Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach

Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach

A feeling of regret is, I believe, very generally excited amongst thinking men, when they observe how little benefit has resulted to barbarous tribes from their intercourse with the people of civilised nations. Not only does the bodily frame of the savage lose its health and manly beauty, his mind its instinctive acuteness and primitive resources, but, either by the more violent means of wholesale murder, or gradually … the races diminish in numerical strength, until they cease to exist as nations or tribes.

From Ernst Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand Vol II, John Murray, 1843, p135

In 1839, Ernst Dieffenbach sailed to New Zealand on the Tory, as surgeon and naturalist for the New Zealand Company. He was a Swiss-trained medical doctor with excellent scientific connections in England and, after the Royal Geographical Society recommended him to the New Zealand Company, he became the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Company’s immediate aim was to purchase land to sell to New Zealand settlers. In his unpaid position of naturalist (only his expenses were covered), Dieffenbach’s job was to report on the country’s flora, fauna  and mineral and water resources to assess the suitability of different areas for settlement. Dieffenbach travelled widely throughout the North Island, and also spent four weeks on the Chatham Islands. He discovered many new species of birds in New Zealand and was the first person to use the term ‘greywacke’ to describe the indurated sandstone that makes up many of the country’s mountain ranges. The shells, pressed plants, bird skins and rock specimens he collected were sent to London where they were eventually deposited with the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

Dieffenbach wanted to stay in New Zealand to complete a scientific survey of the country, but his petition to the government was rejected and, after resigning his position with the New Zealand Company, he had no option but to return to Europe. He arrived back in London in 1841 and, two years later, published Travels in New Zealand, a lively and opinionated account of his time in New Zealand, in which he recounted his North Island expeditions, including his first European ascent of Mount Taranaki, made on Christmas Day 1839.

As well as focusing on flora, fauna and geology, Dieffenbach criticised aspects of colonisation, and the land speculation happening under the New Zealand Company. Dieffenbach was the founder of London’s Ethnological Society, and in his book about New Zealand made sensitive and humanist observations of the plight of Māori under the onslaught of European settlement.

A subsequent attempt to return to New Zealand was unsuccessful and Dieffenbach eventually settled in the newly constituted Germany as a geology professor and museum director.

By Rebecca Priestley

Further reading

Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach biography – Dictionary of New Zealand Biography website

Philip Temple, New Zealand Explorers, Whitcoulls, 1985;

Ernst Dieffenbach, Travels in NewZealand, J Murray, 1843

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