The parlous situation of indigenous peoples in Southern Africa and New Zealand deteriorated even further in the 1850s and 1860s. The Aborigines’ Protection Society tried to promote indigenous rights in these regions to increasingly hostile and independent settler polities and to persuade the imperial government and metropolitan Britons of their continuing responsibilities to indigenous subjects. Ever more conscious of the gap between its programme of securing indigenous land and autonomy and colonial policies of (coercive) ‘amalgamation’, the society made little headway. Dr Thomas Hodgkin tried to mediate between indigenous leaders, missionaries and activists, settlers, and colonial and imperial governments during conflicts in Lesotho and New Zealand, focusing his efforts particularly on the powerful architect of ‘humane governance’, Governor Sir George Grey. These years, however, revealed the society as at odds with both metropolitan and colonial power brokers, patronizing towards its indigenous and missionary allies and impractical in its plans.

The men who governed the empire in 1857; the Great Xhosa Cattle Killing; George Grey and amalgamation; John Bowring, the causes of the Second Opium War and Hong Kong.