New Zealand Theosophists in “New Education” networks, 1880s-1938

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-57
Author(s):  
Sue C. Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
Set Up ◽  
New Education

Purpose It is well-known that Beatrice Ensor, who founded the New Education Fellowship (NEF) in 1921, was a Theosophist and that from 1915 the Theosophical Fraternity in Education she established laid the foundations for the NEF. However, little research has been performed on the Fraternity itself. The travels of Theosophists, texts, money and ideas between Auckland, India and London from the late nineteenth century offer insights into “New Education” networking in the British Commonwealth more broadly. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on archival documents from the Adyar Library and Research Centre, International Theosophical Society (TS) headquarters, Chennai, India; the archive at the headquarters of the New Zealand Section of the TS, Epsom, Auckland; the NEF files at the archive of the London Institute of Education; papers past digital newspaper archive. Findings New Zealand’s first affiliated NEF group was set up by the principal of the Vasanta Gardens Theosophical School, Epsom, in 1933. She was also involved in the New Zealand Section of the Theosophical Fraternity, which held conferences from 1917 to 1927. New Zealand’s Fraternity and Theosophical Education Trust had close links with their counterparts in England and India. The setting up of New Zealand’s first NEF group was enabled by networks created between Theosophists in New Zealand, India and England from the late nineteenth century. Originality/value The contribution of Theosophists to the new education movement has received little attention internationally. Theosophical educational theory and Theosophists’ contributions to New Zealand Education have not previously been studied. Combining transnational historiography with critical geography, this case study of networks between New Zealand, Adyar (India) and London lays groundwork for a wider “spatial history” of Theosophy and new education.

Affect and the history of masculinities

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brickell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Relational Quality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Purpose – Many scholarly disciplines are currently engaged in a turn to affect, paying close attention to emotion, feeling and sensation. The purpose of this paper is to locate affect in relation to masculinity, time and space. Design/methodology/approach – It suggests that historically, in a range of settings, men have been connected to one another and to women, and these affective linkages tells much about the relational quality and texture of historically experienced masculinities. Findings – Spatial settings, in turn, facilitate, hinder and modify expressions and experiences of affect and social connectedness. This paper will bring space and time into conversation with affect, using two examples from late nineteenth-century New Zealand. Originality/value – If masculinities scholars often focus on what divides men from women and men from each other, the paper might think about how affect connects people.

scholarly journals The Plutarch of Maoriland: James Cowan and Pictures of Old New Zealand

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Blackley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Full Page ◽  
Late Nineteenth

James Cowan’s Pictures of Old New Zealand (1930) documents the Partridge Collection of paintings by Gottfried Lindauer in full-page, half-tone illustrations accompanied by historical biographies. Lavish by New Zealand’s publishing standards of 1930, the book originated in an earlier, unillustrated guide to the collection overseen by a much younger Cowan in 1901. This essay discusses the genesis of many biographies in manuscripts solicited by Partridge from his friend James Mackay, a “fixer” between Māori and Pākehā worlds in the late nineteenth century who personally knew many of the subjects. It further argues that Cowan’s Pictures of Old New Zealand deserves recognition as the first significant art monograph to be published in New Zealand. 

“Impressions Which Will Never Be Lost”: Missionary Periodicals for Protestant Children in Late-Nineteenth Century Canada and New Zealand

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 388-393
Author(s):  
Hugh Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Juvenile Literature ◽  
Child Agency ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Adequate Analysis

Despite extensive engagement, children were invisible in the programs of the nineteenth-century Protestant missionary conferences. By the early 1900s this had noticeably changed as denominations and missionary organizations sought to maximize and enhance juvenile missionary interest. Childhood was the key stage in which to establish habits; the future depended upon “the education of the childhood of the race, in missionary matters as in all others.” Literature was pivotal and periodicals were deemed to be the most effective literary form. They provided the young with “impressions which will never be lost . . . nothing will appeal to the young more strongly than stories from beyond the seas, of strange people who know not of Christ, but who need His gospel.” Juvenile missionary periodicals were ubiquitous in Britain, Europe, and America, but they are still only partially understood. Adult and juvenile literature was qualitatively different so that “any adequate analysis . . . requires to be grounded in an understanding of the construction of childhood in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.” This task remains very much a work in progress. Most recent scholarship tends to discursively situate children's periodicals with respect to religion, culture, and politics. All agree on at least a broad two-fold function: the spiritual and the philanthropic. Periodicals per se were an integral part of a large and pervasive Victorian corpus of juvenile religious and moral literature. At the same time missionary periodicals were different. They emphasized child agency by encouraging a “participatory relationship” between readers and their subject. Children became active agents “in a diaologic relationship with [their] world.”

scholarly journals Men Alone, Men Entwined: Reconsidering Colonial Masculinity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brickell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Two men pose together in an oval cut-out.  The man on our right stands for the camera and lays his arm against the back of his seated companion.  Both ignore the camera.  They study a book instead, absorbed in the world portrayed by its pages.  The pair shares a moment in time, a space, and also an intimate closeness; these are no men alone.  What is their story, and what does it tell us about men's lives in late-nineteenth-century New Zealand?

The dangers of infection: school medical inspection in Brazil (the 1910s)

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heloísa Helena Pimenta Rocha ◽  
Henrique Mendonça da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Debate ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Hygiene ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the introduction of school medical inspection (SMI) in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Brazil) during the 1910s, in a process aligned with the international debate that, since the late nineteenth century, sustained the need of services that focused on the sanitary inspection of schools and their students. It analyzes the purposes guiding the creation of these services and their connections to the spheres of public health and education, highlighting the role taken by the concerns about issues such as the control of infectious diseases, particularly tuberculosis. Design/methodology/approach The study consists of a historical analysis using as sources the legislation and documents produced by the SMI. The documents are examined in correlation with the positions defended at international conferences held at the period. Findings The study evidences the intricacies of the introduction of SMI services in the Brazilian states that were pioneers in this area. It examines their relations to guidelines established in international forums, which certainly played an important role in the Brazilian efforts. It also allowed to highlight the relations between efforts to create medical inspections in school and those aiming at fighting infectious diseases. Originality/value The paper contributes to a better comprehension of the efforts regarding social hygiene and particularly the hygiene of schools and their students in a period in which the state takes greater responsibilities for its population.

scholarly journals Restless Spirit, Resolute Conviction: The Life and Times of Joseph ‘Ivo’ Evison

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stephen Robert John Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Many ◽  
Do So

<p>At first glance, Joseph Evison's life was a confusion of convictions and contradictions, played out in the pages of the many newspapers he edited and wrote for in New Zealand and Australia. A late nineteenth-century Freethinker, he would go on to edit a Catholic newspaper, just as he would readily criticise the British Empire, in spite of serving in its army and navy. Despite his obvious intricacies, historians have not been kind to Evison, reducing him to a mere one line curiosity, implying that he shifted causes to follow the money or because he was a simple contrarian at heart. However, Evison's unsettled nature means a study of his life and ideologies adds to a number of other histories including those of Freethought, Catholicism, conservatism, colonial settlers, empire, transmission of ideas, reader culture and biographical studies. This thesis therefore attempts to chronicle Evison's life, before arguing that his changing causes was down to deep-seated secularist and libertarian convictions, which left him always fighting for what he perceived as the underdog, against both the state and the Protestant majority. To do so, it not only studies his writing, which remains vibrant and engaging even today, but also his editing style at various newspapers and his speeches during a short-lived political career.</p>

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