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of the colony, whilst being conscious of the hand of censorship from his former employers who
had invented most of the rhetoric in the first place. For him, New Zealand did not therefore face
immediate success, but a slow and sure rise when founded on agriculture. In the case of Travels in
New Zealand, he directed many of his comments and criticisms as much at the British public and
future colonists as at those in charge and already resident in the colony. While he generally only
hinted or omitted the role of the New Zealand Company until the publication of his Allgemeine
Zeitung article, he, nevertheless, took issue over the merits of bringing over the Company’s
preferred absentee investors and capitalists instead of an industrious middle class and skilled
agricultural labourers, who would in reality form the basis of the immigrant vision of the
‘worker’s paradise’ which Friedrich Krull and others observed several decades later, and disputed
the naive allocation of land for the Maori reserve scheme. In contrast, he had no such reservations
over criticising the erroneous activities of the Government, colonists, missionaries and land
speculators in an effort to educate and inform them of a better course of action.
A secondary aim of his work, which in the end takes centre stage as his most memorable
contribution, was to correct the colonist’s view of the Maori. Dieffenbach’s perception of the
Maori has in this case been influenced by Romanticism, or more specifically the ‘Romantic
Savage’, which involved the blending of ‘noble’ and ‘barbaric’ qualities to create a more
harmonious and balanced picture of relative equality between the sexes and positive freedom in
childrearing than Forster provided. The Maori now become representatives of an ancient
Polynesian Empire, and exhibit the Greco-Romanesque qualities of a symmetrical, wellproportioned
and European-like physique, which is adaptable to the colder, harsher climate of
New Zealand (when compared to the warmer tropics), making them, in the process, similar to the
British constitution. His comparisons with European cultures do not end there, as the superstitious
beliefs of the Polynesians also draw the first parallel between Maori and the Germanic tribes. Due
to his longer stay of several years, his more personal contact with the Maori and colonial
enterprises, as well as the benefit of having other modern literary precedents on pre-colonial New
Zealand and the Maori to work with, Dieffenbach was naturally able to surpass Forster’s
ethnological knowledge, whilst retaining much of his ambivalence and original philosophical
flavour. This again culminates in a dual portrayal of Maori as affectionate, good-natured,
chivalrous and hospitable, with equal, if not superior, agricultural and architectural prowess to
most colonists, while at the same time quick to anger and revengeful. However, he continues
Forster’s characteristic philosophical mentality through attributing the cause and severity of
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