David McNab

Herman Merivale and the Native Question, 1837–1861

One of the most important consequences of the granting of colonial self-government in the British Empire in the early and mid-Victorian period was that it created complex problems for the Colonial Office concerning the future of native populations. In the nineteenth century this imperial dilemma was termed the “native question.” Natives were regarded as a lower class, like the Irish or the poor in Britain, and British liberals sought to better the material condition of these people by means of the panaceas of education and religion. Their object was humanitarian and their methods were usually paternalistic. Herman Merivale, in his role as a commentator on the native question, was both naive and at times Utopian in his attempts to find a solution. As an imperial administrator he was involved in the ineffectual attempts to implement the schemes of “amalgamation” (gradual union leading to assimilation) and “insulation” (reservations). British native policies failed largely because of resistance by native peoples and the weaknesses of imperial administration rather than British racial attitudes. For Merivale “race” was a cultural idea derived from early nineteenth century ethnography, not a pseudo-scientific rationale which determined that native peoples were physically and, therefore, intellectually and materially inferior. Until the 1860s, at least, his ideas on this subject were not very different from those of his British contemporaries and were derived from a wide variety of written sources rather than direct observation.