ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Marsden’s career in the Tasman world from 1810, after his return from England with permission to establish the New Zealand mission. The achievements and controversies of this later period of his career were documented in a number of printed texts, a selection of which are analysed in this chapter, some written by the chaplain himself and others penned by colonial contemporaries about Marsden. This chapter examines the way that Marsden, his supporters and his critics characterized Māori and Aboriginal people. It examines a number of critical moments for the creation of race in the Tasman world and argues that racial thought that we may now see as fixed and natural was not yet, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, set in stone. Marsden was an active agent in the creation of racial hierarchy in the Tasman world; not only in the way he depicted Māori and Aboriginal people in his writing, but also in the choices he made in regard to his evangelical exertions.
