John Beaglehole
John Beaglehole CMG | |
---|---|
Born | John Cawte Beaglehole 13 June 1901 Wellington, New Zealand |
Died | 10 October 1971 Wellington, New Zealand | (aged 70)
Alma mater | |
Children | Tim Beaglehole |
Scientific career | |
Fields | History |
John Cawte Beaglehole
Early life and career
Beaglehole was born and grew up in
After three years of post-graduate study Beaglehole obtained his PhD with a thesis on British colonial history. At this time he was much influenced by left-wing teachers, especially R. H. Tawney and Harold Laski, and on returning to New Zealand he found it difficult to obtain an academic post owing to his radical views. For a time he had various jobs including a spell as a Workers' Educational Association lecturer, and had time to develop other enthusiasms including civil rights issues, writing poetry, and music, an interest inherited from his mother. In 1932 he took a temporary position as a lecturer in history at Auckland University College, but within months the position was abolished in a retrenchment by the college council. Many believed the decision was due more to the college's reaction to Beaglehole's reputation (albeit exaggerated) for radicalism.[1] His academic career finally took off in 1934 after the publication of his first major book, The Exploration of the Pacific, after which he developed his specialist interest in James Cook. He became lecturer, later professor, at the Victoria University College.
He married Elsie Mary Holmes in 1930, and they had three sons.
Editing Cook's journals
Beaglehole became known internationally for his work on Cook's journals which brought out his great gifts as historian and editor. It was not all desk work among the archives – he also travelled widely in Cook's wake, from Whitby to Tahiti, to Tonga and to the New Hebrides. The four volumes of the journals that emerged between 1955 and 1967 were subsidised by the New Zealand government which also set up a special research post for their author. The sheer size of these tomes, each of them approaching 1,000 pages, may seem disconcerting at first sight, but they are enlivened by Beaglehole's stylish and often witty introductions, intended to set the journals in their contexts. As well as Cook's own journals Beaglehole also printed, either entire or in lengthy extracts, the journals of several of Cook's colleagues on the voyages. The introductions themselves, together with copious footnotes, reveal the breadth of his erudition. They cover many topics, ranging from the structure of Polynesian society to oceanography, navigation, cartography, and much else.
Much of the zoological and botanical notes for Beaglehole's work on James Cook's three voyages were provided by Dr
Cook's journals themselves had never before been comprehensively and accurately presented to the public, and to do so required enormous research since copies and fragments of the journals and related material were scattered in various archives in London, Australia and New Zealand. For his edition, Beaglehole sought out the various surviving holographs in Cook's own hand in preference to copies by his clerks on board ship, and others. For the first voyage, the voyage of the
All students of Cook owe an enormous debt to Beaglehole for his all-encompassing editorship. So much so, in fact, that today it is difficult to view the subject of Cook except through Beaglehole's perspective. Some recent biographies of Cook have tended to be little else than abbreviated versions of Beaglehole.[5] Nevertheless, it is also clear that Beaglehole’s work is, by and large, a continuation of the long tradition of Cook idealisation, a tradition from which post-Beaglehole scholarship has started to diverge.[6] For Beaglehole, Cook was an heroic figure who practically could do no wrong, and he is scathing about those contemporaries of Cook who ever ventured to criticise his hero, such as Alexander Dalrymple, the geographer, and Johann Reinhold Forster, who accompanied Cook on the second voyage. Recent research has to some extent rehabilitated both Dalrymple and Forster.[7]
Honours and awards
In the
Later life and death
Just before he died in 1971 Beaglehole was in the process of revising his detailed and authoritative biography of Cook, which was subsequently prepared for publication by his son Tim, who was Chancellor and Emeritus Professor at Victoria.[9]
Archival collections at Victoria University
Beaglehole's alma mater, the
Works by Beaglehole
- The Exploration of the Pacific, London, A. & C. Black, 1934.
- ed., The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771, vol 1 & vol 2., Sydney, 1962.
- ed., The Journals of Captain James Cook: The Voyage of the Endeavour, 1768–1771, Cambridge, 1955, reprinted 1968.
- ed., The Journals of Captain James Cook: The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure, 1772–1775, Cambridge, 1961, reprinted 1969.
- ed., The Journals of Captain James Cook: The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery, 1776–1780, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1967.
- The Life of Captain James Cook, Stanford, California, 1974.
- The Death of Captain Cook. Wellington, NZ, Alexander Turnbull Library, 1979.
See also
- ISBN 978-0-86473-535-5.
- I Think I am becoming a New Zealander: Letters of J C Beaglehole edited by Tim Beaglehole (2013, Victoria University Press) ISBN 978-0-86473-902-5
- Beaglehole Glacier in Graham Land, Antarctica is named after him.
References
- ^ Beaglehole, Tim. "Beaglehole, John Cawte". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 28 April 2012.
- ISBN 047302046-7.
- ^ Cook, James, 1728–1779. Journal of the H.M.S. Endeavour, 1768–1771 manuscript.
- ^ Glyn Williams: The Death of Captain Cook, Profile Books, 2008
- ^ For a discussion of some recent books on Cook see Glyndwr Williams, 'Reassessing Cook' in Captain Cook: Explorations and Reassessments, ed. G. Williams, London, The Boydell Press, 2004
- ^ Nicholas Thomas: page xxxvi. Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook, London, Allen Lane, 2003
- ^ For the rehabilitation see Andrew Cook's introduction to the reissue of Dalrymple's An Account of the Discoveries made in the South Pacific Ocean, Sydney, 1996; also, Michael E. Hoare (ed.), The Tactless Philosopher: Johann Reinhold Forster [1729–98], Wellington NZ, 1979
- ^ "No. 41406". The London Gazette (3rd supplement). 12 June 1958. p. 3553.
- ^ Chancellor Archived 4 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "J.C. Beaglehole Room". library.victoria.ac.nz. 2011. Archived from the original on 13 October 2011. Retrieved 2 October 2011.
- ^ "John Cawte Beaglehole – a history". 2011. Archived from the original on 18 October 2008. Retrieved 2 October 2011.
- ^ "Welcome to the blog of the J.C.Beaglehole Room". library.victoria.ac.nz. 2011. Archived from the original on 20 November 2012. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
Bibliography
- E. H. McCormick, "Beaglehole, John Cawte (1901–1971)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Tim Beaglehole, "Beaglehole, John Cawte (1901–1971)", The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia, ed. John Robson, London, Chatham Publishing, 2004.
- Doug Munro, "J.C. Beaglehole—Public intellectual, critical consciences", The Ivory Tower and Beyond : Participant Historians of the Pacific, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, pp. 15–76.
External links
- John Cawte Beaglehole at the NZ Electronic Text Centre, 12 August 1926 – 3 November 1927
- J. C. Beaglehole and the design of the (1940) Centennial publications