The landed gentry of lowlands Ashburton County, 1890-1896

The large landowners of the south are a group of vital importance to the study of nineteenth-century New Zealand. Throughout the colonial period they played a heavily disproportionate role in the country’s politics, commerce, developing agriculture and society. The aim of this thesis is to subject a small section of the large landowning group to detailed analysis. It is an attempt to study a part,to make 11useful and accurate" statements and generalisations, and so throw light upon the whole, as has been suggested by W.H. Oliver in his paper, Towards a New History. The part chosen was lowlands Ashburton county. Ashburton county is a particularly convenient sub-region, as its political borders have remained unchanged since its first creation as a county. This provides an unusual stability and a firm base for statistics. In addition, the county has recently been the subject of a detailed and scholarly history by the late W.H. Scatter, which enabled this thesis to proceed from an already well-_prepared field. Ashburton county was also, in many respects, a "typical" southern county in the nineties, with a matured economic and social pattern common throughout the lowlands areas of theSouth Island and south-eastern North Island

The pastoral families of the Hunter Valley, 1880-1914

The Hunter valley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a burgeoning rural society. Its population of humans, cattle, sheep and horses grew rapidly. The number of its farms increased from 5,000 in 1885 to over 11,000 by 1914. Although legal and social attacks were launched on the unequal distribution of property in this society between 1880 and 1914, the economic structure remained fairly stable. While the community as a whole grew richer, the rich grew richer too. The principal forms of property in the Hunter valley were land and animals; in 1880 ownership of this property was concentrated in a marked way into the hands of a few score families and after more than thirty years remained almost as concentrated. Ownership of property among this handful of families was largely hereditary, and although there was a good deal of transference of property from one individual or partnership to another, estates tended to remain with the same few score families. These families were a stable and distinct economic elite in a prosperous expanding society. The economic elite did not form a complete marriage or social elite, being divided within itself into circles of connubiality and acquaintance which on occasion crossed the lines of economic class . Religion acted as an arbitrary divider of th economic elite, but education seemed to unite many members of the group - along with other well-to-do people - into something of a status elite. The economic elite clearly dominated certain fields of political , military, magisterial and other power in the Hunter valley and was certainly disproportionately influential in most. On the other hand, many members of the economic elite took no part in public life and did not act as leaders. In two particular environments important to the economic elite - their estates and their homesteads - they were clearly distinguishable in their customs from all other people in the community. The economic elite - which I have dubbed 'the pastoral families' - was a successful propertied group which had acquired, and was acquiring status and power in varying degrees. Those status and power forms that could be paid for in cash were common to all the pastoral families. But where personality, public presence and other intangibles came into play - as in so many institutions of rural society - only some pastoral families held authority or were admired by their economic inferiors