Dr. Caitlin Harvey maps out land transfers from Indigenous communities to European education institutions, through an 1873 Map of New Zealand’s 'Colonial' University.
Depicting the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, a vast map outlines the lands around the Kimihia and Hakanoa Lakes and Waikato River. It's largest feature, thousands of acres in size, is labelled 'Endowment for Colonial University' - referring to the British University of New Zealand, hundreds of miles away in Christchurch. Exporting the Oxford model, 19th century settler-governments across the world supplied higher education institutions with enormous tracts of Indigenous lands, sometimes violently seized, their lease and sale generating great income. Possibly the longest-lasting myth of the land-grant university is that its operations exist in one, fixed place. Indeed, students often nostalgically associate their university with its distinct city or campus. But this map exposes their mobile and broad territorial reach, how university-building was used as a tool of imperial expansion, and who was excluded from the production of new knowledge and wealth in these new 'progressive' institutions.
PRESENTER: Dr. Caitlin Harvey, Research Fellow in History and POLIS at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge.
ART: Map of Endowments for 'Colonial' University, New Zealand (1873).
IMAGE: 'Endowments'.
SOUNDS: onion.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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