"The native inhabitants, although cannibals, were a fine and warlike race" – On the Popular Image of New Zealand in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Abstract

The New Zealand to be discovered in the popular media of nineteenth-century Europe is surprising: foremost because it is scarcely present. Other British colonies like those in North America and Australia were much-loved subjects for popular exotic pictorial inventions, for example in illustrations to Karl May novels, product advertising, posters for world exhibitions and the so-called ethnological expositions, or successful journals like Die Gartenlaube in Germany. Images of the islands and their inhabitants are noticeable by their absence in product advertising in Europe. Likewise Maori appear to have not featured at the ethnological expositions, though they do appear considerably in scientific and scholarly publications.

Keywords

• Colonial and Indian Exhibition 1886 in London
• New Zealand
• Nineteenth Century
• popular representation
• scholarly representation