was echoed in reports of the Protectors themselves. Perth Native Protector, Charles Symmons, wrote that one girl who was married was ‘reclaimed from the bush’ at an older age than many of the other children who had ended up in school. Her longer time in the bush had made her ‘natural disposition’ ‘wayward and intractable’.41 The longer she spent in the bush, the more difficult it was to civilise her. Symmons believed settling Aboriginal workers in the homes of settlers would break down barriers between the Aboriginal and European races, and that ‘a gradual appreciation of the comforts and luxuries of our civilization will naturally creep upon him, together with a consequent disgust of, and inability to return to his former precarious and desultory mode of life’.42 By 1840, however, measures had been put in place to monitor the presence of Aboriginal people on the streets of Perth, to protect the (white) inhabitants of the town. If Aboriginal people were found begging, committing any crimes against white, or Aboriginal, peo-

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ple, they and their families were ‘banished’ from the town, ‘depriving them of many of their comforts, and compelling them to seek a precarious subsistence in the chase’.43 As Jessie Mitchell highlights, Perth in the 1840s provides one of the most potent examples of how Aboriginal people ‘could be rendered “deserving” of access to urban space’.44 In other words, urban space was not something that Aboriginal people automatically had access to. They needed to conform to particular social codes, enforced by settlers, in order to remain in towns. Besides the obvious benefit of providing labour to colonists, permanently settling Aboriginal people would also make them a ‘known’ entity to the colonists. As Tiffany Shellam argues, ‘Aboriginal desires to travel and the significance of it were constantly misunderstood by the colonists at Swan River and the garrison at King George’s Sound’.45 Hutt was sure that the scheme would go some way towards addressing what he saw as a fundamental difficulty in the Aboriginal relationship to land. ‘A great triumph would be gained over their present wandering and fickle disposition, should any of them ever settle down into the sedentary existence which the practice and nature of the mechanical arts require.’46 ‘Civilisation’, therefore, had an important spatial element. Hutt valued urban spaces as centres of education and civilisation and imagined that agricultural progress, urban living, labour, and advancement in civilisation were mutually reinforcing. Hutt likened Aboriginal people to ‘the birds and the wild animals’. He wrote that his energies had been ‘directed to dislodging the aborigines from the woods, and encouraging them to frequent our town and farming locations’. Rather than trying to persuade ‘a savage to adopt industrious habits’, he argued that ‘he cannot be taught civilization, though by constant contact he may become infected with it’.47 Hutt’s thinking about the value of Aboriginal people being settled in towns connected with broader debates over how best to ‘protect’ and ‘civilise’ Aboriginal people in the empire during this period. In nearby New South Wales, in the area to become Victoria in 1851, the Port Phillip Protectorate was set up in 1839, following a directive from the British government as recommended by the Select Committee on Aborigines. While Hutt was arguing for the importance of urban centres as civilising spaces, the Port Phillip model promoted Aboriginal isolation as having the most potential. As Robert Kenny shows, the protectorate was borne out of the successes of the anti-slavery cause.48 With the express aim of protecting and civilising Aboriginal people, George Augustus Robinson was appointed Chief Protector of Aborigines, and four Assistant Protectors

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were appointed to work across the district. The Protectors were encouraged to promote education in these districts—their instructions were to ‘teach and encourage them [Aborigines] to engage in the cultivation of the grounds’, to build permanent houses, ‘the education and instruction of the Children, as early and as extensively as it may be practicable’, and the ‘moral and religious improvement of the Natives, by instructing them in the Elements of the Christian Religion, and preparing them for the reception of Teachers, whose peculiar province it would be to promote the knowledge and practice of Christianity among them’.49 All this was to take place, in contrast to Hutt’s scheme, in a protectorate—a ‘humanitarian space’ set apart from settler encroachment.50 Incidentally, Charles La Trobe was appointed as Superintendent of the Protectorate in 1840. The role he took up was similar to that of a Governor of the district—he oversaw the running of the District and liaised with the Chief Protector of Aborigines. La Trobe was committed to the ‘improvement’ of Indigenous people: he believed that education and Christian conversion were the only paths to civilisation for Indigenous people.51 Apart from his time as Inspector of the Negro Education Grant in the West Indies, he had spent time in the American West, where native Americans were being dispossessed of their land. This, no doubt, fed into his thinking for his new role in Australia.52 Influenced by his background in a prominent Moravian family, he called for missionaries to be sent to the district.53 In this context, missionaries attempted to attract Aboriginal people to their stations, despite Aboriginal people’s disinclination to settle there. GS Airey, the Commissioner for the Western Port District, was not confident that Aboriginal people would remain on the reserves. However, he was more hopeful about their children who, ‘with a proper system of education and restraint (that is, weaning them as it were from their wild habits), some hopes of a beneficial result might arise, in making them, as they grow up, useful members of society’.54 The protectorate system in Port Phillip came to an end in 1849, being deemed a ‘failure’ by those involved.55 Hutt’s idea that civilisation was ‘infectious’, and that it was only through amalgamation with settler society that Aboriginal people would be civilised, proposed a different vision for the future of Aboriginal people in Western Australia than the contemporary plans in Port Phillip. In this early period of European settlement, the very idea of the colonial government’s ability to govern was spatially located.56 Hutt suggested that Aboriginal people in the settled districts might be brought under British laws and be treated as British subjects, but that ‘we have not the

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means to supervise and control their dealings with one another in the bush and in the wild districts…’57 Although Aboriginal people had nomadic lifestyles like ‘the birds and the wild animals’, they could be civilised through racial amalgamation. Towns and farms were spaces where the seed of civilisation was growing. The dispossession of land, for settler agricultural use, was coupled with the idea that Aboriginal people could only be civilised through contact with settlers in settled districts. Symmons agreed with Hutt about the civilising effects of town life, commenting that Aboriginal people near Perth were ‘gradually acquiring ideas of the value of property and a consequent desire for its possession’.58 Another objection Hutt had to the reserve system was the effect it might have on children, who were both particularly vulnerable to picking up the bad habits of their parents, and exceptionally permeable to new ways of life. Because Aboriginal people ‘require[d] variety in their amusements and employments’, any schools to be set up should be ‘in the ­vicinity of a town, or a thickly-peopled farming locality’.59 In this case, ‘thickly-peopled’ meant settled by Europeans. Given his belief that schools were the most important institutions for the civilisation of Aboriginal people,60 Hutt supported the Wesleyan Native School, which opened in Perth in 1840. From that year, the Native Protectors were tasked with finding Aboriginal pupils for the school, which was run by missionaries.61 Hutt believed that through the right combination of Christianity and education for Aboriginal children, they could be successfully incorporated into settler society.62 Hutt’s thinking here was about an ideal situation in which Aboriginal people could be neatly fitted into a new urban landscape. They would naturally see the benefits of ‘civilisation’ and want to amalgamate, through working for settlers, with this new society. However, as I show below, the actual practice of settling Aboriginal people in towns, and providing education, was subject to far more tension than Hutt anticipated. Aboriginal people were active participants in this process, with their own reactions to colonial settlement, urban living and education.

The Wesleyan Native School in Perth: Microgeography of Civilisation? The Wesleyan Native school, funded by the government and the Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society (WMMS), operated as a civilising and civilised ‘microgeography’ in colonial Perth. The school married the religious,

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moral training of children with basic numeracy, literacy and labour.63 The school took pupils between the ages of three and twelve, and ran out of Francis Armstrong’s—the Native Interpreter’s—house in Perth.64 Armstrong and his wife taught at the school, for an annual salary of £50.65 It was here that the children slept and spent their Sundays in prayer, attending services at the Wesleyan Chapel. Wesleyan missionary, Rev. John Smithies, attended to the children’s religious education. Smithies had recently arrived from the Family Islands, where he had been stationed after his first mission to Newfoundland.66 Smithies hoped that the small school would provide the space for children to learn, engage with the right kind of Europeans, and become valuable workers. However, the porousness of the space, given its location in the town, was perceived as a constant threat to this process. The imagined blankness of the colonial town, free from Aboriginal incursions, was constantly challenged by the presence of the school. Moreover, the belief that interactions between settlers and Aboriginal people would be inherently civilising, as had been Hutt’s vision, came under close scrutiny as these interactions began to take shape. The school ran for two hours each day, with the exception of Saturday. Pupils were taught to read and write, using the Bible. Girls did some needlework, and boys wrote on slates. In their remaining time, the children were employed as domestic labourers in settlers’ homes.67 According to Protector Symmons, Smithies and Armstrong provided ‘that surveillance over [the children’s] moral conduct which promises most beneficial future results’.68 The school in Perth fulfilled what Hutt saw as necessary for the education of Aboriginal children: ‘a change of scene or place, in the exercise of both the mind and body’.69 Newspapers reported that the children were ‘eagerly sought after as domestic servants in various capacities, and their conduct has given very general satisfaction’.70 The settler employers who took children into their homes were urged to treat them with patience and, for the first while, to bear with ‘the awkwardness and possible wayward habits of their little charges’.71 By the end of 1842, Symmons reported that there were twenty-­eight pupils in the school, fourteen boys and fourteen girls, who were ‘house servants’ in Perth.72 Loitering on the streets, playing, and misconduct in the houses of settlers, were liable for punishment, and settlers who complained about the Aboriginal children working for them were permitted to have different children sent to their aid.73 It is worth reflecting on the fact that ‘play’ was liable for punishment. Children in the school were not only being transformed into civilised workers, but also into adults.

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Western Australians celebrated the twelfth anniversary of the colony’s foundation on the first of June 1841, with a public celebration in Perth, marking the settlers’ permanence in the colony. There were horse and pony races, and a display of spear throwing from Aboriginal people.74 Smithies decided that the children in his school should not attend the celebrations. Like missionaries across the settler colonies, Smithies was concerned about the children interacting with settlers of the wrong sort. In the nearby Port Phillip district, missionaries complained that Aboriginal people were not given sufficient protection from the ‘oppressive and contaminating influence of convict shepherds & stockmen the outcasts of England (sic)’.75 In this case, Smithies believed he was ‘keeping them [the children] from scenes of evil, and associating them with what is good’.76 The children instead had a feast at Armstrong’s house. The Perth Gazette was not pleased with Smithies’ decision, reporting that the children should not have been kept away on these grounds, ‘as we presume, that they might not be contaminated’. According to the Gazette, ‘This is carrying the business matter of such an institution too far, and is calculated to produce a wrong impression on the mind of the savage, when we are convinced a good effect is intended’.77 An article in the Inquirer agreed: it surely must be ill-judged that these children should be taught, that nineteen-­twentieths of the population of Perth, with his Excellency the Governor and his principal officers at their head, were doing what it would be wrong to allow them to share in! what opinion can these children have of those whom they should be taught to respect and honour?78

Smithies replied in a letter to the editor of the Inquirer, saying that the decision for the children to be kept ‘out of harms way’ was made ‘deliberately, specially, pointedly, religiously’.79 The hostility directed towards Smithies continued, with the editor of the Inquirer accusing him of abusing his position with the ‘ignorant children’. Smithies, the editor thought, was turning the children against the community, and by addressing the claims against him in the newspaper, was acting in a spirit not becoming of a missionary.80 The colonial public was interested in the progress of the school, not only because it would supply them with labour, but also because the Aboriginal children’s progress was cast as a mirror of the settler society. Living in their settled town, and interacting with settlers, would lead the Aboriginal children to emulate civilisation. That Smithies kept the children away was an insult to settlers’ own civilisation.

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For Smithies, protection from the outside world was important to the children’s progress. Smithies positioned himself as central to deciding which influences would be good or bad for the children. As Lester and Dussart argue, ‘Protection and civilisation were two sides of the same coin, since only once colonised peoples were able to fend for themselves as the civilised subjects of an imperial polity, would they be freed of the need for white philanthropic guardianship’.81 Smithies acted here as a protector from settlers’ influence and a civilising agent. However, Hutt imagined the civilising town as peopled with settlers who would not corrupt children. His fantasy of colonisation of a different sort was challenged by the realities of these kinds of settler colonial exchanges. Hutt drew on ideas about Western Australia being different from other colonies, and providing a blank slate where interactions between settlers and Aborigines could be different. It was not only the settler public at Perth who were invested in how the school proceeded. The Executive Council disagreed on how the school should be run, given that it was receiving government aid. They were concerned that the WMMS was receiving credit for an institution that they were only partially funding. The Colonial Secretary stated that he considered it unfair that the Wesleyans should reap the whole merit of the establishment by which the Government would appear to be neglecting their duty, when the children were taught by the Native Interpreter under the Superintendence of the Protector of Aborigines, both of them Officers paid by the Crown.82

While Hutt urged the Council not to be too worried about who was receiving credit for the school, the Council decided that ‘credit was due to them in assisting the undertaking’, and that the progress of the school would be included in the Report of the Protector of Aborigines, published on a quarterly basis, so that the public were made aware of the government’s role in the school.83 The settler public needed proof that the colonial expenditure on education was worthwhile, particularly in a period when there was relatively little government expenditure on the education of their own children. The reports were made available to the public, ­public examinations of the children were held in the chapel, and their ‘astonishingly rapid’ progress was reported on in the local newspapers.84 Apart from the concerns about children of different ages being negatively influenced by settler society, there were also gendered concerns

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about the pupils. The management of girls’ movement was of particular concern for missionaries and colonial officials. Here, ideas about the seclusion and protection of Aboriginal children collided with those about gender and appropriate Christian marriage. Until 1842, boys and girls were taught together in the school, after which the girls were taught domestic skills separately from the boys.85 Symmons worried about what would happen to girls who had been trained in the school, ‘brought up in comparative luxury and civilization’. He was concerned that they would be married to far older men, left to the ‘rigorous privations of the bush’.86 Thus, marriage between Aboriginal children who had been educated at the school was encouraged. It would be particularly uplifting for women: ‘that native curse, will gradually become extinct and the women will become something better than the degraded creatures,—the mere domestic drudges which they are at present’.87 As Joanna Cruickshank has argued about marriage in native institutions in Western Australia and New South Wales, the expectation about the moral purity of wives in particular was based on a ‘powerful discourse within British Evangelical culture, which celebrated the transformative power of the morally elevated wife’.88 In both states, institutions ran on the belief that if boys and girls were educated according to the correct gender roles for a European household, the right sort of marriage partners could be found, which would ‘create the foundation for the permanent transformation of Indigenous people’.89 Marriage was essential to the creation of nuclear families, which was part of the vision for settlement of the Aboriginal population.90 In this case, Smithies had to acknowledge that Aboriginal people had connections beyond the colonial town, and were not simply empty vessels waiting to imbibe the doctrines of Christianity. The concerns about girls marrying and returning to the bush involved a tacit acknowledgement that Aboriginal people had cultural ties that might have been stronger than their newly forged ties to British ‘civilisation’. In 1844, legislation was passed aimed at curtailing the movement of Aboriginal girls and increasing the power of school masters and Native Protectors. Girls had to seek permission to leave their service positions or schools. Any person found removing a girl from school was fined £2 for the first offence, and £5 for any subsequent ones.91 Symmons strongly supported this legislation. He was anxious about the girls, as it seems that some marriages between pupils took place quickly, most likely because girls were pregnant.92 In his first quarterly report for 1844, Symmons stated that the Perth Native school was coming to a ‘most

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interesting’ point in its history, because many of the children who had entered the school were now of the age ‘when the passions are more fully developed, and the desire of emancipation from control begins to assume the mastery’.93 Smithies’ own correspondence was equally anxious in tone. While the girls slept in his home, he had little control over their treatment from—or exposure to—settler communities, when they were working as domestic servants in town. He wrote to the WMMS in London, retelling a story of the conversion of a sixteen-year-old girl, Wo-burt (Wobart) who was living with him. She had requested permission to sleep at her employer’s home on a night when they were hosting a party. Smithies refused, saying he did not want her ‘exposed to moral evil’.94 The need to protect girls from ‘inappropriate’ sexual partnerships with Aboriginal and European men seems to have been at least part of the motivation for the movement of the school to a new site. He went on to state that a better site had been found for the school, where agriculture could be taught, but also where the children could live in an environment that would promote their ‘moral purity’.95 Even within the urban landscape, being constructed by Hutt as a civilising centre, there were gradations between pure and impure places, ones that were safe and ones that were dangerous, and civilised and uncivilised spaces. The microgeography of the school was a space for the ‘protection’ of children, but was also about fundamentally altering their way of life, down to the kinds of intimate and sexual relationships that they would enter into. In this way, the discourse of protection showed its shadow side—it was fundamentally interested in asserting control over the bodies of Indigenous people. Moreover, while schools might have assumed certain moral codes and standards, a shared register between pupils and teachers, there was no way to ensure that the broader society—settlers, colonial officials, Aboriginal families and men—would adhere to these norms. The fact that Aboriginal people, children in particular, had ties to the world beyond colonial Perth was increasingly challenging for those seeking to remake the children in a civilised, British, mould.

Land, Rural Space and Education By the mid 1840s, Native Protector Symmons was worried that education was not having any long-term positive effects on the children. This chimed with increasingly pessimistic attitudes about colonised people’s potential

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for civilisation in other parts of the empire, as my earlier discussion of the Caribbean context in Chap. 2 showed. While many children had worked for settlers, receiving food and wages, he was concerned that the children had an ‘innate yearning for the freedom of savage life’.96 While living in town was believed to have had a positive influence on the younger children, the older children, aged between thirteen and sixteen, were not showing the positive signs of ‘civilisation’ that Smithies had anticipated.97 This, coupled with concerns about Aboriginal girls being taken advantage of in urban areas, led to the school being moved into a rural area. The school reopened in 1844 as a ‘native experimental farm’ at Alder Lake, also known as Wannerroo or Galililup. At this point, there was an increasing push for educational measures to include ‘industrial skills’, rather than education that focused on the development of literary skills that would ‘benefit the child’.98 Farming and cultivation, like elsewhere in the empire, were constructed as important civilising agents. The funding for the project soon began to dry up. After Governor Hutt left the colony in 1846 and was replaced by Governor Irwin, the Legislative Council met to discuss the expenses connected with the Aboriginal population, including the police, justice departments and schools. The Council claimed that these departments received a sixth of the whole colonial revenue for 1846, and that it was not sustainable to continue funding the school to the same degree. They overlooked the fact that the recorded figures for their spending on the school included the grants made to it by the WMMS.99 By 1847, the scheme of offering land to settlers for their successful civilisation of Aboriginal adults was abandoned as well: there had only been ten applications for land grants in the period it had been in place, and of these, only one had been successful.100 The school made its final move at the beginning of the 1850s, not long before its closure in 1855. In the York district, it was reopened as the Gerald Mission after the following governor, Fitzgerald, still under Smithies’ superintendence. Symmons had high hopes that the better quality of land would ‘do much to attach them [the students] to the soil’.101 Ironically, this ‘attachment to the soil’ was something that Smithies feared for the children who might be encouraged back to the bush by their families. Symmons hoped that better quality land would ‘eradicate those unsettled ideas and migratory habits which have hitherto been the bane of our Aboriginal Institution’. It is interesting that the thoughts are described as unsettled—movement was not just a physical act, but also a way of thinking. However, even the better quality of land

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did little for the i­nstitution. During 1852, there were seven pupils based at the mission, and seven girls out at service. During the year, there had been sixteen who had absconded, two who had died, and one who had been imprisoned.102 The Protector of Aborigines from the York district, Walkinshaw Cowan, explained this rapid removal of students from the school as a result of ‘yearning’, or ‘strong particularity’ for their own districts, but also due to high death rates from influenza at the institution.103 It was Smithies’ suspicion that, of the Aboriginal people who had left during the year, eight of them had returned to Perth.104 While Smithies and Symmons were able to recognise the emotional disruption that being in this institution caused, they remained committed to a version of humanitarian thinking that positioned them—as European men—as fathers to these Aboriginal children. By 1855, although Cowan was hopeful that the institution would raise £80–£100 to meet its own expenses, the school closed. Cowan had sent a ‘native woman’ to the school in the hopes that she would ‘help to reconcile the Natives to it’.105 Once again, there was an ambivalent recognition of Aboriginal people and culture. The children were not going to change simply from living at a colonial institution—there was something far more enduring halting their ‘progress’ in civilisation. In the views of the Protector, the children’s ‘yearning’ could only be addressed by a woman of their own race. A number of children who had been brought down to the institution from Stanton Springs, some sixty miles away, were secretly removed from the institution by their parents, ‘leaving their clothes behind’.106 Smithies left for Tasmania in 1855, and the Protector of Aborigines had to find a place for the few children who had remained in the school. Some stayed with Mr and Mrs Pope, the teachers at the school, while others were returned to their families. There were numerous difficulties with this, including European settlers wanting compensation for taking in the children, as well as some children refusing to return to their biological parents.107 Cowan was clearly disappointed by the lack of success of the institution, not least because it reflected on his role as the Protector for the York district. In his 1856 Annual Report, he discussed the history of the establishment, saying that the two years during which the school had been under the care of the Popes was too short a time for the institution to flourish, and that there was little choice but to have a boarding institution in a sparsely settled district like York. He argued that the government should not neglect their spending on Aboriginal people, and given ‘Settlers are now realizing large fortunes from the occupation of

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their lands’, some part of the profits should be used for Christian instruction. He went on to say that ‘It is indeed to be feared that sooner or later they will disappear before the face of the white man: but before this does occur if occur this must, many of the children at least may be instructed in and many cordially embrace the christian (sic) faith.’108 Here, Cowan connected with debates that positioned Aboriginal people as part of a ‘dying race’.109 There was nothing that could be done to stop their inevitable demise, but their Christian conversion could assuage the guilt of the colonisers. Australian Aboriginal people were being discursively removed from the continent, as settlers and politicians spoke about their inevitable extinction in the face of European settlement. The movement of the school from the centre of town, where it was seen by settlers as porous to their influence, to a less densely settled area aided this removal from the public’s imagination of the colonial space. Increasingly, urban Australian cities were imagined as white. In the settler colonial context, according to Wolfe, ‘space is not shared—…the Aborigines are always somewhere else’.110 And, as Edmonds argues, ‘colonial frontiers did not exist only in the bush, backwoods, or borderlands; they clearly sat at the heart of early town and city building, a process crucial to the settler-colonial project’.111 The ‘failure’ of the school and the construction of the town as settler space were mutually constituting. In spite of the narrative of demise, however, ­ Christian schooling remained central to how Aboriginal children’s future was being imagined.

Conclusion: Protection, Civilisation and Education in Settler Colonial Spaces The case of Smithies’ school provides an example of the way in which early educational endeavours were shaped by competing concerns from settlers, government and missionaries. The negotiations about the location of the school, whether in urban or rural space, close to or far from settlers, were about the future of Aboriginal people in Western Australian society. Should they amalgamate with settler society, take on the values taught to them by missionaries, and live in new European towns? Or, should Aboriginal people be kept apart, removed from urban spaces, ‘protected’ and converted, without the aim of bringing them into white society?

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Education in this context took multiple forms—it was the teaching of children in classrooms, it was their learning to read and write and sing, and their Christian conversion. It included their learning to work rather than play, and ‘choosing’ to marry appropriate partners. Children’s receptiveness to education was seen as both a blessing—they were more civilisable than their parents—and a potential danger—they could all too easily learn the wrong things. Adults could also be educated, but this was often seen to be possible only if it resulted from physical labour. Educational projects and ideas were deeply related to the contexts in which they were rooted. Broad ideas about the role of the government and missionaries in education, as well as the benefits of practical training, informed the local context. The growing suspicion amongst settlers and, indeed, some missionaries and government officials, that mental capacity was tied to race, and that civilisation was not universally attainable, influenced responses to education. For those coming to the colonies as missionaries and colonial officials, the discourse about the degeneration and immorality of the urban context would have fed into their ideas about civilising Indigenous people. However, at the local level, education was profoundly shaped by the movement of people within the colony, and the local and imperial government’s attempts to negotiate between the ­competing needs of settlers, missionaries, humanitarian principles and the need for the ‘protection’ of Indigenous people.112 The idea that Aboriginal people should be ‘protected’ in the colonies of settlement was clearly outlined in the Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines in 1837. However, this case shows that ‘protection’ was not a neutral concept, and the best means of carrying out the suggestions of the Report were contested. ‘Protection’ of Aboriginal children had many different faces. There appeared to be multiple different elements that children needed to be protected from, including their own families, who could corrupt them with bad habits; men who would prey on young girls, and the bad influence of settler society. The idea of a new colony, where children could be influenced by settlers of the best kind, was foundational to Hutt’s thinking about Western Australia. However, the imagined ‘blankness’ of the colony was challenged by the presence of increasingly vocal settlers. It also became apparent, in projects like the Wesleyan school, that Aboriginal people were not simply waiting for colonisers to ‘civilise’ them. Rather, they had ties to family, children and land.

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Notes 1. See Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British settlements); with the minutes of evidence, appendix and index, HC 425 (1837), 79. 2. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 90. 3. Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines, 79. 4. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, Volume 1 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 71. 5. Ibid., 75. 6. Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 20. 7. Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research, 8 (2006), 387–409, 395. 8. See Elizabeth Elbourne, ‘The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 4 (2003), n.p. 9. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 15–16. 10. Megan Watkins, ‘Teachers’ Tears and the Affective Geography of the Classroom’, Emotion, Space and Society, 4 (2011), 137–143, 137. 11. Ibid., 138. 12. Herman Merivale, Lectures on Colonisation and the Colonies: Delivered before the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840, and 1841 (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman’s, 1842), Lecture XVII, 179. 13. Ibid., 180. 14. Damon Ieremia Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 27. 15. Ibid., 31. 16. John Milloy, ‘A National Crime’: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879–1986 (Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press, 2000), 13; James Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 133. 17. Salesa, Racial Crossings, 122–132. 18. Irwin to Earl Grey, 23.12.1847, The National Archives at Kew, CO 18/45, No. 62. Hereafter all CO correspondence is from this source. 19. Merivale to Hawes, 28.04.1847, note on ibid. 20. Bain Attwood, ‘Returning to the Past: The South Australian Colonisation Commission, the Colonial Office and Aboriginal Title’, The Journal of Legal History, 34 (2013), 50–82, 54.

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21. Mark Hickford, Lords of the Land: Indigenous Property Rights and the Jurisprudence of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 62–63. 22. Salesa, Racial Crossings, 29. 23. Penelope Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children as a Potential Labour Force in Swan River Colony, 1829–1850’, Journal of Australian Studies, 16 (1992), 41–55, 41. 24. Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, Servants & Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2002), 101. The 1848 census listed 548 aborigines as employed, with only 6530 white settlers present in the colony. Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children’, 47. 25. Shirleene Robinson, ‘Resistance and Race: Aboriginal Child Workers in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Australia’, in Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World, ed. by Shirleene Robinson and Simon Sleight (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 129–143, 130. 26. Instructions to Governor Hutt, State Records Office, Western Australia [Hereafter WASRO], Con.621/1. 27. The exact numbers of injuries and deaths are debated, as the figures that Stirling reported, of twenty Aboriginal deaths, include only Aboriginal men. See John Harris, ‘Hiding the Bodies: The Myth of the Humane Colonisation of Australia’, Aboriginal History, 27 (2003), 79–104, 86. 28. Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies). Return to an address of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 5 August 1844;—for, copies or extracts from the despatches of the governors of the Australian colonies, with the reports of the protectors of aborigines, and any other correspondence to illustrate the condition of the aboriginal population of the said colonies, from the date of the last papers laid before Parliament on the subject, (papers ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12 August 1839, no. 526), [Hereafter Aborigines (Australian Colonies)], HC 627 (1844), No. 34, 381. 29. Salesa shows that the New Zealand Company constructed New Zealand as ‘exceptional’: the perfect place for settlers to live and with the ‘best “natives”’. Salesa, Racial Crossings, 49–50. 30. Sir George Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery, Vol. 2 (London: T. and W. Boone, 1841), 365. 31. Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 11, 381. 32. Ibid., 382. 33. Ibid., 383. 34. Grey, Journals, 382–384. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid.

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37. Colonial Secretary’s notice, 23.06.1841, Western Australia Government Gazette (Perth: Government Printer, 1841) [Hereafter WAGG], 25.06.1841. 38. Ibid.; Hutt to Russell, 21.07.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 15, 394. 39. Peter Barrow was appointed as Native Protector in the York district, and Charles Symmons was based in Perth. Both travelled from London to take up these positions. Barrow served for less than two years. Symmons served in that position, and other government positions, including as the Assistant Police Magistrate, Immigration Agent, Acting-Sheriff and Assistant Superintendent of Police, until he retired in 1873. Paul Hasluck, Black Australians: A Survey of Native Policy in Western Australia, 2nd edn (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1970), 72–73. See also Hutt to Marquis of Normanby, 11.02.1840, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 7, 371. 40. On Aboriginal Protectors, see Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, ‘Trajectories of Protection: Protectorates of Aborigines in Early 19th century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand’, New Zealand Geographer, 64 (2008), 205– 220 and Colonization. 41. Quarterly Report of Native Protector, Charles Symmons, 12.04.1844, WAGG. 42. Symmons Report, 09.07.1841, WAGG. 43. Symmons to Brown (Colonial Secretary), 31.12.1840, Encl. 4 in Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, No. 11, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), 389. 44. Jessie Mitchell, In Good Faith? Governing Indigenous Australia through God, Charity and Empire 1825–1855 (Canberra: ANU EPress, 2011), 103. 45. Tiffany Shellam, Shaking Hands on the Fringe: Negotiating the Aboriginal World at King George’s Sound (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2009), 178. 46. Hutt to Russell, 10.07.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 45, 394. 47. Hutt to Stanley, 08.04.1842, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 18, 412. 48. Robert Kenny, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathaniel Pepper and the Ruptured World (Carlton, Victoria: Scribe Publications, 2010), 72. 49. Glenelg to Gipps, 31.01.1838, No. 72, Historical Records of Australia [Hereafter HRA] 1, Series 19, 255. 50. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 115. 51. Dianne Reilly Drury, La Trobe, the Making of a Governor (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2006), 135. 52. Ibid., 191.

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53. Jane Lydon, Fantastic Dreaming: The Archaeology of an Aboriginal Mission (Plymouth: AltiaMira Press, 2009), 89; Robert Kenny, ‘La Trobe, Lake Boga and the “Enemy of Souls”: The First Moravian Mission in Australia’, La Trobe Journal, 71 (2003), 96–113, 100. 54. GS Airey to CJ La Trobe, 24.12.1842, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), Encl. in No. 64, 260. 55. Stanley to Gipps, 20 Dec 1842, HRA I, Series 12, 438. 56. See Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) on the spatial location of imperial power. 57. Hutt to Russell, 10.07.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 45, 392. 58. Symmons’ Report, 13.01.1843, WAGG. 59. Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841 Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 11, 382. 60. Hutt to Stanley, 21.01.1843, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 23, 416. 61. The position of Native Protector was created in 1839, and replaced the previous title of Native Interpreter. Mitchell, In Good Faith?, 181. 62. Neville Green, Broken Spears: Aboriginals and Europeans in the Southwest of Australia (Cottesloe: Focus Education Services, 1984), 138. See also Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children’, 47. 63. Missionary Louis Giustiniani had opened a small school in Guildford in 1836, but by this stage, it had closed, making the Wesleyan school the only Aboriginal school in the colony until George King opened an SPG school in Fremantle in 1842. 64. The position of Native Interpreter was created in 1834. Francis Armstrong’s role was act as an intermediary between the Aboriginal and settler population. 65. Smithies to the WMMS, 08.10.1840, FBN 1, Australia Correspondence, School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) WMMS Archive. On the Wesleyan school see John Harris, One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: A Story of Hope (Sutherland: Albatross Books, 1994), 269–278; Mitchell, In Good Faith?; William McNair and Hilary Rumney, Pioneer Aboriginal Mission: The Work of Wesleyan Missionary John Smithies in the Swan River Colony 1840–1855 (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1981). 66. Richard B.  Roy, ‘A Reappraisal of Wesleyan Methodist Mission in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, as Viewed through the Ministry of the Rev. John Smithies (1802–1872)’ (PhD thesis, Edith Cowan University, 2006). 67. It is worth pointing out the parallel with the schools for Aboriginal Canadians here, as they used this method of settling Aboriginal children in white homes, known as ‘planting out’. Milloy, A National Crime, 28.

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68. Symmons Annual Report, 8.01.1841, WAGG. Emphasis in original. 69. Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, 382. 70. George Fletcher Moore, ‘On the Aboriginal Race of Western Australia’, Perth Gazette, 20.02.1841, 3. 71. ‘Regulations and Arrangements relative to the Native Children who may be provided with situations in the houses of the settlers and who attend the Wesleyan Methodist School at Perth, commenced September 1840’, Encl. 3 in Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 11, 388. 72. Symmons Annual Report, 31.12.1842, Encl. 1  in Hutt to Stanley, 21.01.1843, 419. 73. ‘Regulations and arrangements relative to the Native Children’, 387. 74. This is interesting, especially in light of attempts to ‘civilise’ Aboriginal people at the time. The need for them to represent ‘savage’ culture to the colonists on this public occasion implies their lack of ability to adapt to the settler society. This incident is also discussed by Mitchell, In Good Faith?, 65. 75. The Journal of Francis Tuckfield MS1134, Box 655, letter to [illeg.] 31.06.1840, from Buntingdale, Geelong, Port Phillip, State Library Victoria. 76. Smithies to WMMS, 20.09.1841, FBN 1, WMMS SOAS. 77. ‘Amusements of the week’, Perth Gazette, 5.06.1841, 2. 78. Inquirer, 9.06.1841. 79. Letter from Smithies to the Editor of the Perth Gazette, 19.06.1841. 80. From the editor, The Inquirer, 23.06.1841. 81. Lester and Dussart, ‘Trajectories of Protection’, 213. 82. Executive Council Meeting 24.11.1840, WASRO, 1058/3. 83. Ibid. 84. ‘Examination of the Native Children’, Perth Gazette, 19.11.1842, 2. 85. Smithies to WMMS, 01.05.1842, Thea Shipley Collection, ACC7158A/ 15, State Library Western Australia. 86. Symmons Report, 21.01.1842, WAGG. 87. Ibid. 88. Joanna Cruickshank, ‘“To Exercise a Beneficial Influence Over a Man”: Marriage, Gender and the Native Institutions in Early Colonial Australia’, in Evangelists of Empire?: Missionaries in Colonial History, ed. by Amanda Barry, Joanna Cruickshank, Andrew Brown-May and Peatricia Grimshaw (Melbourne: University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre, 2008), 115–124, 118. 89. Ibid.

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90. I have touched on Aboriginal marriages in Australian schools in Rebecca Swartz, ‘Educating Emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–65’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18 (2017), n.p. 91. ‘An Act to prevent the enticing away the Girls of the Aboriginal Race from School, or from any Service in which they are employed’, Act 6, 1844, Western Australia. 92. Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children’, 52. 93. Symmons report, 12.04.1844, WAGG. 94. Smithies to WMMS, 25.10.1843, FBN 2 SOAS. 95. Ibid. 96. Symmons report, 22.01.1847, WAGG. 97. Neville Green, ‘Access, Equality and Opportunity? The Education of Aboriginal Children in Western Australia, 1840–1978’ (PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004), 85. 98. Ibid., 86. 99. John Brown, ‘Policies in Aboriginal Education in Western Australia, 1829–1897’ (M.Ed thesis, University of Western Australia, 1979), 88. 100. Louis Tilbrook, Nyungar Tradition: Glimpses of Aborigines of SouthWestern Australia 1829–1914 (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 1983), 20. 101. Symmons report, 03.02.1852, WAGG. 102. Cowan to Colonial Secretary 11.07.1852, CSO 231, WASRO. 103. Ibid. 104. Cowan to Colonial Secretary, 03.03.1852, CSR 230, WASRO.  The introduction of convicts to the area, and their proximity to the school, was also seen as a bad influence on the children, and Smithies asked the Governor to ensure that the depot for the ticket of leave men was moved. 105. Cowan to Colonial Secretary, 09.04.1855, CSO 317, WASRO. 106. Cowan Report, 20.02.1855, WAGG. 107. Cowan to Colonial Secretary, 21.01.1856, CSO 348, WASRO. 108. Cowan Report, 20.02.1856, vol. 348, WASRO. 109. See Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2003). 110. Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology (London: Cassell, 1999), 173. 111. Penelope Edmonds, Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 5. 112. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 1.

CHAPTER 4

‘Forgotten and Neglected’: Settlers, Government and Africans’ Education in Natal

The humanitarian principles outlined in reports like that of the Select Committee on Aborigines were foundational in Natal, which was annexed as a British colony in 1843. The local government was told that it should attempt to bring the local population under civilising and civilised British law, and use part of the annual revenue of the colony for the ‘religious, moral, and industrial training’ of the natives to allow them to ‘attain a higher social position, and emulate ourselves in the arts of civilised life’.1 This language is reminiscent not only of the instructions given to Western Australian Governor Hutt in the 1830s, but also discussions of religious, moral and industrial education in other parts of the empire at the time. However, imperial governments and settlers often had different views regarding what the ideal colonial society would look like. As Alan Lester has argued, the imperial government believed that civilisation and the reformation of Indigenous people, while ensuring their ‘protection’ and access to land, was essential to the colonial project. On the other hand, settlers asserted their rights to occupation of newly colonised territories.2 Thus, the local government was often caught between the need to provide some limited resources for the use of Indigenous children, and outright hostility towards these attempts from local settler communities. Colonial violence, in both literal and structural forms, was widespread across the colonies of settlement. Settlers complained about funding ‘native’ schools, which they believed should not be a priority for small and © The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_4

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struggling colonial governments. At the same time, they were reliant on Indigenous people for labour, and this was reflected in their approach to education. The local government, for its part, was caught between the need to ‘protect’ Indigenous people from colonial violence, while also attracting settlers to the colonies, and being seen to be responsive to the local conditions that settlers faced. The 1840s saw stop-start attempts to provide education and funding through government channels. As the 1850s began, race was increasingly, although not exclusively, understood as something that could not be overcome through education. While early mission activity focused more closely on the idea of incorporating Indigenous people into settler society by ‘civilising’ them, later attempts at education were often based on a more concrete notion of racial difference. Histories of education have been criticised for being overly focused on schooling.3 In the case of colonial Natal, which is the focus of this chapter, the preponderance of mission activity has led to many rich studies of missions and education that draw on missionaries’ extensive archives. This is a logical place to focus scholarship: as a very full mission field, there were multiple mission schools, some with continuing legacies of academic excellence.4 These studies are central in giving us a detailed picture of mission activity and motivations in the region. However, the school or mission society is often examined as a unit standing alone when, in fact, local officials, the imperial government and settlers were all interested in what they termed ‘native education’. The challenge posed by educating African children was in its potential to undermine an increasingly racialised social order in the settler colonies. Thus, commentary on this issue was not exclusive to missionaries. This chapter examines the debates regarding native policy in the 1840s and 1850s in Natal, showing how these policies positioned the (industrial) education of Africans. While the imperial government may have been committed to the ‘humane’ colonisation of new territories, there were multiple ways in which these goals were renegotiated at the local level, particularly as settlers pushed for involvement in colonial governance. Local colonial governments often attempted to construct settler colonialism as a humanitarian intervention, in which aspects of the colonial process were refashioned as teaching opportunities. If Indigenous people could only understand the value of property ownership, and the benefits of hard work, they could be incorporated into settler society. As Catriona Ellis notes of the Indian context, most Indian people’s education did not

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occur in schools, but rather, in relationships between parents and children, in homes, and in other relationships with the state, often through work.5 Thinking about colonial practice as pedagogy is beneficial for colonial historiography more broadly: it asks us to consider which aspects of the colonial enterprise were deemed useful for Indigenous people, but also about how these things could be taught, and learned. This chapter takes up this approach, focusing on the broader context of education, and paying attention to the ways in which education was articulated through broader schemes for Indigenous people’s reformation. As was the case in Western Australia in the 1840s, Natal’s economy was flailing, and settlers were increasingly aware of their own economic and social precariousness in this young colony. Settlers feared educated Africans, and attempts to introduce measures for the widespread education of Indigenous children were met with suspicion and, sometimes, open hostility. Norman Etherington points out that critiques of missionaries’ involvement with native education were often contradictory: On the one hand, they complained that Africans, Canadian Indians, Australian Aborigines, and other peoples were incapable of understanding or making use of “literary education” and should therefore be given manual training suited to their limited intellects. On the other hand, they argued that mission education at the higher levels would be only too well understood by converts, who might imbibe doctrines of equality, demand equal rights, and foment insurrections.6

The education of Indigenous children had the potential to undermine the very structure of settler colonial society. Therefore, attempts to teach Indigenous children, or to provide funding to that end, were met with concern, and sometimes outrage, from settlers. This chapter focuses on how land and labour were situated as central to the education of Africans in Natal. The settler colonial context fundamentally influenced the kinds of education promoted, the amount of funding given, and the level of government involvement in education. Thus, while there might have been broad ideas about the civilisation of Indigenous people throughout the empire, this came up against a changing relationship between imperial and local governments in Natal. The plans for education in this context focussed on labour that would serve the needs of settlers. Many of the proposals for increased provision came up against opposition from colonial officials and settlers. By reading these—largely

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‘failed’—attempts at African education, I show how local settlers’ voices were increasingly dominant in Natal’s colonial politics. This had implications for the kinds of education that African pupils could access. I begin by discussing two Commissions of Enquiry, the first on land and the second on labour. These were pivotal in constructing labour as central to Africans’ education. I then turn to a discussion of plans for industrial training, proposed by the Bishop of Cape Town, Robert Gray. These plans were protested against by Natal’s local government and settlers. In the final part of the chapter, I indicate how, in the 1850s and 1860s, settlers were increasingly hostile towards expenditure on Africans, with detrimental effects on Africans’ education.

