This chapter asks what the Aborigines’ Protection Society and Thomas Hodgkin reveal to us about British humanitarianism and settler colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century. It also considers how, in the twenty-first century, we should read the chauvinism and paternalism of metropolitan advocates of indigenous rights, and how we can understand the importance, but limitations, of their interventions.

This chapter traces Dr Thomas Hodgkin’s engagement with British anti-slavery, the American Colonization Society, Liberia and the African American Emigration movement. Hodgkin was the leading advocate in Britain for the colony of Liberia, and became its British consul after independence in 1848. Hodgkin conceived of solutions to slavery within an unusually transnational framework. However, his championing of gradual emancipation for British slaves and plans to civilize West Africa by repatriating emancipated slaves from the New World, led him into unsavoury alliances and conflict with leading British and US abolitionists. Hodgkin’s correspondence with humanitarian opponents, doyens of British abolition, leading Liberians, African American Emigrationists, and the American Colonization Society, reveals deep divisions within anti-slavery which had ramifications for the campaigns for indigenous protection and civilization.

This introductory chapter examines the archive of Thomas Hodgkin and its value for understanding British humanitarianism and activism on behalf of indigenous peoples, and particularly the activities of the Aborigines’ Protection Society. It considers the history and historiography of humanitarianism and indigenous protection. It also explores scholarship on settler colonialism, imperial networks, critical indigenous studies and new imperial histories, before presenting the book’s argument.

Despite the boost it gave to settler colonialism, Thomas Hodgkin and the Aborigines’ Protection Society initially supported colonization on the ‘systematic’ principles advocated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. This chapter examines the society’s engagement with three systematic colonization schemes: South Australia; ‘Australind’ in Western Australia; and New Zealand. The systematic colonizers recognized the strength of contemporary humanitarian sentiment: they couched their plans in philanthropic language and courted the support of the Aborigines’ Protection Society. However, evidence quickly emerged of the systematic colonizers’ indifference to and violation of indigenous rights, yet the Aborigines’ Protection Society continued to advocate new systematic colonization schemes into the 1840s. This chapter explores humanitarian dissatisfaction with existing vectors of indigenous protection; desperation for a solution to the emigration crisis; growing disillusionment with imperial inquiries and imperial authorities; the charismatic force exerted by Wakefield; and the allure of a ‘systematic’ plan to protect indigenous rights.

This chapter investigates two episodes in which humanitarian objectives clashed with liberal economic orthodoxy. The British India Society broke away from the Aborigines’ Protection Society in 1839. It linked ‘Justice to India’ with ‘Prosperity to England’ and ‘Freedom’ to American slaves, but its supporters were divided over the first Opium War and its campaign was derailed by the decision to prioritize Corn Law repeal over Indian reform. The relationship between ‘free trade’ and ‘free labour’ was also a focus of the campaign waged by the West India Association, in which Dr Thomas Hodgkin was prominent, to maintain tariff protection for British West Indian sugar against that produced by slaves in Brazil and Cuba. The Association prioritized free colonial labour over free trade, even though a more ethical British stance would come at the expense of British workers. The chapter reveals tensions between London and the British provinces, and within liberal imperial policy, as well as contradictions within humanitarian circles.

North America was a key nineteenth-century battleground for indigenous rights. The Aborigines’ Protection Society followed US developments keenly; derided and despaired of the rule of the monopolistic Hudson’s Bay Company in Rupert’s Land; and hoped that the Canadian colonies could lead the way in recognizing indigenous rights. This chapter considers the society’s championing of indigenous rights in British North America at a time of imperial withdrawal. It explores the emphasis placed by the Aborigines’ Protection Society on ‘civilization’, and how this was shaped by Thomas Hodgkin’s encounters with four indigenous activists from British North America. The Ojibwa chief and missionary, the Reverend Peter Jones and his niece, Nahnebahwequa, protested the theft of their land and advocated for indigenous education, representation and legal rights. Alexander Isbister and his uncle, William Kennedy, spearheaded the campaign in Britain against the Hudson’s Bay Company. The chapter explores how indigenous interlocutors’ engaged with British humanitarians; how their authority translated to the metropolitan context; and how this translation jeopardized standing at home.

Dr Thomas Hodgkin was a physician and medical researcher as well as a humanitarian campaigner. Hodgkin’s science was informed by his social conscience and his affiliation to the Society of Friends, while his philanthropy rested on the presentation of systematically organized and scientifically derived evidence. This chapter discusses Hodgkin’s medical research and career, and then his significant contribution to the emerging disciplines of ethnology and geography. Hodgkin and his peers within newly emerging scientific disciplines established and used scientific societies to not only stake disciplinary claims, but also promote political and humanitarian objects. Exploring the myriad overlaps in personnel, ideas and approach between the different areas and organizations with which Hodgkin was involved, this chapter addresses the underappreciated connection between science and humanitarian activity in mid-century London, and the impact of that relationship on our reading of indigenous protection.

This chapter explores three connected approaches to the protection of indigenous peoples and their rights in Great Britain’s empire that emerged in the wake of slave emancipation. The House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines (1835–7) published a report described as a ‘blueprint’ for imperial humanitarians throughout the rest of the century. It inspired the 1837 establishment of two new bodies, each dominated by Dr Thomas Hodgkin, which advocated the protection of indigenous peoples in Britain’s empire: the Society of Friends’ Committee on Aborigines and the better-known Aborigines’ Protection Society. The Friends’ committee endured for twenty-five years, drew on British Quakers’ experience of anti-slavery activism and disbursed a substantial budget, but had a limited impact. The Aborigines’ Protection Society proved better at maintaining and drawing on networks that incorporated government, settlers, indigenous people, missionaries and humanitarian activists.

During the early Victorian era, British settler colonialism dramatically intensified and expanded in Southern Africa, British North America, New Zealand and Australia. The granting of self-government to settler colonizers was accompanied by the transfer of responsibility for indigenous affairs from imperial to colonial governments in the 1850s and 1860s. The Aborigines’ Protection Society recognized the threat settler colonizers posed to indigenous populations. Its 1840 Outline of a System of Colonization revealed a universally applicable plan to ensure the protection, rights and civilization of indigenous peoples. This chapter analyses the society’s anxieties about unruly settlers, missionary endeavours and government-sponsored Protectors of Aborigines and, by contrast, the peculiar allure of the promise and rhetoric of systematic colonization. Exchanges with colonial informants, the imperial government, colonial speculators and humanitarians contributed to the development of platform, which emphasized indigenous possession of land, rights, fair access to the law and education.

The parlous situation of indigenous peoples in Southern Africa and New Zealand deteriorated even further in the 1850s and 1860s. The Aborigines’ Protection Society tried to promote indigenous rights in these regions to increasingly hostile and independent settler polities and to persuade the imperial government and metropolitan Britons of their continuing responsibilities to indigenous subjects. Ever more conscious of the gap between its programme of securing indigenous land and autonomy and colonial policies of (coercive) ‘amalgamation’, the society made little headway. Dr Thomas Hodgkin tried to mediate between indigenous leaders, missionaries and activists, settlers, and colonial and imperial governments during conflicts in Lesotho and New Zealand, focusing his efforts particularly on the powerful architect of ‘humane governance’, Governor Sir George Grey. These years, however, revealed the society as at odds with both metropolitan and colonial power brokers, patronizing towards its indigenous and missionary allies and impractical in its plans.