Auckland Library Heritage Trust has awarded its John Stacpoole Scholarship 2026/2027 to Dr Matthew Woodbury. ALHT thanks everyone who applied this year and wishes all applicants well with their various research endeavours. Thanks, too, to the Auckland Libraries staff for the expertise they brought to advising ALHT on the proposals.
Matthew's topic is 'Industrializing Flax: Ecological knowledge and environmental commodification in colonial New Zealand (~1860 to ~1930).' The library holds a wealth of material that will inform this research, including items from before the 1860s.
This summary comes from Matthew's research proposal:
In the late 1860s, New Zealand’s government canvassed possibilities for the colony’s commercial future. Alongside grains, timber, and minerals, officials expressed interest in harakeke. Botanically unrelated to the European plant cultivated as a source of fibre for linen, eighteenth-century observers first encountering Māori using harakeke fibre classified it as Phormium tenax and referred to the plant as New Zealand flax. Lightweight, strong, and water-resistant, at several periods between the 1820s and 1970s harakeke fibre was envisioned as a future contender in the global fibre market.
Auckland Libraries’ collections will be used to demonstrate how Pākehā and indigenous contributors planned for harakeke’s commercial applications. The project will explore how individuals and communities expressed these economic aspirations and reveal how scientific, mercantile, and government networks interpreted, analysed, and reported on indigenous environmental expertise. By placing the commodification of harakeke fibre at the intersection of governance, political economy, and environmental knowledge, this will be a historical inquiry into how policy decisions relied on translated (metaphorically but in some cases literally) knowledge of local ecosystems, assessments of labour capacity, and notions of demographic and environmental mutability.
Sources include the George Grey letters and larger manuscript collections, published reports about gathering samples of flax produced by Māori, information about technological innovations focused on growing and processing flax, and decision-making about agricultural research and how and when to display flax at commercial exhibitions. Additionally, the project will refer to bilingual Māori/English newspapers, journals of learned societies like the Polynesian Society, and reports issued by British and colonial manufacturers. Though an initial survey of visual media has been more fruitful for the years after 1900, flax’s status as an iconic New Zealand plant also generated a large number of images in newspapers, trade publications, and scientific illustrations. Many of these sources were created by wealthy or prominent Pākehā and occupy a privileged position within colonial knowledge structures. To add context, the project will also refer to extensive material about harakeke produced by or researched on behalf of Māori communities and submitted as part of Waitangi Tribunal processes.
While acknowledging the real headwinds Māori workers and businesses faced, taking the vantage point of the Māori agricultural economy as dynamic, reactive, and entrepreneurial reveals pathways for indigenous innovation and success. An interest by colonial networks in learning more about Māori flax production, and often being refused, demonstrates that the development of a settler-colonial economy could not simply be imposed and that as economic actors tangata whenua could be progressive and discerning rather than, as some British commentators claimed, conservative and nostalgic.
New Zealand flax is not a global fibre like wool or cotton, but harakeke remains a vital part of te ao Māori. The contemporary significance of harakeke for Māori communities is a story best told by tangata whenua. Nevertheless, this history of settler-colonial failure offers an instructive example of how governments have understood their nation’s relationship with the environment, how communities imagined and sought to modify local ecologies, and how societies seek to reconcile ecological and economic worldviews.
About Matthew Woodbury
Dr Mattew Woodbury is a public historian whose research interests focus on the history of humanitarianism and how communities utilize and learn from environments locally and at global scale. He works as a senior historian at Te Tari Whakatau – the Office of Treaty Settlements and Takutai Moana. He has designed and facilitated courses for public servants about the history of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Māori Crown relationship. Among his work internationally, Matthew taught environmental and imperial history at the University of Michigan.
In January 2025 Matthew became president of the Professional Historians’ Association of New Zealand/Aotearoa (PHANZA).
