TRANSPLANTED IRISH INSTITUTIONS - University of Canterbury

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family. To further his argument he notes that the abolition of assisted passages in 1891
coincides with decreased migration from this area as these landless labourers could not
afford the expensive passage to New Zealand. I 8
The other stream of migrants came from Ulster and their experience was vastly
different to the immigrants from Munster.
It must not be assumed that all of the
immigrants from Ulster were 'Ulster-Scots'. Figures from the 1881 census show that Ulster's
religious composition was predominantly Catholic, although that does not mean that the
migrants were mainly Catholic. (Refer to Table 1). While many Irish Protestants would
have come to New Zealand from Ulster there would also have been some Catholics from
that region.
Akenson suggests that these Ulster Catholics had a totally different perception of
Ireland from that of the Catholics in the other parts of Ireland. The Catholics in the rest of
Ireland not only fought for land in terms of class, but also in national terms. The landlords
were Protestant and absentee and thus seen as foreigners. In Ulster the battle was very close
to home as competition was on a village by village basis.
"This day-to-day perduring
rivalry, close, personal, unremitting, produced a toughness, a mixture of doggedness and
shrewd calculation, in the northern Catholic that enabled (and indeed, still enables) him [or
her] to carry on a battle over decades, even centuries". 19 It is important to understand the
origins of the Irish migrants and their own experiences as this effected their development
when they settled in New Zealand.
The extent to which their traditional rivalry and
nationalist aspirations were continued in New Zealand was influenced by their past.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century the New Zealand government,
under the guidance of Julius Vogel (1835-1899), who believed that the country needed
more settlers, devised a plan for national development based on immigration and public
works. 20 Davis notes that "Immigration was a burning issue for all New Zealanders" as
18Ibid .. pp. 69-72.
190p. cit, Akenson, Half the World from Home, p. 73.
20Julius Vogel was the Colonial Treasurer in 1870 and was Premier from April 1873 to July 1875 and
then Premier again from February to August 1876.