Akaroa French may have come here
This year has been a vintage year for wine, but, had official plans formed in 1841 eventuated, we might possibly have been taking a much closer interest in the harvest, for 127 years ago there was a suggestion that the struggling French colony at Akaroa should be transferred to Kaitaia to grow such things as grapes and olives.
Captain Hobson, the Governor, had visited Akaroa, and though he had no particular fault to find with the immediate disposition of the settlers, who he saw were “very peacefully established,” cultivating rich soil, with gardens that were growing more than needed for local supplies, he had a marked prejudice against isolated communities.
He thereupon conceived the idea that the interest of all parties would be better served if the colonists were transferred to the north of Auckland, where land and climate would provide a natural home for their vineyards.
The proposal was discussed with a French representative at Akaroa, who gave tentative assent, and he submitted the scheme to Lord Stanley, at the Colonial Office, proposing that the land be allotted to the settlers provided they relinquish their present location and all other claims whatsoever in New Zealand.
“The arrangements I should hope to derive from such an arrangement would, in the first place, be their better government by removing them to a situation in which they would be brought within the practical contact of the government; and in the second the encouragement of a species of labour which they could supply, and which would tend to develop the true resources of the northern district by the cultivation of the vine, the olive and the mulberry, for which the climate and soil are most particularly well adapted,” he wrote.
“If it were approved I should be prepared to provide 50,000 acres of land situated within a moderate distance of a convenient seaport.
“If Your Lordship coincides my views, and the French company agree to the conditions, an early intimation of Your Lordship’s pleasure will enable me to secure the land requisite for the reception of the emigrants, which I propose to select in the district of Kaitaia, placed on the map in the 35th degree of latitude, where there is a good harbor and an abundance of fine land with an undulating surface well adapted for vineyards.”
The proposal was not adopted because the French company did not approve it, and the little settlement at Akaroa went on its peaceful way.
The French Foreign Minister, the Duc de Decazes, hoped that the French would stay on Banks’ Peninsula, especially on account of its harbours and the ports of call for French whalers.
A larger settlement of French people, reinforced from France, might have made a profound difference to the racial stock in the Kaitaia district, and perhaps New Zealand’s growing taste for table wines would have been anticipated a century ago.
The main trouble might have come from Matthews and Puckey. They would not have looked with too much favour on a 50,000 acres settlement of Catholic Frenchmen set down in their Anglican community.
— March 26, 1968