A Short History of History at Canterbury
Canterbury College was founded in 1873 by an ordinance of the Canterbury
Provincial Government "for enabling all classes and denominations … to
pursue a regular and liberal course of education". Canterbury was the
second institution for tertiary-level education established in New Zealand,
following Otago University (1869). An act of 1933 changed the name Canterbury
College to Canterbury University College until 1957, when the College
became officially the University of Canterbury. From that date until
1961, Canterbury remained affiliated to the central examining body, the
University of New Zealand, in whose name degrees were conferred. It was
not until January 1962 that the University of Canterbury became an independent
degree-conferring institution, with its own coat of arms.
History was first taught at Canterbury College within the original Department
of Classics and English, under John Macmillan Brown, one of the foundation
professors. In 1906 the subject was transferred to a new lectureship
in Economics and History. The lecturer was Dr James
Hight, first recipient
of a D.Litt. from the University of New Zealand (in 1906) and the only
History student ever to gain First Class Honours under Macmillan Brown.
Hight was the obvious choice when a new chair in Economics and History
was established in 1909. Ten years later these two subjects were split
into separate departments, and Dr Hight became Canterbury's first Professor
of History.
Hight was without question the outstanding figure of Canterbury College in his thirty years as History Professor. In 1928 he was appointed Rector (equivalent of today's Vice-Chancellor) soon after his return from England on an exchange visit to Leeds University, whose Professor A.J. Grant had spent 1927 at Canterbury. Hight's former colleague in the old Department of Economics and History, J.B. Condliffe, had become the first Professor of Economics at Canterbury, but he was a historian at heart, establishing his reputation with the classic New Zealand in the Making (1929), which he dedicated to Hight. Teaching and administration took up most of Hight's time (he became Pro-Chancellor in 1935) but he co-edited the first volume of The History of Canterbury (1957). He was awarded the CMG in 1932, and was knighted in 1947, the year before he retired. Hight died in 1958.
The History Department throughout the 1920s and 1930s was very small
by modern standards, being virtually a partnership between 'Doc' Hight
and Miss Alice Candy (together they wrote A Short History of Canterbury
College in 1927) helped by various assistant lecturers and part-time
tutors. Miss Candy was unofficial dean of women in the 1930s, and ably
complemented Hight's mild-mannered and even-handed approach to their
subject. She retired in 1948 but continued as Warden of Helen Connon
Hall until 1951. She died in 1977. Her portrait (by W.A. Sutton) now
hangs in the Level 3 foyer. Hight's name is perpetuated in the James
Hight Library where his portrait overlooks the Reference Collection.
Hight's
successor as Head of Department was Professor N.C.
Phillips, a Canterbury
graduate who had studied at Oxford (Merton College) before serving in
the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. He returned to Canterbury
as a lecturer in History in 1946. Neville Phillips set himself very high
standards of scholarship and expected his staff and students to match
them. Though students grumbled that Firsts were rare under the Phillips
regime, the department gained an enduring reputation overseas for the
excellence of its graduates.
Notable figures on the staff in the 1950s were the Medievalist and Crusades authority J.J. Saunders (1949-1972); J.B. Owen (1949-54) who went on to Oxford and the Chair of History at Calgary, then to Saint Mary's Nova Scotia; D.K. Fieldhouse (1953-9), who became a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at Cambridge; W.H. Oliver (1955-9), author of The Story of New Zealand (1960) who went on to become first Professor of History at Massey University, and first editor of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography until his retirement in 1990; W.J. (Jim) Gardner (1948-1976), whose Amuri (1956) set new standards for New Zealand regional history; and J.G.A. Pocock (1959-62), who became Canterbury's first Professor of Political Science in 1963. Pocock later went on to St Louis, Missouri, and the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. As the author of several major works, he is now one of the world's leading historians of political thought, but he has retained his links with Canterbury, returning for the Centennial in 1973 and the History Conference in May 1991.
In common with most universities around the world, Canterbury experienced
rapid expansion in numbers of staff and students in the 1960s.
A second History Chair was created in 1966 to which Professor
W. David McIntyre, a specialist in British Imperial and Commonwealth History from
Nottingham, was appointed. That same year, Neville Phillips was made
Vice-Chancellor and Professor Emeritus, and resigned from the History
Department. After superintending the university's centennial in 1973
and the final move to the Ilam Campus, Professor Phillips retired to
live in England.
His successor as Professor of History was G.W.O. Woodward (also from Nott and Hingham), a specialist on Tudor England and an authority on the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, who arrived at the start of 1967. That
year also saw the establishment of a Chair in American Studies, attached
to the History Department and supported by a grant from the American
Council of Learned Societies. Professor Alan Conway, a specialist in
the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods, was the foundation
Professor of American Studies at Canterbury until his retirement at the
end of 1985. Under these three professors, McIntyre, Woodward and Conway,
over the next twenty years History grew steadily to become one of the
largest departments in the Arts Faculty at Canterbury.