Civilised Workers: Land, Labour and Education in Colonial Natal From the end of the 1840s, the twin issues of land and labour became increasingly pressing in Natal. Unlike the Cape, where there had been white settlers since Dutch colonisation in the seventeenth century, Natal provided a different opportunity for attracting what were seen as the ‘right sort’ of settlers to the colony. The Wakefieldian ideas that underpinned settlement schemes in Australia were influential in Natal as well. The Byrne Emigration scheme, which brought about five thousand white settlers to Natal between 1849 and 1852, was designed to bring settlers of different classes to the colony, in order for some to act as labourers and others as landholders.7 However, the scheme did not attract the desired colonists, and settlers were largely supported by public funds. In spite of the scheme’s perceived failure, the settlers were a vocal and powerful group who lobbied against what they saw as favouritism towards the African population. Natal Africans, and refugee populations from the still independent Zululand to the northeast, amounted to some hundred thousand people, outnumbering white settlers in Natal throughout the period under study.8 In spite of the preponderance of Africans in Natal, the settler population articulated a founding mythology of the colony that rendered the land a terra nullius.9 Rather than seeing Africans in Natal as ‘indigenous’ or ‘native’ to that area, they were constructed as refugees who did not have rights to the land where they settled.10 Byrne’s Emigrant’s Guide to Port Natal assured potential settlers that there was a large African population who, while useful as labourers, were ‘not the aboriginal possessors of the soil; they have no right of previous occupancy and possession to bring forward against

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white settlers, they have no inalienable claim to the soil, such as all barbarous aboriginal tribes possess to a certain extent…’11 Colonial politicians and settlers used this rationale to justify schemes to remove Africans from most fertile farmlands, beyond the borders of Natal, or to native reserves. This effort became particularly potent when coupled with arguments about the ‘improvement’ of Africans when living amongst their own people, outside towns, or in labour reserves. Lorenzo Veracini has termed this settler colonial strategy ‘transfer by conceptual displacement’: where ‘indigenous peoples are not considered indigenous to the land and are therefore perceived as exogenous Others who have entered the settler space at some point in time and preferably after the settler collective’.12 The issue of labour, like that of land, was increasingly fraught in the colony. The newly arrived settlers had begun testing crops, and sugar was found most suitable to Natal’s climate. In contrast to the other sugar colonies, like the West Indies, where, by the 1840s, the emancipated population worked on plantations, Natal Africans were often self-sufficient and initially had the power to refuse work.13 In spite of settlers’ recognition of the economic potential of the African population they were living with, they began to believe that many Africans were ‘making no noticeable contributions to the colonial labour market’.14 Atkins argues that colonists fundamentally misunderstood pre-existing patterns of work in Natal African society, which were often based on age, gender and status within society.15 While some Africans willingly entered into the service of white settler farmers as agricultural labourers, or servants, in order to make money to buy cattle for lobola (bride price), or to afford hut taxes, many refused to work. Increasingly, therefore, Natal settlers constructed particular forms of labour as the only thing that could redeem the African population from barbarism. There were also gendered concerns about Africans’ labour: women were seen to be doing too much manual work in agriculture, which colonists believed indicated Africans’ inferior culture. Colonists’ own ideas about gender and work shaped this belief: increasingly, they believed women should remain in the household, and should not be involved with physically taxing work. In order to solve the ‘labour problem’, local government and settlers argued that for Africans to be civilised, they should be introduced to manual and industrial training. This argument was not unique to Natal, as Chaps. 2 and 3 have shown. The question then was how to provide this, while simultaneously granting land to settlers and ensuring a supply of steady agricultural labour. In Natal, the reserve system was keenly debated,

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as settling this large population would involve considerable expense. There were competing ideas about whether Africans should be ‘amalgamated’ with settler society, or ‘insulated’ from settler incursions. In contrast to the Western Australian Aboriginal population, often believed to be ‘dying out’ in the face of European civilisation, Africans were understood to be particularly well adapted to their environment, and were seen as physically strong, warlike people.16 Schemes for settler control of land and labour involved two strategies: the settling African people on small tracts of land, or ‘locations’, which would act as centres of civilisation, and training them as workers. Thus, education, whether in civilising Christian principles, or industrial training, was seen as a central way to solve the most pressing problems in the colony. Missionaries were central to these plans for the ‘improvement’ of the Indigenous population. Natal was ‘one of the most heavily missionized regions on earth’ during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.17 Between the 1830s and 1850s, groups from the American Board of Missions, Berlin Mission Society, Hermannsburg Mission Society, Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society, United Free Church of Scotland, and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for Foreign Parts arrived in the colony.18 Each of these groups began schools that followed different models for education. Secretary of Native Affairs, Theophilus Shepstone, who served in various roles in the colony between 1838 and 1877, argued that there should be one system of education and training for all native schools. He argued that sectarian differences should be minimised so that missionaries avoided making ‘a parade’ before Africans for their membership in different churches. The government should act as ‘the paternal head and guardian of such a mass of grown up children, by selecting and employing such an agency as in its judgement appears the best calculated to obtain the object sought after and beyond all to secure uniformity’.19 Thus, there was a reluctant recognition from the government that while they relied on missions for education provision, they had limited control over the precise nature of mission activity. The local government increasingly denounced missionaries as out of touch with the reality of Natal’s context. As Lieutenant-Governor Pine argued in 1854, inadvertently pointing to the intellectual capacity of Africans, The very qualities, such as purity and simplicity of character, which render them [missionaries] the best teachers of Christianity, unfit them to cope with the subtlety of the savage. The natives are extremely quick in discerning

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the character and wishes of those whom they come in contact with, and when their interests are not directly and immediately concerned, they will always adopt language which they think will please their hearers.20

Pine’s view that Africans were ‘subtle’ and able to manipulate missionaries who worked with them, while intended as a slight on all Africans’ characters, in fact pointed to a recognition of their agency in these colonial encounters. The optimism of many missionaries in their interactions with Africans was increasingly running up against a far more pessimistic view of relations between the races in Natal, propagated by settlers and the local government. As Chap. 3 has shown, the issue of where to locate Aboriginal people and institutions was central to strategies for Aboriginal education in Western Australia. There had also been similar debates regarding the eastern Australian colonies and the Queen Adelaide province in the Cape.21 The same was true of Natal. The 1846 Native Locations Commission was given the task of considering the best way to ‘locate’ the ‘natives now within this district, in such a manner as will best prevent any collision between their interests and those of the emigrant farmers’.22 This seemingly innocuous description of the Commission’s remit indicates the tension between prioritising farmers’ access to land, and the need to ‘protect’ the African population. This Commission drew on experience from local government and missionaries: it was run by William Stanger, the Surveyor General; Theophilus Shepstone, then Diplomatic Agent to Native Tribes (later Secretary for Native Affairs); Lieutenant Charles Gibb of the Royal Engineers; and the missionaries, Dr Newton Adams and Daniel Lindley, of the American Board mission. In Natal, the Commissioners considered whether reserves or locations could act as centres of civilisation. They suggested it would be easier to convert and civilise Africans on small locations housing five to ten thousand Africans, to be superintended by a resident magistrate and missionaries, and a native police force.23 The smaller reserves were seen as easier to manage than larger ones. The idea of native locations was generally favourably received, although there was some opposition from colonial officials and settlers. This vision of the colony was one fundamentally altered, from small pockets of white settlement in African occupied land, to large swathes of government owned land on which Africans occupied small reserves. Education was central to the Commissioners’ view of the operation of the locations, likely influenced by the missionaries represented on the

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Committee. They argued that these reserves would be centres of civilisation where education would be promoted for the ‘moral and intellectual improvement of the natives’.24 There should be missions and schools in each location, providing government-funded education. Most importantly, each location should have an industrial school where the ‘useful arts should be taught and practically illustrated…’. Under the ‘direct control and management of the Government’, these institutions would be crucial not only for the moral elevation of the individual native, but also for the future of the colony in general. They would furnish to the whole district competent mechanics of every description required for the development of the resources of the country. They would create artificial wants among the natives themselves, while at the same time they would provide the means for satisfying them.25

Industrial education would provide the settlers with labourers and create new markets in the colonies. It would also, in the Commissioners’ view, ‘improve’ the natives themselves, by introducing industrious habits and teaching them the value of hard work. Earl Grey, who was at this time promoting industrial education in the West Indies and elsewhere, looked favourably on the scheme, agreeing that industrial education was central to the civilisation of African children. Their labour in schools would also contribute to institutions’ maintenance.26 However, Natal was not a strategically important colony, and the Colonial Office avoided spending on it.27 Ultimately, the suggestions of the Locations Commissioners were not taken up. Rather than settling groups of Africans with magistrates, missionaries and mechanical schools, the locations were governed through local chiefs, in what would become the system of indirect rule through native law. The first native location was set up in 1846, and by 1856, there were forty locations and twenty-one mission reserves in the colony. The land these comprised amounted to roughly twelve per cent of the colony’s area, housing ninety per cent of its population.28 In 1852, the Secretary of State called a further Commission of Enquiry, this time on native labour. This was in response to the perceived failure of sugar and cotton farming initiatives in the region. The Secretary of State believed the issue of African governance was pivotal to the management of a people ‘whose ignorance and habits unfit them for the duties of civilised life…’29 The Commission was made up of prominent colonists

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and politicians in Natal, and although the evidence they collected did draw on the experience of missionaries in the colony, there were no missionaries represented on the Committee, in contrast to the earlier Locations Commission.30 Settlers had been vocal in their criticism of the Locations Commission’s recommendations—they thought that the recommendations made by officials and missionaries ‘excluded those with real knowledge and experience—the settlers’.31 Lieutenant-Governor Benjamin Pine therefore ensured that the Labour Commission was made up of a more ‘representative’ sample of Natal colonists. In this case, ‘representative’ involved representing the needs of settlers. The Labour Commission examined the history of relations between settlers and Africans in Natal and suggested the best mode of government for Africans. They also considered the ‘causes of the want of labour, and the remedies applicable to ensure labour’.32 Lack of African labour was the major obstacle to the young colony’s economic success—it prevented widespread agriculture from taking off in the region, resulting in a loss of crops. However, the labour shortage was not only understood in economic terms. Rather, the effects of this, the Commissioners argued, were detrimental to the African population itself: ‘above all, this state of affairs retards the civilization, and stops the industrial training of the young Kafir (sic)’.33 The industrial education of Africans was thus discursively tied to the economic prosperity of the colony. Civilisation sprang from labour and, without this, the population could not progress. The lack of labour was blamed on Africans’ location on remote reserves where they were governed under a separate and archaic system of native law.34 As in the Western Australian case, concerns over land, labour and education for Indigenous people overlapped. The Labour Commission recommended that the reserves set aside by the Locations Commission should be reduced in size. As it was, in the view of the Commissioners, they were encroaching on farmland that should have been given to British settlers.35 The location size also allowed Africans a relative degree of autonomy to produce their own crops. Small locations, where seven or eight thousand people could live, would act as useful labour reserves, where Africans could be brought into contact with civilised (white) people by acting as ‘free servants’.36 Racial amalgamation was the best path to civilisation for Africans. Through contact with British settlers, African men would learn to be civilised workers.37 In this ­argument, the settler Commissioners articulated a view of ‘amalgamation’ in which African people could be part of settler society. The Commissioners

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eagerly pointed out that African people lived in urban centres already, and that they were—in the correct relationship of master and servant—becoming ‘intermingled with, and absorbed by’ settler society. The rejection of the complete isolation of Africans from settler society was, nonetheless, framed in ‘humanitarian’ terms. Lester and Dussart’s description of the ambivalence of humanitarian colonial governance is useful in understanding this disjuncture.38 Local governments were eager to characterise settlement as civilising and uplifting for Indigenous people. Therefore, they constructed settler colonialism as a humanitarian intervention. In the case of industrial education, the rhetoric of work as civilisation helped for this form of education to be framed as benefitting the African population. The Commissioners characterised Africans as lacking ‘judgement as regards his work’, ‘superstitious and warlike’, ‘crafty and cunning’, ‘at once indolent and excitable’, ‘averse to labour’ and ‘bloodthirsty and cruel’.39 This, they attributed to ‘the natural indolence of the Kafir (sic) himself’.40 These contradictory characterisations of Africans went some way towards explaining to settlers why Africans were not flocking to white farms and homes to enter into service. However, posing labour as a means of civilisation not only served settlers’ labour needs, but also improved the native himself. It is worth noting that these characterisations were gendered—the Commissioners were concerned with recreating gender relationships within families, reforming men and women into Christian husbands and wives. The discourse about work was primarily mobilised about men, who were imagined as labourers and household heads, who did not yet understand the value of hard work. Women were often constructed as passive victims of the oppressive systems of lobola and polygamy, who would assume their rightful place in the domestic sphere if this vision succeeded. In the Commissioners’ view, labour and civilisation would reinforce each other: without labour and ‘exertion’, ‘there can be no true civilisation’. They saw the role of government and settlers in paternalistic terms— while they believed that African people should take the initiative in their own ‘improvement’, there was ‘no probability that the Kafir (sic) will ever voluntarily take the initiative, Government must do this for him, by legislating in such a manner as to induce him to betake himself to the pursuits of industry’.41 The argument also positioned Natal as a unique colony, with different race relations, a grateful African population, eager for ­civilisation, and one where the experiences of other parts of the empire would not be repeated. Of course, these discussions were not unique. As

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Chap. 2 showed, there were similar conversations about labour and education occurring in the West Indies during the same period. The Commissioners drew on a ‘discourse of civilisation’ to justify their proposed intervention in the education and working relationships of Africans. They proposed that the ‘savage’ could become civilised, and overcome the shortcomings of his race, but only by accepting a position inferior to the civilised race. As Jeremy Martens has argued regarding settler views on African marriage practices in the 1860s, ‘whites continued to employ the rhetoric of liberal humanitarianism because its flexibility afforded ample justification for discriminatory policies’. Indeed, ‘the enlightenment belief in civilisation and savagery was still prevalent, even as scientific racism began to extend its influence’.42 Whether the Commissioners truly believed that Africans could achieve civilisation is dubious, but the language of civilisation allowed them to propose work as a convenient remedy to the native’s inferior character, and to their own labour shortage. The discourse of work leading to civilisation was framed as a moral issue by the Commissioners, who argued that Idleness is the root of all evil, and should be systematically discouraged by authority; habits of industry should be enforced. In the opinion of the Commissioners it is cheaper, it is infinitely preferable, to train the young Kafir (sic) now, than to exterminate him hereafter; one or other must be done.43

The relationship between morality, order and labour and industry was clear. The economic success of the colony required African labour, and therefore, this labour was framed as civilising. The Commissioners suggested government industrial schools should be opened on all of the small native locations, and that three years’ attendance should be compulsory for boys and girls.44 Children should be compelled to attend these schools, as their ‘uncivilised’ parents were unfit to make decisions about their education.45 The perceived labour crisis justified an education system that focused on manual or industrial training over literary education.46 While mission activity was widespread in this era, the Commissioners saw Africans’ conversion as potentially dangerous. Many settlers claimed Africans could not be truly converted.47 They were suspicious of ­missionaries, whose work with African people was often seen as a reason for Africans avoiding manual labour.48 For example, an article in the Natal Witness urged settlers not to employ English-speaking, Christian Africans

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as they ‘hold in great abhorrence the idea of making themselves generally useful, and want tea and coffee, and high wages, and who show that a step or two farther in civilisation would capacitate them to like muffins and crumpets’.49 At the same time as denouncing mission educated Africans, the Commissioners argued that no progress had been made by the missionaries in civilising the population, although they had to admit that there had been ‘no systematic attempt’ from the Government at education of the children. ‘It was as though’, Etherington suggests, ‘the settlers unconsciously feared that Christian Africans would have a more powerful claim to equal rights than an uneducated population devoted to their ancient beliefs’.50 Although the Commission’s recommendations for the native reserves and industrial schools were not enforced, they highlighted some important ideas about the racial future of the colony. First, racial amalgamation through working for whites was central to African civilisation. Whether this civilisation was truly attainable remained ambiguous in the eyes of the Commissioners, as ‘civilised’ Africans continued to be seen with suspicion or disdain. Second, by the 1850s, industrial education was central to the government’s agenda for African education. As Guy argued, the Labour Commission’s evidence shows how ‘in a racially divided colonial context, the absence of capital resources and the belief that labour can create them can lead to social demands and tensions that accumulate and intensify as they transmute into further race prejudice and racial violence’.51

Settler Hostility to Missionaries and Industrial Education The Locations Commission and the Labour Commission, although unsuccessful in driving policies for widespread industrial training, were able to position industrial training as a central facet of the civilising process in Natal. Missionaries, in this context, continued to lobby the local government for funding for schools, including their industrial branches. Often, industrial training would be conducted in conjunction with a school in which some students would be taught to read and write, fulfilling the missionaries’ goals of training African teachers and preachers. As the example of Bishop Robert Gray’s scheme for education shows, settlers and local officials remained hostile towards plans for the widespread education of Africans. In 1850, the Bishop of Cape Town, Robert Gray, conducted a tour of the diocese. He had been involved with education in the Cape, particularly

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with the elite Zonnebloem school for the sons of chiefs, based in Cape Town. Gray’s tour led him to conclude that industrial education was central to the future of the Natal colony. Gray’s scheme connected to broader questions about the status and future of Africans in the colony and the place of industrial training in the ‘civilisation’ of African people. It attracted comment from local settlers and the local and imperial government. Gray believed that Zulu people were becoming degraded through their contact with settlers, and that an intervention at this early stage of contact with white society was crucial. He argued that education was central to saving the ‘coloured race’ in Natal, not only from ‘contamination’, but also ‘annihilation’.52 ‘But these poor people are undergoing a great change’, he wrote to London, ‘and unless some large and comprehensive system be adopted while they are in their present submissive & docile state, I fear they will fall into anarchy and lawlessness, & next into a very hardened state’.53 This discourse of ‘annihilation’ was rare in the Natal context—the ‘dying race’ theory was far more common in Australia, or regarding the Cape San.54 He proposed that, on each of the native locations, there should be an institution that would convert Africans, provide health care, educate their children and teach industrial skills, along with an orphanage and a boarding school. These institutions would be based on those already run by the Moravians in the Cape Colony.55 The school would train the children in industry according to their gender: sewing, cooking and washing for the girl boarders, and gardening, farming and mechanical arts for the boys. The scheme would combine moral and physical training, under the ‘teaching of zealous pastors’.56 The teachers were to be married, to provide a good example of domestic life to their pupils. His suggestions were based on discussions with local missionaries, settlers and government officials who he met during his visit to the colony. The response to Gray’s scheme indicates the constraints of funding for education in this settler colonial context. The Lieutenant-Governor, Benjamin Pine, told Gray that while he himself supported the scheme, he worried about the ‘jealousy that it might occasion to the various souls who were in the country, or who might come to it’.57 Gray’s response emphasised the advantages of industrial training for the whole population in Natal and the government’s responsibility towards the African population.58 Gray requested government funding of £300 per year for three industrial institutions. The SPG would provide some funding towards the institutions’ running costs.59

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In a despatch in 1853, the local Natal government gave a lukewarm reaction to this plan for missionary education in the colony. When the scheme was put to the legislative council in 1853, it was rejected for a number of reasons. First, it was decided that it would be too difficult to grant the Bishop a large sum of money without granting similar amounts to other mission bodies that had already been established in the colony for a longer period of time, including the American Zulu Mission. A further despatch to Pakington, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, also speaks of public discontent with the scheme, which, if granted, Acting-­ Lieutenant Governor Preston  felt would ‘prove a very great embarrassment to the local Government’. The government wondered if they would have control of the schools in ‘the government and management of an enterprise to which it contributed so largely by grants of the public funds and of the Crown lands’.60 The mention of land is central here, as it indicates how foundational land use was to the emerging settler colony. There were also ‘pedagogical’ concerns, relating to the place of local agricultural knowledge. Preston wondered if teachers from England would be adequately prepared to teach agricultural and mechanical skills upon their arrival in the colony. He believed they would be ‘ignorant of the soil, peculiarities of climate, seasons, and language of the natives’, and would be ‘compelled to unlearn their English knowledge, in order to garden or farm with any prospect of success’.61 In raising his objection to this scheme, Preston also raised a query about the necessity of providing agricultural education at all. He praised the farming skills of local Africans who were growing Indian corn, millet, pumpkins and ‘native vegetables’, and said that there was little reason to teach agricultural skills, as the only thing that could improve the way in which natives already farmed was for them to be taught to ‘lay out their ground according to English ideas’.62 Preston thus asserted that ‘local’ knowledge was key to the education enterprise. However, he used this assertion to argue against the importing of teachers or the provision of government education, rather than to formalise the use of local knowledge within government-funded institutions. In this way, the argument assuaged responsibility from the local government to provide education. He continued, stating that Gray himself had insufficient local knowledge and, particularly, he didn’t understand local Africans’ family circumstances. Parents would have to be paid to give up their children into schools, as the loss of children would translate into a loss of domestic, agricultural or pastoral labour. He also referred to the success of Rev. ­ James  Allison’s industrial school at Indaleni, which was running without

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government aid. Preston told the Bishop that that school would be the first priority for funding, should any surplus funding be available.63 The despatch concluded with Preston stating that the government could not support such a scheme, but that they could use their influence to support any scheme which the Bishop undertook using private funding.64 Local settlers also responded to Gray’s proposal. They complained that the imperial government should not be involved in funding education, as it showed their attempts to ‘interfere with the colonial revenue’ and that, because of this ‘interference’, the settlers should seek representative institutions.65 Colonial Office clerk, George Barrow, responded to this accusation in a note to Herman Merivale, by then Under-Secretary of State for the colonies, and proponent of systematic colonisation, saying that approving a grant should not be seen as an undue interference, especially for this object, as the Select Committee of the H. of Commons in 1837 on Aborigines, expressed their opinion that the protection of the Aborigines should be considered as a duty peculiarly belonging & appropriate to the Executive Government, as administered either in this Country or by the Governor of the respective Colonies, & that it was not a trust which could conveniently be confided to the local government.66

Thus, in relation to Africans’ access to education, settlers asserted their right to govern themselves and the local African population. The perceived ‘interference’ from the imperial government, on behalf of Africans, was seen as unwanted meddling in the affairs of this settler colony. Gray and the Church of England were finally given a land grant for the mission, but this was on the request of then Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Newcastle, and went against the wishes of many Natal colonists, and missionaries, who believed this showed favouritism to the Church of England.67 The imperial government remained committed to pursuing the humanitarian principles outlined in the Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines. However, the local government was caught between the need to ‘protect’ and ‘civilise’ Indigenous people, and its function of providing labour and land to settlers for their vision of economic success for the colony.68 While Gray had attempted to use his position as the Bishop of the diocese to lobby the local government to fund schools, the local government turned to arguments about their knowledge of the local context in order

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to rebuff his demands. The disagreement about how education should be provided, by whom and using which funding, was a microcosm of larger debates about the status of African people in the colony during this period. There were real financial concerns in the colony, but there were also fears that schools could provide the bridge between the ‘heathen’ and ‘savage’ world of Africans and the Christian, civilised world of colonists. Movement between these worlds would force colonists to recognise the humanity of local Africans, which could undermine their right to the land they had settled upon and the labour they were hoping to exploit.

Ordinance 2 and the Native Reserve Fund In this context of intense competition for resources, and outright hostility towards any spending believed to be for the benefit of the African population, the first legislation specifically for promoting African children’s education passed in 1856. Ordinance 2 of 1856 was based on Sir George Grey’s 1847 Education Ordinance in New Zealand, which allocated government funding to missionaries for Maori education.69 Ordinance 2 set aside £2,000 to be spent on education for ‘coloured youth’. Grey, by 1856 governor of the Cape Colony and High Commissioner of South Africa, and his close ally, Bishop of Natal, John William Colenso, pushed for similar legislation in Natal.70 Lieutenant-Governor Cooper believed that funding missionary education was the ‘duty which the Government may most usefully and properly undertake’.71 Settlers once again opposed the government spending on ‘native’ education and petitioned the secretary of state for the colonies, Labouchere, to disallow the legislation, as it applied to only ‘one section of the population’. They also believed that the Lieutenant-Governor did not have necessary skills or the time to be involved with education. The ordinance was, they complained, ‘injurious in its provisions [and] at variance with the principles of civil and religious liberty, and certain to engender dissension among the various denominations of Christians, who have hitherto existed in harmony in this Colony’.72 ‘[P]eace and security’ in the colony could not result from Africans’ education.73 This is consistent with Norman Etherington’s descriptions of ­protests from settlers against education for Indigenous people—they often feared that education would raise political consciousness amongst scholars. In spite of these complaints, the fund was approved, and £2,000 was set aside for native education, although it was never properly administered.74 John Scott, who followed Cooper as Lieutenant-Governor, wrote

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in 1857 that the ordinance ‘had remained a dead letter’. He believed the Legislative Council would ‘endeavour to obtain its repeal’.75 It was not imperative for the funds to be used each year, and education was provided for out of the Native Reserve Fund, when it was introduced in 1856. Natal achieved limited representative government in July 1856.76 The Natal Charter, which constituted a representative Legislative Council, ostensibly made no distinction between the different races in the colony: any man owning property worth £50, or renting for £10 annually, could vote.77 However, this effectively excluded all African men from the vote. The new Legislative Council controlled the major social and political decisions in the colony, with one important exception. The Charter stipulated that a £5,000 grant would be set aside for ‘native purposes’ each year, over which the Legislative Council had no power.78 Rather, the Governor would be recognised as the ‘supreme chief’ of Native Affairs. Grey pushed for the Native Reserve Grant, particularly for the ‘religious and moral instruction, or…the social well being of the Kafirs (sic)…’79 Once again, he drew on his experience in New Zealand, where the extension of representative government in 1852 had been qualified by reserving £7,000 for ‘native purposes’, particularly the provision of English education in mission schools.80 The response from the settler population and the now representative Legislative Council to the Native Reserve Fund was extremely hostile. The Legislative Council argued that the Charter introduced a system of ‘double government’ in the colony.81 They claimed that they did not object to money being spent on ‘native purposes’, but wanted to be trusted with the expenditure. The Council was dissolved twice over access to and management of the fund, in 1858 and 1861. The Legislative Council continued to promote wage labour as the best means of civilisation. Then, they argued, ‘every farm and homestead would then become an industrial training school without any charge on the public revenue’.82 The Legislative Council observed that there had not been ‘any advance in real civilisation, and improvement by the Kafirs (sic) isolated in large locations shut out from the influences of the daily example and direction of the civilised inhabitants’.83 Another settler commentator wondered ‘Whether a Government is a fit machine for improving natives…’ He continued, ‘We have little faith in government attempts of the kind, and we have little doubt that some of the missionaries, who could best use the money, will— as we should be in their place—be very wary how they accepted government money, given with ever such good intentions’.84

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The Reserve remained in place, however, largely due to the imperial government’s insistence that they had an ‘obligation which circumstances seemed to have imposed on them of not abandoning the native population which has taken shelter under British protection, and on the hope of effecting their civilization and improvement’.85 The phrasing here is worth noting, as referring to this colony as something which was ‘imposed on them’ by ‘circumstances’ removed the imperial government’s agency regarding, and culpability, for the situation in Natal. In the Colonial Office, the need to ‘protect’ and ‘civilise’ native races through the provisions of the Reserve fund ran up against the settlers’ increasing desire to gain control of the fund. As Secretary of State for the Colonies Edward Bulwer-Lytton explained in 1858, the role of the imperial government in Natal was ‘two-fold. To the natives, as human beings placed under the protection of our institutions, to the colonists, with even more of an anxious thought, as British fellow subjects of the same race as ourselves’.86 Even within the category of ‘human beings’, Bulwer-Lytton made a revealing distinction between ‘fellow subjects of the same race as ourselves’ and ‘the natives’. In 1858, writing about the implementation of the Native Reserve Fund in Natal, Lieutenant-Governor Scott outlined the centrality of industrial training to the civilisation of Natal Africans. ‘Experience has proved’, he wrote, ‘and it is now almost universally admitted that Religious and industrial training must be combined in order to produce a lasting beneficial effect on a savage, and really to draw him out of barbarism, and place him in a higher social position’.87 He criticised the Council for their understanding of wage labour as the best means of native improvement, saying that this would simply create further dependence of the black on the white population.88 Religious and industrial training would be morally uplifting while supplying a semi-skilled labour force. As Shepstone explained in a letter to Wesleyan missionary Rev. Horatio Pearse, the grants to schools were given  on the understanding that ‘industrial training to skilled labour in mechanics and agriculture shall form the leading feature in the establishments in aid of which they are made and founded, on the belief that to improve the barbarian mind, it is as necessary to induce industry as to teach morality’. In 1858, the hope was that African labourers would learn to cultivate cotton.89 Industrial education, besides being seen as an unnecessary expense by the Legislative Council, was also seen as a threat by settler artisans. They

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spoke out against industrial training, fearing competition from skilled African workers. Charles Grubbe, principal of the Ekukhanyeni institution, to be discussed in the next chapter, who Colenso would later dismiss for his use of harsh discipline on the boys, lamented the fact that it was difficult to find suitable teachers to bring over from England to teach the boys at the school mechanical arts.90 When these practical teachers were brought over, he said, they soon realised that ‘if they instruct the natives in their respective trades, they make competition possible to the great benefit of the colony generally—but to their individual loss’.91 Writing to Grey, Colenso stated that he did not doubt that much of the popular cry against Industrial Schools in this very young and ignorant colony, arises from prejudice of this kind, on the part of white tradesmen or artisans, themselves too frequently, drunken, worthless, idle & incompetent, but determined to keep the native from coming into competition with themselves.92

In spite of these concerns, under Scott and Shepstone’s watch, industrial training became a condition on which government grants-in-aid were made to native schools run by missionaries, although this was not uniformly adhered to.93 Shepstone used his position as Secretary of Native Affairs to promote agricultural schemes, and with the Reserve Grant in place was able to carry out some of his own plans for Africans’ ‘improvement’.94 Central to this government promotion of industrial education was an attempt to transform gendered relationships, and indeed, the moral outlook of individuals, within African families. By encouraging the use of ploughs, Scott hoped that more men would be encouraged to take up manual labour.95 This would counteract what were seen as unnatural patterns of work in African households, where women traditionally laboured in the fields. In his view, the native family, the source of early education, taught unnatural gendered patterns of work. The industrial training schools would go some way towards addressing this issue. If new patterns of work were promoted, it could lead to the ‘improvement of the ­barbarian mind’.96 Scott was dedicated to this scheme, arguing that Africans in Natal had the ability to be civilised as they did not have ‘any deficiency of mental or physical powers’. As ‘acute reasoners, and keen observers of every passing act or event’, they had the capacity for intellectual engagement, yet, this needed to be channelled into what he saw as the correct

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direction. Through work, their suspicions of Europeans and their ‘excitement’ would give way to steadiness, morality and industriousness.97 Scott was so convinced that amalgamation through industrial training was the best means of improving the native population that he made generous grants to industrial schools, beyond those covered by the Reserve fund.98 So, while settlers constructed work as the natural remedy to the depressed condition of the work-averse Natal natives, Scott instead saw work as part of an apparatus of humane, moral treatment, to improve their individual and family lives. The Reserve was used for different government-sponsored projects, ranging from the building of a sugar mill at Mvoti, where Africans would work, a water course on the American Mission station run by the Rev. Wilder, and the provision of annual grants of £12 for each boy enrolled in the Church of England school run in Pietermaritzburg by Walter Baugh, who was training boys as ‘master tradesmen and artizans (sic)’.99 It was also used to sponsor the purchase of ploughs to teach improved modes of agriculture, and to encourage Africans to grow cotton.100 The use of the grant indicates the reliance of the government on missionaries already working amongst the Natal population: for example, grants in 1858 were given to Bishop Colenso’s school at Ekukhanyeni, to Dr Henry Callaway to establish his industrial mission at Spring Vale, Rev. James Allison, to establish an ‘industrial training village’, as well as for the establishment of a hospital, a salary for a surveyor ‘with the view to settling the natives so as to avoid any collision between them and the colonists’.101 The government made use of the missionaries’ experience in teaching, networks of knowledge and resources to assign grants for education. By the mid-­ 1860s, almost forty per cent of the Reserve was given to mission societies, specifically for education.102

Conclusion: Forgotten, Neglected, Ignored? The schemes for African education in Natal were related to broader thinking about the relationship between race, civilisation and labour. The attempts of Commissioners to either isolate or amalgamate the African population spoke to competing visions of the colony’s future, with Africans either retaining a relative degree of autonomy within native locations, or being incorporated as wage labourers into white society. Competing and conflicting discourses of humanitarianism and settler colonialism shaped

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the responses of the local government to calls for either increased access to land and funds for education, or settler concerns over this spending. The imperial government remained ostensibly committed to its humanitarian agenda during this period, in spite of their unwillingness to spend on native education. They continued to be suspicious of the local government’s ability to manage the settler populations, as the correspondence regarding the Native Reserve Fund indicates. In this context, the local government reframed the colonial endeavour as a teaching opportunity. Rather than promoting industrial training as simply creating labourers, the generation of new labour was seen as a by-product of an inherently sympathetic, improving system, designed to elevate the moral character of Africans. There were exceptional cases in which Africans were provided high quality education in mission schools, for example, at the American missions of Adams and Inanda Colleges, or in Bishop Colenso’s short-­ lived Ekukhayeni school, which I discuss in more detail in the next chapter. However, the local government and settlers primarily promoted a version of education that bolstered their own power. The perceived competition between settlers and Indigenous people was fundamental to access to education in the mid-nineteenth century. Settlers’ sense of their vulnerability and their desire to be recognised as equal to those living in Britain, meant that they continued to push for their rights to land and labour to be recognised, to the detriment of the local population. The settler colonial contexts of Natal, Western Australia and elsewhere, had a profound influence on the nature of education provided to Indigenous people. Although there were resonances between schemes for training freed people in the Caribbean and education programmes in the settler colonies, there were also ways in which particular settler concerns over Indigenous children’s education were articulated in the settler colonies. At the heart of these concerns were fears about how Indigenous people, when educated, might mount critiques of colonialism—in some scenarios, settlers feared, leading to rebellion. In spite of the reassurances of government that the settlers’ safety was their foremost priority, settlers across the empire maintained a level of suspicion towards the Indigenous population, particularly when they were being provided with resources from the colonial government that were believed to be in short supply. In Natal, the attempts on behalf of the imperial government to ‘protect’, ‘improve’ or ‘civilise’ Indigenous people were met with attempts to curtail spending on Africans’ education. These were often framed in

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terms of settlers’ own political sovereignty. Any legislation that did not apply to the ‘whole’ population, often taken to mean the settler population, was met with antagonism. In their comparative study of Natal and Western Australia, Curthoys and Martens point out that from the 1870s, in both Natal and Western Australia, the imperial government’s apparent and formal commitments to equal and humane treatment of Indigenous peoples were everywhere severely undermined by strong competing interests—land and labour for the settlers, and Britain’s own imperial aims. In the process, the interests of Indigenous peoples were often forgotten and ignored.103

This phrase—‘forgotten and ignored’—recalls the Western Australian settlers’ sense of being ‘forgotten and neglected’ by the local government as well. There, protests against the promotion of Aboriginal people’s protection and education took on a similar tone to that of Natal. This was perhaps most notable in protests against the position of Native Protectors, appointed in 1840. The argument that the government-appointed Native Interpreter should do as much for settlers as for the Aboriginal people, was restated when the title was changed to Guardian of Natives and Protector of Settlers in 1849. As Governor Fitzgerald explained to Earl Grey, the settlers expressed ‘growing discontent’ regarding Aboriginal protection, ‘while the Settlers in their conception are forgotten and neglected…’ The altered title would prove to settlers that the ‘Government is not unmindful of its duty on their behalf…’104 By 1857, the position was abolished altogether.105 Chapters 3 and 4 together have shown that the settler colonial context, coupled with humanitarian imperatives from the imperial government, was fundamental to the development of education for Indigenous children in Natal and Western Australia in the 1840s and 1850s. Whether it was concerns over access to land, and what this would mean for Indigenous people’s civilisation, or the need to provide labour for local industries, education was shaped by its local context. However, there were broader ideas about education that filtered down to the local context—ones that were transmitted between individual colonial officials and missionaries in the colonies. The next chapter shows how the idea of ‘industrial training’ was used across different colonies, often to refer to different kinds of education.

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Notes 1. Scott’s speech opening the Legislative Council, 26.04.1859, Encl. in Scott to Lytton, 09.05.1859, Natal. Copies of correspondence between the Governor of Natal and the Colonial Office with respect to the £ 5000 reserved from the general revenues of the colony for the disposal of the Crown; and, of correspondence on the subject of the growth of cotton as now carried on by the natives, under the auspices of the government of that colony, HC 596 (1860), [Hereafter Native Reserve Correspondence], No. 15, 76. 2. Alan Lester, ‘British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire’, History Workshop Journal, 54 (2002), 25–48, 30. 3. John Doheny, ‘Bureaucracy and the Education of the Poor in Nineteenth Century Britain’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 39 (1991), 325–339, 326. 4. For example, Meghan Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education (Scotsville: University of KwaZuluNatal Press, 2013); Ingie Hovland, Mission Station Christianity: Norwegian Missionaries in Colonial Natal and Zululand (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Linda Chisolm, Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2017). 5. Catriona Ellis, ‘Education for All: Reassessing the Historiography of Education in Colonial India’, History Compass, 7 (2009), 363–375, 371. 6. Norman Etherington, ‘Education and Medicine’, in Missions and Empire, ed. by Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 261–284, 269. 7. Joseph Byrne had travelled throughout the British Empire before finally creating the scheme for the systematic colonization of Natal. See Joseph Byrne, Twelve Years’ Wanderings in the British Colonies. From 1835 to 1847, Vol. 1 and 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1848). 8. John Lambert, Betrayed Trust, Africans and the State in Colonial Natal (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1995), 8, 10. 9. Jeff Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013), 247. 10. See Julian Cobbing, ‘The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo’, The Journal of African History, 29 (1988), 487–519. Etherington argues that the Mfengu, recent arrivals to Natal and Zululand after the mfecane, were more likely to adhere to Christian doctrines than the northern Nguni people who had remained settled in that area before European settlement. Norman Etherington, ‘Mission Station Melting Pots as a Factor in the Rise of South African Black Nationalism’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 9 (1976), 592–605, 593n.

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11. Joseph Byrne, Emigrants Guide to Port Natal (London: Effingham Wilson, 1850), 62. 12. Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 35. 13. Patrick Harries, ‘Plantations, Passes and Proletarians: Labour and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century Natal’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 13 (1987), 372–399, 373. 14. Keletso Atkins, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900 (London: James Currey Ltd., 1993), 1. 15. Ibid., 3, 57 and chap. 3. 16. Bernth Lindfors, ‘Hottentot, Bushman, Kaffir: The Making of Racist Stereotypes in 19th-Century Britain’, in Encounter Images in Meetings between Africa and Europe, ed. by Mai Palmberg (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2001), 54–75, 69. 17. Norman Etherington, ‘The Missionary Writing Machine in Nineteenth-­ Century Kwazulu-Natal’, in Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, Missions, ed. by Jamie Scott and Gareth Griffiths (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 37–50, 37. 18. See Norman Etherington, Preachers, Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa, 1835–1880 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), Chap. 2. 19. Letter from Shepstone to the Acting Secretary of Government, Natal, 9.12.1851, CO 179/20, No. 20. [Hereafter all CO correspondence is from the National Archives at Kew] 20. Pine to Sir George Grey, 5.09.1854, CO 179/35, No. 58. 21. On the Queen Adelaide province, see Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001), Chap. 4. Jeremy Martens argues that the Queen Adelaide province provided an important model for colonial rule of Africans in Natal. Jeremy Martens, ‘Decentring Shepstone: The Eastern Cape Frontier and the establishment of Native administration in Natal, 1842–1849’, South African Historical Journal (2015), 1–22. 22. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 97; Instructions to Commissioners, Encl. 1 in Maitland to Gladstone, 16.05.1846, Natal. Correspondence relative to the establishment of the settlement of Natal, [Hereafter Correspondence relative to the establishment of Natal] HC 980 (1847–48), no. 35, 57. 23. David Welsh, The Roots of Segregation: Native Policy in Colonial Natal, 1845–1910 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1971), 11. This was in contrast to what the Natal volksraad, the governing body of the Boer republic of Natalia (1839–1843), suggested. They proposed larger locations, which the Commissioners felt would be more difficult to control. Instructions to Commissioners, Correspondence relative to the establishment of Natal, 59.

