Abstract
Abstract
As a pioneering missionary to Maori in the Cook’s Strait region, Octavius Hadfield was extensively influential through three decades. Yet his contribution is virtually unknown today. Working with the discourse of “entanglement” developed by Tony Ballantyne, this thesis investigates the source and the nature of Hadfield’s influence and some of its significant outcomes. He identified with Maori, uniquely opting to live not in a mission compound but in the pa. Thus his life became deeply entangled with Maori, their culture, customs and language. This entanglement nurtured trust and commended the gospel he proclaimed, moving Maori society towards “new visions of both the natural and supernatural worlds” to quote Ballantyne. The thesis seeks to answer two questions: to what extent was Hadfield entangled with Maori of the Cook’s Strait region, and how did the degree of his entanglement enable him to initiate radical social change?
The answers, worked out through close engagement with archival sources, are set out in four chapters covering four relevant periods of Hadfield’s life: his formative years, his frustrating year in the Bay of Islands, his first few years in the Cook’s Strait region, and his campaign for justice for Te Atiawa in 1860-1861. Hadfield emerges creditably. An important topic sometimes discounted, rarely discussed, but researched here and needing further investigation, is the nature of Christian conversion among Maori and its relationship to societal transformation. Hadfield made a profound contribution to that subject, both intellectually in his writings and demonstrably through his ministry. Deeply entangled with Maori, through gospel principles he initiated and guided radical social change.