The
department's most respected and prolific scholar until his retirement in
1997 was Professor Sam Adshead, a graduate of Oxford and Harvard universities
who achieved the rare distinction of a personal chair in 1992. Professor
Adshead specialised in Chinese history and was a world authority on its
salt administration. His books include China in World History (1988), Salt
and Civilisation (1992), Central Asia in World History (1993)
and Material Culture in Europe and China (1997).
New staff added more courses and new research interests. While British and European History remained as a strong core, History at Canterbury pioneered the teaching of Asian and Australian history among New Zealand universities, and then added Pacific history. New Zealand history was not taught as such until the 1960s, but it has now become one of the department's largest streams. The New Zealand Historical Association was established at a conference held at Canterbury in 1989 and the department hosted New Zealand's largest History conference to that date in 1991, with a special stream devoted to Ngai Tahu's claim before the Waitangi Tribunal.
A major project supported by the History Department has been the new Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Jim Gardner headed its Canterbury Working Party in 1984, succeeded by Geoffrey Rice from 1986, and members of the department have contributed to all five volumes appearing between 1990 and 2000.
Another major project has been the 'Christchurch 2000 History Project' initiated by Dr John Cookson in 1993 to prepare publications to mark the sesquicentennial of the Canterbury settlement in 2000. Jean Sharfe compiled an electronic database of over 5,000 sources for Christchurch history, and organised an Historic Photo Search in 1996, which provided some of the images for Geoffrey Rice's Christchurch Changing: an illustrated history (1999) and Southern Capital (2000) (both vailable from Canterbury University Press), a collection of scholarly essays edited by John Cookson and Graeme Dunstall. John Cookson was also Head of Department from 1995 to 1998.
The retirement of Professors Adshead and McIntyre at the end of 1997 marked the end of an era, along with the retirement of four other long-serving staff members in the mid-1990s. Both chairs were retained, and in 1998 we welcomed Miles Fairburn and Peter Hempenstall as the two new professors. Five new lecturers appointed between 1996 and 1999, all young and active in research, have added to a strong existing core. Global History was a notably successful new course at Stage One, while at the honours level Canterbury became the first New Zealand university to offer a course in Public and Applied History in 1995.
However, after 2001 enrolments began to decline in a context of proliferation of courses in other subjects, while the university's chronic budget deficits prevented replacement of retiring staff. History became a School in the restructuring of 2004, but continued to lose staff and students in a fiercely competitive College of Arts. Three professors retired and were not replaced in this period. New courses at 100-level on Revolutions and Modern World History helped to stabilise numbers, and modest growth was recorded in 2008-9, resulting in a replacement position in 2010. Another restructuring in 2009 ended History's independence, when the department became one programme among eight in a new School of Humanities. Geoff Rice was Head of History throughout this very difficult phase 2006-9, supported by a loyal and dedicated band of colleagues. Student evaluations remained high, and in 2007 History at Canterbury sent its first Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University.
For more details see CLIO-CANTA, 1(1991).
In 2003 the department suffered adverse criticism for refusing to publish a staff member's article supporting the author of a holocaust-denying MA thesis. The staff member was in breach of a previous written agreement, and subsequently left the university. This episode had an adverse effect on enrolments, which prevented the replacement of retiring professors John Cookson, Miles Fairburn and Peter Hempenstall. Other Canterbury staff over the years successfully sought promotion elsewhere: Nicola di Cosmo to a research chair at Princeton, Glenn Burgess, Trevor Burnard and Campbell Craig to chairs at UK universities, and Ian Campbell to the University of the South Pacific at Suva.
Geoff Rice became Head of School in 2006, and was immediately confronted by a financial crisis in the College of Arts, with forced redundancies in which History lost one position. With a smaller staff, the department adopted co-coding of 200 and 300 level courses to make more efficient use of staff time. New 100-level courses on Revolutions and Modern World History helped student numbers to rise again, enabling the appointment of a new lecturer in European History in 2009.
History at Canterbury was second-equal (with Classics) in the College of Arts PBRF (Performance-Based Research Funding) results in 2006, reflecting a solid research output over the previous six years. Donations for prizes and scholarships indicated the department's good reputation in the Christchurch community, and in December 2007 an inaugural History Awards ceremony was held, at which the deputy vice-chancellor and PVC Arts awarded prizes and certificates to our top students across all levels. However, in 2008 further restructuring in the College of Art resulted in History losing its status as a separate school, and in 2009 it became the largest programme within a new School of Humanities.
History has been closely associated with the establishment of two new research centres in the university: the New Zealand Australia Research Centre (which the department hosts) founded by Philippa Mein Smith (Director) and Peter Hempenstall, and the South Asia Research Centre. Jane Buckingham is Director of the latter, and was also the recipient of the department's fourth Marsden Grant.
University Teaching Awards were won by Chris Connolly, Peter Field and Gareth Pritchard in these years, and in October 2009 the department celebrated its centennial, marking one hundred years since Dr Hight's appointment as the first Professor of History at Canterbury. This was followed by our second biennial Festival of History, a one-day public presentation of lectures and panel discussions, which now forms part of the department's community outreach, alongside the Canterbury Historical Association and Canterbury History Foundation.