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24. Report of the Locations Commission, 30.03.1841, Encl. 2 in Pottinger to Earl Grey, Correspondence relative to the establishment of Natal, No. 65, 134. 25. Report of the Locations Commission, 134. 26. Earl Grey to Sir Henry Smith, 10.12.1847, Correspondence relative to the establishment of Natal, No. 66, 139. 27. Jeremy Martens, ‘“So Destructive of Domestic Security and Comfort”: Settler Domesticity, Race and the Regulation of African Behaviour in the Colony of Natal, 1843–1893’ (PhD thesis, Queen’s University, Canada, 2001), 69. 28. Jeff Guy, ‘Class, Imperialism and Literary Criticism’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23 (1997), 219–241, 222. 29. Royal Instructions to Labour Commissioners, Proceedings of the Commission appointed to enquire into the past and present state of the Kafirs in the district of Natal and to report upon their future government, and to suggest such arrangements as will tend to secure the peace and welfare of the District (1852) (Natal: J Archbell and Son, 1852–53). 30. The Commission was chaired by Walter Harding, Crown Prosecutor, and the committee members included Shepstone, John Bird, the Acting Surveyor General, J.N.  Boshoff, Registrar of the District Court, field commanders of the Mooi and Klip River districts, and settlers R.R. Ryley, Addison, Otto, Milner, Henderson, Cato, Struben, Nel, Landman, Potgieter, Morewood, Uys, Spies, Labuscagne, Macfarlane, Moreland, Barter, Boast, with Edward Tatham as Secretary and Henry Francis Fynn as Interpreter. 31. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 198. 32. Labour Commission, 3. 33. Ibid., 43. 34. Jeremy Martens, ‘“Civilised Domesticity”, Race and European Attempts to Regulate African Marriage Practices in Colonial Natal, 1868–1875’, The History of the Family, 14 (2009), 340–355, 354. 35. Edgar Brookes and Colin Webb, A History of Natal, 2nd edn (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1987), 69. 36. Labour Commission, 27, 52. 37. Jeremy Martens discusses settler intervention in African family and gender relationships, and argues that ideas about ‘civilised domesticity’ were central to Natal whites’ views of racial difference. Martens, ‘“Civilised domesticity”’, 355. 38. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 273–275. 39. Labour Commission, 26, 43.

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40. Ibid., 44. 41. Ibid., 45. 42. Martens, ‘“Civilised Domesticity”’, 342, 345. 43. Labour Commission, 46. 44. Ibid., 53. See also, Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 49. 45. Ibid., 53. 46. See Rebecca Swartz, ‘Industrial Education in Natal: The British Imperial Context, 1830–1860’, in Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a Comparative Perspective, ed. by Peter Kallaway and Rebecca Swartz (New York: Peter Lang, 2018), 53–80, 67. 47. Norman Etherington, ‘Christianity and African Society in Nineteenth Century Natal’, in Natal and Zulul and from Earliest Times to 1910: A New History, ed. by Andrew Duminy and Bill Guest (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1989), 275–300, 286. It is worth pointing out that Christian converts remained subject to African customary law, even though they were resident on mission stations, and actively seeking ‘civilisation’. 48. Ibid., 285. Etherington cites an example of an angry crowd of settlers accusing a Methodist missionary of stopping their servants from working, and shouting that ‘“Missionary Kaffirs” were the worst in the country’. Many kholwa did demand higher wages. 49. No author, ‘Kafirs’, in Natal Witness, 06.05.1857, 2. 50. Etherington, ‘Christianity and African Society’, 286. Similar claims against missionaries were made in the Caribbean in the years before emancipation. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Oxford: Polity, 2002), 77, 106. 51. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 199. 52. Scheme for industrial education, sent to Pine by Gray, 17.6.1850, Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand [Hereafter CL], AB 1162/ A1.1. I have discussed this scheme in Swartz, ‘Industrial Education in Natal’, 64–67. 53. Gray to Williamson, 24.06.1850, CL AB 1162/A1.1. 54. See Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2003). 55. Letter from Gray to Williamson, 05.06.1850, CL AB 1162/A1.1. 56. See Pakington to Pine, 11.06.1852, Natal. Further correspondence relative to the settlement of Natal. (In continuation of papers presented July 30, 1851), HC 1697 (1852–53), No. 13. 57. Bishop Gray’s Journal, CL AB 1161 (1850). 58. Ibid. 59. Gray to Williamson, 24.06.1850, CL AB 1162/A1.1. 60. Acting Lieut-Governor Preston to Pakington, 18.02.1853, Further correspondence relative to the settlement of Natal, No. 31, 95–97. 61. Ibid., 96.

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62. Ibid. 63. An enclosed petition from the Wesleyan church expressed their dissatisfaction at the lack of funding. Ibid., 98. 64. Ibid., 97. 65. Encl. 3 in ibid., 98. 66. Barrow to Merivale, 01.06.1853, on Preston to Pine, 18.02.1853, CO 179/28, No. 13. 67. Newcastle to Pine, 14.07.1853, Natal. Further correspondence relative to the settlement of Natal, No. 36, 140. 68. The Natal Native Trust was created in 1864, which gave the Lieutenant-­ Governor and Executive Council control of all African land. Benjamin Kline, Genesis of Apartheid: British African Policy in the Colony of Natal 1845–1893 (Lanham and London: University of America Press, 1988), 54. 69. Acting Lieutenant-Governor Cooper to Molesworth, 25.01.1856, CO 179/42, No. 9. 70. Charles Templeton Loram, The Education of the South African Native (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1917), 55. 71. Cooper to Molesworth, 25.01.1856. 72. Memorial signed by 172 settlers to the secretary of state for war and the colonies, Encl. in Scott to Molesworth, 25.09.1856, CO 179/42, No. 7. 73. Ibid. 74. Loram, The Education of the South African Native, 55; Oscar Emanuelson, ‘A History of Native Education in Natal, between 1835 and 1927’ (M.Ed thesis, University of South Africa, 1927), 46. 75. Scott to Labouchere, 03.06.1857, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 46, 5. 76. While most Australian colonies gained responsible self-government in the 1850s, this was delayed in the Cape, Natal and Western Australia. Zoë Laidlaw, ‘The Victorian State in its Imperial Context’, in The Victorian World, ed. by Martin Hewitt (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 329–345, 332. The Cape achieved representative government in 1853, and similar concerns over the status of Indigenous people were raised in that context, and particularly around non-racial franchise. Anthonie du Toit, The Cape Frontier: A Study of Native Policy with Special Reference to the Years 1847–1866 (Pretoria: Archives Yearbook, Government Printer, 1954), 72. 77. Scott to Labouchere, 15.10.1858, The reports made for the year 1857 to the Secretary of State having the Department of the Colonies; in continuation of the reports annually made by the governors of the British colonies, with a view to exhibit generally the past and present state of Her Majesty’s colonial possessions. Transmitted with the blue books for the year 1857, HC Session 2, 2567 (1859), No. 30, 192. Once it became a possibility that Africans would be able to meet this property requirement, non-racial franchise was removed in 1865. Brookes and Webb, A History of Natal, 75. 78. Brookes and Webb, A History of Natal, 75.

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79. Grey to Russell, 24.11.1855, CO 179/37, No. 34. See Welsh, Roots of Segregation, 52. 80. New Zealand Constitution Act, 1852, (15 & 16 Vict. c. 72). New Zealand gained responsible government in 1856. 81. Bill to alter and amend a certain clause and certain provisions in the Royal Charter of Natal, 10.04.1858, in Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 35, 39. 82. Legislative Council to the Queen, 10.04.1858, Encl. 2  in Scott to Labouchere, 28.04.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 6, 43. 83. Report of the Select Committee on the Reserve of 5,000 for native purposes, Scott to Bulwer-Lytton, 28.12.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 84, 59. 84. ‘Bystander’, ‘The £5000 Reserve’, Natal Witness, 26.02.1858, 2. 85. Bulwer-Lytton to Scott, 19.08.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 18, 88. Lytton also pointed out that a reserve fund was made in all Charters, and that the Cape had £14,000 set aside for the ‘Border Department (Aborigines)’. This grant was also used for educational purposes. Du Toit, The Cape Frontier, 240. 86. Bulwer-Lytton to Scott, 24.03.1859, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 9, 91. 87. Scott to Stanley, 31.07.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 55, 49. 88. Scott to Labouchere, 28.04.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 36, 40. 89. Shepstone to Pearse, 13.11.1858, Encl. 1  in No. 9 Scott to Lytton, 28.11.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 53. 90. Patrick Kearney, ‘Success and Failure of “Sokululeka”: Bishop Colenso and African Education’, in The Eye of the Storm: Bishop John William Colenso and the Crisis of Biblical Interpretation, ed. by Jonathan Draper (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003), 195–206, 201. 91. Report from Grubbe, Bishopstowe, 03.01.1859, SPG Missionary Reports, Rhodes House Library, E2. 92. Colenso to Grey, 01.04.1858, Grey collection correspondence, South African Library, No. 52. 93. Scott’s speech opening the Legislative Council on 26.04.1859, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 32, 76. 94. Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 267. 95. Scott to Bulwer-Lytton, 30.12.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 88, 72. 96. Shepstone to Allison, 22.02.1858, Encl. 3 in Scott to Stanley, 31.07.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 55, 51. 97. Scott to Bulwer-Lytton, 30.12.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 13, 71.

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98. Scott to Bulwer-Lytton, 29.11.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 9, 52. 99. Scott to Newcastle, 31.12.1859, CO 179/53, Desp. 113. 100. Scott to Bulwer-Lytton, 04.04.1859, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 16, 74; Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 269. 101. Scott to Stanley, 31.07.1858, Native Reserve Correspondence, No. 55, 49. 102. Norman Etherington, ‘Missionaries, Africans and the State in the Development of Education in Colonial Natal, 1836–1910’, in Missionaries, Indigenous People and Cultural Exchange, ed. by Patricia Grimshaw and Andrew May (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2010), 130. 103. Ann Curthoys and Jeremy Martens, ‘Serious Collisions: Settlers, Indigenous People, and Imperial Policy in Western Australia and Natal’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, 15 (2013), 121–144. 104. Fitzgerald to Earl Grey, 19.06.1849, CO 18/51, No. 46. 105. Jessie Mitchell and Ann Curthoys, ‘How Different was Victoria? Aboriginal “Protection” in a Comparative Context’, in Settler Colonial Governance in Nineteenth Century Victoria, ed. by Leigh Boucher and Lynette Russell (ANU–Epress, 2015), 199.

CHAPTER 5

A Useful Education: Humanitarianism, Settler Colonialism and Industrial Schools in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa

Captain George Grey, an explorer and, later, an influential colonial official, toured Western Australia in 1837. He was appointed to report to the Colonial Office on the status of Western Australia and the treatment of Aboriginal people there. In 1840, his Report on the Best Means of Promoting the Civilization of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Australia was published. This document spoke directly to the need to balance the ‘improvement’ of the Indigenous population with settler needs for land and labour, and the ultimate economic success of the colony. As convict labour had not yet been introduced in Western Australia, Grey proposed that Aboriginal people could be introduced to good habits of work, which would benefit both them and the settlers. His Report was sent throughout the Australian colonies, and outlined some of the difficulties involved in the civilisation of Aboriginal people. According to Grey, there were two important factors which would aid Aboriginal civilisation: first, they needed, where possible, to be brought under British law. Second, it was imperative that they were introduced to regular labour, preferably from childhood.1 Aboriginal ­people, young boys in particular, should be taught to work, which would not only benefit the settlers in the colony, but also improve Aboriginal people’s own moral and physical condition.2 Aboriginal children were ‘perfectly capable of being civilised’ but it was too costly to open government-run schools.3 One way around this obstacle was to civilise children through work, rather than government-funded schooling, and to © The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_5

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rely on missionaries for their education. This approach would be repeated across the colonies where he worked, where Grey promoted regular employment to ‘improve’ Indigenous people.4 As Lester and Dussart point out, ‘Grey himself would see in his Report a blueprint for projects of what he called amalgamation in each of the colonies that he came to govern’.5 This Report shows an early engagement with the idea of labour as education that Grey would articulate in New Zealand and the Cape in the years ahead. Central to Grey’s thinking about education across the colonies where he lived and worked were the connections between Christianity, morality and manual labour. Like other thinkers at the time, including James Kay-­ Shuttleworth—whose memorandum on industrial education in the British Empire I discussed in Chap. 2—in industrial education, Grey found a set of ideas that could be connected with his religious feelings about the morality of hard work, be positioned as beneficial to settlers and Indigenous communities, and develop the land. Thus, the narrative surrounding industrial education had two seemingly conflicting elements: it was both an efficient way to serve the needs of settler society and a means of ­‘civilising’ Indigenous people. In the 1840s and 1850s, shaped by increasingly heightened tensions between the humanitarian objectives of the colonial government and the demands of vocal, and powerful, settlers in the colonies, colonial governments constructed settler colonialism as a humanitarian intervention.6 If Indigenous people were able to fundamentally alter their relationships to land and labour to bring them in line with the needs of local settlers, their character and quality of life would be improved. However, there were some disjunctures between conceptions of industrial education in different places, including the British metropolitan context and the colonies. While Grey’s ideas drew on commonly held beliefs about the value of work in improving the poor or Indigenous people, the exact ways in which this improvement might take place varied across contexts. These ideas were not confined to individual national contexts, but rather, travelled across colonies and were adapted to the local colonial contexts where they took root. Moreover, the involvement of different groups in industrial education programmes, including government and missionaries, meant that plans for industrial training were often laden with many conflicting aims: on the one hand, to produce labourers, artisans and skilled workers, or, on the other hand, to train teachers and preachers, willing to spread the word of God in their own language.

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This chapter focuses on colonial discourse regarding industrial education in the mid-nineteenth century, primarily through the lens of Sir George Grey’s schemes for industrial education in New Zealand, the Cape and Natal. Grey recognised that schools could be a useful tool in the apparatus of a humanitarian colonial government. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the concept of industrial education. It then discusses Grey’s broad schemes for industrial training in New Zealand and the Cape, describing the contours of these ideas about industrial education and how they were interpreted across multiple institutions. It pays particular attention to the industrial schools founded along the Cape frontier under the auspices of Grey’s grant. It then moves onto one institution in Natal where Grey’s support for industrial education was foundational to the institution’s (short-lived) success. At this institution, Ekukhanyeni, the local missionary Bishop John William Colenso was able to use Grey’s grant in unexpected ways to teach pupils beyond the purely industrial ­curriculum. In the cases from the Cape and Natal, in particular, I show how colonial education was always subject to negotiation, and challenged the boundaries between coloniser and colonised in unexpected ways. Parents and pupils were not passive in education and had ideas about what kind of education was best suited to them. This chapter contributes to a growing concern of new imperial histories: that of scale.7 It balances the broad ideas about industrial training with a local case study, and by narrowing the lens of analysis from a wide scale to an individual institution, shows how policies became practices. The engagement with individual actors and contexts of education helps to illustrate just how the concept of industrial education was subject to negotiation over time. Ideas about class from a range of perspectives were central to schemes for industrial education. First, the idea of training Indigenous people in industrial pursuits presupposed a particular (working-) class position for them as a result of their education. Second, white artisans and tradespeople consistently complained about Indigenous people gaining access to these skills. White workers’ position in an increasingly stratified and racialised social order needed to be protected from outsiders who might challenge the boundaries of their own settler identities. Finally, across the geographical contexts here, there were attempts to educate elites—to provide them with the necessary education to promote education amongst their people. Of course, thinking about race underlined many of these developments—the idea that Indigenous people should naturally be taking a working-class position in society was one of these. As Stoler and

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Cooper have argued, ‘the otherness of colonized persons was neither inherent nor stable; his or her difference had to be defined and maintained’.8 In the cases I discuss below, the need to define people in order to provide different kinds of education relied on the two unstable concepts of ‘class’ and ‘race’. However, there were subtle ways in which this mode of ­education either reinforced or challenged ideas about class and education, that will be teased out below.

The Concept of Industrial Education The idea of industrial education and training that Grey drew upon was influenced by the British and European contexts. Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had promoted ‘education by doing’ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He advocated for a combination of manual and literary education as the best means of educating children of the working classes.9 Philipp Emmanuel von Fellenberg, whose Swiss Hofwyl institute influenced James Kay-Shuttleworth’s 1847 scheme for industrial training, and Egerton Ryerson’s memorandum on industrial training in Upper Canada, promoted vocational and manual training. Fellenberg ran three different types of institutions: the agricultural school, the industrial reform school and the manual labour school. At Hofwyl, lower class children were given agricultural and technical education, while for upper class children, their classical education was supplemented with manual labour with a focus on their physical development.10 In England, since the eighteenth century, schools of industry had catered to the education of rural, unemployed children, and were provided by the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor from 1796. Here, children were taught some basic manual skills, with reading and religious education and some arithmetic. In the nineteenth century, industrial schools and reformatory schools were set up, catering for poor children and juvenile delinquents, respectively. The Industrial Schools Act (1857), which I discuss in greater detail in Chap. 7, catered to the industrial training of urban poor children. A further class of schools, the Poor Law Schools, were set up after the passing of the 1834 Poor Laws. These were designed to train children outside of the workhouses, to give them some industrial training and education. In the metropolitan context, as Gillian Gear shows, there was a significant amount of slippage between the different types of schools, and particularly between reformatory and industrial schools.11 This would

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have implications for the colonial context as well, as the categories of delinquent, working class and racial ‘other’ blended into each other. The ideas drawn from the metropolitan context, about childhood, morality, work and education certainly informed the development of industrial schools elsewhere. Amanda Barry argues that ‘colonial strategies for dealing with non-Christian peoples had their genesis in techniques to control Britain’s poor and rapidly urbanising populations in the wake of the Industrial Revolution’.12 She argues that ‘the old categories of “poor” and “slave” were refashioned, by politics, industry and science, into the new categories of “working class” and “race”’.13 Industrial training schemes in the colonies certainly relied on ideas about class, but these were influenced by increasingly rigid ideas about race and its connection to mental capacity, and therefore, to what kind of education children should be given. In the colonies, there were different ideas about what exactly an industrial education entailed. Andrew Paterson’s discussion of industrial education in the Cape in the early twentieth century reminds us that understandings of what industrial education should do varied according to location and time period, and that while there may have been some consensus surrounding the importance of ‘practical’ education for Africans, there was less agreement regarding what this should include.14 In Canada, there were similar drives towards industrial training as part of a broader ‘civilising’ mission for Aboriginal people. There, industrial schools often served the needs of the local government, proving that Indigenous people could become settled agriculturalists, while being run in conjunction with local missionaries.15 As Sarah de Leeuw puts it, the idea of ­ settling  Indigenous people in villages where they would learn to cultivate land would ‘ameliorate the childlike qualities of Indigenous subjects, which in turn would result in a civilized (grown-up) Indigenous population who would both cost the government less and, due to adult sedentariness, not stand in the way of colonial land acquisition and settlement’.16 The Davin Report, published in 1879, solidified some of these ideas regarding the necessity of industrial schooling for Indigenous people. In it, Nicholas Flood Davin, commissioned by the Canadian Prime Minister to write this report, argued that day schools had not worked because ‘the influence of the wigwam was stronger than the influence of the school’ and that industrial boarding schools were thus the best means of educating and civilising Indigenous peoples.17 This report drew heavily on the North American context for inspiration regarding the nature of industrial schooling. For

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their part, in the early nineteenth century, American thinkers adopted and adapted the ideas of Pestalozzi and von Fellenberg, such that in government sponsored schools for Native American students, industrial training was compulsory. Similar ideas were applied in the mid-­nineteenth century for African American students.18 Industrial education served a particular function in settler colonial contexts. For example, the kind of industrial education promoted in the West Indies was designed to prepare the children of emancipated slaves for life as labourers on the sugar plantations. In Southern Africa, industrial schooling involved a variety of manual skills and training, from basket-weaving to brick-making, to building schools and hospitals. Pupils’ labour was often seen as a way of paying for the cost of their education, so making objects or providing services (like cleaning and laundry services) to local settlers, was seen to provide not only the skills that children would need as they became workers in the local colonial economy, but also kept schools in operation. Across the colonies under discussion here, the fact of industrial schools becoming self-supporting was used to justify their continued existence and funding, although in reality, as the discussion below shows, they were often very expensive to maintain and were rarely able to wean themselves from government funding. Andrew Barnes argues that the primary motivation for Christians running industrial schools in the early twentieth century was that the education would cover its costs, although this overlooks some of the cultural values placed on the morality of work.19 Industrial education was an idea that was put to service in order to perform a particular function in settler colonial contexts. It needed to be constructed as a humanitarian intervention—as improving the lives of Indigenous people—in the context of settler hostility and greater colonial expansion. There were also important ideological underpinnings to ideas about industrial training. The idea that Indigenous people were incapable of work, or were inherently lazy, was long established, and remained potent in many different parts of the empire.20 Regular employment for adults, and manual and industrial training for adolescents and children, could go some way towards addressing this inferiority. Africans were believed to be lazy because the warm climate led to indolence. As food was abundant, and was often not actively cultivated, many believed that ‘their [Africans’] minds were lethargic as well’.21 Atkins points out that in Natal, ‘the popular rhetoric [of Africans being “desultory and primitive”] was so interwoven with facile assumptions and racist mythology that the imagery became increasingly confused in the colonists’ minds until it was difficult

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to discern reality from fiction’.22 In Australia, similar claims were made against Aborigines when they did not flock to employment with white settlers. Settlers and the local government emphasised the superiority of agriculture and pastoralism over Aboriginal nomadic lifestyles. As Veracini argues, ‘when settlers claim land, it is recurrently in the context of a language that refers to [its] “higher use”’.23 Richard Broome points out that Aborigines were often described as ‘poor or indifferent workers’, and Giordano Nanni discusses similar constructions of Victorian Aboriginal people as ‘lazy’ and unable to work regular hours, which was often attributed to racial inferiority.24 The only way—in the view of settlers and some colonial officials—to overcome this inherent laziness was to introduce steady labour.25 It was best if this could be introduced during childhood. Thus, the settler colonial strategies of controlling land and labour were served by policies promoting Indigenous people’s involvement in labour and agriculture. However, this is only half of the picture. The corollary of this was that hard work was inherently moral, uplifting and spiritual, a belief borne out of an evangelical worldview which closely linked labour to morality.26 Settled agriculture was seen as particularly civilised and refined,27 and in many industrial schools, there were hopes of creating settled agrarian communities. This was a view shared by many missionaries and colonial officials. Their ideas were often drawn from a romanticised version of pre-­ industrial England, where rural peasants lived in small communities and farmed the land. Thus, industrial training conformed to some missionaries’ worldviews as well, and found support amongst different sectors of the colonial population.

Comparing Colonies: Educating Out of Race in New Zealand and the Cape Grey’s Western Australian Report was put into place with some minor changes, as discussed in Chap. 3. It captured perfectly the ambivalences of humanitarian projects in settler colonial contexts: it was about individual reform and improvement, as well as controlling change in a stratified society. Grey left Western Australia for South Australia in 1841, where he served as Governor until 1845. There, he implemented some changes to education, providing support for mission schools and passing legislation in 1844 for the ‘protection’ of Indigenous children, enhancing the power of

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Protectors of Aborigines over ‘orphaned’ Aboriginal children.28 This fell within the humanitarian rhetoric of the period, in which Aboriginal families were constructed as intensely corrupting of civilisable children, and good humanitarians were called upon to intervene and save the innocent. Grey was confident that contact with settler society would improve Indigenous people. He was also involved with founding the Native School Establishment in Adelaide. Boys learnt trades in local settlers’ homes or worked at the government printing press; girls learnt sewing and domestic skills in the school in order to prepare them for life as Christian wives and mothers, or for employment as domestic servants.29 Grey was committed to the idea of racial amalgamation. This position held that the different races could, and should, live together as the Indigenous race became accustomed to and took on the values of the ‘superior’ British culture. In his schemes, he consistently proposed that Indigenous people should live with white settlers, in the ‘correct’ relationship of master and servant. The proposal for Aboriginal civilisation in Western Australia, as well as the industrial schools in New Zealand and the Cape were all based on the idea that if Indigenous people, Aborigines, Maoris or Africans, could learn to work, they would be successfully incorporated into the settler colonial economy. In other words, as Damon Salesa has shown, racial amalgamation was not based on ideas about equality, but rather, on a highly stratified vision of a society in which Indigenous people would be incorporated into white society as inferiors, under the stewardship of white settlers.30 As governor of New Zealand, a position he held from 1845 to 1853, and from 1861 to 1868, Grey once again turned his attention to education, particularly for Maori and part-Maori children.31 Grey used his position to pass Education Ordinance 7 of 1847, ‘for promoting the education of youth in the Colony of New Zealand’, which ensured a certain portion of money given to mission bodies for education was set apart to fund boarding and day schools for Maori and part-Maori pupils.32 This legislation formed the blueprint for Ordinance 2 of 1856, for ‘promoting the education of Coloured youth in the District of Natal’.33 Rather than beginning a national system of government-funded education, Grey proposed that missionaries already running schools in New Zealand should be given portions of government funding, provided their curriculum included religious teaching and industrial training, and was taught in English.34 English language teaching marked a break from earlier missionary efforts in New Zealand that focused on teaching in Maori language. In 1844, the

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earlier discourse of preserving Maori language in schools gave way to a far more assimilationist policy. The Native Trust Ordinance of 1844 spoke of Maori people’s desire for English teaching and the need for rapid assimilation.35 Grey’s correspondence with the Colonial Office about Maori education continued over the following years. In 1849, Grey wrote to Earl Grey, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, saying that as provision had increased, so too had Maori demands for education.36 Missionaries spoke highly of the effects of ‘useful’ education on all native, ‘half-caste’ and destitute children.37 The 1847  New Zealand Education Ordinance, promoting religious and industrial training, was passed in the same year that Kay-Shuttleworth’s suggestions on industrial education, discussed in Chap. 2, were distributed throughout the British colonies. Ideas about industrial training, informed by both metropolitan contexts in which the poor were introduced to work, as well as the settler and ex-slave colonies’ need for labour, were gaining influence during this period. Grey’s plans for industrial training in the Cape and New Zealand need to be understood in this context.38 Grey knew about James Kay-Shuttleworth’s plans for education. He had forwarded that memorandum to the New Zealand Church Missionary Society’s missionary, Robert Maunsell, who wanted to use ‘a plan recommended in the “Suggestions of Mr. Kaye Shuttleworth (sic),” which you were so good as once to send me’.39 Grey’s comprehensive scheme for industrial training in New Zealand, presented in 1852, warrants special examination here. Grey sent a despatch to John Pakington, Earl Grey’s successor as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, regarding what he termed a matter ‘of so much interest to the whole empire’.40 The 1840s saw a series of violent colonial wars between Maori people and New Zealand settlers, in which Maori people were systematically dispossessed of land.41 Grey argued education had been the deciding factor in putting down the ‘rebellion’, and rejuvenating Maori loyalty to the British government because of their ‘gratitude for benefits conferred’. In particular, Grey thanked the missionaries for their role ‘in smoothing down every difficulty and difference that arose between jealous races who had come in contact; converting, educating, and training, by hourly, unremitting watchfulness and care…’42 Grey laid out some of his key ideas for improvement of the education system in New Zealand, and suggested a similar scheme might be applied elsewhere. In particular, Grey argued that similar education could contain frontier violence at the Cape.43 Amalgamation of the races and their incorporation

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into the colonial economy through education and labour were central to Grey’s conception of the future of each colony.44 Grey wrote about the New Zealand system in which Maori, part-Maori and some European children were educated at (sometimes racially mixed) boarding schools. Grey favoured co-educational teaching, with separate living quarters for boys and girls. At these schools, missionaries were stationed with a carpenter, an agricultural labourer and, in some cases, a teacher. The government paid salaries of the carpenters and agriculturalists, and supplied some tools for building and farming, which formed a major part of the students’ curriculum.45 It was important, Grey thought, for each institution to ‘become self-supporting’, and so it was essential for government to grant tracts of land to missionaries. In the future, the institutions could at no farther cost to the empire … be constantly either preparing the way for British commerce and for British institutions throughout the Pacific Ocean, or will be consolidating Christianity and civilization in countries recently reclaimed from barbarism; and which at the same time will, by saving from ignorance and vice the children of the Maories, or of destitute Europeans in these islands, be conferring inestimable benefits upon New Zealand.46

Education would benefit the nation and empire, making space for increased trade within a (Christian) humanitarian framework. Grey’s plans for racial amalgamation cleverly married the need for labour and the humanitarian objectives of colonial government.47 And, as Barrington and Beaglehole show, ‘[e]ducation was to be the agent of this process’.48 In Grey’s writing, we see just how industrial education was put into service for both humanitarian and settler colonial aims: it would civilise and reclaim children, while affording new opportunities for colonial expansion. It is also worth pointing out how Grey conflated Maori people with ‘destitute Europeans’. Although they were not exactly the same, in which case they would be simply referred to as ‘children’, there was enough in common between the groups that the same strategies might be used for their reclamation from savagery. He thought that Indigenous people should be encouraged into public works, as it would teach the value of labour and introduce them to the European economy. He also insisted on the establishment of hospitals in each location. Industrial education was fundamental to building the colonial settlement: the idea was not simply to create wares for sale and support of schools,

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but for colonised peoples to contribute to the building of colonial infrastructure. The concept of education was broad here: not only did it include language and basic arithmetic, but also industrial skills, information about health and the body, and religion. Work and religion together could result in the transformation of the character, and eventually, could create a labouring class able to provide for themselves through their new agricultural skills. The infrastructure of the empire would make physical and metaphorical changes to the landscape and to Indigenous people—the introduction of roads would allow for the easier movement of armies, hospitals would cure the diseased native body and schools would teach the habits and morals of civilisation, changing children’s internal landscapes as well. In his despatch, Grey commented on schools already in operation in New Zealand. Run by the Church of England, the WMMS, and the Catholic Church respectively, these schools catered to about seven hundred children, and Grey saw them as fertile spaces for the growth of an Indigenous group of teachers. He argued that ‘…it is considered that a state of half civilization is as bad as no civilization at all, the children are, in respect of food, bedding, &c, brought up in quite as comfortable a manner as the children of European peasants’.49 The conception of European peasants being on the same level of civilisation, and in need of the same kind of ‘care’ as Indigenes is indicative of a conception of ‘race’ as less tied to physical appearance than was prevalent later in the nineteenth century. Here, race was likened to civilisation, and just as one could become civilised, so too could one be ‘educated out’ of a state of Indigenousness through adhering to the correct manners, dress, speaking English and living in respectable western dwellings. This sort of belief was rooted in Enlightenment theories of civilisation, in which progress was seen as ‘stadial’ and in which ‘all had the potential to be “civilised” and “improved”’.50 This conception of race was also characterised as something that could be learnt in the family, and unlearnt in the classroom, making it a cultural rather than a biological trait. If children could be caught before they had been contaminated with their parents’ ‘native’ ways, it was possible that they could, in time, become civilised. The culmination of this conception of race as being learnt, rather than intrinsic, was the residential boarding school for Indigenous children, common in Australia and Canada, and trialled with less success in New Zealand, the Cape and Natal.51 Removal from the ‘heathen’ family could aid the ­process of civilisation. However, even though ideas about contamination remained prevalent, later in the century, as ideas about race became more

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fixed, the idea that race was something that could be ‘educated out’ no longer held sway. Increasingly, physical appearance was seen to determine capabilities. When the Colonial Office received Grey’s suggestions for industrial training, there was some discussion of whether the cases of the Cape and New Zealand were, in fact, comparable. Herman Merivale, advocate of racial amalgamation, wrote a note on Grey’s memorandum: I wish the cases were parallel. In N.Z. an excellent & self-imposing system has been introduced by a Governor of peculiar ability for such purposes, & an admirable missionary Bishop, besides the valuable cooperation of other bodies. At the Cape we inherited an evil system [of slavery] from the Dutch, & except the mere abolition of slavery we have not improved it. And our failure has assuredly not been from want of missionaries or missionary institutions. I suppose however that we should seek the use which Sir G. Grey desires of this and 772 [another despatch about Industrial schools], by sending copies to the Gov. stating that although the Secy. of State is fully aware of the difference between the circumstance of N.Z. and the Cape, he has thought it nonetheless his duty to transmit them at Sir G. Grey’s request & in the hope that some of the suggestions may be found valuable.52

The memorandum was sent to the Bishop of Cape Town, Gray, and the governor of the Cape, but Grey’s plans for industrial schools were not put into place until he arrived there as governor in 1854.53 The fact that these two colonies were being thought about together, and the difficulties in comparisons that were being highlighted, indicates why a comparative approach to writing colonial education histories is fruitful. These comparisons were salient at the time, and experiences in one location were seen as—if not as directly applicable—then at least relevant to other colonies. It also shows the difficulties in constructing policies for Indigenous people’s education: local differences could mean that what seemed applicable to one context might not function as well elsewhere.

‘Hired Out to White Man by White Man’?54: Industrial Schools in the Cape Grey was appointed governor of the Cape Colony in 1854, and upon arriving there, he wasted no time in trialling an ambitious scheme based on his New Zealand experience. In December 1854, in language deeply

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reminiscent of his description of the success of industrial schools in New Zealand, Grey argued that he could ‘restore tranquillity’ on the Cape frontier, by ‘employing [Africans] on public works’, ‘establishing institutions for the education of their children’, and building hospitals and other government institutions.55 He applied for an annual grant of £45,000 per year for five years to support his plans, but was eventually granted £40,000 for three years by the Colonial Office for native policing, salaries for officials, industrial training schools and schemes for public works. This fund was known as the Aborigines (Border Department) fund, and was specifically for the ‘pacification’ and ‘civilisation’ of groups of Africans living on the border between British Kaffraria and Natal. Grey assured the Colonial Office that the industrial institutions would soon be self-supporting, with boys trained in the schools working as apprentices, and products made by pupils being sold locally.56 Grey’s ideas about education in one context were moving with him as he was employed in different capacities across the empire. As these ideas came into contact with local people and with ideologies of different mission societies, they were adapted in various ways. Correspondence about the schools highlights how the meanings of childhood, class, industrial education and race were evolving in this context. The history of this project should be read in the context of widespread colonial violence at the Cape. From 1855, a number of industrial institutions were set up along the Cape frontier, which had seen a series of wars between Xhosa people and local settlers, the eighth of which concluded in 1853. Having recently emerged from another violent frontier war, Xhosa people were faced in 1856–1857 with a lung sickness epidemic, destroying livestock and forcing many into public works or work for settlers. This, coupled with the Cattle Killings in 1856–1857, meant that Xhosa people were in a precarious position—many were starving and had little choice but to engage with colonial institutions for their survival. Three types of schools were supported under Grey’s grant: industrial institutions, with native schools attached; native day schools, with industrial training; and native day schools at outstations. The industrial institutions were designed to provide comprehensive industrial training, initially to boys, but later to some girls as well. The native day schools provided limited industrial training in a more general curriculum, and the day schools at outstations focused on basic numeracy and literacy. The industrial institutions with schools attached were the most ambitious part of the project. They were few in number: by the end of 1862, there were

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eight institutions where teachers’ salaries, stipends for pupil apprentices and the expenses of boarders were being paid.57 The schools operated in collaboration with mission societies already working in the colony. The schools were run by missionaries from Scots Presbytarian, Methodist, Congregationalist and Anglican mission societies respectively. Barnabus Shaw from the Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society superintended the Salem Institution, John Ayliff superintended Heald Town, another Wesleyan institution. William Govan was based at Lovedale, the Scots Presbyterian mission. These institutions also generally catered to specific ‘ethnic’ communities: Lesseyton to the Tembu community, Heald Town and D’Urban to the Mfengu group, and Salem to Tswana and some Xhosa pupils. From the outset, these institutions were subject to negotiations between missionaries and the government regarding their purpose, and their records indicate the reluctant reliance of missionaries on the government for funding. There were a number of points of conflict surrounding the operation of these schools. First, there were differences of opinion regarding the ages of scholars to be taken into the schools. These reflected differing ideas about the malleability of children, and the appropriate time to be focusing on manual and industrial skills. For example, the Wesleyan missionaries, John Ayliff and Barnabas Shaw, disagreed on the best time for children to be sent to the institutions. Ayliff argued that the younger the children enrolled in the schools, the more likely was success at ‘weaning them from evil native habits; and of training them to more civilized modes of life’. Here, Ayliff espoused a similar belief about being educated out of particular uncivilised habits that Grey had expressed in the New Zealand context. In personal correspondence with Grey, Ayliff outlined his vision for the future of the children in his industrial institution, saying that the earlier they could be introduced to ‘habits of order, and industry’, the more prepared they would be for ‘hard and constant work’.58 The pupils at Heald Town were mostly between eight and twelve years old. Shaw, for his part, disagreed, arguing that the character was only fully formed in the teenage years, between fourteen and eighteen.59 He was concerned that young children were not yet ready to adequately contribute to industrial work, saying that the older students in the Salem Institution were better suited to this kind of employment. However, he reported that the young boys did work in the field and garden each day, ‘with the view of forming industrious habits’.60 These differing opinions indicate the negotiations around the concept of childhood and its attendant qualities in the mid-nineteenth century.

