Abstract
Robert Stout (1844-1930) was a preeminent political and intellectual figure in nineteenth and early twentieth-century New Zealand. Despite this, he has not been the primary subject of extensive historical research since the 1960s. This thesis reexamines Stout’s life and legacy, focusing on his ideas and ideals. Stout was a complicated and multi-faceted individual whose attitudes and actions were shaped by mid-nineteenth-century assumptions about race, society, science and progress. However, despite a deserved reputation as New Zealand’s leading freethinker and a critic of religion, Stout’s Scottish Presbyterian roots also continued to mould his worldview. He was a ‘secular puritan’ with all the moralising tendencies of an evangelical preacher. Politically, Stout was an avowed liberal, influenced by the philosophies of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, which were centrally concerned with protecting individual flourishing and freedoms. Stout’s adherence to a classical liberal philosophy manifested in his general commitment to laissez-faire economics and a minimal state, but his politics were less narrowly individualistic than has sometimes been made out. As well as individual rights, Stout also prioritised the ‘public good’ and collective interests, drawing upon his religious heritage. His prolonged efforts to promote a distinct New Zealand national identity provide one example of this. In his nation-building endeavours, Stout hoped to protect New Zealand from division and fragmentation, whether based on religion, class, race or whatever, by promoting a single shared identity. However, his unifying vision was also intrinsically exclusionary. Those individuals and groups he considered a threat to New Zealand’s racial purity or social stability – such as the Chinese and Irish Catholics – had no place in his vision of the nation. This thesis attempts to make sense of Stout and his ideas without disregarding their inherent complexities and ambiguities.