Amidst the rampant militarism of the 19^th century empire, we don’t hear much about those who objected to serving in the armed conflicts. In colonial conflicts such as the New Zealand wars between Government and settlers, and Māori, volunteer bodies were often quickly raised, martial law imposed, and settlers called to serve, with few exemptions.

The Rev. Thomas Gilbert (1809-1894) was pastor of the General Baptist church at Ditchling, Sussex, in England for some nine years, and also ran a school at the nearby village of Hurstpierpoint. It was there that he ran up against the rector of the parish, Baptist versus the established Anglican church, and resolved to leave. He did that in a rather resolute way, emigrating with his wife and 7 children, sailing on the Simlah in April 1851, supplementing his family with a nursemaid and manservant. They landed in Wellington in November of that year, and moved to New Plymouth where they took up land. Gilbert was never again a practising minister.

Gilbert farmed the land in Taranaki for almost 10 years, and in 1860 found himself in the middle of the preparations for the first Taranaki War. The basis for the conflict, as ever, lay in disputes over sale of Māori land, Māori mostly resisting purchase and settlers determined to own the new territory. Much has been written on this, from contemporary accounts[1] through to modern histories[2]. But in essence the two Taranaki conflicts displayed the worst of settler demands and a militaristic Government response, the resonance of the injustice still vibrating today.

There was an early intention signalled by the Government in January 1859 ‘to call out the Taranaki militia and volunteers, and to proclaim martial law’[3], in the instance of continuing resistance by the Māori leader Wiremu Kingi to the purchase of Waitara. The Government recognised that the issue was broader than local land purchase, the issues uniting Māori beyond the region, particularly the Waikato, and stimulating a wide, determined resistance, which in the Government eyes was ‘to arrest the progress of the Europeans and [to] throw off their dominion.’  This for Gilbert was the ‘key to the explanation  of the present unhappy war.’³ Gilbert was very clear that the preparations for conflict were wrong and unnecessary. He had two main threads to his objections, embodied in the words in his preface: ‘impolicy as well as the unchristian character of all war’. That is, he had strong pacifist views on the wrongness of war based on his religion, and in his understanding of the local issues, he ‘ever regarded the subject of a collision with the natives as dangerous to the whole settlement, and likely to be dangerous to the settlers.’ The rush to arms was ‘not only unchristian and unrighteous, but impolitic and dishonourable.’ His views were unpopular: ‘I was not carried along with the current opinion in Taranaki, which was in favour of the war, and in too many instances expressed by a desire to thoroughly exterminate the natives.’

Then the crunch came. When the militia was called out after the murder of the chief Katatore and subsequent fighting between Māori war parties on settlers’ land, both Gilbert and his eldest son George Channing refused to serve. Gilbert was legally exempted, as a minister of religion (even though not practising) and his son fined £5. The militia was called out again soon after, following further resistance from Wiremu Kingi to the Government survey of the disputed land. In this case, despite Gilbert’s exemption and the later remission of the fine, both Gilbert and his two eldest sons, George and Thomas, were called up. ‘On the presentation of the New Testament to us by the appointed Captain, I and my eldest son both objected to taking the oath, or even making an affirmation, stating that we could not conscientiously enter into a solemn agreement to take up arms and fight, as we believed all war to be unchristian and impolitic.’ They were threatened with fines and imprisonment, but stayed firm. The younger son, Thomas aged 20, was more indifferent and took the oath ‘without well knowing the nature of the engagement he had entered into….It was painful and difficult position for a father to be placed in:- one son conscientiously refusing the oath and the service, the other as truthfully saying he did not object to the oath, although very much disliking the service. No protestation of mine respecting this lad would have any effect, for everyone concerned in this affair was full of bitterness and wrath against me and my eldest son.’³

Gilbert didn’t claim  exemption on the basis of being a minister, but following a letter to the militia commander explaining his Christian objections, he was exempted. What followed with regard to his son George was of more interest. Gilbert, with the help of a Quaker friend, was able to get the militia commander and Colonel Murray, overall commander of the forces, to agree to allow George to leave the province. The Quaker friend and George ‘had but a few hours to get ready, and they left by steamer with only a carpet bag...’. They sailed to Nelson where George wouldn’t be asked to serve, and some time later were joined by Gilbert and his family.  ‘I deemed a settlement under martial law, and a town likely to be not  much better than a garrison – where every man was expected to take up arms, and be fully compared to kill and destroy at the bidding of officers, who perhaps had no interest in the matter beyond the mere glory of slaying the greatest number – no fitting place for me or my family.’³

 Gilbert later returned to New Plymouth, but finally settled in Nelson, peacefully tending his garden until his death in 1894. George became a talented artist, learning from John Gulley in Nelson and together drawing in Taranaki after the war. In Gilbert’s account it is the settlers who drove the conflict, the government responding to them, and the military caught in the middle. It was the settlers who called out Gilbert for his objections, ‘set down as arising from meanness, cowardice, and want of patriotism’, words familiar 55 years later with objectors in WWI. The military, rather improbably, seemed more sympathetic, or perhaps just more respectful of men associated with the church. Would a poor working agriculturist have been treated the same? Gilbert’s account, the book is rarely seen these days, is a heartfelt, personal and acute observation of the first of the armed conflicts in the Taranaki and Waikato regions in the 1860s.

[1] E.g. Gilbert, T., New Zealand settlers and soldiers; or the war in Taranaki; being incidents in the life of a settler. London: A. W. Bennett; Houlston and Wright. 1861; Carey, Lt.Col. Narrative of the late war in New Zealand. London. Richard Bentley, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.  1863.

[2] E.g. O’Malley, V., The New Zealand wars. Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa. Wellington, Bridget Williams, 2019.

[3] Gilbert, T., pp.11-29.