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A second point of difficulty was the curriculum of the schools. There were a wide range of skills being included under the bracket of ‘industrial’ training, including shoe-making, tailoring, carpentry, masonry, bricklaying, agriculture, wagon-making, smithing and needlework and domestic skills, which were reserved for female pupils.61 However, from the reports of many missionaries, it seems that their goals for the institutions were primarily to train a literate generation of native teachers and preachers, who would be able to conduct lessons in English and local languages at the native outstation schools.62 At the renowned Lovedale Seminary, which had opened in 1841, and added industrial branches in order to fall under the auspices of the grant, the hours devoted to industrial training were far fewer than those at the other institutions. Grey gave the institution a grant of £3,000 to develop the workshops and facilities in 1855, but the all-round curriculum prevailed until James Stewart arrived as principal in 1867.63 Students had a full curriculum with Classics, Mathematics and English and only devoted two hours to labour each afternoon. William Govan, superintendent of the institution, had the specific aim of producing teachers who could work at the outstation schools connected to the Church.64 Overall, the project did meet with some success, with students being apprenticed to local tradesmen after their studies.65 As Davis notes, there was scope in the Cape at this point for some well-trained African tradesmen to find employment.66 The contrasting views of missionaries and Grey here surrounding literary or industrial training indicates two visions for the future of Africans at the Cape. Missionaries, in some cases, imagined literate professionals who could educate and convert their own people. By contrast, Grey imagined these students as a potential working class, who conducted manual labour. A third issue was the lack of expertise amongst missionaries to teach the identified industrial skills, and an unwillingness of white artisans to be involved in this training. There were similar concerns in Natal at the time, as the government promoted industrial education but did not provide funding for teachers to be sent out from abroad or to be appropriately trained locally. R Lange wrote to Grey in 1858, asking for ‘emigrant tradesmen’ to be sent to his station, specifically, a blacksmith, tinsmith, shoemaker and farmer.67 This was not done on government expense, and tradespeople were generally sent out at the expense of the mission societies. There was another issue with training in industrial skills: when Ayliff wrote to William Impey, Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society in South Africa, asking for skilled white tradesmen to be sent to Heald

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Town, he said that there was a ‘reluctance of the white apprentices to work with them [the pupils]’.68 Shaw, at Salem, complained about the ‘unwillingness of respectable tradesmen to take the trouble and responsibility of giving instruction in their trades’ unless they were well paid.69 This was a common complaint in the South African context: white workers were threatened by the potential labour power of local black workers, whose labour would likely be cheaper than their own. As Jonathan Hyslop has argued of White Labourism in the early twentieth century, ‘the element of the critique of exploitation and the element of racism were inextricably intermingled’.70 In this early moment, the potential threat to white workers’ class position from African labourers was not described in racial terms, but rather, in terms of ‘respectability’ or class. The potential for class solidarity here was overlooked in favour of a civilising discourse in which Africans were not only uncivilised, but always a potential threat to white workers. There were also complaints and suspicions from parents and pupils about the purpose of the institutions. At Heald Town, parents initially did not send their children to the school for the fear that they would be turned into soldiers for the colonial government.71 It is worth noting that industrial training, and more general education, were not uniformly welcomed by parents on the Cape frontier. As one missionary put it, ‘The parents in general are indifferent, and some hostile to education; the latter from a fear that their children might embrace the gospel and break off from their heathen customs’.72 These examples give us a glimpse of resistance to colonial education in many forms—indifference might be so-called because this was easier for colonists to reconcile than an outward critique of these education practices. The phrasing here is interesting: to ‘break off’ from customs implies a significant rupture. Education was seen as potentially disruptive to the relationships between parents and children, and part of a broader set of colonial incursions that people living on the frontier faced. This fear was not unfounded, as a report from the Salem Institution indicated, the students ate dinner with the missionary and his family in the hopes that this would provide them with a model Christian family that they would emulate in their own lives. As Arthur Brigg put it: ‘The behaviour of the children has decidedly improved. They are attached to the school, and prefer it to their own homes’.73 At Heald Town in 1860, progress was measured by ‘the many cases which have occurred during the past few months, of abandonment of the old Kafir hut, and the erection of comfortable square houses’.74 For their part, too, some missionar-

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ies had misgivings about Grey’s scheme, and given their longer experience of working in the colony, were sometimes concerned that the local context was not being taken into account. Shaw was concerned about what he described as the ‘fickleness of the native character’, particularly regarding hard work, which he believed could undermine the project.75 One project that put Grey’s scheme into practice in the Cape was the Kafir Industrial Institution, later the Zonnebloem School, opened in 1858. This school was an exception in the context of the other schools catered to by the grant: while the others were based on the Cape frontier, Zonnebloem was situated in Cape Town. Grey argued that the establishment of a school in the town was ‘considered of primary importance, with a view to the peaceable occupation of the Interior of Africa by a European Race, and the civilization and advancement in Christianity of the Races living within, or immediately beyond the borders’.76 Importantly, the establishment of such an institution in Cape Town would provide an object lesson to children who would be sent there, as they would be based in ‘the Capital, where European Civilization is to be found in the most perfect form in which it exists in South Africa’.77 The school’s location away from the imagined heathen countryside would remove children from the ‘barbarous influence’ of their traditional practices and families.78 The Zonnebloem Institution was reliant on teaching and support from the Church of England. Designed to educate the sons and daughters of chiefs, the school focused on an English education, but also on instilling a solid work ethic. Among the scholars were Henry Duke of Wellington Tshatshu (Tzatzoe), son of Dyani Tshatshu, a Gaika chief; Sandili’s (Paramount chief of the Gaika) son, Gonya; and Maqoma’s son, Mapolissa.79 The boys were responsible for building their own classroom and learning other trades to prepare them for work in European communities.80 These children were seen as central allies in maintaining peace on the frontier. A similar establishment had been created by Anglican Bishop Selwyn at St John’s College in Waimate in New Zealand in 1846, where the best Maori and European students were trained together in different branches of education. Their curriculum included theological training, farming, printing, carpentry and shoe-making.81 At Zonnebloem, however, the institution catered only to African children, presumably because of other government-funded schools, understood to cater to white children, already open in the Cape.82 At Zonnebloem, Grey was involved both in funding the school, and providing advice on how his scheme might be put into practice. The imperial

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government provided an annual grant for the school. The Bishop of Cape Town, who had recently proposed a scheme for industrial training in Natal, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Institution, Governor Grey and industrial education in general.83 Initially, Grey and the Bishop struggled to find children to be sent to Zonnebloem, but the Cattle Killings of 1856–1857 left Xhosa communities starving and desperate. The effect of this was that chiefs were willing to part with their children, and other parents on the frontier also sent their children to the refuge of the mission stations and schools.84 Of course, not everyone in the Zonnebloem Institution appreciated Grey’s industrial education scheme. A telling letter from a pupil, likely an elite member of society, indicated frustration with the curriculum in the school and, ultimately, the privileging of industrial training. The students, he wrote ‘have not come to learn, they have come to work. Let him who brought his child to school come and fetch him, if he loves him, because there is nothing which he will learn’. The student also complained that the boys ‘will get nothing because they are taught to work’ and that because of this they ‘were hired out to white man by white man’.85 This letter is a rare surviving example of opposition to the system from a pupil, and highlights some of the contradictions involved in a scheme designed to look like a humanitarian intervention in education, but which was understood as training for servitude in the white community. Those receiving education were clearly not passive in the process. In February 1859, a report from the institution spoke about some boys being apprenticed to local tradesmen in Cape Town. The report on the industrial branches of the school reflected on the nature of industrial schooling more broadly and said that these institutions were unlikely to become self-supporting: ‘that a training school can never be a profitable manufactory, in a strictly mercantile sense’.86 William Foster, who reported on the industrial departments, believed that the institution alone was not sufficient to teach a trade, and that apprenticing the pupils to local tradespeople would ‘have the additional advantage of [apprentices] being brought in contact for a longer period, and in a more direct manner, with the usages of our social life’.87 This kind of belief would have appealed to Grey, whose own vision of racial amalgamation included constant interaction with settlers. The funding for the industrial schools did not last, however, and some were forced to close in the early 1860s. In April 1858, the Treasury informed Grey that the annual grant would be halved, to £20,000 per

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year. In 1862, following an enquiry from the governor regarding whether the industrial schools might be included under the general Cape department of education’s funding and inspection, the Watermeyer Commission— the Cape Education Commission of the 1860s—concluded that the schools should be inspected by the Superintendent-General of Education, Sir Langham Dale.88 Dale presented an extensive report on the schools in 1863, reporting on the trades being taught at each school, general curriculum, number and gender of pupils, and their funding. He then made some recommendations on the future of the scheme. He argued that the educational and industrial training were aiding ‘the general amelioration of the mode of life, and … [the] introduction of the habits of civilisation, among the native population’. While the ‘experiment’ of the industrial schools had been successful, he said, it had also wasted ‘energies and resources’, and that the attempts to provide widespread industrial training had largely failed.89 He suggested that Salem be immediately closed, given its difficulties in finding pupils. Heald Town’s school had been closed for a year, as the teacher had resigned from the posting. Dale did admit that this was, at least in part, due to the school being told that the government grant would be coming to an end. However, he claimed that the lack of appropriate buildings to conduct the school was ‘an inexcusable deficiency’, as all apprentices should at least have some ‘reasonable facility in reading, writing, and arithmetic’. Dale also gave away his own views on ‘native education’ more generally, saying As regards the comparative value of instruction in book-learning and training to a trade, the latter, to the native is far the more important, but its advantages are necessarily restricted to a very few. The daily school, maintained at a small cost, diffuses a civilizing influence over the whole settlement at once.90

Dale’s report was characterised by contradictions. He recognised that industrial schools had had some success, but at the same time, reduced their funding. He also believed that literary training would help Africans, but did not provide the means for this to be accessible. His views represent some of the ambivalences of colonial officials at the time—the humanitarian commitment to ‘improvement’ coexisted alongside a need to make economically viable decisions. Education funding, whether practical or literary, was, for the African population at least, seen as an unnecessary luxury.

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Dale’s recommendations reduced funding to the schools by almost half, despite local missionaries’ protestations.91 At the same time, funding to outstation schools, and some day schools, was also reduced. William Impey wrote to the Colonial Secretary, saying that the reduced grants would mean some institutions would have to close, while others would be hampered in their operations: The Wesleyan missionaries, at the instance and solicitation of Sir George Grey, undertook the management of these schools, not as aided schools, but as Government institutions. Beyond the general interest felt in the furtherance of every philanthropic design, and an earnest wish to aid in the plans of the late Governor, we have had no special object in their conduct or continuance. On the contrary, we have been put to much inconvenience and considerable expenditure, both of men and means.92

William Govan, at Lovedale, was concerned about the waning government aid, saying that he hoped some extra funding could be found to keep their institution going. ‘Surely, efforts to promote education among the large native population of British Kaffraria, in the present highly critical period in their history, ought to be stimulated and aided’.93 This case indicates the tensions involved in such an ambitious scheme—it relied on continued and extensive government funding, and with Grey being recalled from the Cape in 1860 and returning to New Zealand in 1861, the impetus for this kind of programme was no longer there. Moreover, the industrial institutions themselves had been difficult to manage and maintain: there were far too few qualified and willing teachers to staff the institutions, and some parents and pupils were unsatisfied with the curriculum. The institutions were also expensive to run, requiring facilities and equipment that the government was not willing to provide. However, missionaries had opened schools that were deeply reliant on this funding and were increasingly dependent on the government for grants. When funding was withdrawn, they either needed to close their institutions, or find another way to raise funds for schools. Finally, the abandonment of the scheme also shows a shifting conception of the purpose of education during this period. These schools had been hailed as a pathway to ‘civilisation’. Lack of government support either meant abandoning the project of civilisation or a belief that civilisation was unattainable. Sir George Grey’s plans for industrial training were not unique, and similar schemes had been suggested before he arrived in South Africa in

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1854. Indeed, as Davis points out, ‘Industrial training for Africans in the Cape Colony fitted into the wider context of a discussion going on throughout the British Empire for the so-called coloured races’,94 which included not only the settler colonies, but also education for emancipated slaves in the West Indies. Similarly, it is worth heeding Damon Salesa’s warning not to see Grey as a ‘lone figure’ advocating for racial amalgamation: his ideas about the incorporation of Indigenous people into colonial society as workers were not unique.95 However, the scheme Grey put ­forward is a useful illustration of the ways that ideas about education were being transmitted across colonies. Grey’s experience in New Zealand was influential in his thinking about the civilisation in South Africa. While Grey was not able to make changes at an empire-wide level, his educational schemes, and earlier promotion of education legislation, formed the basis of much of the industrial training that would be used in the South African colonies in the years to come. The ideas that Grey had espoused about industrial education were used in a variety of ways at the local level. They were sometimes radically transformed by missionaries and pupils. Grey’s writings had assumed a one-way transmission of education, from missionaries to Indigenous people. What Colenso’s case illustrates most strikingly is that colonial education was never a linear transmission from pupil to teacher. Rather, in the interactions between missionaries, pupils, parents and others based near schools, learning took place on all sides. This challenged notions about the civilising mission as a transmission of the superior values and culture of the British coloniser being passed on to inferior, barbaric Indigenous people.

Ekukhanyeni: Another Model of Industrial Education A missionary correspondent of Grey’s during the 1850s and 1860s was the first Anglican Bishop of the recently created Diocese of Natal, John William Colenso. Using his connections to Grey and other influential officials, Colenso was able to put his plans for an industrial school into place in Natal. Like Grey, Colenso’s life and writing have been the subject of significant historiography, and as both Hlonipha Mokoena and Vukile Khumalo point out, this has led to the writing and archives of his African students and translators being overlooked.96 However, Colenso’s school is worthy of examination because, even in the context of the popularity of

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industrial training from the local government, the missionary Bishop’s unconventional stance on African education and culture led to a version of education being promoted that envisioned a different future for Africans in Natal, than Grey had hoped for Africans in the Cape. Colenso was born in Cornwall in 1814. He had long been interested in mission work, and as Jeff Guy has shown, was committed to the idea that conversion to Christianity needed to take place slowly, using the beliefs and worldview of potential converts.97 After touring Natal in 1854, Colenso was appointed Bishop and moved to the colony with his wife, Sarah Frances (Bunyon) and children.98 Colenso was convinced that Grey’s industrial schools could civilise and ‘improve the condition of the people at their own kraals’. In his view, Church of England missionaries should ‘endeavour to bring this influence of civilization and Christianity to bear upon the habits of the heathen at the fountain head’.99 However, he thought that boarding school might be better for children. As I have written about elsewhere, sending children to this boarding school created significant emotional disruption, whether parents had assented to their children being sent to the mission or not.100 Colenso’s relationship with Grey saw him advising Grey on colonial policy and receiving grants towards his Institution.101 They met when Grey was touring Natal in October 1855.102 Grey was eager to support the work of the Church of England in South Africa, especially given the slow progress of the Society’s mission work in the Eastern Cape. Colenso was aware of Grey’s reputation from his work in New Zealand, and hoped that similar energies might be directed towards Africans in South Africa.103 Grey sponsored Ekukhanyeni’s building costs and promised to give the school an annual grant of £500, which was supplemented by grants from the SPG.104 Grey’s contribution was contingent on the institution being run on the principles that he had outlined for similar institutions in New Zealand.105 Colenso was frustrated by the local government’s negligence of education, confiding in Grey that ‘by a vigorous Government so very much might be done, for the education, of our people’. Colenso was, however, granted £300 by Natal’s Governor Scott for his institution, on the condition that the institution offered agricultural or industrial training. However, from the outset, Colenso’s institution served a different function as well: Shepstone, Natal’s Secretary for Native Affairs, wrote to Colenso in May 1858, saying that the institution, in Scott’s opinion, ‘need be so [industrial] only to a certain extent, trusting as he does, that it may prove the training-school for teachers of a class capable of being made useful in new institutions’.106

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Two years before the Zonnebloem Institution opened in Cape Town, Colenso opened the Ekukhanyeni (Place of Light) Institution, about ten kilometres from Pietermaritzburg. His family’s farm, Bishopstowe, was next to the school.107 Like Zonnebloem, the school was conceived of as an elite institution, primarily for the sons of chiefs.108 Having worked at Harrow as a mathematics tutor from 1838 to 1842, educating the Zulu elite would have appealed to Colenso. Indeed, he referred to Ekukhanyeni as the ‘Kaffir Harrow’. In 1857, Colenso wrote that the school was a ‘success’ precisely because it educated the children of chiefs in contrast to other schools who usually taught the ‘children of poor or needy parents, or parents more or less under missionary influence’.109 His understanding of African society was read through the lens of class in Britain: Colenso believed that those at the upper end of society should be educated first. In spite of his beliefs regarding Africans’ intellectual abilities, he was not advocating a completely egalitarian society. Initially, there were nineteen pupils enrolled at the school, but the number grew rapidly to thirty-three in 1857, and forty-two in 1859. From 1858, nine girls enrolled in the school, and lived in the Colenso’s home, taught by female teachers and Colenso’s wife, Frances.110 The first intake of scholars were between six and fourteen years old, the majority boys between eight and nine years old. The industrial training at Ekukhanyeni consisted of ploughing and some ‘elementary lessons in the Carpenter’s shop’, which would later be supplemented by training in printing.111 One of the teachers at the school, Charles Grubbe, argued that exclusive teaching of the Gospel was pointless. He recognised the ‘impossibility of their [the pupils] all being finally employed as teachers, Catechists, Clergy’ and thus, argued that it was better to give them some essential background in the ‘necessary employments’ rather than focusing on a literary education. Regardless, it was difficult for the school to find suitable people to train the pupils in industrial pursuits. When practical teachers were brought over from England, Grubbe complained that they soon realised that ‘if they instruct the natives in their respective trades, they make competition possible to the great benefit of the Colony generally—but to their individual loss’.112 Settlers, too, worried about the implications of training Africans as skilled artisans. Colenso told Grey that he could not doubt that much of the popular cry against Industrial Schools in this very young and ignorant colony, arises from prejudice of this kind, on the part of

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white tradesmen or artisans, themselves too frequently, drunken, worthless, idle & incompetent, but determined to keep the native from coming into competition with themselves.113

Colenso believed education should take advantage of the fact that Africans were not ‘at all wanting, as a race in intelligence’, and therefore, pupils were taught arithmetic, the older boys from Colenso’s own Euclid, languages, science and geography, as well as practical skills.114 Unlike Bishop Gray, who favoured Anglicisation and rapid civilisation, Colenso believed civilisation should be extended slowly. In contrast to the Zonnebloem School, Colenso ensured that the teaching in the school was carried out in Zulu rather than English.115 All of the other industrial schools in Grey’s scheme taught in English as well, the language being seen as an important agent of civilisation. Colenso spoke out in favour of ‘secular education’, saying that it was missionaries’ ‘bounden duty, not a matter of choice’ to teach converts scientific truths, whether they challenged contemporary Biblical interpretations or not: The knowledge which I possess of these would make it sinful in me to teach any heathen brother to believe in the historical truths of the scriptural accounts of the Creation and the Flood, as other scientific reasons make it equally impossible to teach them the scriptural story of the Fall, and other parts of the Bible narrative, as historical facts.116

Colenso’s Elementary Science textbooks, designed both to introduce African adults and children to science and be used as a reader to teach English, highlight his broad approach to education.117 Colenso began his First Lessons in Science by explaining that it was ‘desirable that they ­[students] should be gaining some information, as they read, about the state of things around them, instead of wasting their energies upon the child’s story of “Dick Bell” and his doings’.118 He explained that there was little point in using basic readers, but instead, wanted to introduce some Astronomy, Geology, and ‘such facts only as ought to be known to everyone’.119 Aware of contemporary scientific research, including the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, Colenso argued that these developments should be commented upon by the Church for it to maintain its reputation in a changing world.120 This did not mean a complete disavowal of the religious aspects of his role: he blended his scientific lessons with stories explaining to the reader that the earth had been created for man by God, the Sun to ‘cheer up our eyes and hearts, to bless

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our whole life, and more than all this, to be a sign to us of His Great Love’.121 Colenso published eighteen books for the use of missionaries and African scholars over the course of his career, including Zulu and English readers, introductions to science, translations of the Bible and tracts dealing with African life and customs. In spite of a context in which there was an increasing drive to pull Africans into the colonial economy as labourers, Colenso was committed to creating a different kind of pupil, one capable of scientific reasoning as much as hard labour. Colenso’s optimism about the early success of the mission was not completely unfounded. Amongst the pupils of the mission was Magema Fuze, whose life and writings have been discussed by Hlonipha Mokoena.122 Fuze arrived at the station in his early teens and was baptised in 1859. He became Colenso’s printer and assistant. Later, he edited the Zulu language newspaper Ilanga laseNatal, and wrote the first history of the Zulu people in the Zulu language, Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (The Black People and whence they came).123 Fuze’s literary career can be seen as evidence of the mission education he received fundamentally changing his future. William Ngidi, who initially worked as a wagon driver at Ekukhanyeni, became Colenso’s Zulu assistant, and eventually a teacher. Born in the 1830s, Ngidi learned to read and write at an American mission station. Ngidi was very influential for Colenso: it was in their conversations, while producing religious and educational materials for schools and churches, that Colenso began to reconsider his own religious beliefs. This resulted in Colenso’s trial for heresy in 1863, as he publicly admitted that he did not believe that the Bible was the literal Word of God. Jeff Guy’s analysis of this friendship is useful, as he shows how this colonial friendship had important effects on metropolitan debates about religion. Colenso crediting Ngidi with his new beliefs led to a disavowal of Colenso himself, and highlights a nervousness ‘at a disturbing reversal of the idea of coloniser and colonised which switched dominated for dominant, unlearned for learned, heathen for Christian, savage for civilized, the self and the other’.124 This cut to the heart of the difficulties associated with educating Indigenous people. Their entering into educated or ‘civilised’ society could fundamentally alter interpretations and belief systems that were foundational in the British imperial project. The relationship between Colenso and Ngidi exemplifies the centrality of the school as a frontier—a site of exchange between the missionary and his African interpreter. In producing new materials for the school, their own beliefs were called into question. As Tony Ballantyne has recently argued, in meetings between

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missionaries and Maori people in New Zealand, ‘vectors of cultural transformation did not flow only one way’. Rather, missionaries who ‘worked on the frontier were also transformed by the experience’.125 The school, then, was not only a space for the transmission of imperial values, but was also a pedagogic space for the missionary himself. Grey and other officials might have imagined colonial society as involving the transformation only of Indigenous people, but they could not control the engagements that took place between individuals. The school closed in 1861 under the threat of Zulu attack. There were rumours in the colony that Cetshwayo kaMpande, older brother to a pupil, Mkhungo, would come to remove his brother from the school.126 Shepstone suggested the school should be closed immediately, and the inhabitants of Ekukhanyeni fled to Pietermaritzburg.127 The school never reopened with the same success, for lack of teachers and funding from government and the SPG, and because of Colenso’s increasing lack of faith in this mode of missionary teaching.128 Far from direct implementation of Grey’s policies, Colenso shaped the education offered at Ekukhanyeni to his own beliefs about what education should give to pupils, and indeed, to their needs. He drew on his scientific background and interests, his theological knowledge and broader thinking about the place of race in education in order to conduct his school. Thus, although funded as an industrial training school, the education at Ekukhanyeni looked quite different in practice.

Conclusion Following Grey’s thinking and writing on industrial training has been fruitful for a number of reasons. His ‘imperial career’ indicates how his ideas about education were shaped by and shaped his subsequent appointments in Australasia and the Cape.129 His ideas also moved beyond the colonies where he had official appointments. They were born out of a context in which these kinds of schemes were being trialled with various levels of success in different parts of the empire. His relationship with Bishop Colenso, for example, enabled the support of the Ekukhanyeni Institution. The context of Natal at the time was particularly ripe for this kind of industrial training although, as we saw above, the Bishop was able to use the funding and support for the scheme to achieve his own ends in that colony. In examining these schemes regarding industrial education, we can begin to unpack how changing ideas were made and remade by

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people, places and historical contexts. It is not insignificant that it was Grey and Colenso taking up these ideas—as individual historical actors they were able to influence colonial contexts in important ways. Neither should their agency be over-emphasised. What is clear is that in the engagement with the local, these ways of thinking and doing were subject to contestation and negotiation over time. In these mid-nineteenth-century schemes, we see the difficulties of industrial training. Firstly, the term was used to encompass a wide variety of manual and industrial skills, and thus, there could be confusion surrounding what exactly it described. There were also shortages of expertise: missionaries, in spite of some having artisanal backgrounds, were often better suited and more interested in literary training to produce teachers and preachers. Moreover, local settler artisans often viewed industrial training as a threat to their own livelihoods and expertise. Finally, industrial training was expensive and often promised far more radical changes to local societies than it was actually able to deliver. In each place discussed in this chapter—the Cape, New Zealand and Natal—those involved with industrial training attempted to work out the meaning of class in colonial contexts. While ‘working class’ was understood in particular (and often unstable) ways in England at the time, in the colonies, the presence of large numbers of Indigenous people complicated this concept even further, and filtered back into metropolitan conceptions of class as well. Colonial educators, students and settlers did not simply borrow pre-existing concepts of class, but instead developed new meanings of class in colonial contexts. In doing so, those involved in educating, in particular, hoped to create new meanings of class, ones that imagined a different society than that they had left in the metropolitan context. However, as Stoler rightly points out, the concepts of class and race were not ‘discursively and practically discrete social taxonomies’.130 Indeed, these already existing ideas and concepts came to inform each other. Industrial education attempted to refashion Indigenous people as a working class, but also relied on the boundaries between groups being maintained. Thus, when African students qualified in trades, white workers feared this would allow Africans to enter their social worlds. In the mid-nineteenth century, as Lester argues, white settlers were increasingly vocal in their critiques of humanitarians, and in protecting their own ­positions as part of a British settler collective.131 The increasingly prevalent discourse of race, which I discuss in the next chapter, allowed the boundaries between class and race to be more firmly drawn.

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What is particularly striking about these schemes, and about Grey’s writing about industrial education, is how they married the needs of the settler colony with the still influential humanitarian ideals of the mid-­ nineteenth century. Industrial training served multiple purposes: personal and community uplift, introduction to habits of Christian industry, and moral training. It also brought people into the colonial economy, to work as apprentices and servants, artisans and tradespeople, and to build roads and hospitals. These policies fully encapsulate the ‘ambivalent humanitarianism’132 of the colonial government in this era. Industrial training initiatives would remain central to African people’s education in Southern Africa, and elsewhere, into the twentieth century. As time went by, ideas about industry and morality were slowly replaced by a new brand of thinking about ‘adapted education’, which was based on the idea that education should be adapted to the circumstances of the individual or cultural or ethnic group, preparing them for the role they were to serve in (colonial) society.133 Underpinning this idea, as with the industrial training policies of the nineteenth century, were a set of progressive beliefs as well as racist ones—it simultaneously recognised that education should serve the needs of the community, while placing strict boundaries on what exactly those needs should be.

Notes 1. Grey, ‘Report on the best Means of Promoting the Civilization of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Australia’, Enclosure Russell to Gipps, 08.10.1840, in Aborigines (Australian colonies). Return to an address of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 5 August 1844;—for, copies or extracts from the despatches of the governors of the Australian colonies, with the reports of the protectors of aborigines, and any other correspondence to illustrate the condition of the aboriginal population of the said colonies, from the date of the last papers laid before Parliament on the subject, (papers ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12 August 1839, no. 526), [Hereafter Aborigines (Australian Colonies)], HC 627 (1844), No. 23, 101–104. This report was important in securing Grey’s reputation and providing him a ‘template for governmentality that he would seek to effect throughout his own gubernatorial career’. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 234. 2. The report is also printed in George Grey, Journals of two expeditions of discovery in north-west and western Australia, during the years 1837, 38,

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and 39, under the authority of Her Majesty’s Government, describing many newly discovered, important and fertile districts, with observations on the moral and physical condition of the aboriginal inhabitants, &c. &c, Vol. 2 (London: T. and W. Boone, 1841). 3. Grey, Report on the best Means of Promoting the Civilization. 4. James Rutherford, Sir George Grey, KCB, 1812–1898 (London: Cassell and Company Ltd., 1961), 53. 5. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 237. 6. Ibid. 7. Zoë Laidlaw, ‘Breaking Britannia’s Bounds? Law, Settlers, and Space in Britain’s Imperial Historiography’, The Historical Journal, 55 (2012), 807–830, 813; Alan Lester, ‘Spatial Concepts and the Historical Geographies of British Colonialism’, in Writing Imperial Histories (Studies in Imperialism), ed. by Andrew Thompson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 118–142. 8. Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. by Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1–56, 7. 9. Arthur F. McClure, James Riley Chrisman and Perry Mock, Education for Work: The Historical Evolution of Vocational and Distributive Education in America (Cranberry, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1985), 23. 10. Kalani Beyer, ‘Setting the Record Straight: Education of the Mind and Hands Existed in the United States Before the 1800s’, American Educational History, 37 (2010), 149–167, 151. 11. Gillian Carol Gear, ‘Industrial Schools in England, 1857–1933’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1999), 9–12. 12. Amanda Barry, ‘“Equal to Children of European Origin”: Educability and the Civilising Mission in Early Colonial Australia’, History Australia, 5 (2008), 41.1–41.16, 41.1. 13. Ibid., 41.3. 14. Andrew Paterson, ‘“The Gospel of Work Does Not Save Souls”: Conceptions of Industrial and Agricultural Education for Africans in the Cape Colony, 1890–1930’, History of Education Quarterly, 45 (2005), 377–404, 378. 15. Jamie Scott, ‘Penitential and Penitentiary: Native Canadians and Colonial Mission Education’, in Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, Missions, ed. by Jamie Scott and Gareth Griffiths (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 111–133, 117. 16. Sarah de Leeuw, ‘“If Anything Is to Be Done with the Indian, We Must Catch Him Very Young”: Colonial Constructions of Aboriginal Children and the Geographies of Indian Residential Schooling in British Columbia, Canada’, Children’s Geographies, 7 (2009), 123–140, 128.

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17. Nicholas Flood Davin, Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and HalfBreeds (Ottawa: n.p., 1879), 1. 18. Beyer, ‘Setting the Record Straight’, 153. 19. Andrew E. Barnes, Global Christianity and the Black Atlantic: Tuskegee, Colonialism, and the Shaping of African Industrial Education (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017), 27. 20. For example, Carlyle wrote about the idle nature of emancipated slaves in the West Indies. Thomas Carlyle, ‘Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question’, Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 40 (1849), 670–679. 21. Charles Lyons, To Wash an Aethiop White (New York: Teachers College Press, 1975), 71. 22. Keletso Atkins, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900 (London: James Currey Ltd., 1993), 78. 23. Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 20. Patrick Wolfe also points out that agriculture is particularly attractive in settler societies because it is ‘inherently sedentary and, therefore, permanent’. Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research, 8 (2006), 387–409, 395. 24. Richard Broome, ‘Aboriginal Workers on South-Eastern Frontiers’, Australian Historical Studies, 26 (1994), 202–220, 202; Giordano Nanni, The Colonisation of Time: Ritual, Routine and Resistance in the British Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 113. 25. Henry Reynolds, With the White People: The Crucial Role of Aborigines in the Exploration and Development of Australia (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1990), 88. 26. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, Volume 1 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 67. 27. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, Volume 2 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 123. 28. Susannah Grant, ‘God’s Governor: George Grey and Racial Amalgamation in New Zealand 1845–1853’ (PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2005), 109–110. 29. Anne Scrimgeour, ‘Notions of Civilisation and the Project to “Civilise” Aborigines in South Australia in the 1840s’, History of Education Review, 35 (2006), 35–46, 40, 45. 30. Damon Ieremia Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 27.

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31. I have used the term ‘Maori’ here with an awareness that it only came into common use in the 1850s. See Salesa, Racial Crossings, 21–24. 32. See Grey to Earl Grey, 09.12.1847, New Zealand. Papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand. Correspondence with Governor Grey. In continuation of the papers presented by command in January and June, 1847. HC 892/899/1002 (1847–1848), 48. Judith Nathan highlights Grey’s extensive correspondence with the CMS missionary, Robert Maunsell, about the position of mission education in New Zealand. Judith Nathan, ‘An Analysis of an Industrial Boarding School: 1847–1860’, New Zealand Journal of History, 7 (1973), 47–59. See also Maunsell to Grey, 29.09.1847, Grey Library New Zealand [Hereafter GLNZ] M31.1. 33. See Cooper to Molesworth, 25.01.1856, The National Archives at Kew, CO 179/42, No. 9. [Hereafter all CO correspondence is from TNA]. 34. The amount given to education was not to exceed one twentieth of the colonial revenue each year. Grey to Earl Grey, 09.12.1847, New Zealand. Papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand, 49. 35. John Barrington and Tim Beaglehole, Maori Schools in a Changing Society: An Historical Review (Wellington: New Zealand Council for Education Research, 1974), 166. 36. Sir George Grey to Earl Grey, 22.03.1849, New Zealand. Further papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand, HC 1136 and 1280 (1850), Desp. 33, 69. 37. Sir George Grey to Earl Grey, 29.01.1851, New Zealand. Further papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand. (In continuation of papers presented 14th August, 1850), HC 1420 (1851), No. 16, 124. 38. R. Hunt Davis, ‘1855–1863: A Dividing Point in the Early Development of African Education in South Africa’ (Unpublished seminar paper, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 18, 1975), 1–15, 6. 39. Maunsell to Grey, 06.08.1852, enclosed in a despatch from Grey to Pakington, 07.10.1852, New Zealand. Further papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand, HC 1779 (1854), No. 69, 155. 40. Grey to Pakington, 08.10.1852, in ibid., No. 70, 159. Original at TNA, CO 209/105. 41. James Belich, Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders, from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Auckland and London: Allen Lane, 1996), 192, 204–211. 42. Grey to Pakington, 08.10.1852, Further papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand, HC 1779 (1854), 159–160. 43. Ibid., 161. 44. See Leigh Dale, ‘George Grey in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa’, in Writing, Travel and Empire in the Margins of Anthropology, ed. by Peter Hulme and Russell McDougall (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 18–41, 22.

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45. Grey was critical of the United Free Church of Scotland’s Lovedale institution in the Cape for having a curriculum that was too ‘bookish’. He ensured that government funding was given to the school for building classrooms and workshops for the practical arts. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 256. 46. Grey to Pakington, 08.10.1852, Further papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand, HC 1779 (1854), 161. 47. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 251. 48. John Barrington and Tim Beaglehole, ‘“A Part of Pakeha Society”: Europeanising the Maori Child’, in Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism, ed. by James Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 163–183, 168. 49. Grey to Pakington, 08.10.1852, Further papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand, HC 1779 (1854), No. 70, 160–161. 50. See Esme Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 1840–1900 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) for a discussion of the ways in which ideas of race changed during the nineteenth century, and in particular, on missionary conceptions of race, 5. 51. On the Canadian case, see John Milloy, ‘A National Crime’: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879–1986 (Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press, 2000); James Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 52. Note by Merivale, 27.01.1853, on Grey to Pakington, 08.10.1852, separate, CO 209/105. 53. According to Du Toit, Cathcart, Governor of the Cape before Grey, resented Grey’s suggestions for the Cape and believed that the comparison between New Zealand Maori people and Cape Xhosa people was misguided. Anthonie Du Toit, The Cape Frontier: A Study of Native Policy with Special Reference to the Years 1847–1866 (Pretoria: Archives Yearbook, Government Printer, 1954), 239. See also Cathcart’s response to the memorandum in CO 48/338. 54. Translated letter from Mruceu to his brothers, 25.05.1859, Zonnebloem archive, University of Cape Town Manuscripts and Archives, A1.27. 55. Sir George Grey to Sir George Grey, 22.12.1854, Cape of Good Hope. Further papers relative to the state of the Kaffir tribes. (In continuation of papers presented May 31, 1853), HC 1969 (1854–55), No. 20, 38. 56. Janet Hodgson, ‘A History of Zonnebloem College, 1858–1870: A Study of Church and Society’ (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1975), 128.

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57. See Correspondence showing the Arrangement made for the Future Aid to be given from Schedule D to Native Industrial Institutions and Schools, Founded upon the Report of the Superintendent General of Education (Cape Town: Saul Solomon and Co, 1864) G29–’64, 23. 58. Ayliff to Grey, Healdtown, 30.05.1856, Sir George Grey Collection, South African Library, MSB 223, No. 12. 59. Reports upon the progress of the Native Industrial Institutions, established at Lovedale, Salem, and Heald Town, in the division of Victoria, Albany, and Fort Beaufort (Cape Town: Saul Solomon) G7–’56, 7. 60. Ibid., 8. 61. See, for example, Report of the Salem Industrial School for the year 1858, Reports of the Native Industrial Schools at Salem, Heald Town and Lesseyton for the year 1858 (Cape Town: Saul Solomon) G13–’59, 4. 62. William Impey to Rawson B Rawson, Colonial Secretary, 24.01.1862, Report on the industrial schools at Salem, Heald Town, Lesseyton and Durban 1862, (Cape Town: Saul Solomon) G7–’62, 1. 63. John Mackenzie and Nigel Dalziel, The Scots in South Africa: Ethnicity, Identity, Gender and Race, 1772–1914 (Manchester and Johannesburg: Manchester University Press and Wits University Press, 2007), 111. 64. Langham Dale, Report on the Industrial Institutions and Schools Supported or Aided by Grants of Money from the Amount Reserved for the Aborigines Department, under Schedule D of the Constitution Ordinance (Cape Town: Saul Solomon) G1–’64, 10. 65. Ibid., 14. 66. R.  Hunt Davis, ‘Nineteenth Century African Education in the Cape Colony: A Historical Analysis’ (PhD thesis, University of WisconsinMadison, 1969), 228. 67. R Lange to Sir George Grey, 9.09.1858, Cape Archives Depository, KAB BK 91. 68. Ayliff to Impey, 11.11.1858, Journal of the Industrial Institution 1855– 1856, KAB A80, 4A. 69. Barnabas Shaw, Evidence to Watermeyer Commission, in Appendix VI, Report of a Commission of Inquiry, in Accordance with Addresses of the Legislative Council and House of Assembly, to Inquire into the Government Educational System 1861 (Watermeyer Commission), G24–’63, 4. 70. Jonathan Hyslop, ‘The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself “White”: White Labourism in Britain, Australia, and South Africa Before the First World War’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 12 (1999), 398–421, 399. 71. Report of the Heald Town Industrial Institution, Reports of the Native Industrial Schools at Salem and Heald Town for the Year 1856 (Cape Town: Saul Solomon), G8–’57, 3. 72. A McDirmind [Illeg.] to Maclean, 15.03.1859, KAB BK 91.

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73. Ibid. 74. Report of the Heald Town Industrial Institution, Reports of the Native Industrial Schools at Salem, Heald Town, Lesseyton, and D’Urban, for the Year 1860 (Cape Town: Saul Solomon) G9–’61, 3. 75. Salem Industrial School, Reports on the Native Industrial Schools at Heald Town, Salem, and Lesseyton, for the year 1857 (Cape Town: Saul Solomon) G16–’58, 4. 76. Grey quoted in Gray to Wodehouse, 08.02.1869, Zonnebloem archive, A2.24. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. See list of scholars in Report on the Kafir Industrial Institution at Bishop’s Court, Protea (Cape Town: Saul Solomon) G15–’59, 9. On Zonnebloem, see Hodgson, ‘A History of Zonnebloem College’. 80. Robb to George Frere, 31.10.186[?], Zonnebloem Archive, BC 636, A1.21. See Janet Hodgson, Princess Emma (Craighall: A.D.  Donker, 1987), for a detailed description of life in the school, particularly for Princess Emma, daughter of Xhosa chief Sandile. 81. Grant, ‘God’s Governor’, 201; Barrington and Beaglehole, ‘“A Part of Pakeha Society”’, 170. 82. See Helen Ludlow, ‘The Government Teacher Who Resolved to do What He Could Himself. Wynberg, Cape Colony, 1841–1863’, South African Review of Education, 19 (2013), 25–47. 83. Gray, first Bishop of the Anglican Church of South Africa, arrived in South Africa in 1848. 84. Hodgson, ‘A History of Zonnebloem College’, 179. 85. Translated letter from Mruceu to his brothers, 25.05.1859, Zonnebloem archive, A1.27. 86. Foster to Managing Committee of the Industrial Institution for Kafir Children at Bishop’s Court, South Africa, 15.02.1859, in Report on the Kafir Industrial Institution G15–’59, 4. 87. Ibid., 5. 88. Watermeyer Commission, lxxix. 89. Dale, Report on the Industrial Institutions, G1–’64, 13. 90. Ibid., 14. 91. Davis, ‘Nineteenth Century African Education’, 235. 92. William Impey to Rawson W.  Rawson, 03.11.1863, in Correspondence Showing the Arrangement Made for the Future Aid to Be Given from Schedule D to Native Industrial Institutions and Schools, Founded upon the Report of the Superintendent General of Education (Cape Town: Saul Solomon and Co, 1864) G29–’64, 7. 93. William Govan to Rawson, 20.10.1863, in ibid., 15. 94. Davis, ‘1855–1863: A Dividing Point’, 6.

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95. Salesa, Racial Crossings, 113. 96. Hlonipha Mokoena, Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011), 65; Vukile Khumalo, ‘Excavating a Usable Past: The Politics of Christian Missions in South Africa with Special Focus on KwaZulu-Natal, 1850–1910’, in Sights and Insights: Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World, ed. by Mary N. Harris and Csaba Levai (Pisa: Edizioni Plus-Pisa University Press, 2007), 109–121. 97. Jeff Guy, The Heretic: A Study of the Life of John William Colenso, 1814– 1883 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press; Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1983), 45. 98. Mandy Goedhals, ‘“The Bravest Woman I have Ever Known”: Frances Colenso (1816–93)’, in The Eye of the Storm: Bishop John William Colenso and the Crisis of Biblical Interpretation, ed. by Jonathan Draper (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster publications, 2003), 326–344, 331. 99. Colenso to SPG, 9.11.1855, SPG D8, RHL [Hereafter all Natal SPG reports and correspondence are from RHL]. 100. Rebecca Swartz, ‘Educating Emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–65’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18 (2017), n.p. See also Guy, The Heretic, 64. 101. Charles Templeton Loram, The Education of the South African Native (London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1917), 55. It is worth noting that Bishop John Colenso’s cousin, William Colenso, advocated for Maori education and literacy in New Zealand. 102. Jeff Guy, Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013), 241. 103. John William Colenso, Ten Weeks in Natal: A Journal of First Tour of Visitation among the Colonists and Zulu Kafirs of Natal (Cambridge: Macmillan and Co, 1855), xxxi. 104. Vukile Khumalo, ‘The Class of 1856 and the Politics of Cultural Production(s) in the Emergence of Ekukhanyeni, 1855–1910’, in The Eye of the Storm: Bishop John William Colenso and the Crisis of Biblical Interpretation, ed. by Jonathan Draper (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003), 207–241, 211. 105. Colenso to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 4.4.1857, SPG D8. 106. Shepstone to Colenso, 28.05.1858, Encl. 1  in Scott to Stanley, 31.07.1858, Natal. Copies of correspondence between the Governor of Natal and the Colonial Office with respect to the £5000 reserved from the general revenues of the colony for the disposal of the Crown; and, of correspondence on the subject of the growth of cotton as now carried on by the natives, under the auspices of the government of that colony, HC 596 (1860), 50.

