ABSTRACT
Sir George Grey is not celebrated as a champion of the protection policies. One of his first acts as Governor of New Zealand in 1846 was to abolish the Aboriginal protectorate. Yet his relationship to the policy of protecting Aboriginal peoples was more complicated than it might seem at first sight. He had supported protection as Governor of South Australia. This essay argues that Grey belonged to the same moral and cultural universe as the protectors. But his vision of politics at least in Australia and New Zealand was more ambitious. He wanted to create the conditions for a regime of racial harmony. He believed in strategies of ‘amalgamation’ that would stimulate the human qualities that Aborigines shared with white settlers-intelligence, moral sense, and the like-and, in due course, create ‘one people.’ This was not a vision of modern racial equality. It was obviously an ‘imperial’ vision. But neither was it a vision that assumed an order of permanent racial difference.
