Illustrious Visitors in New Zealand 1880s–1930s

Numerous famous individuals travelled to New Zealand in the period from the 1880s to the 1930s. Their names have previously lent celebrity endorsement to the promotion of New Zealand tourism and the twentieth-century historical project to define a unique national identity. This thesis contextualizes some of these recognizable names and faces by placing them into the transnational circuits that brought them to New Zealand. It addresses three groups of mainly male visitors to New Zealand from the 1880s to the 1930s: political commentators, itinerant lecturers, and wealthy fishermen. Partly due to the promotional efforts of these visitors, New Zealand has acquired the international reputation of being a ???social laboratory??? at the turn of the twentieth century, a tourist destination in the early twentieth century, and a millionaires??? playground in the interwar period. Re-situating these privileged individuals in their contemporary networks and communities demonstrates ways in which these national and nationalistic images were generated, and the limits of their application to understanding New Zealand???s past. The personal relationships that created and nurtured the networks that allowed individuals to lead transnational lives in this period are also explored, and this thesis argues that New Zealanders actively participated in these transnational circuits of politics, entertainment, and sport. If we view history in national isolation we lose sight of the sustained connections New Zealand and New Zealanders had with the world throughout these decades. It is not enough to simply theorize transnational connections; transnational networks must be populated. Peopling these transnational networks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with the familiar names that helped constituted them enriches our view of New Zealand in this period.