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107. Khumalo, ‘Excavating a Usable Past’, 113. 108. Norman Etherington, ‘Missionaries, Africans and the State in the Development of Education in Colonial Natal, 1836–1910’, in Missionaries, Indigenous People and Cultural Exchange, ed. by Patricia Grimshaw and Andrew May (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2010), 123–137, 128. 109. Colenso to Labouchere, 4.4.1857, SPG D8. 110. Khumalo, ‘The Class of 1856’, 214. 111. Colenso to Grey, 01.02.1857, Cullen Library, AB1606F. 112. Report from Grubbe, Bishopstowe, 03.01.1859, SPG E2. 113. Colenso to Grey, 01.04.1858, Grey collection, SAL, MSB 223, No. 52. 114. Colenso, Ten Weeks, 257; Journal written by Miss Alice Mackenzie while at Bishopstowe; the last letter written to her Brother, The Rev. Charles Mackenzie later Bishop of the Central African Mission, who died finally at his post, in Africa. MSS. Afr. R.174, RHL, Entry, 12.04.1859; Colenso, The Elements of Euclid, from the Text of Dr Robert Simson (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1846). 115. Hodgson, ‘A History of Zonnebloem College’, 159. 116. John William Colenso, ‘On the Efforts of Missionaries Among Savages’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, 3 (1865), 248–289, 277–278. 117. There was considerable competition between different mission societies in Natal regarding the printing of Bibles and textbooks in Zulu. Books were also printed in Zulu at Ekukhanyeni. For example, Incwadi yezindaba ezi’inhlanganisela covered topics in history and geography. Bishop John Colenso, Incwadi yezindaba ezi’inhlanganisela (Natal: Printed at the Industrial Training Institution, Ekukanyeni, 1860[?]), contents page. 118. Bishop John Colenso, First Lessons in Science Designed for the Use of Children and Adult Natives (Natal: Printed at the Industrial Training Institution, Ekukanyeni, 1861), i. 119. Ibid., ii. 120. Jeff Guy, ‘Class, Imperialism and Literary Criticism’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23 (1997), 219–241, 229. 121. Colenso, First Lessons in Science, 17. 122. Mokoena, Magema Fuze. 123. Magema Fuze, The Black People and Whence They Came, transl. by Henry Camp Lugg and ed. by Anthony Trevor Cope (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1979). Orig. published in Zulu in 1922. 124. Guy, ‘Class, Imperialism’, 221. 125. Tony Ballantyne, Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Maori, and the Question of the Body (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014), 4.

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126. Cetshwayo kaMpande would go on to be Zulu king, and to win the battle of Isandlhwana in 1879. 127. Guy, The Heretic, 105. 128. Ibid. 129. David Lambert and Alan Lester (eds.), Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 130. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 127. 131. Alan Lester, ‘British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire’, History Workshop Journal, 54 (2002), 25–48, 44. 132. Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 272–273. 133. Peter Kallaway, ‘Welfare and Education in British Colonial Africa and South Africa During the 1930s and 1940s’, Paedagogica Historica, 41 (2005), 337–356, 344.

CHAPTER 6

Researching Education: Florence Nightingale, British Imperialism and Colonial Schools

In 1863, nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale, most famous for her work during the Crimean War, published a survey on the health of children in ‘native’ schools and hospitals in the British Empire.1 She began collecting data for the survey in 1860. Nightingale was interested in engaging with claims about Aboriginal depopulation, which positioned Aboriginal people as a ‘dying race’, inevitably fading away in the face of (superior) European civilisation. Nightingale hoped to measure, using statistics collected from colonial institutions, whether this was in fact the case, and if, through the examination of comparative social statistics, she could reveal trends in the effects of civilisation on the health of Indigenous people. This chapter tracks two developments. First, it positions schooling and education as central to the process of creating knowledge about Indigenous people. Focusing on two cases, one of Nightingale’s survey, which drew on information from various colonies in the empire, and another in colonial Natal, I argue that schools were important sites to learn about Indigenous people. As a place in which groups of young people were brought together, they provided a space in which ideas about ‘civilisation’ of the races could be tested out. Racial difference was both constructed and articulated through education. In attempting to define what kind of education should be provided to Indigenous people, researchers engaged with how race affected intellectual capacity. By the mid-nineteenth century, © The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_6

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researchers with a humanitarian agenda ‘had to counter not only the racial theories of the day but also the pragmatic argument that all previous endeavours to civilise the Aboriginals had failed’.2 Schools could be used as a place to measure and reflect upon the capacity of different races, potentially proving that civilisation was attainable. Schools should thus be understood as ‘frontiers’—as sites where knowledge about Indigenous people could be created and recorded, and where schemes for their improvement could be tested out. I draw here on Penelope Edmonds’ reconception of the ‘frontier’ as a phenomenon existing in both urban and rural (settler-colonial) space. Edmonds argues that frontiers were not static entities, but rather, involved exchanges across colonial divides.3 I have argued elsewhere, following Stephanie Olsen, that schools operated as ‘emotional frontiers’—creating, altering and destroying affective ties between parents and children, and pupils and teachers.4 This chapter, by contrast, focuses on frontiers of knowledge. It shows how schooling and education was used to create and disseminate knowledge through the exchanges and encounters between teachers, settlers, governments and researchers and Indigenous children. However, in the process of knowledge production, the affective landscape of schools cannot be ignored. In particular, Anne Camfield’s response to Nightingale shows how her intimate engagement with her pupils shaped her understanding of racial difference. I investigate the ways in which schools operated as sites of enquiry and knowledge production in the 1860s. The educational space—the school, field, or boarding house—provided an important source of information about Indigenous people. Schools were often the only point of contact between Indigenous people, particularly children, missionaries and the colonial state. School records and reports could be used to measure the progress of civilisation, but also to define and quantify racial difference. Schools were also critical to providing information to Indigenous people, about what it meant to be civilised, Christian and British subjects. In the cases I study here, we see attempts to define how education changed Indigenous people, and to think through ways to record these changes. The educational process in the cases discussed in this chapter was multifaceted. First, children were educated in schools. Second, researchers used information gained from schools to construct new racial knowledge. Finally, this information was communicated to a broader colonial public, at ‘home’ and in the colonies, who attended lectures and read publications regarding these developments in the colonies.

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Second, it points out how educational practitioners and researchers, like Florence Nightingale and Dr Robert James Mann, a doctor, missionary and later education official in Natal, were increasingly approached as professionals, pointing to a growth in disciplines like social statistics but also of an education bureaucracy in the colonies. The transmission of their research in scientific periodicals reflects the changing nature of education provision in the metropole as well as the colonies. The extension of education to different classes in Britain had been a point of discussion and debate since the 1830s, and by the 1860s, there was still an important drive for literacy to be promoted amongst the general population. The rationale for this was that literacy would provide access to reading the Bible. The growth of these scientific periodicals was part of the picture: these were designed with amateur scientists in mind and were part of the vision of broad education of the English masses.5 At the same time, science began to professionalise, with new credentials and distinctions being made between ‘amateur’ and professional scientists, ethnographers and statisticians. For Nightingale and Mann, being understood as professional was central to the way they were able to carry out their research. Anne Camfield, a teacher at a small school in Albany, Western Australia, whose institution was one site in Nightingale’s study, fell into a far less clear category. Between missionary, teacher and researcher, she needed to prove the legitimacy of her claims of knowledge regarding Aboriginal children. The information gained from schooling and education was used in various ways in metropolitan Britain, including by fledgling organisations like the Social Science Association. By the mid-nineteenth century, ideas about race were shifting, and it was more often seen as a biological rather than a cultural trait.6 Events around the British Empire, including the Indian ‘Mutiny’ in 1857, Cattle Killings in the Cape in 1856–1857 and the Morant Bay ‘uprisings’ in 1865, reinforced these increasingly rigid racial attitudes. These events were seen as evidence that colonised people were either uncivilised or did not see the benefits of being ruled by a ‘superior’ British government. Competition over resources and hostility towards Indigenous people increased as more Europeans settled in the colonies in the 1850s.7 There was also a sense from some missionaries and humanitarian thinkers that the civilising mission had ‘failed’—Indigenous people were not flocking to missions, and those who had, often returned to their previous ways of living as young adults.8 A central debate in this context regarding race was

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about Indigenous people’s ability to survive in the face of continued European settlement—often described as being in the face of superior European civilisation. The growth of scientific modes of enquiry allowed questions about race to be addressed in new ways—through particular forms of ethnographic study and through the ‘neutral’ science of numbers. As Sadiah Qureshi argues of the mid-nineteenth century, there was remarkable interest in ‘defining what counted as human difference, the significance of such variation, and how it should be studied’.9 The cases I draw on here indicate that while an older version of humanitarian thinking might have been giving way to different—and more fixed—ways of understanding race, there were still debates and discussions about the future of Indigenous people. In other words, understandings of race were not monolithic. These conceptions responded to, interacted with and were created by individuals, humanitarian discourses and settler colonial contexts, in different ways. The cases in this chapter drew on different kinds of expertise from an interested medical researcher, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, colonial politicians, educators and missionaries. Expertise on native affairs was used to render Indigenous people more ‘legible and governable’.10 Addressing these cases together shows that while there was no uniform policy on colonial education in the British colonies, there were significant connections in thinking about education in different spaces. Moreover, the growth of new kinds of professional disciplines and identities allowed schooling and education to be approached as a site of enquiry in novel ways.

Florence Nightingale, Colonial Education and Civilisation of the Races Florence Nightingale’s survey on native schools and hospitals arose out of her desire to engage with debates about the future of Indigenous peoples. As Tiffany Shellam has argued, Nightingale hoped to counter arguments about the inevitable demise of Indigenes in the face of western civilisation and culture.11 What I am particularly interested in here is how the report was put together, and the way in which its contents were engaged with in  local contexts. The report was created through the correspondence between Nightingale, Sir George Grey, educators, missionaries and colonial officials. This highlights the networks between those invested in the

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project of Indigenous education and civilisation. The contents of the report also warrant attention: they indicate the kind of information available to colonial officials and others interested in making comparisons across colonies. The results also highlight an attempt to quantify the effects of ‘civilisation’ on Indigenous people. This survey was unique in its time for its attempt to collect and analyse a vast amount of information about Indigenous education. In collecting statistical information about the schools, Nightingale attempted to make the vague idea of ‘civilisation’ into something rigid that could be enumerated and therefore compared. Florence Nightingale met Sir George Grey in 1859, when he was Governor of the Cape.12 Both were interested in the fate of Indigenous people who were being exposed to the effects of colonialism.13 At Grey’s request, Nightingale sent Grey some notes on the depopulation of Maori people in New Zealand, which began to articulate her thinking about race and education.14 Nightingale argued ‘Uncivilised man cannot be dealt with in the same way as civilised man’. Before conducting her survey of native schools, in correspondence with Grey, she was already advocating a combination of literary and practical education, which, as the previous chapter showed, appealed to Grey. She wrote,    In an aboriginal school there should be   ample space   free ventilation   cheerfulness   half-time at least given to out door work or play.15

Nightingale believed that education had to be adapted to local circumstances and that failure to do so could be disastrous. Before the surveys had been sent out, Nightingale expressed suspicions about missionaries who she believed were not paying adequate attention to the needs of local societies in their conversion and education. As she explained to Grey after publishing the study: ‘The education must have day-by-day reference to the past habits & history of the people. Its object should be to draw them gradually into better habits & gradually to civilize them’.16 The idea that civilisation should take place gradually indicates her belief that civilisation, if carried out too quickly, could be potentially harmful to students. Nightingale knew little of the kinds of schools available in the colonies, so needed to obtain factual and trustworthy data through Grey and the Colonial Office. This was supplemented by reading published accounts

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from various colonies.17 She was impressed with Grey’s knowledge about Indigenous people, and believed that he could use his position as governor of New Zealand to protect and civilise Aboriginal people. In a letter to Grey, she wrote, ‘The aboriginal question is still unresolved. And I believe it rests with you to solve it’.18 For his part, as Alan Lester has recently argued, Grey was concerned with collecting information about Indigenous people, in order to cast interventions in their lives as ‘humanitarian’, opposing a narrative of their eventual and inescapable demise.19 Nightingale’s research on what she termed ‘native colonial schools’ relied on this connection: his reputation as a friend of the native races would help her make enquiries of schools throughout the empire.20 Grey was confident that he would be able to help Nightingale with the survey, saying that he would be able to provide her with statistics regarding schools.21 She also drew on his local experience, asking him to give her advice on the survey to be sent out to schools.22 He guided her in the structuring of the survey, urging her to include children with mixed racial parentage in her surveys, and to be aware of children of different races attending schools officially designated for native children.23 Apart from her connection with Grey, Nightingale also corresponded with Newcastle, then Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, to ask for help in sending her surveys throughout the empire. In May 1860, she asked Newcastle to ‘further what I believe to be a very important interest of our country, viz., how we can civilize without destroying the natives of our colonies?’ In her explanation of the survey, Nightingale argued ‘Missionary schools have the best observable data. The [colonies’] governors are, however, the most competent judges’.24 Here, Nightingale made a claim about ‘official’ knowledge—colonial officials were constructed as neutral observers in contrast to missionaries whose close engagement with children and schools clouded their judgement. Nightingale’s published report included information from one hundred and forty-three schools in Sierra Leone, Western Australia, Natal, Ceylon and Canada, and commented on the suitability of the education in the schools there.25 The final returns sent out to the schools asked about the duration of school education, what schooling involved, and the amount of time allotted to play, outdoor activities and holidays.26 Nightingale also wanted schools to record how many children failed to complete their training, whether on account of health or for other reasons. Finally, she enquired about the funding of the schools under study.27 The use of surveys and questionnaires, sent throughout the empire, was in line

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with contemporary collection of information about Indigenous people.28 Using statistics to gather information about Indigenous people ‘allowed older aspirations—of uniformity in imperial policy and metropolitan control—to be pursued by the Colonial Office’.29 By the end of the 1830s, as the discussion of La Trobe’s Negro Education Reports in Chap. 2 showed, the amount of information collected by the Colonial Office was increasing rapidly.30 Social statistics, and the kinds of questions which this new discipline was able to address, constructed the colonial world as knowable. In contrast to ethnographic (or missionary) descriptions of Indigenous people, which Nightingale dismissed as less accurate than that from governors, statistical representation could make ‘“otherness”…comparable and commensurable’.31 As Nikolas Rose notes of the metropolitan context, statistics turned an ‘unruly population…into a form in which it could be used in political arguments and administrative decisions’.32 Here, Nightingale was engaging in a central debate of the nineteenth century— what did race actually mean in the future of the British Empire? Would Indigenous people survive long enough for this question to be answered? The use of numbers and surveys was particularly potent in this case: it made civilisation quantifiable. It also allowed a level of disengagement from the harsh realities of the processes that colonial schools supported. Measuring the number of hours given to work or play, for example, did not take into account the facts of children’s dislocation from parents and homes—either literally, where children were in boarding schools, or metaphorically, through their enculturation into new ways of seeing the world. As I show below, the realities of the local context, with all of its tensions and negotiations, were more difficult for teachers working on the spot to ignore. In spite of both Nightingale and Grey’s optimism that school statistics would be readily available, the information received from the colonies was far from complete. The first line of the published report reflects Nightingale’s frustration with the lack of data. ‘If it is said on reading this paper, There is nothing in it, I answer, That is why I wrote it, because there is nothing in it, in order that something might come of nothing.’ She continued, ‘the only explanation is that the subject has never hitherto been considered at all’.33 Information on colonial schools was not being collected in any systematic manner, which meant that it was difficult to make practical suggestions about changes to the system. Nightingale found that information on mortality rates and schools ‘does not exist, or, if it does, it is in a very undeveloped state’.34 It is unsurprising that

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Nightingale was disappointed with the information that she received from the schools, as her initial hope was to have far broader data. She estimated that there were ‘nearly 500 native day schools’ in the colonies she wanted to include in her study. As she explained to Newcastle, she needed ‘a sufficient number of data to form a conclusion on the question of the causes of aboriginal decrease of population’.35 In a letter to Grey, written after the completion of the collection phase of the research, she complained that The project has been carried out with all the machinery in the possession of the Colonial Office. I hoped to have solved some problems for you. But here is the result. It is so imperfect that I scrupled as to making any use of the data. The result has really none but a kind of negative value, which I am giving to them.36

Nightingale was disappointed that the survey had not been more conclusive. ‘I wish I could have helped you more—you will do a noble work in New Zealand. But pray think of your Statistics. I need not say, think of your Schools.’37 The Colonial Office sent the survey out to the colonies as a circular, but the responses they received were limited.38 The schools that did respond to the survey were not necessarily those with better systems of education in place, but rather, those whose teachers had good lines of communication with the local government. For example, the Western Australian schools were included because of the extensive data that Bishop Salvado at New Norcia was already collecting on his mission, as Shellam has shown,39 as well as the more concise report included by Anne Camfield at Annesfield. The information about Natal came through the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony, and was sent to Nightingale by Chichester Fortescue, the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies.40 The Canadian returns were collected by the Superintendents of the Indian Department and transmitted to Nightingale through the Colonial Office.41 Nightingale’s conclusion from her (limited) data was that ‘civilisation’ should take place slowly, and be adapted to local circumstances. Her data showed that mortality rates of children in native schools were double those at ‘home’ in England. Within the data, there were significant differences between the death rates for children across the colonies, with Natal and Western Australia presenting as the two extremes, with Natal reporting the least deaths and Western Australia the most. Nightingale believed that Natal’s focus on industrial training was a significant factor in  local

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children’s health: she argued that a combination of physical, intellectual and religious training was essential to civilising uncivilised people. Training the body and training the mind were inseparable—‘systematic physical training and bodily labour at useful occupations [are] an element absolutely essential and never to be neglected in the training of uncivilized and half civilized children in civilized habits and trains of thought…’42 Nightingale stated it was possible that, if ‘outcast native children’ were educated, they would be able to ‘contribute their quota to human knowledge and advancement’.43 Nightingale’s ideas about physical training being an essential part of civilisation for native schools was also informed by her experience in the metropolitan context. For example, she corresponded with Edwin Chadwick, poor-law reformer and fellow researcher of sanitation and public health, about ‘children’s epidemics’ in metropolitan infant schools.44 She believed metropolitan methods were being incorrectly applied to the colonies, and was disappointed by ‘our teachers [who] go among them [Indigenous children] just as they would into English villages’.45 The movement of children from the outdoors into poorly constructed buildings ‘is not done without great risk, even with children of English birth’, she wrote.46 She argued in her final report that there was indeed far too close a reliance on the British models of education in the colonies: colonial schools were being carried out ‘based on our home system, without reference to physical training or other local conditions affecting health’.47 Here, Nightingale was making an early argument for what would come to be known in the twentieth century as ‘adapted’ education: education needed to be adapted to the particular needs and aptitudes of certain groups of people. Nightingale’s ideas were representative of broader beliefs about religion, education and work going hand-in-hand. Civilisation could raise the individual’s quality of life, but could also be potentially harmful: if contact with civilisation was unrestrained, or if the process took place too quickly, it could lead not only to a depressed quality of life, but also to death. Religion was particularly important to the transformation of the self. ‘[D]isease and death’ were, in Nightingale’s opinion, ‘produced by too rapid a change in religious habits’ among the civilised, and so religion should be introduced gradually to the uncivilised.48 Acquiring civilisation was a precarious, potentially dangerous, process that needed to be carefully managed. She therefore argued for a recognition of local contexts, particularly as this affected health.

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The ambiguities of this kind of argument are worth pointing out: it involved a recognition of local circumstances, adopting a humanitarian stance, but also contributed to an increasingly influential narrative about human differences that was used to justify colonial expansion. In other words, she was not critiquing the process of ‘civilising’ itself, but rather, trying to promote a healthier, more moral, way to do it. By recording the differences between groups of Indigenous people, she also contributed to scientific knowledge about racial difference. Nightingale believed that the colonies should not simply reproduce the metropolitan education system, particularly as education and juvenile delinquency were subject to intense moral panic in Britain at the time. However, in saying this, she argued that there was something fundamentally different about Indigenous people in colonial contexts. Making this difference legible was her job. However, it was exactly this kind of argument about difference that justified colonialism. Colonised people could—and should—be civilised out of this difference by humane colonisers. Besides her Sanitary Statistics, printed for the National Association for the Promotion of Social Sciences, known as the Social Science Association, Nightingale published a further paper on the Aboriginal Races of Australia, where she used information from both Camfield and Salvado.49 The Social Science Association, founded in 1857, focused on five social issues: public health, the social economy, legal and penal reform and education.50 The paper on Aboriginal races that Nightingale read at the 1864 York meeting of the Social Science Association drew on the ‘imperial intellectual networks’ connecting Nightingale, Camfield, Salvado and the imperial government, and complemented the interests and aims of the Association.51 As Lawrence Goldman’s work points out, the mid-Victorian period saw a more pronounced role for ‘experts’, who were increasingly professionalised and relied upon in matters of public health, education, poverty and poor reform, and politics. Underlying the Social Science Association’s work was a firm commitment to positivism, including the belief that recording and understanding the natural world would lead to social reform.52 Missionaries and their allies were essential to constructing Indigenous populations, and efforts to enumerate and describe particular groups were often aimed at children, ‘since the schooled child was not only easily countable but also, in these humanitarians’ view, eminently vulnerable’.53 Rowse and Shellam argue that ‘in situations of severely limited state capacity common to the Antipodean colonies’ missionary data-­ collection was a ‘significant step in the formation of governmental

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intelligence about native peoples’.54 However, as the following section shows, contributing to a metropolitan discussion and debate about the future of native races was an immensely complicated process. On the one hand, it allowed those at a local colonial level to have their experience and expertise recognised, while on the other, there was potential for their experiences to be taken out of context in order to serve the needs of metropolitan researchers and audiences. What Nightingale’s survey indicates, however, is that schools were being used as places where important questions about race and civilisation could be addressed, and  as a source of information about Indigenous people.

Writing Back: Annesfield, Western Australia Nightingale’s research highlighted an important oversight on the part of the imperial government: Nightingale recognised that schools could be central to quantifying colonialism, and that the Colonial Office was not taking enough care to use these resources. Nightingale saw schools as frontiers where contact between civilised and uncivilised people could take place in a controlled environment and lead to the improvement of Indigenous people. The lack of response to many of her surveys, and the patchy information she did receive from missionaries and colonial governors indicates the fluid nature of education policy and practice during this period. When colonial schools were collecting information about their pupils, it was often incomplete, and did not lend itself to broad generalisations across colonies. Her survey did not have an impact on policy for Indigenous schools, and indeed, is one of her less famous pieces of writing. It does indicate, however, the value of schools as sites of information, and the necessity of drawing on personal correspondence and local expertise as a way of implementing changes. As she put it in a letter to epidemiologist and medical statistician Dr William Farr, enclosing the returns she received from Ceylon, You may perhaps remember (or more likely you may have forgotten) that the Colonial Office employed me, or I employed the Colonial Office (which is more correct?) to come to some conclusion about the relation between education and mortality in our uncivilized colonies…55

In a survey of this kind, which aimed to draw broad conclusions across colonies, there were certain local details and experiences that were

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­ ecessarily overlooked. Anne Camfield, teacher at the Annesfield institun tion in Western Australia, responded to Nightingale’s conclusions. Like Nightingale, Camfield was interested in proving that Aboriginal children could be civilised with no detrimental effects. Camfield’s responses to the survey questions sent by Nightingale in 1860, and then to the published results of the survey, give an insight into Camfield’s beliefs about race, education and civilisation. They also show how the broader public debates about race and civilisation were read and understood at a local level, once again highlighting the tensions between the urge to create general conclusions about the effects of education on health across the colonies, and the local educator’s desire to have the uniqueness of her situation recognised.56 The information from Camfield’s Annesfield school came through Governor Kennedy, who sent Camfield’s responses to the Colonial Office in December 1860. Kennedy was emphatic that he disagreed with much of what Camfield had written, and in contrast to her more optimistic, humanitarian stance, stated that the Aboriginal population was ‘hopeless’ and that ‘all attempts for their permanent civilization, or for raising them in the social scale have been signal failures’. Although ‘benevolent and philanthropic people’ like Camfield might believe that they could make an impact on the lives of children, ‘reasoning and practical people cannot look for any higher results’ than meeting the immediate needs of Aboriginal people.57 Kennedy, here, was in agreement with more ‘biological’ explanations for Aboriginal people’s current status—he conformed to a discourse of Aboriginal demise, in which the most that a caring government could do was to smooth the dying pillow of the race. There was also a gendered element to his critique of Camfield—here, the female teacher was positioned as irrational and impractical, out of touch with the real situation in the colony. This attitude towards Camfield was particularly misplaced— her writing showed  a deep engagement with contemporary discussions about race. Camfield believed in the civilising potential of schools.58 It was difficult for her to deny the staggeringly high death rates at her school: ten of the thirty-three pupils who had been sent there between 1852 and 1860 had died. However, she claimed that ‘civilization has not (as has been asserted) caused the extinction, so far as it has gone, of the Native Tribes’.59 Rather, many of the since deceased pupils had lost their mothers at infancy, leading to malnutrition. Camfield explained that it was not inherent weakness in Aboriginal people that killed them, but rather, the introduction of

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European vices, including alcohol and disease. However, she explained that Aboriginal adults ‘are mere children in understanding, and if their present wants are gratified they care not for the future’. This was a common trope in talking about Indigenous people: they were inherently childlike—unable to conduct themselves as responsible adults. If they had been ‘rescued’ as children, she argued, they could have ‘been taught what was right & really civilised’. What is striking in Camfield’s discussion of the civilisation of Aboriginal children is that she refers to competing versions of civilisation. Like Nightingale, Camfield believed that some parts of ‘civilisation’ could potentially be detrimental, and ultimately, that imparting civilisation needed to be carried out by particularly sensitive and well-­ trained individuals—moral interlocutors who would appreciate the differences between the races and had considered the best ways to manage and iron out these differences. In her response to Nightingale, Camfield reflected on the role of her school in Western Australian society. Her intention for Annesfield was to ‘prove that the Natives are capable of being made useful members of society, and what is more, that they are capable of understanding, and embracing, the great Truths of Salvation’.60 In an 1863 report on Annesfield, she said her experience proved—that the Aborigines have minds capable of comprehending their need of the Saviour Christ to die, and so to procure from them the forgiveness of sin, and an eternal inheritance in Heaven. That all who are taught believe this, I do not assert, but only that they can comprehend it which is as much as can be said of hundreds and thousands of white people.61

Camfield believed that, through the successful education of very few Aboriginal children, she could prove that an entire race was capable of civilisation, and of comprehending Christian teaching.62 When Camfield received the published results of Nightingale’s enquiry three years after sending Nightingale her response, she was unimpressed with the conclusions Nightingale had drawn. Camfield saw the results through her local, Albany lens: from this perspective, Nightingale’s imperial overview was ill informed and took data out of context. Nightingale had singled out Salvado’s New Norcia School as the only place where ‘systematic physical training’ was provided.63 Camfield replied to Nightingale that while she had accounted for the hours of school and work in her initial response, she ‘must have taken it for granted, that it

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would be inferred that the remainder were given up to play’.64 Camfield reiterated to Nightingale that civilisation, rather than harming the children, was actually ‘a great preservative of their lives. There are several children in the school who are year by year improving in health, who would not have been alive, I think, if they had remained in their wild state’. She argued for Aboriginal children being removed from their homes, saying that ‘Every one tells me such a measure would be unlawful. My idea is, that it is much more unlawful to take the Country from the Natives without any equivalent, than to give the compensation of blessing their children with civilization’. It was particularly important that children of mixed racial origins should be removed because they were ‘much more vicious than the true Aboriginal, if brought up in a wild state’. She drew parallels between Aboriginal children and children of the urban poor in England, saying that any objections against the children’s conversion should ‘hold equally against ragged schools, and all other means of christianizing any of our fellow creatures’.65 Camfield needed Nightingale’s acknowledgement of her work and engagement with Indigenous people. Here was a metropolitan nurse and statistician who, in Camfield’s view, was glossing over the realities of Camfield’s everyday experience. Once Nightingale’s survey was published, there was further commentary on its contents, both from Camfield and the Bishop of Perth, Mathew Hale. Hale argued that the statistics collected by Nightingale were hardly broad enough to make generalisations about the fate of Aboriginal people in Australia. The fullness of the data collected from Ceylon invited comparisons from Hale. He argued that, having visited there in 1859, it was clear that the Ceylonese people were already civilised enough to ‘derive benefit’ from contact with European civilisation. The Australians, rather, were degraded, and thus were poorly affected by civilisation’s ‘destructive progress’. In this case, as well, there was a tension between local and global understandings of race and civilisation—Hale believed his experience made him more qualified than Nightingale to comment upon the future of Australian Aboriginal people. This draws attention to the way in which racial knowledge was created—those at the local level took exception to the oversimplification of what they saw as an important and contextually specific issue. He was also engaging with ideas of racial hierarchies that saw Aboriginal people as on the lowest rung of civilisation. Camfield took the opportunity to explain to Nightingale that the schools in that colony were situated in a far more complex context than

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Nightingale had indicated. She said that local settlers ‘look upon any money spent upon the Natives as money thrown away’ and that ‘the Colonists as a body cannot be depended upon for carrying out any scheme for the benefit of the Natives’. This, she believed, went some way to explain why there had been so little progress in education in the colony.66 This attitude was reflected in writing in the local press at the time, which highlights just how much Camfield’s opinions ran counter to dominant ideas about Aboriginal people: one writer in the Perth Gazette claimed that the only chance of doing ‘permanent good’ was to remove children into a private home, where they would be ‘taught no reading or writing but kept under an easy discipline, taught such manual labour as may suit their years, and when broken-in sufficiently to be worth their keep, to treat them as parish-apprentices and indenture them to respectable farm settlers…’67 The local government’s lack of interest in, and funding for, widespread Aboriginal education during this period is indicative of more pessimistic beliefs about the power of education to ‘civilise’ and incorporate Aboriginal people into settler society. In their reports, like the letter from Governor Kennedy, and in local newspapers written by settlers, they contributed to an alternative understanding of race—one which would become increasingly hegemonic as the century progressed. Camfield’s desire to be heard was not satisfied in simply replying to Nightingale through the local government. She also wrote directly to the Aborigines Protection Society (APS) in 1864.68 Her letters, dealing with similar subject matter to that covered in her responses to Nightingale, called for greater government involvement in Aboriginal children’s education. She willed the Society to campaign for a law to ‘oblige those natives who are in settled districts to allow their children to come to the schools for a certain time’.69 She was eager to assert that this was not cruel, but rather, a benevolent act in the best interests of Aboriginal children. She believed it was a ‘greater cruelty’ to put Aboriginal people under British laws which they could not comprehend than to educate children where they could be ‘taught their duty to God and their neighbour, and, by the grace of God, accept the salvation purchased for them by our Lord Jesus Christ, and where the parents and friends see them whenever they choose…’70 The letters were printed in the Society’s periodical, the Colonial Intelligencer, which covered the affairs of the Society in the areas where they worked, and published correspondence and reports regarding the treatment of Indigenous people. Thus, this correspondence, using the experience Camfield gained from her school in Western Australia,

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c­ ontributed to a humanitarian body of thought that would be engaged with in both metropolitan and other colonial contexts. The APS’s response to Camfield’s proposal for child removal was to raise ‘grave, if not insuperable objections against it…’71 Camfield argued in a further letter in November 1865 that while British subjects should make the decision about their children’s education themselves, Aboriginal adults were ‘but as babies in comprehending the advantages of education’.72 Thus, this kind of involvement in the life of Aboriginal children and families was warranted. Here Camfield articulated the ultimate paradox in Indigenous education: if Aboriginal adults were like children, what kind of ideas underpinned the education of their children? Aboriginal adults, in her view, did not have the right to make decisions about their children’s education; they did not have the rights over their children that civilised people would. Aboriginal children, however, if removed early enough from their parents, could become civilised. The recognition of this also involved an uncomfortable reckoning with the fact that Aboriginal children would grow into Aboriginal adults. When these educated Aboriginal people came of age it would remain to be seen if they would have access to the liberties of the civilised. Knowledge about schooling and education was being used to contribute to far broader debates about the fate of Indigenous people. Although experiences at the school may have been shaped by local circumstances, Indigenous education was a central way to prove what different races were capable of. In this way, those working at the local level could engage with imperial debates about civilisation, science and ‘racial type’. Camfield’s letters and Nightingale’s survey, although two different genres of writing, indicate how schools can be understood as frontiers of knowledge—these were spaces to reflect on children’s capacity, spaces to teach and train, and places where the reality of the everyday contributed to the production of scientific knowledge that would have far broader implications. They were also spaces to reflect on the nature of knowledge itself. While there might have been good reasons for Nightingale to look for comparative data, those working on the spot were wary of broad claims about the nature of education or Indigenous peoples that didn’t take into account local specificities, expertise and experiences. While Camfield herself was neither a scientist nor a missionary, she believed that her experience in teaching children in her school, introducing them to reading and writing, outdoor work and play, and music lessons, could prove something about the ability of the entire race to undergo a great change. It is also worth emphasising

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that part of the difficulty here was turning a powerfully affectively charged moment of encounter, between often-orphaned children and a teacher, into a series of numbers in Nightingale’s table. How could this new form capture the variety of experiences of the school? Camfield had personal experiences with individual children that she could not overlook in her engagement with Nightingale.

Robert James Mann and the Native Races Included in Nightingale’s survey was information from the Ekukhanyeni school, discussed in Chap. 5, run by Bishop John William Colenso. Ekukhanyeni was one of the schools being funded under Sir George Grey’s scheme for industrial education, but was based in Natal rather than on the Cape frontier. As a school for elites—initially for sons of chiefs—the school combined some limited practical education with a more literary curriculum. There, the survey reported, children were in school for six days a week, with five hours per day devoted to school work and seven to outdoor work.73 While Florence Nightingale’s survey was based on information collected across the colonies, in Natal, there was a different kind of research occurring. As I have written about elsewhere, missionaries often engaged in writing about Indigenous people in ways that they hoped would contribute to knowledge about these groups more generally.74 Dr Robert James Mann’s situation was slightly different. Mann’s scientific background allowed him entry into the colony as an educational ‘expert’. It also afforded him the opportunity to contribute to debates about Indigenous people more broadly, in popular science texts and emigration literature. Colenso invited Mann to work at Ekukhanyeni as the lay principal of the institution. Colenso excitedly reported Mann’s arrival to the SPG in October 1857, explaining Mann’s role, saying he would write textbooks for the pupils which would be translated into Zulu, and conduct a small hospital. Colenso hoped Mann would give some pupils medical training to use locally.75 Mann had a background in education: like Colenso, he had published textbooks that he hoped would make science, particularly astronomy, accessible to the masses.76 Mann positioned himself as part of a growing group of popularisers of science—he wrote prolifically throughout his career in books and periodicals regarding astronomy, biology and health. Mann’s Lessons in General Knowledge, published the year before he left for Natal, was designed both as an elementary reader and as an

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i­ntroduction to general science. The book was wide-ranging, covering descriptions of the natural world, human and animal biology and, finally, included some discussion of reasoning, intellect and education. Mann wrote that great pains have been taken to render these Reading Lessons illustrations of the Author’s idea of what educational writing should be. In a general way, only the simplest words and the plainest construction have been used, and involved that their precise meaning should be pointed out.77

He believed, as Jeff Guy has pointed out, that education could help the lower classes better their circumstances.78 Prior to his arrival in the colony, he espoused a broad view of education, saying that while some forms of education were superior to others, ‘savages’ were not ignorant, but rather, were ‘nature-educated’ men. If given the same education as what he termed ‘civilised’ men, they would be able to achieve the same things.79 This was a similar view to that held by Colenso at the time: he too believed that there were elements of Africans’ culture and background that should be protected, and that they were capable of achieving as well as ‘civilised’ British people in education. In spite of their similar views, Colenso and Mann disagreed on some aspects of education. While Colenso was eager to give the scholars at Ekukhanyeni a broad education—including only limited industrial training in order to fall under Grey’s grant—Mann increasingly favoured industrial education, the position being adopted by Natal’s Lieutenant-Governor, John Scott. Colenso was disparaging of Mann’s approach: writing to the SPG, he reported that Mann had struggled to learn Zulu, and therefore was unable to ‘bring his educational powers, which are considerable, to bear upon the work of this Institution in the way he had hoped’.80 The tensions between the Colensos and Mann and his wife Caroline, were significant enough to be mentioned by Caroline in her biography of her husband: she refers to their time spent at Ekukhanyeni as ‘a period to both of us of ever increasing dissatisfaction’. She believed that the Bishop ‘entertained unpractical ideas of what was desirable or even possible to be done by those he brought around him’.81 These tensions in the everyday workings of the school were another element that Nightingale’s returns were unable to capture. This glimpse of the relationship between Mann and Colenso casts light, perhaps, on why Nightingale received so few responses to her enquiries. The very idea of what education was supposed

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to do for Indigenous people was subject to intense negotiation. With no clear directive from the Colonial Office about how schools should operate, and who should be involved in teaching and curricula, it was no wonder that many of them were affected by local disagreements over the shape of education. From Caroline’s account, it seems that Mann was looking for a new position shortly after arriving in Natal. When John Scott appointed a Select Committee on General Education in the colony in 1858, Mann was appointed the colony’s first Superintendent-General of Education, a position earmarked for him after he met Scott earlier that year. This was two years after Natal separated from the Cape, with its own legislative council. The Committee recommended establishing a teachers’ college, full religious freedom in schools, and regular inspections of all government-aided schools, both European and native. This marked an important point in the development of a state bureaucracy for education in Natal. While in the Cape, the government had long been involved with educational matters, funding and inspecting schools since the earlier nineteenth century, this kind of engagement was new in Natal. Although Mann was not himself a teacher, this formed part of a professionalisation of education inspectorates, in which the government attempted to increase control over schools they funded. Scott praised Mann’s interest in the matter of ‘general education’ and mentioned that his scientific publications rendered him particularly suited to the role as Superintendent of Education. At the same time as his appointment in education, he was also working for the Immigration Board, attempting to describe the colony to potential emigrants from the home country.82 There, he took part in another form of knowledge creation. Mann’s role was to visit all of the European and native schools in the colony, record the numbers of pupils in school, salaries of teachers, and subjects taught according to which principles. The reports from Mann highlight the co-dependence of the government and missionaries regarding education for African children in particular. A Wesleyan missionary commented on his first meeting with Mann, saying that it was important that they should be able to work together with the government inspector in the ‘common cause of Education’. In 1864, when Mann produced his first report on native schools in the colony, there were twenty-eight native schools receiving government aid. These schools educated 1,190 students. Indaleni, Edendale, and Verulam, all Wesleyan industrial stations, each received £200  in aid. When he visited the Wesleyan industrial schools,

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Mann suggested a curriculum for the schools: to teach English, reading, writing and arithmetic to the boys, so that some of them could become successful teachers in smaller branch schools. The industrial schools were run with the cooperation of Governor Scott, and Secretary of Native Affairs, Theophilus Shepstone, who promised to send any boys he could find to the stations and see to it that they would remain there for five years.83 Mann soon became a prominent colonist and figure in the local scientific community. He was vice-president of the Natal Society, arguing for the importance of scientifically recording information about the colony, in a similar vein to Nightingale’s own opinions on the importance of this kind of data collection.84 At the same time as performing his role as a government employee, he used his local context in order to bolster his own reputation and career as an expert on local people and events, and to contribute to scientific knowledge about the colonies. Mann’s writing on the ‘native’ population of Natal is a pertinent example of the ways that educational knowledge fed into broader discussions and debates about racial difference. In content, Mann engaged with contemporary ideas about the intellectual capacity of Africans and debates regarding their civilisation, including regarding the origins of races and their ability to survive in the face of European expansion. Although Mann had been an avid researcher and writer before arriving in the colony, his access to this colonial context allowed him to produce a new kind of knowledge for audiences interested in human difference. Mann wrote a series of articles in the Intellectual Observer in the 1860s in which he drew on his experiences in the colony. The Intellectual Observer: Review of Natural History, Microscopic Research and Recreative Science was a scientific periodical, designed to appeal to a popular audience, published in England between 1862 and 1868, when it was renamed Student, and Intellectual Observer. The introduction to the first volume emphasised the importance of colonial exploration in gaining scientific knowledge. It also referred to the growth of scientific clubs and societies in England, saying that a higher standard of mental and moral culture is the desire of the English people, and the progress of education among the masses tends to refine popular intelligence, and encourage prudence and thrift, and inculcate that wholesome doctrine that God helps those who help themselves.85

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Education was thus central to these publications: intended to reach a broad audience at home, they were educational objects, produced from knowledge gained through, in this case, an educational bureaucracy in the colonies. Mann’s articles in the journal all dealt with the ‘Kaffirs’ (sic) of Natal. In the first article of the series, Mann outlined the history of movement of Africans into Natal (in his opinion, they were refugees), and began to explore what the role of the British government was in their administration.86 He reflected on where the race would end up, engaging with contemporary debates regarding the ‘extermination’ of native peoples. ‘[C]ivilisation and barbarism cannot continue to look into each other’s eyes at close quarters’, he wrote.87 He continued to describe the body type, clothing and temperament of Natal Africans. His second article in the series described his views on the racial origins of Natal Africans. He claimed that Natal Africans had mixed racial origins—with both African  and Arab ancestry.88 This meant that they were capable of civilisation in ways that other African groups were not. Here, Mann followed a particular ethnographic script, what Cohn describes as the ‘historiographic modality’,89 for describing native peoples in their manners and customs, pointing to their origins that could prove something about their educability or civilisation. Mann also used the articles as a space to give some insights into the operation of the native education system in Natal. He noted that the government was not spending adequately on Africans’ education, which meant that the majority of the work was being done by missionaries—if they agreed to teach in English and provide industrial training. He believed that local people were suspicious of missionaries’ intentions, and were more likely to trust the government if they provided schools.90 His own misgivings about Colenso’s mode of mission education likely informed this opinion: while many Africans were suspicious of missionaries’ motives, they were equally reticent about what the government hoped to achieve by educating their children. Mann concluded that, in spite of the natural state of ‘the’ African there being barbaric, he nonetheless had ‘a certain kind of culture and training even in his most savage condition. His education properly begins even before he falls within the sphere of the white man’s operations’.91 Mann observed that the behaviour of old men and young men was different, which he attributed to education: ‘The young men are all of the raw material of barbarism; the old men are all educated! The education of the Kaffir race is talk’. Mann thus recognised the importance of oral tradition to education within African communities. To refer to this way of engaging in

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knowledge dissemination as ‘education’ was an important discursive move—not only did it point to a broad view of education, but it also reminded the reader that Mann’s own position within the government education inspectorate in Natal legitimised his claims. Mann’s view of education was also decidedly gendered—he spoke of men and boys talking to one another, passing over the relationships between women and girls. Mann wondered whether ‘the negro races have not advanced into civilization because they have no literature?’ He believed in the necessity of creating a written version of Zulu language and literature, as even if races received a literature which they had not created themselves, this could still make ‘progress possible and advance permanent’. He was clearly impressed with the children he had met during his time as a missionary teacher, and later as Inspector. He said that African children learnt to read very easily, and were particularly good at mental arithmetic. They showed a ‘very remarkable facility for the acquisition of book-learning’.92 However, in spite of his ideas about a Zulu literature, Mann wondered about whether it was necessary to teach children to read in Indigenous languages at all, given his belief that teaching in English would ‘immediately bring them so much more within the pale of white influences’.93 There were intense contradictions in this form of writing—on the one hand, it described everything that made a particular race unique—history, mental capacity, body type and so on. On the other, it said that this could all be erased if the race was exposed to civilisation and the English language. In spite of his claims about the intellectual capacity of Africans, his writing was suffused with the language that colonists were using at the time to justify industrial training and the use of African labour on public works. He wrote about African labourers, saying that ‘well-ordered and well-­ arranged work … would prove among these people the most certain and most potent civilizer that could be employed in their behalf’.94 Africans should, in his opinion, become an ‘industrious and civilised community, serving the interests and co-operating in the objects of their white and more highly gifted brethren, or their places on colonial ground must become vacant’.95 The phrasing here warrants special attention: the idea that land ‘must become vacant’ covers up the exact ways in which this would occur. In light of this, he hoped that his articles would be read as evidence for ‘what may fairly be hoped for, and as suggestions of what may possibly be done’.96 He had contradicted himself once more, saying, on the one hand, that Africans had intellectual capacity, while on the other, saying that whites were ‘more highly gifted’ than them.

