Karen Fox

Grand dames and gentle helpmeets: women and the royal honours system in New Zealand, 1917-2000.

Scholars, for the most part, have paid little attention to royal honours systems, both in Britain and in the settler societies whose honours systems are derived from that of Britain. This article challenges that neglect through a particular focus on womens experiences of the New Zealand royal honours system. It uses the New Zealand context as a window on to the gendered nature of honours systems, arguing that the history of honours is a rich field of research for womens historians interested in shifts in society and in gender identities and statuses in the twentieth century. Focusing on the award of titles to women, the article explores patterns in such awards and the representations of the recipients in popular culture. Like many women who have reached the top of a historically male‐dominated system, their experiences display a constant disjunction between conformity to traditional images and ideals of the feminine as being exceptionally situated as different from other women.

'A pernicious system of caste and privilege' Egalitarianism and official honours in Australia, New Zealand and Canada

It is commonplace to assert that egalitarianism has been a cherished value in Australian history, and a founding tenet of Australian society. This article explores one example where the rhetoric of egalitarianism shaped public debate over an official institution, the honours system. Exploring the intersection of the ideal of egalitarianism with contests over honours in Australia, Canada and New Zealand over more than a century, it reveals how different understandings of the concept of egalitarianism were employed in the service of arguments both for and against titular honours such as knighthood. It also finds that, in efforts to reform honours systems inherited from Britain, the language of egalitarianism was shared across these three former settler colonies, returning full circle to inflect British debates about the future of honours in the twenty-first century. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Ornamentalism, Empire and Race: Indigenous Leaders and Honours in Australia and New Zealand

The imperial honours system, David Cannadine has argued, was a means for binding together ‘the British proconsular elite’ and ‘indigenous colonial elites’ throughout the settler colonies and dominions of the British Empire (Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. London: Penguin, 2002). Yet in settler colonies like Australia and New Zealand indigenous populations were marginalised and often disregarded, and it was local white elites who became knights of St Michael and St George, the Bath and the British Empire. Focusing on Australia and New Zealand, this article explores the complex relationships Aboriginal and Māori leaders have had with honours during the twentieth century. Building upon Cannadines analysis, I examine the ways in which indigenous leaders navigated the political complexities involved in the offer of an honour, and how their acceptance of awards was received by others, shedding light on how honours systems intersected with post-war struggles for indigenous rights in the former dominions.