At the Margin of Empire: John Webster and the Hokianga, 1842-1900

At the Margin of Empire: John Webster and the Hokianga, 1842-1900

Jennifer Ashton

FEBRUARY 2015

Auckland University Press

Paperback, 228 x 148 mm, 276 pages

978 1 86940 825 1, $49.99

Using the life of John Webster as a unique lens through which to view the early history of New Zealand, this remarkable biography is an intimate and revealing account of life at this time.

Born in Scotland in 1818, John Webster came to New Zealand via Australia in 1841 (after a violent encounter in the outback which he just escaped unscathed) and spent most of the rest of his life in Hokianga. At the Margin of Empire charts his colourful experiences carving out a fortune as the region’s leading timber trader and cultivating connections with the leading figures of the day, Māori and Pākehā.

Webster fought alongside Tāmati Wāka Nene in the Northern War, married one of Nene’s relatives and built up his kauri timber business through trade with local chiefs (though at one point awoke to find a plundering party had arrived on his front lawn). He was also friends with Frederick Maning, and visited by George Grey, Richard Seddon and other luminaries of the day. In telling the story of John Webster’s long and colourful life for the first time, this biography also explores the wider transformation of relationships between Māori and Pākehā during the nineteenth century.

Jennifer Ashton graduated from the University of Auckland history department with a PhD in 2012, after a career as a technical writer and editor. Her doctoral thesis was placed on the Dean’s List and won a special Post-Doctoral Award from the Kate Edger Educational Charitable Trust. She lives in Auckland.

She was inspired by a trip to Opononi that had taken place almost 20 years earlier, when she first saw an old, double-storied white house languishing there on the waterfront. The house was shown to her by the original owner’s great-great-granddaughter, and the faded opulence of the place made an impression that she never forgot. For the next five years, the man who built that house, John Webster, lived inside her mind as she reconstructed the life that he had lived in that sleepy but fascinating part of the country. His attitudes and opinions didn’t always make him the easiest housemate to have around, but Jennifer never found him dull or tedious.