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At the same time as constructing himself as an expert on Natal Africans, Mann was also producing literature encouraging emigration to the colony. This literature, in contrast to the articles printed for the amateur scientific readership of the Intellectual Observer, constructed the local population in a different way. For example, in his Colony of Natal, designed as an emigrant’s guide to the colony, and published in 1860, Mann emphasised that labour was cheap in the colony, but that the native population was naturally ‘disinclined to sustained labour’.97 Good masters, however, were able to get some labour out of their servants if they were willing to put in the hard work and training that the labourers required. Mann noted that young men and boys could often be used as nurses for young children in settler homes, another draw card for emigrants to the colony.98 In the Colony of Natal, Mann eagerly refuted any ideas of the barbarous hordes of violent Zulu people in Natal. He denounced earlier accounts of the colony that had emphasised the danger associated with the local population, instead emphasising their usefulness as labourers and servants. Not to neglect his scientific background, even in a publication of this type, he also included a response to an account that had said that Indigenous people in Africa would suffer the same fate as the ‘Red Man of the West’. This, according to Mann, was ridiculous: ‘The Kafir is not the Red Man of the West, and has scarcely anything in common with him in his constitution. He is about as much like to him as the horse is to the zebra.’99 Mann assured his reader that the ‘Kafirs are indeed particularly fond of money’, and so, labour would be easy to obtain. Rather than emphasising the capacity for book learning and arithmetic, as he would in the Intellectual Observer, Mann constructed the African population as able workers, who would recognise the authority of white masters. Robert and Caroline Mann returned to England in 1866, where he continued to work as an Emigration Agent for Natal, contributing to the colony’s displays in exhibitions and attempting to attract further settlers to the colony. In 1869, he wrote to Sir George Grey, requesting a meeting in London, so they could have a ‘quiet chat’ and do ‘a little comparing of notes, about South African things’.100 He thus remained connected to others interested in race and difference in the colonies. He also stayed involved in scientific writing and societies, becoming a member of the Royal Astronomical, Royal Geographical, Meteorological, and Photographic Societies as well as the Royal Institution.101 Mann’s career in Natal was perhaps not an illustrious one—he was unable to maintain his position as a teacher working with Colenso, and

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found the work of education inspection physically and intellectually taxing. He was unsuited to life in the colonies, and he and Caroline were happy to return to England. However, an entry into this education bureaucracy afforded him a particular kind of access to expertise—he was no longer an amateur scientist, but an individual whose scientific knowledge was legitimised by his government position. His use of his experience in education, coupled with the dissemination of his writing in periodicals for metropolitan public consumption, indicates how education and schools became sites of enquiry in colonial contexts—creating spaces in which theories about civilisation and race could be tested out.

Conclusion Understanding schools as sites of encounter, or frontiers, which were used both to educate children but also to produce knowledge for colonial and metropolitan audiences, indicates how these sites were central to producing knowledge about Indigenous people. They were also places where the nature of knowledge itself was contested. Mann, Camfield and Nightingale were each involved in different kinds of writing. Mann was producing scientific knowledge about racial type. Camfield’s deeply contextual knowledge about Western Australia highlighted an engagement with a form of humanitarian writing that took into account the experiences of individual people on both sides of the colonial divide. Nightingale’s statistics challenged Camfield’s narrative about the individual and the particular. Nightingale’s approach was to collect broad generalisable data. On the other hand, both Mann and Camfield hoped that their local experience would translate into a different kind of knowledge production that positioned the particular as central. Taking seriously the nature of research both about and produced through education highlights the scattered nature of what might constitute a colonial education archive. Neither Mann nor Nightingale were at the time of writing working as educators. Yet, education and schooling remained central to their understandings of the future of Indigenous people, and their ability to produce research that spoke to humanitarian narratives surrounding these groups. Studies that focus too heavily on either governments or missionaries in education provision overlook these diverse sources of information about education, which indicate not only that this was a site for knowledge production and dissemination, but also that educational ideas were travelling across and between colonies.

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The cases in this chapter also show how meanings of race were created and contested. There was not a simple shift from humanitarian, universalist thinking about race towards a scientific discourse that assumed innate difference. Rather, even in the face of pessimism about the future of races, like that which spurred Nightingale’s enquiry into native schools and hospitals, there were humanitarian thinkers who remained committed to the idea of civilisation as attainable to all. Both Camfield and Mann emphasised the importance of the local context and experiences in shaping knowledge about race more broadly. For Camfield this meant writing about her own experience and authority as a teacher; for Mann, this meant writing about Africans in Natal as a mixed-race group with Arab and African origins. The shift away from cultural understandings of race and towards more biological ones, which gained traction after the publication of Darwin’s On The Origin of Species was not linear. There were dissenting voices and individuals ‘talking back’ from the colonies. The cases in this chapter also point to the shifting nature of ideas about education in the mid-nineteenth century. Mann’s background was not in teaching, but in medicine and scientific writing. This was seen as suitable background for his work as superintendent and inspector. For Nightingale’s survey, what became clear was that what constituted education varied across colonies and contexts. Her frustration by the lack of uniformity in statistics and information collection indicates a desire to see a more organised set of information about schools, and guiding principles about what an education for Indigenous people might look like. As a medical doctor and missionary, Mann engaged with both scientific explanations of race and religious and humanitarian arguments about the equality of the races. These seemingly conflicting ideologies underpinned his approach to education in Natal. Florence Nightingale was reliant on her missionary interlocutors, despite being fairly dismissive of their ability to gather factual data. The tensions between humanitarianism and settler colonialism that I have discussed in previous chapters were present for these researchers as well—they engaged in debates about the future of races that at once recognised the capacity for civilisation, the need for humanitarian ‘care’, and the superiority of British culture. Camfield’s experiences of engaging with children, living in her home and at her school, shaped her response to Nightingale. How could the multiplicity of emotional encounters that made up a day in the institution be captured in a broad study like Nightingale’s? Nightingale was also engaged in a particular form of

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humanitarian thinking and writing—she hoped her statistics could ameliorate Indigenous people’s condition. Through this, she relied on the connections to missionaries and humanitarian colonial officials, like Sir George Grey. Colonial knowledge about Indigenous people was thus created in extreme ambivalence between recognition and disavowal: at the same time as recognising something innately ‘wrong’ or in need of change in Indigenous people, the researchers discussed here also wanted to acknowledge and take into account the local circumstances under discussion. Both Mann and Camfield, in different ways, wanted the particularity of the local to be recognised. They recorded what made the people they lived and worked with unique. However, they did this to indicate how this difference could be managed, and ultimately, erased. That which they were so eager to classify, write down and acknowledge about their situation was also that which they hoped could be written out of Indigenous people’s futures.

Notes 1. Florence Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals (London: n.p., 1863). 2. Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 11. 3. Penelope Edmonds, Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 5. 4. Rebecca Swartz, ‘Educating Emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–65’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18 (2017), n.p. 5. Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularisers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 296–297. 6. Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), 88. 7. Alan Lester, ‘Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century’, in Missions and Empire, ed. by Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 261–284, 264. 8. Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800–2000 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000), 70. 9. Sadiah Qureshi, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthropology in Nineteenth Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 220.

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10. Damon Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 152. 11. Tiffany Shellam, “‘A Mystery to the Medical World”: Florence Nightingale, Rosendo Salvado and the Risk of Civilisation’, History Australia, 9 (2012), 109–134. 12. Lynn McDonald (ed.), Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Volume 6 of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004), 163. See Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 3. 13. See Shellam, “‘A Mystery’”. 14. Ibid., 117. 15. Nightingale to Grey, 16.4.1860, Grey Collection, Auckland Public Library, New Zealand (hereafter GL) GL/N8.2. 16. Ibid. 17. Nightingale to Grey, 26.04.1860, GL/N8.3. 18. Nightingale to Grey, 16.04.1860, GL/N8.2. 19. Alan Lester, ‘Settler Colonialism, George Grey and the Politics of Ethnography’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34 (2016), 492–507. 20. She was also helped by ‘British sanitation and public health experts, John Sutherland, William Farr and Edwin Chadwick’. Shellam, ‘“A Mystery”’, 118. Nightingale’s correspondence with Chadwick shows another connection between metropolitan reforms in education and those in colonial contexts. See McDonald, Florence Nightingale, 165. 21. Grey to Nightingale, 13.04.1860, British library manuscripts collection (hereafter BL MS) BL MS 45797, ff. 108–109. 22. Nightingale to Grey, 12.04.1860, GL/N8.1. 23. Grey to Nightingale, 27.04.1860, BL MS 45797, ff. 110–114. As Salesa shows, Grey was involved with education projects for ‘half-caste’ children in New Zealand, and this most likely led to his promotion of this line of enquiry. Salesa, Racial Crossings, 118. 24. Nightingale to Newcastle, 22.05.1860, University of Nottingham Nec 10,  937, Newcastle Collection, as quoted in McDonald, Florence Nightingale, 189–190. 25. Nightingale had hoped to get information from the Cape Colony, New Zealand and the other Australian colonies, but her surveys were not returned. Sir George Grey also suggested she send returns to the South Sea Islands, where there were over 800 schools in operation. See Nightingale to Newcastle, 15.06.1860, from a typed copy of a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, State Library of New South Wales 60/Q8107, in McDonald, Florence Nightingale, 191. See Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, Appendix 1, 20–26. 26. Nightingale to Grey, 16.04.1860, GL/N8.2.

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27. Ibid. 28. Shellam, ‘“A Mystery”’, 118. 29. Zoë Laidlaw, Colonial Connections 1815–1845: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 2005), 189. 30. Ibid., 169. 31. U. Kalpagam, ‘The Colonial State and Statistical Knowledge’, History of the Human Sciences, 13 (2000), 37–55, 43. 32. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd edn (London and New York: Free Association Books, 1999), 6. 33. Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 3. Nightingale also referred to the results of the survey as ‘scrofulous’ in a letter to William Farr. See Nightingale to Farr, 28.04.1860, quoted in McDonald, Florence Nightingale, 164. 34. Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 3. 35. Nightingale to Newcastle, 15.06.1860, in McDonald, Florence Nightingale, 191. 36. Nightingale to Grey, 28.07.1863, GL/N8.4. 37. Ibid. 38. I have not been able to locate the circular itself, but it is mentioned in Scott to Newcastle, 01.05.1861, The National Archives at Kew, CO 179/58. Hereafter all CO sources are from TNA. 39. Shellam, ‘“A Mystery”’, 110. Salvado to Newcastle, 19.02.1864, CO 18/135. 40. Nightingale to Fortescue, 13.07.1861, CO 179/62. 41. See Head to Newcastle, 04.06.1861, CO 42/627, No. 37. The original returns and reports were forwarded to Nightingale and do not appear in the Colonial Office correspondence. 42. Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 8. 43. Ibid., 17. 44. Nightingale to Chadwick, 16.02.1861, BL Add Ms 45770 f221, and Chadwick to Nightingale, 29.03.1861, BL Add Ms 45770 f222. 45. Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 13. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., 8. 48. A measles epidemic in 1861 contributed to the high mortality rates amongst the Aboriginal population. Tiffany Shellam, ‘“On My Ground”: Indigenous Farmers at New Norcia 1860s–1900s’, in Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism: Land Holding, Loss and Survival in an Interconnected World, ed. by Zoë Laidlaw and Alan Lester (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 62–85, 67. 49. Florence Nightingale, ‘Note on the Aboriginal Races of Australia: A Paper read at the Annual meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, held at York, September 1864’ (London: Emily Faithfull, 1865).

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50. See Lawrence Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) on the Association. 51. Tim Rowse and Tiffany Shellam, ‘The Colonial Emergence of a Statistical Imaginary’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 55 (2013), 922–954, 927. 52. Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics, 19–20. 53. Rowse and Shellam, ‘The Colonial Emergence’, 953. 54. Ibid., 928. 55. Nightingale to Farr, 13.09.1862, BL Add MSS 43399 f77. 56. I have written about Anne Camfield and her relationship with a particular pupil, Bessy Flower, in Swartz, ‘Educating Emotions’. I have also written about this school in Rebecca Swartz, ‘Civilisation and Colonial Education: Natal and Western Australia in the 1860s in Comparative Perspective’, History of Education, 47 (2018), 368–383. 57. Kennedy to Newcastle, 24.12.1860, CO 18/114, No. 130. 58. Memo from Camfield in ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Anne Camfield, ‘The Annesfield Native Institution: A sketch of its history and present condition 1868’, Information Respecting the habits and customs of the Aboriginal inhabitants of WA, compiled from various sources: Presented to the Legislative Council by His Excellency’s Command (Perth: Richard Peter, Government Printer, 1871), WASRO, Con.1067 1871/002, 23. 62. On this aspect, see Swartz, ‘Civilisation and Colonial Education’. 63. Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 7. 64. Camfield to Nightingale, 26.12.1863, Encl. 2 in Hampton to Newcastle, 24.03.1864, CO 18/135, No. 34. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Laicus, ‘Thoughts about Natives: Part 2’, Perth Gazette, 24.11.1865. 68. Swartz, ‘Civilisation and Colonial Education’, 372–376. 69. The APS was a metropolitan based humanitarian lobby group that advocated for the rights of Indigenous people in different parts of the empire. See Zoë Laidlaw, ‘Heathens, Slaves and Aborigines: Thomas Hodgkin’s Critique of Missions and Anti-Slavery’, History Workshop Journal, 64 (2007), 133–161, and James Heartfield, The Aborigines Protection Society: Humanitarian Imperialism in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa and the Congo, 1836–1909 (London: C. Hurst and Co, 2011) on the APS. 70. Camfield to Fowler, 03.08.1864, Colonial Intelligencer or Aborigines’ Friend (London: Published by the APS, January 1863–December 1864), 386. 71. Fowler’s response, ibid. 72. Camfield to Fowler, 01.11.1865, in ibid., 489. 73. Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 31.

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74. Swartz, ‘Civilisation and Colonial Education’. 75. Colenso to SPG, 8 October 1857, SPG Collection, Rhodes House Library [hereafter RHL], Oxford, D8. 76. Henry Trueman Wright Wood, ‘Mann, Robert James’, in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, ed. by Lee Sidney, 36 (London: Smith, Elder & Co), n.p. 77. Robert James Mann, Lessons in General Knowledge: An Elementary Reading Book (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856), vi. 78. Jeff Guy, ‘Imifanekiso: An Introduction to the Photographic Portraits of Dr R.J. Mann’, Safundi, 15 (2014), 1–24, 2. 79. Mann, Lessons, 270–271. 80. Colenso to SPG, 1.04.1859, D8, RHL. 81. Caroline Mann, A Sketch of the Life of Robert James Mann. Printed for private circulation (London: Edward Stanford Printers, 1888), 48–49. 82. Ibid., 52. 83. Natal Educational Return for 1864, CO 183/15. 84. Natal Witness, 10.09.1858, 3. 85. Shirley Hibberd, ‘The Work of the Year’, Intellectual Observer, 1 (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1862), 9. 86. Here, Mann was engaging with contemporary theories regarding Natal Africans. Colonists promoted the idea that the majority of Africans in Natal had arrived there recently as a result of the mfecane. 87. Robert James Mann, ‘The Black Population of the British colony of Natal, South Africa’, Intellectual Observer, 10 (1867), 184–193, 189. 88. Guy, ‘Imifanekiso’, 12. See Robert James Mann, ‘Wild Kaffir Life and Wild Kaffir Intelligence’, Intellectual Observer, 10 (1867), 289–297. 89. Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 5–6. 90. Robert James Mann, ‘Kaffir Promise and Capability’, Intellectual Observer, 10 (1867), 428–440, 435. 91. Mann, ‘The Black Population’, 193. 92. Mann, ‘Kaffir Promise’, 432. 93. Ibid., 433. 94. Ibid., 431. 95. Ibid., 440. 96. Ibid. 97. Robert James Mann, The Colony of Natal: An Account of the Characteristics and Capabilities of this British Dependency (London: Jerrold and Sons, 1859), 188. Mann used different spellings of Kafir/Kaffir (sic) in different publications. 98. Ibid., 210. 99. Ibid., 217. 100. Mann to Grey, 12.06.1869, MSB 223 3 (112), Grey collection, SAL. 101. Mann, A Sketch of the Life, 87.

CHAPTER 7

Education and Obligation: Compulsory Schooling, Childhood and the Family

In 1876, Frank Chesson, Secretary of the Aborigines’ Protection Society, gave a speech to a meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Examining the role of the local and imperial government in ‘native’ education, he asked, ‘Are we prepared to become the educators of these native populations?—to recognize the obligation imposed upon us as a nation to raise them in the social scale?’ Complaining that there was no comprehensive education scheme under imperial, or local, authority, he argued that the colonial government should intervene. In fact, the metropolitan context provided a good object lesson for why more government involvement in education was needed: was it not the role of the government in the colonies to ‘to place ourselves in relation to them [Indigenous people] in a position not unlike that which, since the Elementary Education Act was passed, we have occupied towards the ignorant and destitute portions of our own countrymen?’ If this intervention was warranted to ‘turn the uncultivated wilds of English ignorance into fertile pastures of knowledge’, then surely the same should be applied to the ‘untamed children of nature, who are now expected to obey laws which they do not understand, and to present an example of disciplined obedience which it is not always possible to enforce in civilised countries’.1 Chesson surveyed education in South Australia, Queensland, Mauritius, New Zealand, Canada and the Southern African colonies, and suggested that ‘one of our chief objects should be to secure control over the children © The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_7

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at the most impressionable age, and to retain that control long enough to make a relapse into barbarism difficult, if not impossible’.2 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the relationship of the family to the state was being renegotiated, with significant impact on education policy. Missionaries and government alike worried about the effects of the family home on children’s education, whether they were destitute children in London, or mixed race, Indigenous, or (poor) white children in the colonies. The role of the state in ‘protecting’ children from the contamination of their families became increasingly pronounced. By the 1870s, the idea of the government taking an active role in the life of the family was more common. This translated into policies that sought to educate all children in the metropolitan context. In colonial contexts, however, it often resulted in different policies for white and Indigenous children respectively. However, increased government involvement in education often occurred in a hesitant way: rather than a linear development towards full government control, it met with resistance from settlers, missionaries and Indigenous parents, as they expressed concern over what government involvement would mean for the content and structure of education systems. In light of the strong religious background of many schools in both metropole and colonies, parents and teachers worried about what message a ‘secular’ education might give their children. In spite of some misgivings, however, a series of settler colonies put versions of the 1870 Education Act (also known as the Forster Act) into place in the 1870s. Generally, this legislation was understood to apply to white children.3 For Indigenous children, increased government involvement in family life did not necessarily translate to more education being provided. Although some missionaries discussed the possibility of compulsory education  for Indigenous children, for example in the Cape colony, this was not a uniform aim, many believing that education for white children should be made compulsory first.4 Rather, the decade saw a series of measures passed that sought to control the interracial mixing of children in schools, and to ‘manage’ Indigenous families. In Australia, child removal was more often accepted as the best policy for Aboriginal children, whose parents were constructed as morally corrupting. In Natal, there were fears about the purity of the white race, and therefore, there was a drive towards segregation in government schools. These arguments followed similar lines to those of compulsory education for white children: that a benevolent government knew what was best for children and should take r­ esponsibility for their moral and

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intellectual training. However, the outcomes of these policies constructed Indigenous families as inherently immoral, contaminating and unable to care for children. Colonial governments, in this case, constructed themselves as ‘caregivers’ to vulnerable or undesirable parts of their populations. There were two important developments that formed the backdrop for these changes. First, ideas about race were changing. As I have shown in previous chapters, there was a shift towards more fixed ideas about race in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although this occurred gradually, partially and hesitantly, it impacted on ideas about what could, and should, be done with Indigenous people’s education. At the same time, there was a new understanding of children and childhood. While earlier in the century, their needs were seen as intimately tied to their families, they began to be seen as young citizens, who might require a different kind of life to what their parents wished for them. With this came the idea that children should be educated in specialised institutions during particular years of their lives and should not be subjected to harsh labour. When these two ideas—those of racial fixity and those of childhood as a distinct life phase—interacted with each other in the settler colonies, racial differences were entrenched through policies designed to protect and educate children. This chapter examines increased government involvement in education using different scales and sources. First, I look at broad sets of changes across the British Empire. In Chap. 2, I showed how educational change occurred in Britain and the West Indies simultaneously in the 1830s. This chapter picks up the British case once again and shows how state intervention in education increased in the decades up to the 1870s. I first discuss the 1857 Industrial Schools Act and then the 1870 Elementary Education Act. The provision of the Elementary Education Act had a significant impact on educational policy across the British Empire, and indeed, shifted thinking about the government’s right to intervene in education. In the second part of the chapter, I focus on legislative change in Western Australia. I approach the Industrial Schools Act as a way into understanding changing conceptions of race, government responsibility, childhood and the family there.5 This legislation was based on the belief that if Aboriginal children could be removed from the contamination of their parents early enough, they could be assimilated into white, settler society. I then discuss a local case study in Natal. Reading the 1874 Industrial Schools Act alongside the case of St Helenian children’s exclusion from

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schools in Natal highlights parallel thinking about race, childhood and education in Natal and Western Australia. While legislation about industrial schools and a local case of a migrant population’s exclusion from schools might not seem like natural points of comparison, reading them together elucidates common sets of anxieties about race and education in the colonies under discussion. The chapter shows that comparative histories are useful in illustrating connections between places and experiences that might, on first impression, seem quite different.6 Indeed, by drawing comparisons between both scales and places, and using different source material, it identifies unexpected points of congruence between the cases. Ideas of compulsion and obligation underlined these changes in education. A moral, benevolent and humanitarian government was obliged to care for children as the most vulnerable members of society, and good parents were obliged to send their children to school. If parents were perceived as unable to conform to these obligations, the government was increasingly able to compel these changes, legitimated by legislative changes. As Ann Stoler has argued, ‘Children were seen to be particularly susceptible to degraded environments, and it is no accident that colonial policymakers looked to upbringing and education, to the placement of servant quarters, and thus to the quotidian social ecology of children’s lives’.7 In the case of education, the twin poles of care and control informed educational changes in the second half of the nineteenth century—the government needed to control children until their parents were able to adequately care for them themselves. On the other side of it were ideas about the permeability of childhood, and the fact that, as Nikolas Rose puts it, ‘the child—as an idea and a target—has become inextricably connected to the aspirations of authorities’.8 Children’s progress was connected to the future of the nation, but was also seen as a reflection of the power of the state. This control/coercion/care ideology was also prevalent in Aboriginal protection schemes in the empire, and in discussions about compulsory education in Britain and the colonies.

Parents, Children and Education in Britain and the Empire Between 1850 and 1870, when the Elementary Education Act was passed in Britain, allowing the state to run elementary schools and extending their power to compel children’s attendance, five royal commissions i­ nvestigated the state of education in Britain. These commissions examined education

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from primary to tertiary levels, and for all social classes.9 By the 1870s, ideas about the need to provide age-specific education to children, and to make progress while they were young, away from their families, were increasingly influential.10 It was a new phase of thinking about the separation between adults and children, and the concept of a parent having the final say in a child’s education was shifting. The 1857 Industrial Schools Act was the first legislation specifically for industrial schools in England.11 Although industrial schools were already in operation, funded by private charities, the government was now involved in their funding and administration. These schools provided residential industrial training for children of both sexes, aged seven to fourteen.12 They were promoted as a way of reforming criminal children, but did not require children to have committed a crime in order for them to attend. Magistrates were permitted to send children believed to be ‘vagrant’ to industrial schools, and after an 1861 amendment of the Act, this category was extended to include children under fourteen found begging, those who were homeless or in the company of thieves, children under twelve who had committed a crime, and ‘children under fourteen whose parent (or parents) was unable to control him or her’.13 Industrial schools were seen as essential to solving child criminality and vagrancy by ‘removing children from contaminating environments before they began a life of crime, and raising them instead to be wholesome members of society’.14 In other words, the schools were useful both in reforming children who had actually committed crimes, as well as those who could, by virtue of their poor parentage or background, go on to commit these acts.15 Children were inherently vulnerable and easily influenced. The state could use these traits to mould moral citizens. The industrial schools legislation, while heavily contested because of the role of the state in its implementation, did pave the way for increased government involvement in the lives of children. The state was now an active player in child protection and education was no longer seen as a privilege for the few. Parents were not necessarily trustworthy guardians of future citizens. The legislation highlights the ambiguity of policies for child protection—as Goldman writes of the reformists behind the legislation, a ‘mixture of sympathy and coercion was … characteristic of the movement’.16 The Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children, in 1861, was influential in the creation of a new category of children in English law: those ‘in need of care and protection’.17 17,783 children ended up in industrial schools between 1857 and 1875.18 The

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industrial schools system gave the state a right to act in loco parentis when parents were seen to be failing their children.19 The element of compulsion was significant: that children could be removed from their family by the law marked a change in the relationship of the individual to the state, and indeed, of the state’s relationship to the family.20 Poor children, in particular, were understood through a discourse of ‘rescue, reform and reclamation’.21 The element of child removal was not easily resolved by the 1861 Select Committee. Evidence to the committee included different opinions on the removal of poor children from their parents, with some saying that removing children from ‘vicious parents’ would be good for children and others disagreeing with it as a general rule.22 However, although ideas about the contamination of children by immoral parents and families existed in Britain, child removals were not widespread in practice. After the 1860s, metropolitan and colonial practice diverged when it came to removing children from their families: the practice of removing children from their families in Britain was small-scale and short-lived in comparison to Indigenous child removal in the Australian (and Canadian) contexts. By the beginning of the twentieth century in Britain, there was ‘a new era of child protection, and the emphasis was on an autonomous family unit free from state interference’.23 As Catherine Hall argues, ‘Working-class Britons were not thought to be the same as Aboriginal or African peoples, even though a similar language might sometimes be used to describe them’.24 An awareness of the ways in which these discourses informed each other suggests, as Shurlee Swain argues, ‘parallel motivation’ on behalf of reformers and missionaries in Britain and the colonies, when they saw ‘what they interpreted as indifference on the part of the peoples they had come to “save”, turned their attention to the “innocent/malleable” children’.25 The 1870 Elementary Education Act compelled children aged five to twelve to attend schools if they lived in a school-board district and, in 1880, this was extended to make education compulsory for all children of this age group.26 Industrialisation in Britain and the improvement of factory infrastructure decreased the demand for child labour, which meant that by the time that this legislation was passed, many working-class children were already in school, making compulsory education an attainable goal.27 Legislators pointed to superior economic productivity in America and Germany, where education was already free and secular, and argued that extending education in Britain could do the same for industry’s prosperity there.28

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The 1870 Education Act applied to all children, not only those in poor or working-class families. However, the legislation was seen as particularly useful for the latter groups. In the context of rapid social, political and cultural change, children were increasingly seen as ‘a national asset; a source of raw material’ to be used for the prosperity of the nation at large.29 The Committee of Council on Education in 1869 was concerned that working-class parents did not value their children’s education.30 As I showed in Chap. 2, while education was seen as a way of controlling the working classes, there was also a fear that, once educated, they would reject menial labour. Sanderson has identified this central ‘dilemma’ in discussions of compulsory education in England: ‘whether to deny education to the poor and so avoid trouble, or whether to provide education in the hope that it would serve as an agency of social control’.31 Norman Etherington highlights similar concerns in the British imperial context. White settlers proclaimed that Indigenous people would not find literary education useful, while at the same time saying that if they were given education, they would ‘imbibe doctrines of equality, demand equal rights, and foment insurrections’.32 There were similar fears about slaves and, later, emancipated people, in the West Indies. The provision of education, therefore, needed to be carefully managed to ensure that it taught the future workforce, loyal citizens, and subjects, the correct thing. For their part, working-class parents were often wary of the idea of free tuition and some rejected the idea of state intervention in their children’s education.33 Some feared the loss of income from children having to forego their labour. Privately funded schools, despite being more expensive, were popular amongst working-class parents.34 This significantly affected the numbers of children in state-aided schools by 1870. As Forster reported, only two-fifths of working-class children between the ages of six and ten were attending school by 1870. This amounted to seven hundred thousand in government education, as opposed to around a million who were not in state-aided schools.35 At the same time, there were notable political changes, both in Britain and the colonies, that impacted on conceptions of education and childhood. The 1867 Reform Act in Britain gave the vote to more men than had ever been represented before, fundamentally altering the idea of political citizenship.36 As Hall argues, between 1865 and 1868, ‘different notions of citizen and subject were constituted, notions that were not formally incorporated into the act but that framed it in such a way as to demarcate some of the different boundaries of nation and

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empire, citizen and subject’.37 The Reform Act passed in a context of ‘continuing anxiety about increases in crime, pauperism and industrial and school unrest, and the fear these would culminate in revolution’.38 The changes in metropolitan education legislation in the 1870s and 1880s addressed some of these anxieties. An educated population was far better suited to this new notion of citizenship. William Edward Forster, whose name was given to the Act, vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education, connected the need to provide compulsory education for working people with political change in Britain, and indeed, with the country’s status as a European power: To its honour, Parliament has lately decided that England shall in future be governed by popular government. I am one of those who would not wait until the people were educated before I would trust them with political power. If we had thus waited we might have waited long for education; but now that we have given them political power we must not wait any longer to give them education. There are questions demanding answers, problems which must be solved, which ignorant constituencies are ill-fitted to solve. Upon this speedy provision of education depends also our national power. Civilized communities throughout the world are massing themselves together, each mass being measured by its force; and if we are to hold our position among men of our own race or among the nations of the world we must make up the smallness of our numbers by increasing the intellectual force of the individual.39

Changes in the metropolitan context were matched by changing ideas about childhood, education and the role of the state in the life of the family in different parts of the British Empire. These ideas moved between metropolitan and colonial contexts in both directions.40 As Russell Smandych and Anne McGillivray point out in the Canadian context, efforts to reform Aboriginal children in the second part of the nineteenth century were ‘closely related to contemporaneous efforts of European “child-savers” to introduce new methods of childhood management for the “normalization” of European children, especially the urban poor’.41 The nineteenth century saw remarkable changes to conceptions of children and childhood: there was a growing belief that children developed through the stages of progress, arriving at a civilised, and adult, state.42 This was particularly potent when coupled with biological understandings of race. Children were seen as particularly vulnerable to contamination from people of different races or classes, or even from their own families.

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The ‘failure’ of many earlier attempts to civilise Indigenous people in different parts of the empire was seen as tied to innate racial difference. As previous chapters showed, by the mid-nineteenth century, ‘scientific’ ideas about race became increasingly influential in both government and missionary circles. Evolutionary theory was used to promote the idea that races were fixed and could be ranked on hierarchical scales of civilisation.43 The dislocation of Indigenous children from their families, whether through child removal or through day schooling, was based on the belief that they were in need of paternalistic care. Their uncivilised parents were unable to render themselves civilised adults, and therefore had no business raising their children, who would undoubtedly be tainted by their parents’ barbarism. These shifting beliefs resulted in intense disruption of Indigenous families. There was a fundamental contradiction underlying this thinking, however. While Indigenous children were believed to be better off in the care of a civilising settler or state, the idea of progress through the life stages towards adulthood did not apply equally to Indigenous people, who were often understood and described as perpetual children.44 A discourse in which Indigenous people were positioned as children could justify imperial rule and construct colonial governments, teachers and missionaries as protective and caring parents.45 Dr Henry Callaway, missionary in Natal, argued that African adults were best understood as ‘minors’ in need of protection.46 Anne Camfield, teacher at Annesfield in Western Australia, believed that sending Aboriginal children to institutions was essential because their parents did not understand the use of education. She claimed that ‘The Adult Natives are like children, they do not consider the future’.47 The idea of the potential for the eventual civilisation of the colonised was in contradiction to the growing popular conception of racial immutability. As Crawford points out, sometimes, entire races were constructed as in their infancy—waiting to progress to a civilised state.48 In other words, educating Indigenous children was potentially futile if Indigenous adults would remain children. Education suited to these races would keep them in a childlike state. Industrial education, which was seen to train the body over the mind, would reinforce this. Nonetheless, the two ideas often existed side by side, even where biological understandings of race were increasingly dominant. It is also worth noting that children more generally, Indigenous and settler, were often conceptualised as savages, who would grow into a civilised, adult state.49

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In the case of Indigenous children, therefore, there were layers of contradictions about their ‘progress’ that were shaped by race, age, gender and the colonial context. In the 1870s, a number of British settler colonies updated their education legislation. Many had existing education policies, but the 1870s saw widespread systematisation of the education policy, and in particular, the encouragement of compulsory education for children, usually from the age of six or seven, to fourteen. These Acts often did not specify which race they applied to but were  often understood to apply only to white children. Education became compulsory in Tasmania (1868), Queensland (1870), Western Australia (1871), Victoria (1872), South Australia (1875), New Zealand (1877), New South Wales (1880), Ontario (1871), British Columbia (1873), Prince Edward Island (1877) and Nova Scotia (1883). These colonies were concerned with the education of the settler population, particularly in light of growing colonial nationalism in this period. Education was an important apparatus in social engineering, and educating in the correct way, by instilling middle class, English values, was central to setting white children apart from Indigenous populations. There were similar aspirations here to the concerns for education after the Reform Act in Britain: with growing political sovereignty, there were concerns over the ability of settler children to be informed citizens. It is worth mentioning that there was a significant divergence between the New Zealand legislation and that of other colonies at this point: after the New Zealand Education Act passed in 1877, there was a rapid increase in numbers of Maori children in the national schools system. The policy in New Zealand was to keep Maori children in separate schools until their English language skills were adequate for them to be transferred to a government school.50 Western Australia passed its Education Act in 1871, leading to increased state involvement in education. Although the Act referred to education for ‘the people’ of the colony, this was never taken to include the Aboriginal population. As the Bishop of Perth, Matthew Hale, argued in 1870: A great change is coming over peoples’ minds at home in regard to compulsory education, and the minds of the people of England were becoming reconciled to the expediency of it. Compulsory education would in due course seem highly expedient here. It must, however, first be considered in relation to the children of the white population. Then it will, there is little doubt, be extended, as far as may be practicable, to the coloured race, when we may hope that the misery and degradation of these poor children will cease.51

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Hale did not want Aboriginal and white children to be educated together and thought Aboriginal education should be delayed until it was ‘practical’ to provide it.52 The phrase ‘as far as may be practicable’ is telling: it turned Aboriginal education into a matter of practicality, and reduced the government’s responsibility for providing this resource, rendering it, to some degree, optional. One MP argued that it was the responsibility of the Protestant government to provide education for Aboriginal people. Another, Mr Marmion, who went on to be a member of the Central Board of Education, stated that he would however deprecate any system of training which simply had in view to teach the natives to read and write, because however desirable that was, it was much better to improve their moral tone, so to speak, by inuring in them habits of industry, than attempting to over-educate them.53

He went on to say that the best thing to do would be to ‘see them so trained that they would become working and useful members of society’.54 The discussions surrounding the passing of the Western Australian Act in Legislative Council raised concerns about the role of religious bodies in the funding and management of schools, particularly about providing ‘secular’ education to settler children.55 Settlers argued it favoured Catholic over Protestant schools, because the governor at the time, Frederick Weld, was Catholic.56 The number of white children in schools in Western Australia did increase as a result of the new legislation, but in 1881, some districts still reported that just over half of white children aged six to fourteen were in school. The compulsory attendance clause was not pursued with much force.57 The significance of this legislation was not in its enactment, but rather, in the positioning of the state as active participants in family life. Moreover, the legislation, far from being ‘colour-blind’, actually worked to entrench the separation of children in schools, according to their race. Notably absent from the list of colonies passing education laws during this period are the African colonies, as well as the West Indies, all of which had significant Indigenous, migrant and slave descendent populations. In many African colonies, education was left largely to mission bodies, supported by the state to differing degrees, up until the 1930s.58 In South Africa, the provision of free, secular education for whites was discussed around this time, but not enforced. In the Cape, from the 1860s onwards, there was growing concern over the education of white

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children and, in particular, of the poor white population living in the interior of the colony. Education could civilise the white child, and conversely, a lack of education would see poor white children grow up in a similar way to the African population surrounding them. Sarah Duff posits that elementary education was not made compulsory at this time for a number of reasons, which included the rural preponderance of the white population at the Cape, whose lifestyle was not compatible with compulsory education.59 In 1878, 5,000 of the 21,000 white children who were enrolled in the colony’s schools were attending mission schools that were designed for the use of African children.60 However, the Cape Department of Education did not want to interfere in the relationship between parents and children, and efforts to do so were resented.61 Only in 1905 would the Cape School Board Act make education compulsory for all white children aged seven to fourteen. While the Act encouraged African and coloured parents to send their children to school, their education was not compulsory. When South Africa became a Union in 1910, education became compulsory for all children, although attendance was still not enforced.62 In Natal, discussions about compulsory education took place, but it was rejected for similar reasons to those raised in the Cape. Natal Superintendent of Education, T.  Warwick Brooks, argued in 1871 that ‘the example of England should be followed here for the present, that is to say, that the Government should support denominational, local, and private schools, provided their management is in conformity with the standard and rules laid down by Government’.63 The press picked up on the discussions about compulsory education in England, but raised concerns about extending state compulsion in Natal, saying a ‘man would feel a certain amount of degradation in allowing his children to be educated at the public cost’.64 The same writer, however, worried about the uneducated children in the colony, saying that without education, the boys would become ‘thiefs (sic) and murderers’ and the girls prostitutes.65 The editor of the Natal Witness, writing about compulsory education in England, wrote that the 1870 Act proved that the ‘State is bound to look after the health of the community, whether physical, moral, or intellectual, and remove every obstacle which is in the way of improvement’.66 One member of the Legislative Council, Mr Barter, drew attention to the fact that education for Europeans would sharpen class solidarity—that if (white) children of different classes learnt together, they would overcome their differences. This was particularly important in a colony where there

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was such a large, and perceived to be threatening, Indigenous population.67 An Education Act was passed in Natal in 1877 to constitute the Council of Education to report on primary and secondary school matters in the colony. However, in spite of this legislation, it remained optional for children to attend school, which meant that in 1898, only a fifth of the European children in the colony were attending schools.68 The changing education legislation in Britain had a significant impact on legislation passed in the British settler colonies. Educational legislation in Britain was not simply transported to the colonies, unchanged. The local contexts of colonies, in which there were either large Indigenous populations, or the rural nature of the white population, affected the development of compulsory education in this decade. Between the 1830s and 1870s, two major changes impacted on education policy and practices in the colonies. Firstly, there were shifts in understandings of children and childhood. Children’s development was more often seen as an arena for state intervention. Secondly, attitudes towards race became increasingly (although not exclusively) rigid. When combined, I argue below, these two beliefs resulted in segregation of education being pursued more persistently in the settler colonies. Moreover, differential access to education entrenched perceived racial differences. Ideas about education and state intervention during childhood circulated through different parts of the British Empire. It is with these ideas about the changing role of the government regarding education that I now turn to the Industrial Schools Act Western Australia.

