Cartographies of friendship: mapping missionary women's educational networks in Aotearoa/New Zealand 1823-40

Abstract

Introduction This article offers a textual map of ways in which two Church Missionary Society (CMS) women, Marianne Coldham Williams and Jane Nelson Williams, established networks predominantly with their evangelical ‘sisters’ in England that simultaneously supported, justified and reinforced their work as missionary educators in Aotearoa/New Zealand in the period 1823-1840.1 Particular attention is paid to mapping textual representations of evangelical women’s educative activities and the problematic relationship of authorship and authority in the exchange of correspondence between the cultural and evangelical metropole (England) and the reconfigured and evangelised periphery (Aotearoa/New Zealand). Primarily this article presents a textual interpretation of Marianne and Jane’s missionary activities that simultaneously supported the imperial ameliorative project and subjected Maori women to their colonising gaze within a colonised space.2 As Christian wives and mothers, Marianne and Jane formed close relationships with women from similar evangelical and class backgrounds to form bonds of ‘sisterhood’ that assisted in the formation of educational networks that regulated and legitimated women’s participation in missionary activities. In the exchange of correspondence with their ‘sisters’ in England, the two evangelical women cast themselves in an authoritative role in the schooling of Maori women in the Bay of Islands area in northern Aotearoa/New Zealand. The educative work of Marianne and Jane was based on assumptions regarding the moral imperative to regenerate Indigenous women through the active intervention and