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the time encouraged the critiquing of other nation’s colonial activities, while moralising and
lamenting the treatment of native peoples, and emphasising a more careful implementation of
colonisation. German travelogues which balanced scientific discourse with general narrative and
philosophy were soon made popular by the likes of Georg Forster and Alexander von Humboldt.
In the context of New Zealand, this was to last right through the nineteenth century, albeit with
greater concentration in the early and middle periods. As science and philosophy went hand in
hand in the broader and less specialised education of the time period, German and Austrian
scientists, in general, showed several fundamental qualities. The first was their propensity for
European moralising, particularly within anthropological circles, in which they often attempted to
distinguish between European and non-European characteristics and behaviour. At the same time
they also revealed a clear predilection for theorising over the merits, implementation and general
process of colonisation, and putting forward solutions and advice in an effort to counteract any
negative outcomes. The effects of colonisation on the indigenous population, in this case, against
specifically British excesses, were of particular importance, and time and time again it is with
these original inhabitants that they characteristically and openly side. The single most influential
development in this perspective, however, was the rise of Social Darwinism as an unquestioning
belief from the 1860s which replaced the above outlook with a tendency to instead sympathise
and retrospectively dwell on British-Maori conflict and the ultimate extinction of the latter
without offering feasible solutions. A by-product of this way of thinking was the ‘Romantic’
connection between Maori and the Germanic tribes, which compared favourable traits and
underscored clear sympathies at the same time as it highlighted the opposite outcomes of the
civilising process.
Naturally viewpoints and attitudes had changed somewhat since the days of Forster, as
Enlightenment thinkers had been replaced by Romanticists and Social Darwinists. The role of the
author was no longer focused on addressing popular misconceptions based on fanciful accounts of
the South Pacific or educating the public on racial theories and the efforts of fearless explorers
and adventurers. Instead New Zealand and the Maori became important subjects in their own
right, as it was the country’s uniqueness in both nature and people that made it worthwhile as a
destination for German-speaking scientists. New Zealand itself had also become a constantly
evolving British colony, whose transforming face was shaped by the remarkable level and speed
of progress characteristic of the colonising era of the 1840s to 1880s. Subsequently, the later
one’s arrival, the more advanced the process of colonisation had become, and the less that could
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