The Industrial Schools Act in Western Australia When the 1874 Industrial Schools Act passed in Western Australia, it was based on understandings of race, childhood, education and civilisation that had been elaborated in the Western Australian, the metropolitan, and other colonial contexts, during the nineteenth century. The perceived inability of Aboriginal parents to care correctly for their children was central to the removal of children from Aboriginal families. The legislation, which attempted to control the contact between Aboriginal children and their families, was based on ideas about Aboriginal people that assumed that ‘progress’ for Aboriginal children was possible but limited. The idea that teaching Aboriginal adults was ‘perfectly hopeless’ made interventions in the lives of children even more urgent.69

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Two important sets of changes in Western Australia affected the passing of the Industrial Schools Act, and the inclusion of Aboriginal people in it. First, there was increased awareness of educational issues in general after the passing of the 1871 Elementary Education Act. The colony achieved representative government in 1870, giving it a Legislative Council of eighteen members: the colonial secretary, surveyor-general and attorney-­ general, three members who the governor nominated, and twelve popularly elected members.70 The question of education occupied some of the earliest meetings of the Legislative Council, as members debated the status of Catholic education.71 While the 1871 Elementary Education Act, as I showed above, did not explicitly exclude Aboriginal people from its provision, it was generally accepted that the law did not apply to Aboriginal people. However, the Act drew attention to the role of the state in education provision. Second, there were ongoing interventions in the treatment of Aboriginal people during Frederick Weld’s governorship, between 1869 and 1875. He vocally condemned settler violence towards Aboriginal people. For example, he intervened in a famous case in which Justice of the Peace and settler, Cleve Lockier Burges, shot and killed two Aboriginal men. While Weld wanted him prosecuted for the crime, the police magistrate and prominent colonist, Edward Landor, argued the evidence in the case was insufficient. Weld ‘interfered’ in the judicial process, and had Landor suspended on the grounds that he had been partial in the case by not convicting Burges of murder. Weld compared his involvement in this case to that of Governor George Gipps, who had faced similar opposition when prosecuting settlers for murders during the Myall Creek massacre in 1838. ‘In comparing his treatment of the Burges case to Gipps’ treatment of the Myall Creek case’, Nettelbeck argues, ‘Weld was appealing to an era when humanitarian discourse had driven colonial policy’.72 As Weld explained to Catholic missionary Bishop Rosendo Salvado, he saw himself as ‘defending the weak against oppression which is of far more importance than myself’.73 He had also been a member of Council in New Zealand, then Minister of Native Affairs there from 1860 to 1861, and Premier from 1864 to 1865.74 Thus, Weld would have been familiar with New Zealand’s legislation for Maori education, and indeed, Governor George Grey’s policies for industrial education. Weld wanted to see Maori people incorporated into the Legislature and suggested to Grey that ‘native chiefs [be recognised] as a kind of constitutional assembly’. Weld was concerned about native affairs in New Zealand, telling Grey that ‘these natives are

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much underrated’.75 Weld’s experience during this period of war in New Zealand affected the way he addressed the treatment of Aboriginal people in Western Australia. During his time in office, Weld pursued policies for the ‘protection’ and ‘care’ of Aboriginal people. The 1871 Native Offenders Amendment Act extended the power of justices of the peace to deal with punishment of Aboriginal people, rather than their trials being dealt with by a jury. After Western Australian frontier settlers were accused of excessive violence by the South Australian government in 1873, Weld issued a proclamation in the Government Gazette stating that violence towards Aboriginal people in the colony would not be tolerated. He promised ‘that all due and legal means will be made use of to detect and punish such acts of violence and injustice practised or that may be practised upon the person of any of the Aboriginal Inhabitants’ of Western Australia.76 The Pearl Shell Fisheries Act passed the same year, spurred by reports of the poor treatment of Aboriginal workers, particularly in the northwest of the colony. The legislation attempted to protect Aboriginal workers from being kept in work against their will.77 There were therefore a series of issues relating to the status and treatment of Aboriginal people in Western Australia being discussed and debated in the same period that the Industrial Schools Act was passed. Weld’s relationship with Bishop Salvado, who ran the mission and school for Aboriginal children at New Norcia, also aided the passing of the Industrial Schools Act. Since his arrival in the colony, Weld had been in contact with the Catholic Spanish Benedictine Mission, staying with the monks on a few occasions and giving grants to the New Norcia School. This funding was conditional on Salvado keeping the government informed about the progress of the boys in his care, as he took in ‘the boys as a favour to the Government’.78 According to Brown, Salvado was ‘enlivened’ by the Elementary Education Act, and wanted to see similar legislation passed for Aboriginal people, or at least, the extension of the existing legislation to Aboriginal children.79 Salvado, having worked with Aboriginal people since the 1840s, was an informed advisor to Weld and members of the Legislative Council.80 Salvado advocated for outdoor work as an essential part of Aboriginal children’s education.81 This partly explains why the industrial school model was followed in the Act, rather than a more literary focused ­education, as called for by the Elementary Education Act. Salvado believed that different races could become equal, but that Aboriginal civilisation needed to take place slowly, and be carefully adapted to Aborigines’ circumstances:

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We look at them [Aboriginal people] with European eyes, consider them as Europeans, and try to train them as such; but in doing so we delude ourselves. Their case is quite another, quite different from ours, and we ought to bring them to our case and high position, not at once, but by the same way we came to it, by degrees.82

Salvado believed that physical and practical training, combined with religious education, would be most beneficial to Aboriginal people at their current stage of development: ‘I believe a native that knows how to cultivate his field to be much more advantageously initiated in the civilized life than another that knows only how to read and write’.83 While Salvado believed in Aboriginal potential, it was within a discourse of difference: Aboriginal people needed to spend more time outdoors than Europeans did, and could not simply be given the same education as young white children. Any education that they were given needed to take into account the differences between races. Weld and Salvado discussed the best means of extending the power of managers of institutions that provided for Aboriginal children. For Weld, Aboriginal children needed to be protected from two potential dangers: their families and white settlers. Like the Metropolitan Act of 1857, the 1874 Industrial Schools Act in Western Australia was about both care and control of Aboriginal children. It drew on the metropolitan legislation, but modified it in relation to the local context. Nearby, Queensland’s 1865 Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act explicitly called for Aboriginal child removal, on the grounds of race.84 There, ‘[a]ny child born of an aboriginal or half-caste mother’ was placed in the same category as homeless or criminal children, and could be put into industrial institutions.85 By contrast, the Western Australian legislation still required parental consent for the removal of Aboriginal children, although, in practice many children were removed from Aboriginal parents outside of the ambit of the law.86 As the Chairman of the City Council, George Randal said, of managers of institutions acting in loco parentis We say that this may be desirable, but it must be recognized as a limitation of the natural power of the parent or guardian, and we much doubt whether, in most cases, the operation of the act can be properly explained or distinctly apprehended by native parents.87

The Western Australian legislation most closely resembled the 1844 Ordinance for the Protection, Maintenance and Upbringing of Orphans

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and other Destitute Children of the Aborigines, passed during Sir George Grey’s governorship in South Australia.88 This legislation had transformed the Protector of Aborigines into the legal guardian of orphaned Aboriginal or mixed-race children. As Grant has written of the South Australian legislation, ‘to Grey the legislation was a perfect example of British law being used to protect natives from the degrading influence of their own culture and laws’.89 The application of this kind of legislation, seen as a ‘humanitarian’ intervention in South Australia at the time, to Western Australia, shows Weld’s commitment to a version of humanitarian protectionism more associated with the earlier decades of the century. The best thing to do for vulnerable children, constructed as civilisable in the colonial discourse, was to remove them from the influence of their uncivilised families. They could be redeemed from savagery provided this was done before their character was fully formed. Childhood was thus the best time for this intervention. The idea of which children should be sent to industrial schools was open to some interpretation in Western Australia, as it had been in the metropolitan context. ‘Vagrant’ children, or those who could not be controlled by their parents, could be sent to the schools, as could juvenile offenders. When the Bill was read before the Legislative Council, one member, Birch, objected to the idea of juvenile offenders being sent to the schools. He worried about other children being contaminated by ‘association with youthful criminals’.90 He positioned children, and childhood, as particularly fragile in terms of the formation of identities. The mixing of different classes of children could be potentially harmful, and it was unclear whether criminals would be a bad influence on the needy children who surrounded them. Aboriginal children needed to be kept from their families, who would inculcate wandering or roving habits; the settler society, which would teach ‘drunkenness’ and ‘vice’, or subject them to violence; and their own race, inherently contaminating for children. The Act reflected a desire to look after children who needed state care. However, it also sought to control and manage a population against their will, and often against the wishes of their parents. It applied to ‘orphaned and necessitous children, or children or descendants of the aboriginal race’.91 The explicit statement that the legislation applied to both white and Aboriginal children was exceptional in Western Australia at the time—other legislation provided for either Aboriginal or settler populations.92 Children could now be kept in charitable institutions until the age of twenty-one, and be apprenticed to settlers as labourers. The ‘manager’ of the institution,

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a new title under the Act, was permitted to apprentice children of any age to ‘some trade or as agricultural or domestic servants or to the sea service’.93 Indigenous people, orphans and young offenders could simultaneously be reformed, made useful, and protected from the contaminating influences of their homes. In the words of the Act, managers of institutions now legally had ‘all the powers and privileges of a father over and in respect of such an infant to the exclusion of its natural guardian…’94 The familial metaphor naturalised the role of state appointed administrators in children’s education and welfare. The legislation turned the Aboriginal family into a site for state intervention and a place where Aboriginal children could be contaminated with their parents’ indigeneity. That juvenile offenders were provided for in the same legislation likened the Aboriginal children being trained in habits of industry with European children who had committed offences. As Jamie Scott has noted for industrial residential schools in Canada, based on those set up by the London Philanthropic Society, such institutions blurred boundaries of race and class, and ‘square[d] Native children with the Dickensian waif of mid-Victorian London by means of the racialised intermediary of the nomadic, and therefore uncivilised, “arab”’.95 The categories of race and class informed and blurred into each other in this context too, as poor white or criminal children were also seen to be challenging the boundaries of civilised whiteness in a community increasingly structured along racial lines, and defining itself in terms of adherence to particular legal and moral codes. The Industrial Schools Act laid the foundation for the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, as they were, in the eyes of the law, the same as European children who did not have parents, and had grown up in state care, or had committed offences. Although it did not allow for legal child removal, the idea of Aboriginal child removal was certainly present in public discourse at the time. For example, Bishop Hale who ran the Swan Native and Half Caste Home from 1872, believed that Aboriginal children were becoming ‘more depraved and wicked than aborigines in their primitive condition’ and that they could only be improved by ‘getting them from their own people and training them as Christians’ and protecting them from ‘growing up in the midst of vice and wickedness’.96 When the Act was read before the Legislative Council, the colonial secretary, Frederick Barlee, emphasised the importance of extending the power of the managers of institutions, particularly in the case of Aboriginal children. Barlee was concerned that these authorities were not able to keep children in these institutions. He said it was

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too often the case now that when children had received a sufficient training at these institutions to render their services useful, they were quietly removed from the custody of managers, and all the civilising and Christianising influences brought to bear in their training were thrown away.97

Barlee referenced Salvado’s case, saying Salvado felt ‘powerless to retain these native and half-caste children in his custody, but that, when their parents demand it, he is obliged to surrender them’.98 One member of the Legislative Council felt that the existing provision in the Bill, that the Justice of the Peace would become legal guardian of any Aboriginal child not living with a parent, and be permitted to move that child into an approved institution, did not go far enough. Walter Padbury favoured Queensland’s approach to industrial schools, and wanted to see the power of Justices of the Peace extended over ‘all aboriginal children, whether living under the care of a father or mother, or not’.99 Since Aboriginal parents were themselves constructed as children, they were deemed unable to look after their own offspring. They certainly were not thought to be capable of choosing whether their children should be educated, or what kind of education they should receive. Approved guardians and the state therefore needed to take on the role of parents to care for Aboriginal children. As biological conceptions of race became increasingly entrenched, so too did the idea that it was too late to help Aboriginal adults in Australia. This had implications for the education of Aboriginal children. ‘[I]n general it was civilised adulthood which was the goal held up to be striven for, within reach of the child in due course, but beyond the attainment of the savage in any foreseeable timespan’.100 This idea of perpetual childhood was applied to educated Aboriginal people who left mission stations, and was used to account for the ‘failure’ of missionary attempts at Aboriginal ‘civilisation’. A series of articles published in the Perth Gazette in 1865 addressed this issue, saying, ‘Of the pupils at the Wesleyan School most of them died off about the age of puberty; others, at the earliest opportunity re-appeared among civilised men with the rags and tatters of their early misspent education hanging loosely upon them.’101 The anonymous writer, using a metaphor drawn from the natural world, wrote, ‘The human plants grow up to maturity, pursue their hereditary course of life, yield to their natural instincts, and leave no trace of their new civilization beyond the trail of some adopted civilised vices’.102 This discourse about Aboriginal adults being children or childlike was reinforced by infantilising legislation that refused to recognise their ability to parent children.

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If children could be removed from their parents at a young enough age, their indigenousness could be reframed. Taking children against their parents’ will, an aspect of both metropolitan and colonial industrial schools legislation, firmly positioned the state as an active participant in the life of the family. Children embodied the contradiction associated with this kind of intervention: while Aboriginal adults were seen as fixed in a particular race, which gave them limited capacity for particular ways of thinking and being, their children might be moulded into something useful to the colonial state. It was too late to change the thinking of adults, and the sooner children were in institutions for their ‘care’, the easier it would be to eliminate uncivilised habits. The fact that these ideas were embedded into what was ostensibly education legislation indicates just how central schooling and education were to remoulding the affective politics of colonial society. Under the name of education, emotional bonds between parents and children could be legally broken.103 As Anna Haebich shows, the implication of this kind of legislation was devastating for Aboriginal communities in Western Australia, and it was followed by increasingly discriminatory legislation.104 The 1886 Aborigines Protection Act allowed Resident Magistrates to compel Aboriginal children under twenty-one, (or of a ‘suitable’ age), to work. In 1905, the Aborigines Act made the Chief Protector of Aborigines the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children. At the heart of these ideas was a legitimation of the state setting parameters for appropriate family life, and a belief that Aboriginal children should be removed from the contaminating influences of their families. As I show below, this concern was not unique to Western Australia, as in Natal, fears about race, contamination and education surfaced at the same time.

Defining Race: White Children and St Helenians in Natal in the 1870s In Natal in the 1870s, there were parallel concerns about race and childhood, as state intervention in schooling and education became more acceptable. Race was seen as particularly fragile, but also most permeable, during childhood. Discussions about compulsory education sparked concern about the future of white children in Natal. That the African population was seen as a threat by settlers was undoubtable: as the editor of the Natal Witness wrote in 1874, any comprehensive scheme for education would require 18,000 whites to civilise 350,000 Africans, ‘and there

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would be 350,000 blacks striving to uncivilize, to demoralize, and degrade, 18,000 partially educated Europeans’. With a younger generation of settler children who had been born in the colony reaching adulthood, commentators were concerned about the effects of their lack of formal schooling, particularly given the tendency not to send children ‘home’ for schooling any longer. In fact, the problem started at infancy for white children. According to the Natal Witness’s editor, ‘Kafir style of thought, mode of expression, condition of feeling, is imparted by the Kafir nurse to the child, and by the Kafir companion to the youth’.105 The issue of improving white children’s access to education, in light of the 1870 Act in England, occurred in a broader context in which questions about race, identity and citizenship were being asked in Natal. As Martens has argued, the late 1860s and early 1870s in Natal was a time of anxiety for white settlers, ‘gripped by the fear that female settlers were in imminent danger of being raped by African men’.106 In spite of the fact that there were ‘no factual grounds for white alarm’, this period saw a focus on the creation of laws to protect women and children. For example, vagrancy laws were passed to ‘control’ African men, who were ‘corrupted’ by urban spaces. At the same time, there was intense resistance to colonial expansion and control. The Langalibalele affair occurred in 1873, when the Hlubi chief Langalibalele kaMthimkhulu refused to register his people’s firearms. He and his followers were violently pursued by settlers as they attempted to flee the colony. This ultimately led to his trial which was biased against him, as it used a combination of native law and common law. It resulted in diminution of power from settlers, whose representation on the Legislative Council was reduced to less than half of the body.107 Settlers thus felt particularly vulnerable, seeing this as an attack on their autonomy  by the imperial government and a misunderstanding of the local context. They thus sought to protect institutions, including schools, from racial others. There were two government-run primary schools in the colony by the 1870s. The first was set up in Pietermaritzburg in 1849 and the second in D’Urban in 1850. The majority of white children were sent to government-­ aided schools, like the Pietermaritzburg High School, opened in 1863, or Durban High School, opened in 1866. The schools were generally understood to be racially segregated and usually single-sex, although they did not specifically bar children of other races.108 However, the schools only needed to admit black students if they ‘conformed to “European habits and customs”’ and a formal proclamation was made to this effect in 1882, seven years after the case under discussion here.109 As the century

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progressed, however, it was increasingly unlikely that any African students would be seen to conform to ‘European habits and customs’ as these were increasingly tied to white skin. In practice, African children were usually taught at mission schools. The Indian Immigrant School Board, established in 1878, worked with mission societies and provided education to Indian migrant labourers.110 Fears of contamination from racial ‘others’ led Natal colonists to strongly condemn the use of urban, government schools by children of other races. As I have written about with Johan Wassermann, when a group of St Helenian emigrant children enrolled in the government school in Durban in 1874, white parents complained that these emigrant children should not have access to the facility, and some white parents removed their daughters from the school.111 As the headmaster of the school later reported, two St Helenian children had been refused admission because they were ‘of a colour bordering upon the black’. He went on to state that he had refused admission to these children not because of any prejudice of his own, but rather because there is ‘a strong feeling of repugnance down here against the St Helena people, as a body, on account of their immorality’.112 The St Helenian children were subsequently expelled from the school, sparking a series of letters from their parents to the local and imperial government, regarding their rights to education as ‘British subjects’. ‘[T]he racial ambiguity of the St Helenian children was seen as particularly harmful to white children whose own racial identities were seen as fragile and were being moulded in relation to changing social circumstances in the colony.’113 In the context of fears of their own children’s degeneration in the colony, being surrounded by ‘barbaric’ Africans, white parents were particularly concerned about those who were difficult to c­ lassify, and therefore more difficult to disavow. As the headmaster of the school from 1875, James Crowe, wrote, ‘I am of the opinion there would be less opposition from parents if Kaffirs or Coolies (sic) attended the School.’114 Thus, as Elizabeth Buettner argues of colonial India, whiteness was understood to be particularly ‘fragile’: the anxieties over interracial mixing proved that white children were seen as vulnerable to ‘slipping into the realm between coloniser and colonised and parents worried about this more than their possibly “going native” through contact with Indians’.115 The interracial mixing that had characterised the early years of settlement in the territory had, by this stage, given way to far harsher attitudes to race, mirroring similar developments in other parts of the world.116 The dangers of this mixing were believed to be particularly pronounced for white children. As

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Stoler argues of the Dutch Indies, ‘Native and mixed-blood “character” was viewed as fixed in a way that European “character” was not’.117 When the case came under scrutiny from the Colonial Office and an investigation was launched into the sequence of events at the school, Sir Langham Dale, Superintendent of Education for the Cape colony, was approached for his opinion on the matter of the children’s expulsion. Brooks, Natal’s Superintendent of Education, asked for evidence about how schools in the Cape dealt with children of mixed parentage and coloured children, as this was seen as pertinent to the case of the St Helenian children in Natal.118 After explaining that schools in that colony were open to ‘all children, without distinction of creed, class, or colour’, Dale said that three orders of schools were designed to cater to the white, the ‘aboriginal’ and ‘the poorer classes, of mixed race, who cannot afford to pay the fee in the Public School, or do not wish that kind of instruction’, respectively. Dale touched on one of the fundamental difficulties for education provision in South Africa, and across the empire: race was difficult to define, and outward manifestations of difference were not always enough to distinguish between races. According to Dale: I feel confident that the increasing number of children of mixed race would render any limitations of Public Schools to white children impracticable, the Colonial children of mixed race are often of a lighter hue than those of European descent; and with the prevailing variety of shades of colour, it is impossible to draw a line of demarcation, except in the case of the pure Aboriginal race.119

Thus, different ways to distinguish between white and mixed-race children were needed. Objections based on language and class were often used to deal with this problem of classification. In Natal, the assertion that the St Helenian children were ‘depraved’ and ‘vicious’, served to highlight their racial difference and set them apart from the white, English and respectable class of settlers in Natal. ‘Any challenges to the respectability of [whites] in terms of class and racial otherness were met with attempts to purge this from the white community’.120 The connection with the Western Australian context is notable: Aboriginal children, by virtue of their colour were also ‘depraved’ and ‘vicious’, just like criminal white children. In fact, the St Helenians’ background was seen as so different to English people that even Bishop Colenso, known for his open-minded views, in a letter to Frank Chesson of the Aborigines’ Protection Society,

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which was investigating the case, wrote that ‘very many of those who were brought here were immoral, as you may guess from the sort of life they had been leading at St. Helena’.121 Robert Russell, by 1875 the new Inspector of Education for the colony, having served as headmaster of the Durban High school himself from 1866, wrote about the issue in his annual report.122 ‘The question is not whether they shall be educated, but whether they shall be allowed to sit side by side in the same schools with our own children.’ The objection to them was on the grounds of class: ‘Their social position, however, is not high; and the characters of many of them would hardly bear scrutiny. Their ways of thought; and their habits and customs, are often widely different from our own’. The particular difficulty in this case was that St Helenians, in his opinion, were settlers, and thus had the ‘right’ to demand education for their children. But, he continued it must be clearly understood that white people have ‘rights’ which they, too, cannot afford to part with; and that not the least cherished of them is that the sense of honour, decency, and manliness inculcated in our children shall be fenced from injury by any possible security.123

Children needed to learn whiteness: partly in the home, and partly in schools. However, this conception of white children being corrupted by ‘others’ in the school assumed something innate about ‘native-ness’. The reactions of parents, teachers and government to the inclusion of not-­ quite-­white-enough children in a government-funded institution in Natal highlight dual understandings of race, as both cultural and biological. The difficulty was explaining this contradictory ideology, particularly for local government officials who needed to appear to act in the best interests of all of Natal’s subjects. The belief in the necessity of segregated education was as much about the perceived negative influences of black children on white children as it was about the perceived intellectual and moral superiority of white children over Indigenous ones. In a place like colonial Natal, where political power was related to skin colour and claims to Englishness, the fear that white children would be mis-educated—and turn out non-­white—was very present. Children who were of mixed racial descent were particularly problematic, as they challenged ideas about racial purity, and their presence could threaten the exclusive socialisation into whiteness that children were receiving in the government schools. If these St Helenian children were successful in their education, they would

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challenge the increasingly rigid boundaries that Natalians were attempting to draw around the meaning of whiteness. In spite of increasingly rigid ideas about race in Natal and across the empire, the case also indicates that openly admitting to discrimination on the grounds of race was seen as unacceptable. Besides Russell’s report that mentioned white people’s rights, the language of class was used far more often to describe the St Helenians. As Martens has argued regarding settler views on African marriage practices in the 1860s, ‘whites continued to employ the rhetoric of liberal humanitarianism because its flexibility afforded ample justification for discriminatory policies’. Indeed, ‘the enlightenment belief in civilisation and savagery was still prevalent, even as scientific racism began to extend its influence’.124 Ideas about race, class, language and morality overlapped in this case, and were impossible to disentangle. Rather than denouncing St Helenians based on race, their class was used to differentiate between them and the white children. While colonial officials in Natal were committed to a narrative in which white English children needed to be protected from those of a lower class, the Colonial Office was less certain that this was the case. The results of the investigation, forwarded to the Colonial Office in 1876, led them to conclude that ‘though the immorality of the St Helena immigrants is stated to be the principal cause of the prejudice against them, it seems that colour had a good deal to do with it’.125 The matter was passed off as a resolved ‘mistake’. However, the Natal government declared shortly after that ‘the Government schools of the Colony are to be open to all classes of Her Majesty’s subjects’.126

Conclusion By considering not only the direct impact of specific legislation, but also how it changed the conversation about education in the 1870s, we can observe broader shifts in thinking about race, childhood and education in that decade. The Industrial Schools Legislation in 1874  in Western Australia, and the contemporary case of the St Helenian children’s access to schools in Natal, do not on first inspection seem like natural points of comparison. However, both cases indicate a drive to keep children of different backgrounds—whether of race or class—apart from each other, ensuring that particular forms of education became spaces for the exclusive use of the settler elite. In the metropolitan context too, there was a desire to cater to juvenile delinquents in separate institutions. Reading the

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cases alongside each other indicates that the anxieties about race mixing for children were not just products of particular locations. They were responding both to changing ideas about race, and also the role of the state in education provision. The use of sources from different contexts and at different scales, from the imperial to the local, highlights these continuities. The cases highlight a shift in ideas regarding decision-making about children. The need for children to work for their parents, either in the home or in agricultural pursuits, had meant that their parents were seen as having the final say in their education. As perceptions of the morality of child labour began to change, so too did the idea that children should be allowed to work. The construction of children as less than fully formed, malleable and vulnerable underpinned the belief that their childhood years should be used for schooling, when they were most receptive to new information. However, this plasticity was also potentially harmful, and their exposure to people seen as the wrong sort was particularly dangerous. Increased intervention in the lives of families in metropolitan and colonial contexts was based on the idea that it was the responsibility of a benevolent government to provide oversight for education. In the 1830s, when the government began to fund education in Britain, this was seen as an important intervention in the lives of poor and working-class people. As government involvement in education increased in both metropolitan and colonial contexts, there was a greater desire to delineate what type of children different institutions should serve. In Britain, there was a need to remove vagrant or criminal children from contaminating families into ­specialised institutions for their reform and care. In Western Australia, Aboriginal, criminal and orphaned children were compared through the provisions of the Industrial Schools Act. Finally, in Natal, government schools were increasingly seen as exclusively for the use of white children. Children who were not-quite-white-enough could disrupt the exclusivity of this social space. Each of these cases highlights the centrality of both schooling and education to the formation of (racialised) identities for children. In colonial contexts, the discourses about children and childhood, which grew out of metropolitan discourses and debates, took on new meanings as they collided with ideas about race. Colonial governments, missionaries, settlers and teachers had long referred to themselves as ‘parents’ to Indigenous people, who were described as children or childlike in

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reasoning, intellect and civilisation. Increasingly, Indigenous adults were described as children. The argument that adults were child-like, and therefore needed the intervention of the guiding hand of government, justified interventions in the life of Indigenous families. Although there were ever more pervasive beliefs about the immutability of race, Indigenous children were seen as capable of learning and being retrained in order to live in ‘civilised’ European society. The construction of their parents as children, however, raised a contradiction. Would ‘civilised’ Indigenous children grow into ‘civilised’ Indigenous adults, who would have access to settler society? Increasingly, this seemed impossible. The material used in this chapter highlights understandings of race as something that could be learnt, but also indicates ideas about racial fixity. All Aboriginal families were contaminating for children, in spite of the fact that their children might be able to, under the protective care of educators and the government, overcome the limits of their race. The colour of St Helenian children was seen as potentially harmful to vulnerable white children. Hence, race in childhood was understood both as fixed and changeable, permeable and impermeable. Biological and cultural discourses of race existed side by side in Natal and Western Australia in the 1870s, contradicting and informing one another. Alongside these changing and contradictory ideologies about race, there were another set of changes that impacted on ideas about compulsory education and the role of the state in children’s lives. Between the 1830s and the 1870s, there were dramatic changes in ideas about children’s own internal worlds, and what childhood meant in relation to adulthood. Childhood was more often seen as a state apart—a time when children should be protected, nurtured and educated. Early strategies of the civilising mission had recognised children’s permeability. Their education being attended to with relative optimism in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century indicated this. By the 1870s, this belief in childhood permeability was ever more entrenched. However, with it came new understandings that race would inevitably define one’s life course, often including mental capacity. As Indigenous adults were more often constructed as races apart, their children needed to be kept away from innocent white children, who could be corrupted by other races. In this sense, there was a shift away from a humanitarian gloss of incorporating Indigenous children into settler society, to finding ways of creating and entrenching boundaries between them and white children.

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Returning to the extract from Frank Chesson’s speech cited at the beginning of this chapter, Chesson speculated on the impact of the Elementary Education Act on those he termed the ‘untamed children of nature’ in the British colonies.127 Although there was not a linear movement towards whole-scale compulsory education in the colonies like in the metropole, there were certainly notable shifts in thinking about the government’s role in education. For children, race was something learned. Attempts to remove children from their families and teach them in institutions, and to segregate education for white children, are evidence for this. The idea that race was learned, however, fundamentally undermined biological theories of race, which were increasingly popular and compelling during this period. Attempts to keep children away from the social effects of racial mixing indicate fears about race being unstable and permeable. Race often served as a proxy for class. Who counted as an adult, and who would be able to parent appropriately, also changed in relation to increased state intervention in education.

Notes 1. Frank Chesson, ‘The Education of Native Races in British Colonies’, Colonial Intelligencer (January 1877), 345–355, 345–346. See Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1877), 470–471 for a summary of the paper. 2. Ibid., 352. 3. Laurence Brockliss and Nicola Sheldon write of the compulsory education legislation having the most effect in the ‘white colonies’ (sic) of Australia, New Zealand and Canada. However, their overview of the impact of this legislation overlooks the ways in which, even in these places with large settler populations, race was implicated in discussions about education. Laurence Brockliss and Nicola Sheldon, Mass Education and the Limits of State Building, c.1870–1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 251. 4. See Kaffir Express, 04.08.1873, 2. 5. ‘An Act to promote the efficiency of certain Charitable Institutions’— Western Australia (38 Vict. No. 11 1874) [hereafter Industrial Schools Act]. 6. Lisa Ford, Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous Peoples in America and Australia, 1788–1836 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 10. 7. Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (London: University of California Press, 2002), 120.

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8. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd edn (London and New York: Free Association Books, 1999), 123. 9. Brian Simon, ‘Education and Citizenship in England’, Paedagogica Historica, 29 (1993), 689–697, 691. 10. Esme Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 1840–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 150. 11. The Industrial Schools Act—England (20 & 21 Vict., c. 48 1857). 12. Marianne Moore, ‘Social Control or Protection of the Child? The Debates on the Industrial Schools Acts 1857–1894’, Journal of Family History, 33 (2008), 359–387, 360. 13. John Stack, ‘Reformatory and Industrial Schools and the Decline of Child Imprisonment in Mid-Victorian England and Wales’, History Compass, 23 (1994), 59–73, 65. 14. Moore, ‘Social Control or Protection’, 363. 15. Ibid., 368. These functioned on different lines to industrial schools in the colonies. For example, Sir George Grey’s industrial schools in the Cape and New Zealand had similar aims around reform, but were not associated with criminality in the same way as metropolitan schools. While Grey and others also preferred boarding schools, there was often insufficient funding for these facilities in the colonies. 16. Laurence Goldman, Science, Reform and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 146. 17. Margaret May, ‘Innocence and Experience: The Evolution of the Concept of Juvenile Delinquency in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, Victorian Studies, 17 (1973), 7–29, 27. 18. Ibid. 19. Pamela Horne, The Victorian Town Child (Stroud: Sutton, 1997), 207. 20. According to Murdoch, in 1898, only 649, or 27 per cent, of the 2406 children in Barnado’s homes were actually orphans. Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 72. 21. Harry Hendrick, ‘Constructions and Reconstructions of British Childhood: An Interpretive Survey, 1800 to the Present’, in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, ed. by Allison James and Alan Prout (London: UK Falmer Press, 2005), 33–60, 49. 22. Evidence, Index to the report from the Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children, HC 460 and 460-I (1861), 16, 20, 94. 23. Moore, ‘Social Control or Protection’, 382.

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24. Catherine Hall, ‘Of Gender and Empire: Reflections on the Nineteenth Century’, in Gender and Empire, ed. by Philippa Levine (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 46–76, 51. 25. Shurlee Swain, ‘But the children… Indigenous Child Removal Policies Compared’, in Writing Colonial Histories: Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Tracey Banivanua Mar and Julie Evans (Victoria: University of Melbourne, Department of History, 2002), 133–143, 136. 26. William Brewer Stephens, Education in Britain, 1750–1914 (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1998), 1. 27. Ibid., 78; Linda McCoy, ‘Education for Labour: Social Problems of Nationhood’, in Forming Nation, Framing Welfare, ed. by Gail Lewis (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 93–138, 111. 28. The Committee of Council on Education described the German education system as ‘complete’, Report of the Committee of Council on Education; with Appendix, HC 4139 (1868–69), 202. 29. Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debate (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2003), 20. 30. Committee of Council on Education, x. 31. Michael Sanderson, Education, Economic Change and Society in England, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 12. 32. Norman Etherington, ‘Education and Medicine’, in Missions and Empire, ed. by Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 261–284, 269. 33. Stephens, Education in Britain, 87. I have not been able to find statistics of parents who actively objected to this education. One factor was likely to do with the fact that parents had, unless in extreme poverty, to pay school fees. Horne, The Victorian Town Child, 87. 34. Anne Digby and Peter Searby, Children, School and Society in Nineteenth Century England (London: Macmillan Press, 1981), 14. 35. W.E. Forster, HC Deb 17.02.1870, vol. 199 cc438–98. 36. See Keith McClelland, ‘England’s Greatness, the Working Man’, in Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867, ed. by Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland and Jane Rendall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 71–118. 37. Catherine Hall, ‘The Nation Within and Without’, in Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867, ed. by Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 179–233, 179. 38. McCoy, ‘Education for Labour’, 113. 39. Forster, HC Deb 17.02.1870. 40. Shurlee Swain and Margaret Hillel, Child, Nation, Race and Empire: Child Rescue Discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010).

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41. Russell Smandych and Anne McGillivray, ‘Images of Aboriginal Childhood: Contested Governance in the Canadian West to 1850’, in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, ed. by Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (London: UCL Press, 1997), 238–259, 238. 42. Hugh Cunningham, The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood since the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 126. 43. Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), 49. 44. Ibid., 97. 45. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (London: Yale University Press, 2012), 204. 46. Henry Callaway in Robert James Mann and G.H. Wathen, ‘Report from the Church of England committee of conference on Native representation in assemblies of the Church of England, in the Diocese of Natal’, Natal Witness, 16.07.1858, 2. 47. Camfield to Nightingale, 26.12.1863, Encl. 2 in Hampton to Newcastle, 24.03.1864, TNA CO 18/135, No. 34. 48. Sally Crawford, ‘“Our Race had its Childhood”: The Use of Childhood as a Metaphor in Post-Darwinian Explanations for Prehistory’, Childhood in the Past, 3 (2010), 107–122. 49. Alan Prout and Allison James, ‘A New Paradigm for the Sociology of Childhood? Provenance, Promise and Problems’, in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, ed. by Allison James and Alan Prout (London: UK Falmer Press, 2005), 7–32, 10. 50. John Barrington and Tim Beaglehole, Maori Schools in a Changing Society: An Historical Review (Wellington: New Zealand Council for Education Research, 1974), 175. 51. Diocesan Church Society, from the Church of England Magazine Newspaper, reprinted in The Inquirer and Commercial News, 02.11.1870. 52. Neville Green, ‘Access, Equality and Opportunity? The Education of Aboriginal Children in Western Australia, 1840–1978’ (PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004), 94. 53. Western Australian Hansard, 06.12.1870, 9. Available online at http:// www.parliament.wa.gov.au/hansard/hansard1870to1995.nsf/vwWeb1870Main. Last accessed 09.07.2015. 54. Ibid. 55. Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, Servants & Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-century Western Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2002), 54. 56. Weld to Salvado, 30.07.1871, SLWA ACC1732A [Hereafter all correspondence between the two is from this source].

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57. Hetherington, Settlers, Servants, 56–57. 58. Bob White, ‘Talk about School: Education and the Colonial Project in French and British Africa (1860–1960)’, Comparative Education, 32 (1996), 9–25. 59. Sarah Duff, ‘Education for Every Son and Daughter of South Africa: Race, Class, and the Compulsory Education Debate in the Cape Colony’, in Mass Education and the Limits of State Building, c.1870–1930, ed. by Laurence Brockliss and Nicola Sheldon (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 261–282, 266. 60. Sarah Duff, Changing Childhoods in the Cape Colony: Dutch Reformed Church Evangelicalism and Colonial Childhood, 1860–1895 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 89. 61. Ibid., 269. 62. Marimutu Ponnusamy, ‘The Working Conditions and Careers of KwaZulu-Natal Women Teachers’ (PhD thesis, University of Durban-­ Westville, South Africa, 2002), 58. 63. Report of the Commission Appointed by His Excellency RW Keate, Esq., Lieut-Governor of Natal to Enquire into the Adequacy of the Existing Establishments of the Colony (Pietermaritzburg: Keith & Co., Government Printers, 1871), TNA CO 181/10. 64. J.R. to the Editor of the Natal Witness, 01.03.1870. 65. Ibid. 66. Editorial, Natal Witness, 07.01.1870. 67. Meeting of Legislative Council, 21.11.1872, printed in Natal Witness, 26.11.1872, 3. 68. For a summary of the Natal education system, focusing in particular on education for white children see Board of Education. Special reports on educational subjects. Volume 5. Educational systems of the chief colonies of the British Empire. (Cape Colony: Natal: Commonwealth of Australia: New Zealand: Ceylon: Malta.), HC 417 (1900), 199. 69. Fitzgerald to Earl Grey, 10.02.1849, Western Australia State Records Office (SROWA), Con.390, Governor’s Despatches. 70. Brian K. De Garis, ‘Self-Government and the Evolution of Party Politics 1871–1911’, in A New History of Western Australia, ed. by Tom Stannage (Redlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1981), 326–351, 327. 71. Ibid., 331. 72. Ibid., 372. 73. Weld to Salvado, 08.07.1872. 74. George H. Russo, ‘Religion, Politics and W.A. Aborigines in the 1870’s: Bishop Salvado and Governor Weld’, Twentieth Century (October 1974), 5–19, 6. 75. Weld to Grey, 19.07.1865 GL W26.7.

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76. Proclamation, Western Australia Government Gazette, 17.06.1873. 77. Pearl Shell Fishery Regulation Act (37 Vict., No. 11 1873); Russo, ‘Religion, Politics’, 8. 78. Weld to Salvado, 19.11.1870. 79. John Brown, ‘Policies in Aboriginal Education in Western Australia, 1829–1897’ (M.Ed thesis, University of Western Australia, 1979), 139. 80. He also corresponded with members of the Legislative Council. See SLWA ACC354A for Salvado’s correspondence with George Shenton about the 1875 Bastardy Act. 81. Information Respecting the Habits and Customs of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of WA, Compiled from Various Sources: Presented to the Legislative Council by His Excellency’s Command (Perth: Richard Peter, Govt Printer, 1871), SROWA Con. 1067 1871/002. 82. Salvado to the Colonial Secretary, 19.02.1864, ibid., 5. 83. Ibid. 84. Shirleene Robinson and Jessica Paten, ‘The Question of Genocide and Indigenous Child Removal: The Colonial Australian Context’, Journal of Genocide Research, 10 (2008), 501–518, 507. 85. Queensland Reformatories. An Act to provide for the establishment of Industrial and Reformatory Schools. 29 vic. No. 8. Industrial Schools Act of 1865. 86. Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800–2000 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000), 78. 87. The Western Australian Times, 08.12.1874, 3. 88. Robinson and Paten, ‘The Question of Genocide’, 513. 89. Susannah, Grant, ‘God’s Governor: George Grey and Racial Amalgamation in New Zealand 1845–1853’ (PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2005), 110. 90. Report from Legislative Council, 30.07.1874, The Western Australian Times, 07.08.1874. 91. Industrial Schools Act. 92. Hetherington, Settlers, Servants, 4. 93. Industrial Schools Act. 94. Ibid.  95. Jamie Scott, ‘Penitential and Penitentiary: Native Canadians and Colonial Mission Education’, in Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, Missions, ed. by Jamie Scott and Gareth Griffiths (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 111–133, 114, 117. 96. Hale to SPG, 14.08.1871, SROWA CLR/209. 97. Charitable Institutions Bill, Second Reading, Western Australia Parliamentary Debates, 7.07.1874. Also quoted in Hetherington, Settlers, Servants, 73.

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98. Ibid. 99. Report from Legislative Council, 30.07.1874, The Western Australian Times, 7.08.1874. 100. Cunningham, The Children of the Poor, 129. 101. Laicus, ‘Thoughts about  the Natives: Part 2’, Perth Gazette  and West Australian Times, 24.11.1865. 102. Laicus, ‘Thoughts about the Natives: Part 1’,  Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, 17.11.1865. 103. Rebecca Swartz, ‘Educating Emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–65’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18 (2017), n.p. 104. Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia, 2nd edn (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1992). 105. Editorial, Natal Witness, 19.05.1874. 106. Jeremy Martens, ‘Polygamy, Sexual Danger, and the Creation of Vagrancy Legislation in Colonial Natal’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31 (2003), 24–45, 25. 107. Ann Curthoys and Jeremy Martens, ‘Serious Collisions: Settlers, Indigenous People, and Imperial Policy in Western Australia and Natal’, Journal of Australian Colonial History, 15 (2013), 121–144, 124. 108. Abraham Behr and Ronald Macmillan, Education in South Africa (Pretoria: Van Schaik, 1971), 128. 109. Ibid., 382. 110. Ibid., 383. 111. Rebecca Swartz and Johan Wassermann, ‘“Britishness”, Colonial Governance and Education: St Helenian Children in Colonial Natal in the 1870s’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 44 (2016), 881–899. 112. Minute paper, T.  W. Brooks, 14.02.1876, CSO 536 1876/270, Pietermaritzburg Archives [hereafter PAR]; Report, H.  E. Bulwer to Lord Carnarvon, 26.01.1876, GH 1219, PAR. 113. Swartz and Wassermann, ‘“Britishness”’, 892. 114. J. Crowe to T. W. Brooks, 22.03.1875, CSO 536 1876/270, PAR. 115. Elizabeth Buettner, ‘Problematic Spaces, Problematic Races: Defining “Europeans” in Late Colonial India’, Women’s History Review, 9 (2000), 277–298, 292; See also Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 116. Charles Ballard, ‘Traders, Trekkers and Colonists’, in Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910: A New History, ed. by Andrew Duminy and Bill Guest (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1989), 116–145, 119. 117. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge, 138. 118. Letter from Sir Langham Dale to Brooks, 23.07.1875, CSO 536 1876/270, PAR.

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119. Ibid. Crain Soudien indicates that Dale was promoting an increasingly segregated education system in the nearby Cape colony, attempting to differentiate between class, race and gender in government schools. Crain Soudien, ‘The Making of White Schooling in the Cape Colony in the Late Nineteenth Century’, South African Review of Education, 19 (2013), 111–124. 120. Swartz and Wassermann, ‘“Britishness”’, 14. 121. Letter from Colenso to Frank Chesson, 26.11.1875, Anti-Slavery Society Papers, RHL, Br.Emp.s18 C130 and C131. 122. John MacKenzie, The Scots in South Africa: Ethnicity, Identity, Gender and Race, 1772–1914 (Johannesburg: Wits University Press/Manchester University Press, 2007), 188. 123. Report from Robert Russell on Government Aided Schools, 1875, PAR, Ed 5/1. 124. Jeremy Martens, ‘“Civilised Domesticity”, Race and European Attempts to Regulate African Marriage Practices in Colonial Natal, 1868–1875’, The History of the Family, 14 (2009), 340–355, 342, 345. 125. Memo from Clerk Malcolm, 30.3.1876, CO 179/120, No. 2575. 126. Memo from F. Napier Broome, 16.12.1875, CSO 536 1876/270, PAR; Behr and Macmillan, Education in South Africa, 132. 127. Chesson, ‘The Education of Native Races in British Colonies’, 346.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: The ‘Chief Blessing of Civilisation, the Benefit of Education’

In 1865, the Anglican Bishop of Natal, John William Colenso, gave a lecture to the Anthropological Society of London ‘on the efforts of missionaries among savages’.1 Facing trial for heresy and his excommunication from the Church due to his unorthodox interpretations of the Bible, Colenso responded to an earlier paper presented to the Society, which asserted that ‘British Christianity can never flourish on a savage soil’.2 Colenso argued the factual basis for that paper was lacking. He believed his long residence in Natal made him particularly suited to comment on mission endeavours in Africa. He explained what had been achieved  at his mission  station, Ekukhanyeni, highlighting his success.3 Education was central to his vision for the advancement of mission activity in Africa. If missionaries and the local government worked together, they could overcome ‘heathen ignorance, idleness, vice and superstition’, by giving children the ‘chief blessing of civilisation, the benefit of education’.4 Colenso knew that providing education would continue to be challenging—children’s close ties to families and communities ‘who know nothing themselves of the meaning of education’ could disrupt this educational blessing. However, he was adamant that the Natal government should be more involved in education provision. Then, he argued, education would be extended ‘systematically,

© The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_8

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instead of being left, as now, to accidental missionary efforts; it would be done thoroughly and effectually, instead of being hindered, as now, by sectarian strifes and jealousies’.5 Colenso’s lecture captured some of the key issues and dilemmas concerning education for Indigenous children in the settler colonies. First, there were tensions between the role of the imperial and local governments, mission societies and settlers, in terms of what kind of education children should be given. Second, education was seen as a central pathway to, or indeed, the ‘chief blessing of civilisation’. Without education, it was not possible for Indigenous people to be civilised. Third, there was the question of Indigenous families, children and communities, whose responses to education were not always positive. At the heart of it, colonisers were forced to recognise the agency, abilities and aptitudes of colonised people. In the period covered by this book, between the emancipation of slaves, in 1833, and 1880, there were dramatic changes in how education was thought about in both metropolitan and colonial contexts. Increasingly, education was seen as an area for government involvement. However, this did not necessarily translate into increased education for Indigenous children. As attitudes towards race hardened, education was seen as something that should cater to the unique abilities and social positions of different races. This often meant that industrial education was promoted for Indigenous children in the settler colonies. Humanitarian thinking, associated with emancipation and with concerns over the treatment of Indigenous people in the colonies, epitomised by the Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines, had promoted education as a way for Indigenous children to enter into civilised society. Their malleability made them particularly good targets for education into civilisation. However, hostility towards Indigenous people in the settler colonies, and competition over land and the need for labour, meant that these opportunities were often denied to Indigenous people. By the close of the period under discussion, the boundaries between different races, in education and in other areas of social life, were being more rigidly drawn. Colenso’s call for greater government involvement in education in Natal would go unanswered for twenty years. By 1885, there were only sixty-four schools providing for 3,783 African students in Natal. The existing system of mission schools receiving grants remained in place. As Native Education Inspector Robert Plant put it in 1889, ‘for the small amount we are at present spending we are receiving the most satisfactory returns.

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Utilising the missionaries, we obtain a European supervision free of cost, and are thus enabled to cover a much larger surface than we otherwise could do’.6 The number of schools increased to 145 in 1896, and 196 in 1901, teaching a total of 11,051 pupils.7 Still, the number of African pupils in Natal remained a minority, with only one per cent of the African population receiving any kind of schooling by 1908.8 In Western Australia, similar issues to those raised by Colenso about the relationship between missionaries, Indigenous people and the government shaped education. Increasingly repressive laws saw government expand control over Aboriginal people and families, ultimately leading to a set of policies that sanctioned child removal. A report on the treatment of Aboriginal prisoners argued in 1884 ‘that the aborigines are fast disappearing is apparent on all sides; and it is a mournful truth that, whatever is done, it appears to be an impossibility to avert this downward course’.9 It continued, saying that Aboriginal people would not ‘ever be more than a servant of the white man, and therefore our aim should be devoted to such instruction as will enable him to live usefully and happily among the white population’.10 By the close of the period under discussion here, there were still only two schools serving Aboriginal children. New Norcia had forty-four pupils, and a further twenty-five were being educated at the Swan Native and Half Caste Home.11 By the turn of the century, Haebich estimates that a mere two hundred Aboriginal people, both adults and children, were living on mission stations in the colony.12 Colenso’s comment that education was the ‘chief blessing of civilisation’ was widely accepted by imperial and local governments, but the way that this blessing was conferred was often partial and contested. Missionaries and government used education to ‘civilise’ Indigenous people, and to train them to become industrious members of society. While education was often positioned as a humanitarian intervention in the lives of Indigenous people, one which introduced them to religion and morality, it was also used to control Indigenous labour in the settler colonies. Turning training in labour into a ‘useful education’ justified the presence of settlers on Indigenous people’s land. As ideas about race changed over the middle decades of the nineteenth century, so too did ideas about the responsibility of government for education, and the capacity of Indigenous people to learn. Indigenous people and families required the ‘care’ of the government in order to properly raise children. Schooling and education were central to the construction of racial difference in the settler colonies. Schools were important sites to learn about

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Indigenous people and customs, for teachers and pupils to engage across colonial divides. However, they were also sites in which knowledge about racial type and difference could be created. Researchers, missionaries and governments used these spaces to attempt to classify and quantify the differences between groups of people. The policies that saw different kinds of education given to Indigenous people were increasingly used to evidence claims about their educability. Lack of access to literary education, in particular, was used to prove that Indigenous people were less capable of ‘civilisation’. Between 1833 and 1880, as racial attitudes hardened, physical appearance was more often tied to intellectual capacity. Connecting education to the construction of racial difference is important. The idea that colonisation was beneficial to Indigenous peoples, at least in terms of access to the English language and modern western education, has been replicated in some of the more nostalgic historiography of the British Empire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.13 The idea that education was a neutral (or even beneficial) system overlooks the ways in which education projects were used to bolster settler needs and to maintain a stratified social order. For elites, there were undoubtedly some benefits of western education.14 However, the majority of colonised peoples had little or no access to formal education, which, when provided, favoured the formation of loyal subjects. In recent years, the impact of colonial education has come under scrutiny, as student protesters in South Africa and England have called attention to the legacies of colonialism in the process of knowledge production in universities.15 In South Africa, the student movement has recently asserted that education in that context needs to be more receptive to local ways of thinking and generating academic discourse and debate. This has drawn attention to some of the ways that colonial legacies within education have been rendered invisible, as we continue to generate knowledge based on an enlightenment worldview and implicated in the colonisation of Indigenous peoples. Moreover, postcolonial writings, including Ngũgı ̃ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind, have shown just how damaging and pervasive narratives of European (linguistic) superiority were and are in postcolonial contexts.16 It is high time that the nature of colonial education and its legacies are more closely scrutinised. Failure to do so allows a myth of progress—from uneducated to educated, savage to civilised, heathen to Christian—so dominant in the twentieth-century imperial historiography, to persist.17 This is not to say that doing so is an easy task, particularly for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The education archive, as I have shown,

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is scattered through colonial government records, across colonies and in metropolitan locations, in mission archives, scientific periodicals and private correspondence. This denies us a comfortable narrative of Indigenous education as a linear development from less to more government involvement in the settler colonies. However, the juxtaposition of diverse archival material, of different colonial sites, and indeed, of local, colonial and imperial interventions in Indigenous education, has revealed sometimes unforeseen connections between places and policies. For example, that industrial education was used in the 1840s West Indies to regulate a supply of labour provides an important connection with the promotion of industrial training in 1840s and 1850s Natal. Educational change occurred in metropolitan and colonial contexts simultaneously, and the extension of education in different places relied as much on local actors as on broad imperial ideas about what function education should perform in the settler empire. Although there were myriad connections in thinking about race and education across colonial territories, the way that education was extended differed substantially across both time and space. Examining education opens up ideas about race, humanitarianism and settler colonialism. Education was a key way that colonial governments sought to extend their hegemony in metropolitan and colonial contexts. From the 1830s, local and imperial governments were aware of the expediency of providing education. Not only would it show their willingness to ‘care’ for their populations, it could also be used to further government agendas, whether of maintaining a labour force, protecting Indigenous people, or ensuring their population’s continued loyalty and acceptance of class and racial hierarchies. Whether at home or in the colonies, the idea of government involvement in education was not neutral, and provoked anxiety for missionaries and voluntary organisations. Equally, as the century progressed, white Britons and Indigenous peoples increasingly perceived education as a government responsibility. Schools were often the only point of contact between Indigenous people, missionaries and the state. They changed the everyday experience of pupils, teachers and families. However, colonialism’s pedagogic strategies were also far broader than this. Attempts to reshape Indigenous approaches to land and labour within settler society assumed that certain practices could, and should, be taught. In the 1840s and 1850s, schemes for the industrial training of Indigenous people constructed labour as a central part of their education. For Governor Hutt, Western Australian Aboriginal people could be civilised through working for settlers. For the Locations

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and Labour Commissioners in Natal, labour was the only path to Africans’ civilisation. In the 1860s, missionaries and educators seeking to extend education were affected both by their own changing ideas about race determining mental capacity, but also by the increasingly vocal demands of white settlers. For example, in the 1850s and 1860s, Anne Camfield and Robert James Mann each engaged with contemporary thinking about race and its connection to mental capacity. Dominant narratives about race were, therefore, responded to, challenged and shaped by people working at the local, colonial level. Focusing on education is a fruitful way of thinking about both the status of Indigenous people, and also of settlers in particular societies. Colonial education, therefore, operated at within, and between, the levels of the intimate and local and the public and imperial. Imperial policies were not simply put into practice by missionaries and educators in the colonies. Rather, they were adapted, contested and adhered to in complex ways. Focusing on government involvement in education reveals the tension between humanitarian ideals and the need to provide for settlers very explicitly. Local governments were involved with plans to ‘civilise’ Indigenous people though education, industrial training or labour schemes. These interventions could be constructed as uplifting to Indigenous people, while serving settler demands for labour and land. Thus, following Lester and Dussart, I argued that colonial government approaches to Indigenous people during this period were shaped by ‘ambivalent humanitarianism’.18 Attentiveness to transnational and comparative questions is essential to understanding colonial education. By highlighting the connections between education policy and practice in different colonies, and connecting these to educational change ‘at home’, I argued that looking beyond the boundaries of the nation-state is crucial to understanding the development of education at the colonial level. While historians of education have been ‘deeply attached to the materiality of the nation-state as the main unit of observation and analysis’, looking beyond the national indicates similarities between seemingly disconnected education policies and practices.19 For example, while there was widespread mission activity in Natal, and some government involvement in education after 1856, in Western Australia, education provision was limited through the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The belief that Australian Aboriginal people were ‘dying out’ and that Zulu people had recognisable tribal structures and authority shaped divergent approaches to Indigenous government and education. However, in spite of these differences, missionaries and local

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governments in both places believed that children would be particularly open to education. Settlers were threatened by education provision, arguing that expenditure on Natal Africans’ or Western Australian Aborigines’ education was wasteful, highlighting common anxieties across the colonies. Education in both places assumed connections between morality, industry and religion. Similarities and differences between colonies are only legible when these experiences and practices are read in parallel. Using a method of comparing and contrasting colonies is necessarily partial: there are people, places, events and times that could not be covered here. The aim of this book has not been to rewrite a national historiography on colonial education, for which there are numerous secondary sources in the cases of both Natal and Western Australia, as well as the other metropolitan and colonial contexts upon which I draw. Rather, by situating these snapshots in their broader imperial context, I have shown how these cases were connected, perhaps not directly through the movement of people or personnel—although there were cases of those kinds of connections—but often indirectly, as ideas about race, labour and education began to solidify. There are numerous other sites that could be usefully incorporated as sites of comparison, including more detailed treatment of the Cape and New Zealand, and of South Australia. The potential exists for comparisons with the Canadian colonies, where debates about assimilation fundamentally affected the provision of Indigenous education.20 It would also be fruitful to situate the changes in Indian education in the nineteenth century in the broader imperial context. Finally, the development of the Irish National School system, in which many of those involved with the Negro Education Grant were interested, also provides an avenue for future comparative and connective work. This book has focused on the policies and practices of colonial education, looking at the imperial and the particular in conversation with one another. It has not gone into the experiences of children and parents, those who were educated or those who resisted, in great detail. However, the hope is that in providing a broad scaffolding for changing conceptions of race and education from the perspective of those involved in education from the side of the coloniser, this book will provide important context to those wishing to take up these questions and their impact for pupils and families. There was a fundamental paradox that shaped education interventions in the British colonies during the nineteenth century. The process of educating assumes a capacity for change. However, by the 1870s, Indigenous

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people were increasingly characterised as unable to change due to the limitations of their race. The education that their children were offered, therefore, at once recognised and denied that race determined educability. This had an impact on education interventions, whether through child removal in Western Australia, or calls for segregated schooling in Natal. Industrial schools legislation in Western Australia, and the case of St Helenian children’s removal from government schools in Natal, showed that race was an increasingly important marker of difference in the two colonies under study. However, the meaning of racial difference, particularly for children, remained subject to debate. Denial of Indigenous access to education at once affirmed settlers’ erroneous beliefs about the inferior mental capacity of Indigenous people, and shored up settler authority. This neglect of Indigenous people’s rights and welfare, and specifically of their education, would have significant ramifications in the twentieth century. In Australia, the rights of Indigenous people were increasingly curtailed after Federation in 1901. The 1905 Western Australian Aborigines Act solidified government control of Aboriginal people. The Chief Protector of Aborigines was now the legal guardian of Aboriginal and mixed-race children younger than sixteen, and mission schools were brought more closely under his control. ‘This gave the [Aborigines’] Department greater power over enforced assimilation of Aboriginal children…’21 In Natal, by 1908, there were 304 schools for European students, with 12,437 pupils enrolled, out of a total European population of about 100,000. By contrast, one hundred and sixty-eight schools served 14,056 African pupils, less than one per cent of the African population.22 The foundations for these policies were laid in the nineteenth century. Attentiveness to shifting policy and practice in the nineteenth century indicates how ideas about race, civilisation, mental capacity and labour became increasingly important markers for educational access in the twentieth century. The legacies of these policies are still felt in postcolonial states today.

Notes 1. Bishop John William Colenso, ‘On the Efforts of Missionaries among Savages’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, 3 (1865), 248–289, 278. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., 250.

  CONCLUSION: THE ‘CHIEF BLESSING OF CIVILISATION, THE BENEFIT… 

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4. Ibid., 278. 5. Ibid. 6. Robert Plant, ‘Minute on Native Education’, in Plant, ‘Report of the Inspector of Native Education for 1889’, TNA CO 181/28. 7. Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906–1908 Disturbances in Natal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 55. 8. Ibid. 9. Report of a Commission Appointed by His Excellency the Governor to Inquire into the Treatment of Aboriginal Native Prisoners of the Crown in This Colony: And Also into Certain Other Matters Relative to Aboriginal Natives (Perth: Government Printer, 1884), 4. 10. Ibid. 11. Reports from Bishop Hale and F. Dominguez, in ibid., 17. 12. Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia, 2nd edn (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1992), 6–8. 13. See for example Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2012); Bruce Gilley’s now withdrawn article ‘The Case for Colonialism’, Third World Quarterly (2017). 14. For example, many of the early leaders of the African National Congress in South Africa were second generation Christians, aspiring to middle class ‘white’ values. Natasha Erlank, ‘Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912–1950’, Feminist Studies, 29 (2003), 653–671, 656. 15. Savo Heleta, ‘Decolonisation of Higher Education: Dismantling Epistemic Violence and Eurocentrism in South Africa’, Transformation in Higher Education, 1 (2016), a9. 16. Ngũgı ̃ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Nairobi: East African Publishers, 1994). 17. Helen Ludlow, ‘State Schooling and the Cultural Construction of Teacher Identity in the Cape Colony, 1839–1865’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2011), 5. 18. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 273–275. 19. António Nóvoa, ‘Empires Overseas and Empires at Home’, Paedagogica Historica, 45 (2009), 817–821, 818. 20. See Andrew Armitage, Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada and New Zealand (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995). Margaret Jacobs and Katherine Ellinghaus both compare Australian and American contexts: Margaret Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940

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(Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); Katherine Ellinghaus, Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in the United States and Australia, 1887–1937 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006). 21. Haebich, For Their Own Good, 85. 22. Report of the Superintendent of Education for the year ended 30th June, 1908, TNA CO 181/66; Meghan Elisabeth Healy, ‘“To Control Their Destiny”: The Politics of Home and the Feminisation of Schooling in Colonial Natal, 1885–1910’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37 (2011), 247–264, 252.

Index1

A Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (The Black People and whence they came, Magema Fuze), 155 Aberdeen, Earl of, 44, 47 Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS), 1, 25, 183–184, 197n69 Acting Lieutenant-Governor of Natal (Cooper), 116 Adams College, 121 Adams, Newton, 107 Africans, 24, 106–107, 110, 113, 136–137, 188, 189 See also Natal, attitude to Africans Airey, G.S., 84 Alder Lake native experimental farm (Western Australia), 91 Allison, James, 114–115, 120 American Board of Missions, 106 American Zulu Mission, 114

Annesfield institution (Western Australia), 180, 181 Antigua, see West Indies, education Anti-Slavery Society, 1, 43 Armstrong, Francis, 86, 87, 98n63 Australia agriculture, 75 education, 131, 208 See also Specific states Australian Aborigines education, 4, 17–18, 20–22, 75–76, 81–82, 85–87, 90–94, 131 extinction of, 24, 93, 113, 169, 180, 237, 240 girls, 88–89, 91, 94 and labour, 4–5, 79, 81, 131, 137 marriage, 89, 94 perceptions of, 137, 217, 218 protection of, 79–85, 90, 93, 94 rights, 242 Ayliff, John, 144–146

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 R. Swartz, Education and Empire, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2

245

246 

INDEX

B Baptist Missionary Society, 45, 49 Barbados, see West Indies, education Barlee, Frederick, 216–217 Barrow, George, 115 Barter, Mr., 210 Baugh, Walter, 120 Bell, Andrew, 39 Berlin Mission Society, 106 Bible, 154, 155, 171, 235 Bishopstowe farm (Natal), 153 Brigg, Arthur, 146 Britain Committee of Council on Education, 205 Committee of Privy Council on Education, 41–42, 56 education, 2, 6, 7, 13, 14, 17–20, 25, 27, 35–47, 51, 54, 61–63, 134–135, 171, 199, 202–206, 210 Elementary Education Act (1870), 18, 26, 27, 199–201, 204, 205, 210 Factory Acts, 40 Industrial Schools Act (1857), 134, 201–203 juvenile delinquency, 178, 224 National Society schools, 39, 41, 50 Poor Laws (1834), 40 Poor Law Schools, 134 pre-industrial images, 137 Reform Acts (1832 and 1867), 26–27, 39, 40, 205–206, 208 Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children (1861), 203 British and Foreign Bible Society, 41 British and Foreign School Society, 39, 50 British Guiana, see West Indies, education

Brooks, T. Warwick, 210, 221 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 118 Burges, Cleve Lockier, 212 Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 41, 43–45, 48, 49, 63n1, 73 Byrne Emigration Scheme (1849–1852), 22, 104, 123n7 C Callaway, Henry, 120, 207 Camfield, Anne, 25, 170, 171, 176, 178, 180–185, 192–194, 207, 240 Canada Bagot Commission (1842), 78 Davin Report (1879), 135–136 education, 25, 61, 134–136, 174, 208, 216 racial assimilation, 78 Cape Colony Aborigines (Border Department) fund, 143 education, 19–20, 24, 26, 35, 43, 60, 63n1, 65n23, 107, 132, 133, 135, 138, 139, 142–151, 200, 209–210, 227n15 frontier wars, 143 governance, 127n76 missionaries and mission schools, 144–150, 210 public works, 143 School Board Act (1905), 210 Cape San, 113 Caribbean, see West Indies Cattle Killings (1856–1857), see Xhosa people Cetshwayo kaMpande, 156, 167n126 Ceylon, 25, 174, 179, 182 Chadwick, Edwin, 177 Chesson, Frank, 199, 221–222

 INDEX 

Childhood, 2, 4, 15, 135, 144, 201, 206, 211, 224, 225 Children African, 190 Australian Aboriginal, 4, 13–15, 26, 74–75, 131, 138, 180, 182–185, 200, 201, 204, 209, 211, 214–218, 221, 237, 242 Canada, 98n67, 204, 206 definition of, 11–12 and families, 200–202, 204, 207, 224 health and mortality rates, 169, 176–177, 180–181, 196n48 and labour, 26, 40, 42, 58, 131–132, 201, 204, 205, 224 Maori, 208 poor, 39, 40, 46, 182, 203, 204 South Africa, 15 voices and perspectives, 17 Church Missionary Society (CMS), 45, 49, 80 Church of England, 115, 141, 147, 152 Civilisation, 1, 141, 146, 154, 171–172, 176–178, 181, 236 Class, 2, 3, 7, 11, 38, 40, 46, 49, 58, 133–135, 146, 157 Colenso, John William, 6, 25, 116, 119, 133, 151–157, 185, 186, 189, 221–222, 235–237 Colenso, Sarah Francis (née Bunyon), 152, 153, 186 Colonial education, 1–7, 10–15, 17–18, 25, 51–52, 73–74, 77, 149, 155, 169, 170, 172–173, 184, 187, 192, 199–200, 202, 211, 237–238, 240–242 archive, 16–17, 238–239 and emancipation, 52–59, 62, 205 of girls, 58, 86, 89, 90, 138, 143, 145

247

and government, 2–10, 17–21, 25–26, 36, 38, 41, 43–45, 47, 55, 61–63, 74, 94, 102, 110, 236, 239 industrial (see Colonial education, and labour) and labour, 4–5, 7, 8, 11, 18, 19, 23, 24, 37, 38, 43, 51, 52, 55–61, 63, 91, 102, 108, 110, 132–137, 139–143, 150–151, 156–157, 209, 227n15, 236, 237, 239, 240 legacy of, 238, 242 missionary, 4–11, 20–23, 26, 38, 43–51, 54, 55, 57–58, 94, 102, 103, 122, 132, 136, 137, 156, 157, 173, 200, 235, 236, 240 and physical training, 177, 181 quantification of, 172–176, 178–179, 182, 185 and race (see Race) and settlers/planters, 2–4, 7, 8, 12, 18, 23, 51–56, 59, 63, 74, 94, 101–103, 116, 121, 122, 132, 133, 136, 157, 200, 205, 236, 237, 239, 240, 242 See also Specific territories Colonialism and humanitarianism, 1–2, 7–9, 13, 21, 24, 36–38, 43, 47, 49, 53, 59, 61, 63, 73, 76, 92, 102, 110, 111, 121, 132, 136, 178, 183–184, 193–194, 237, 239, 240 as pedagogy, 5, 103 settler, 3, 8, 9, 13, 37, 74, 76, 79, 102, 104, 110, 120–121, 132, 193, 239 and violence, 8, 15, 21, 37, 78, 101 Colonial Office, 6, 7, 16, 50, 55, 59, 108, 118, 142, 143, 173, 175, 176, 179, 187

248 

INDEX

The Colony of Natal: An Account of the Characteristics and Capabilities of this British Dependency (Robert Mann), 191 Cowan, Walkinshaw, 92–93 Crowe, James, 220

Forster, William Edward, 205, 206 Fortescue, Chichester, 176 Foster, William, 148 Frontiers, 15, 73, 79, 93, 155, 170, 179, 184, 192 Fuze, Magema, 155

D Dale, Langham, 149–150, 221 Davin, Nicholas Flood, 135 Durban High School, 219

G Galililup, see Alder Lake native experimental farm (Western Australia) Gerald Mission, (Western Australia), 91–92 Gibb, Charles, 107 Gipps, George, 212 Glenelg, Lord, 45–46 Govan, William, 144, 145, 150 Gray, Robert, 104, 112–116, 142, 148, 154 Grey, Earl, 57, 59, 108, 122, 139 Grey, George, 7, 24, 44, 49, 60, 80–82, 116, 117, 119, 131–134, 137–145, 147–154, 156–157, 172–176, 191, 194, 212–213, 215 Grubbe, Charles, 119, 153

E East India Company, 19 Education compulsory, 46 research, 171–176, 178–180, 192 Ekukhanyeni school (Pietermaritzburg, Natal), 24, 25, 120, 121, 133, 151–156, 185, 186, 235 Elgin, Earl of, 56 Ellis, Captain, 80 Emancipation of slaves (1834), 6, 18, 19, 36, 42–44, 52, 64n4 Emigrant’s Guide to Port Natal (Joseph Byrne), 104 Evangelicalism, 9, 36, 39, 61–62, 74, 89 F Factory Acts, see Britain, Factory Acts Farr, William, 179 Fellenberg, Philipp Emmanuel von, 134, 136 First Lessons in Science (John Colenso), 154 Fitzgerald, Governor, 91, 122 Forster Act, see Britain, Elementary Education Act (1870)

H Hale, Mathew, 182, 208–209, 216 Hawes, Benjamin, 57 Heald Town (Cape), 144–146, 149 Hermannsburg Mission Society, 106 Herschel, John, 19 Hofwyl school (Switzerland), 58, 61, 134 Humanitarianism, see Colonialism, and humanitarianism Hutt, John, 74, 79–86, 88, 90, 91, 94, 101, 239

 INDEX 

I Imperial histories, 13–16, 133, 142, 241 Impey, William, 145, 150 Inanda College (Natal), 121 India Charter Act (1813), 19 education, 19, 20, 102–103 Education Minute (1835), 19 ‘Mutiny’ (1857), 171 Indigenous people, 10, 12, 26, 27, 40, 73, 77, 94, 101, 136, 170–172, 175, 181, 184, 192, 194, 207–208, 224–225, 236, 237 Industrial education, 55, 56, 58–61, 108, 111–116, 213, 236 concept of, 134–137 See also Colonial education, and labour; Specific territories Industrial schools, see Schools, industrial Ireland Commissioners of Education, 43 education, 19, 20, 36, 42–44, 61, 241 people of, 57 Irish language, 43 Irish National School system, see Ireland, education Irwin, Frederick, 91 J Jamaica, see Morant Bay ‘uprisings’ (1865); West Indies, education K Kafir Industrial Institution, see Zonnebloem School (Cape)

249

Kay-Shuttleworth, James, 19, 38, 41, 43, 56–61, 69n101, 132, 134, 139 Kennedy, Arthur, 180, 183 L La Trobe, Charles, 35, 49–54, 59, 60, 84 Labouchere, Henry, 116 Labour, 2–4, 7, 13–14, 18, 39, 51, 53, 57, 74 Lancasterian Society, see British and Foreign School Society Land, 73–76, 237 Landor, Edward, 212 Langalibalele kaMthimkhulu, 219 Lange, R., 145 Leeward Islands, see West Indies, education Lessons in General Knowledge: An Elementary Reading Book (Robert James Mann), 185–186 Lindley, Daniel, 107 London Missionary Society, 45, 49 London Philanthropic Society, 216 Lovedale Seminary (Cape), 144, 145, 162n45 M Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 19 Mann, Caroline, 186, 187, 191, 192 Mann, Robert James, 25, 171, 185–194, 198n86, 240 Maori people, 24, 161n31, 173, 212–213 Maqoma, Mapolissa, 147 Marmion, Mr., 209 Masters and Servants Acts, 11 Maunsell, Robert, 139 Mauritius, 35

250 

INDEX

Merivale, Herman, 77, 78, 115, 142 Merri Creek school (Victoria), 60 Mfecane, 22, 34n71, 198n86 Missionaries and missions, 2, 8–11, 16, 17, 19, 44–45, 49–50, 73, 74, 76, 84, 106–107, 156, 171, 174, 178, 235 See also Colonial education, missionary; Specific territories Mkhungo kaMpande, 156 Morant Bay ‘uprisings’ (1865), 171 Moravian Mission Society, 45 Myall Creek massacre (1838), 212 N Natal agriculture, 108, 109, 114, 119 attitude to Africans, 104–108, 110–113, 116, 117, 119–120, 136–137, 189–191, 198n86, 218–220, 223, 240–241 Charter (1856), 117 Commission of Enquiry on Native Labour (1852), 108–112, 125n30 Council of Education, 211 education, 3, 18, 23–26, 101–104, 106–108, 111–121, 133, 145, 151–156, 174, 176–177, 187, 189–190, 200, 210–211, 218–224, 235–237, 239, 240, 242 Education Act (1877), 211 emigration to, 191 (see also Byrne Emigration Scheme (1849–1852)) Indian Immigrant School Board, 220 labour, 21, 22, 63, 103–106, 108–109, 111, 112, 117–120, 190, 191, 240

land, 103–105, 109, 114, 127n68, 190 locations (see Natal, reserve system) missionaries and mission schools, 102, 103, 106, 109, 111–115, 117–120, 126n47, 148, 152, 166n117, 187–189, 220, 236–237, 240–241 Native Locations Commission (1846), 107–109, 112 Native Reserve Fund, 117–121, 128n85 Ordinance 2 (1856), 116–117, 138 representative government (1856), 22–23 reserve system, 105–109, 113, 120, 124n23 St Helena community, 201–202, 220–223, 225 Select Committee on General Education (1858), 187 settlers, 3, 22, 23, 26, 52, 102–105, 107, 109, 111–112, 115–122, 125n37, 153–154, 219, 223, 241 vagrancy laws, 219 Zulu language teaching, 154 Natal Society, 188 National Society, see Britain, National Society schools Native School Establishment (South Australia), 138 Negro Education Grant (1835–1845), 18, 35–38, 41, 44–52, 54–56, 63n1, 67n47, 241 New Norcia School (Western Australia), 213, 237 New South Wales, 75, 80, 83, 89 New System, see Cape Colony, education New Zealand

 INDEX 

colonial wars, 139, 213 cultural exchange, 156 education, 24, 60, 117, 132, 133, 138–142, 144, 174, 208, 227n15 Education Act (1877), 208 Education Ordinance (1847), 116, 138, 139 missionaries and mission schools, 138–140, 156 Native Trust Ordinance (1844), 139 racial assimilation, 78, 139 teaching in Maori language, 138–139 Newcastle, Duke of, 115, 174, 176 Ngidi, William, 155 Nightingale, Florence, 25, 169–186, 188, 192–194, 195n25 O On the Origin of Species (Charles Darwin), 23, 154, 193 P Padbury, Walter, 217 Pakington, John, 114, 139 Pearse, Horatio, 118 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 134, 136 Philip, John, 63n1 Pietermaritzburg High School, 219 Pine, Benjamin, 106–107, 109, 113 Pinjarra Massacre, 80 Plant, Robert, 236–237 Pope, Mr and Mrs, 92 Port Phillip Protectorate (Victoria), 21, 75, 80, 83–84 Preston, Major William R., Acting Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, 114–115

251

Q Queensland, 214, 217 R Race, 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 12–14, 18, 23–25, 27, 38, 46, 49, 58, 62, 63, 76–77, 94, 102, 111, 134, 135, 141–142, 146, 157, 169–172, 175, 180, 182, 184, 188, 190, 193, 201, 202, 206–208, 211, 220–225, 236–240, 242 Racial amalgamation, 77–78, 85, 138–140, 148, 151 Randal, George, 214 Reform Acts, see Britain, Reform Acts (1832 and 1867) Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines (1835–1837), 17–18, 20, 73, 83, 94, 101, 115, 236 Report on Industrial Schools (1847, Egerton Ryerson), 61 Report on the Best Means of Promoting the Civilization of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Australia (George Grey, 1840), 80, 81, 131–132, 137 Robinson, George Augustus, 60, 83 Roman Catholic emancipation (Ireland, 1829), 42 Russell, John, 41, 42, 55 Russell, Robert, 222, 223 Ryerson, Egerton, 61, 134 S St Helena, see Natal, St Helena community St John’s College (New Zealand), 147 Salem Institution (Cape), 144, 146, 149

252 

INDEX

Salvado, Rosendo, 176, 178, 181, 212–214 Sandili, Gonya, 147 Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals (Florence Nightingale), 178 School inspectors, 41, 47, 49, 62, 65n23, 187 Schools, 76, 90, 170 boarding, 141 industrial, 57, 61, 203–204 (see also Colonial education, and labour; Specific territories) monitorial, 39, 50 Poor Law, 134 Sunday and evening, 38, 39, 54 workhouse, 39, 40 Science, 154–155, 171, 172, 185–186, 188 Scott, John, 116–120, 152, 186–188 Scriptures, see Bible Selwyn, George, 147 Settler colonialism, see Colonialism, settler Shaw, Barnabus, 144, 146, 147 Shepstone, Theophilus, 106, 107, 118, 119, 152, 156, 188 Sierra Leone, 25, 174 Slavery, 36, 43, 47 See also Emancipation of slaves (1834) Sligo, Lord, 45–46, 48 Smithies, John, 86–93 Social Science Association, 171, 178 Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, 134 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for Foreign Parts (SPG), 49, 106, 113, 152, 186 South Africa children (see Children, South Africa) education, 4, 13, 136, 210

See also Cape Colony; Natal South Australia, 137–138, 214–215 Spring Rice, Thomas, 41–44 Spring Vale mission (Natal), 120 Stanger, William, 107 Stanley, Lord, 42–44, 56 Sterling, James, 44–47, 54, 57 Stewart, James, 145 Stirling, James, 80 Sugar plantations, 105, 108 Swan Native and Half Caste Home (Western Australia), 237 Swan River Colony, see Western Australia Symmons, Charles, 4, 82, 85, 86, 89–92, 97n39 T Teacher training, 48, 58, 62, 187 Trinidad, see West Indies, education Tshatshu (Tzatzoe), Henry Duke of Wellington, 147 U United Free Church of Scotland, 106 W Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 79, 104 Wannerroo, see Alder Lake native experimental farm (Western Australia) Watermeyer (Cape Education) Commission (1860s), 149 Weld, Frederick, 209, 212–215 Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society (WMMS), 45, 49, 85, 88, 106, 144 Wesleyan Native School (Western Australia), 85–86, 88–90, 94

 INDEX 

Western Australia Aborigines Act (1905), 218, 242 Aborigines Protection Act (1887), 218 education, 3, 7, 18, 21–22, 25, 60, 81, 83, 85–93, 107, 109, 138, 174, 176, 180–185, 209, 211–218, 237, 240–241 Elementary Education Act (1871), 208, 212, 213 governor, role of, 79–80 Industrial Schools Act (1874), 211–216, 223, 224 labour, 5, 21, 63, 79, 81–83, 86, 90, 109, 131, 239 land, 75–76, 85, 131, 137 Metropolitan Act (1857), 214 missionaries and mission schools, 98n63, 217, 237, 240–241 Native Offenders Amendment Act (1871), 213 Native Protectors, 82, 122 Pearl Shell Fisheries Act (1871), 213 racial assimilation and protection, 78, 81–88, 213–218

253

settlers, 3, 20–21, 26, 52, 75–76, 79–81, 87, 88, 91–94, 122, 131, 137, 183, 213, 223, 241 West Indies education, 6, 7, 18–20, 35–38, 42–53, 55–63, 67n46, 108, 111, 136, 151, 205, 228n33, 239 Wilder, Reverend, 120 Windward Islands, see West Indies, education Wobart (Aboriginal girl), 90 Wyse, Thomas, 42 X Xhosa people, 143, 148, 171 Z Zonnebloem School (Cape), 113, 147–148, 154 Zulu kingdom, 22 Zulu language and literature, 190