David Hamer

David Hamer was Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington for 28 years from 1971-1999. He was a champion of Public History and thanks to his efforts a Master of Public History was introduced at Victoria in 2000.

He contributed to the administrative life of the university in a wide variety of ways, serving as Chair of the History Department (1984-86; 1997-99), as Dean of the Faculty of Arts (1988-91) and as Assistant Vice Chancellor (Academic) (1991-94).

Externally, David Hamer was formally involved in the work of the National Library, the Historic Places Trust, the New Zealand Historical Association, the Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs and in the heritage movement.

His doctoral research at Oxford focused on the politics and politicians of the Liberal movement in Victorian England. This early interest in liberalism, and in the origins and nature of political allegiance, shaped his scholarly owrk over three decades. This was reflected in Liberal Politics in the Age of Gladstone and Rosebery: A study in leadership and policy (1972) and The New Zealand Liberals: The years of power, 1891-1912 (1988).

After six years at Lancaster University David Hamer returned to New Zealand in 1970 and turned his attention to the professional and commercial life of rural towns. This grew into a comparative history of the urban frontier in the New World societies of New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States and was published in 1990 as New Towns in the New World: Images and Perceptions of the 19th Century Frontier.

During the 1990s he used his sabbaticals in the US to develop his public history skills, with History in Urban Places: The historic districts of the United States published in 1998.

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Memorial to David Hamer

Professor David Hamer died on the 15th of May, 1999. He had been Professor of History at Victoria since 1971. As an academic he was a successful and prolific writer, who made valuable contributions to such diverse fields as New Zealand history, public history, and the historic preservation movement. But for many students he will be remembered for the more personal interactions of teaching and administration.

David Hamer lectured and tutored thousands of students over the years, and his passion for history was infectious. He saw thousands more in his capacity as Department Head of History, signing forms, answering queries, and sorting out problems. His calm, patient manner made him very approachable and he was regarded with much affection by many of his students. He dealt with any query with empathy and support. David Hamer's door was always open, quite literally. It is a mark of his character that his door often remained open even when he was out of his office.

David Hamer strove to support postgraduate history students through tutoring and research work. He always listened readily to requests for funding, and suggested productive avenues when the department could not help. At times he could seem reserved or diffident, but this was always an illusion, dispelled the next time he would smile and give his trademark laugh. David's gentlemanly demeanour was appreciated by everyone that he dealt with, and will be profoundly missed by us all.

Cameron Bayly, Johanne Benseman, Peter Boston, Jo Burton, Katrina Ford, Hayley Robertson, Philippa Tucker, David Tulloch, Sue Wightman on behalf of the students of the History Department.

John Beaglehole

Photo Credit: Lynette Corner

‘A veritable man is not hidden among many’, a tribute by F.L.W. Wood, New Zealand Listener, 1 November 1971: 11

The world knows John Beaglehole as a scholar, whose monuments in published work, and the skills and ideas taught to his pupils and strengthened in his friends, are “more enduring than brass”. His works testify to the fierce integrity with which he sought out knowledge, down to the most minute detail, and faced truth as he found it; but their greatness derives also from his warm human qualities – compassion, sensitivity, a basic humility combined with a spiritual toughness, and a rare quality of humour, which can sometimes see around the corners of a argument and help reach the heart of men and problems. Thus in his work as a scholar one finds qualities which made him so much loved as a man. More than this, he had the skill as well as the insight of an artist. His medium was words, though his appreciation included the whole of artistic expression. In all his writing the man showed forth; and in his best work as a historian this illuminated and did not obscure his subject. John Beaglehole on James Cook represented in a subtle way a partnership between two great men.

In the wide world Beaglehole is the authority on Cook. For New Zealanders he is that too but something more. During the generation just passing, New Zealand has been emerging from independence to nationhood, finding a sense of identity, and trying to give it the kind of meanings for which men may live and die. It was a long pilgrimage and the Celestial City may never be attained. But as we trudged along, John Beaglehole was always there – Mr Greatheart in the van, a sturdy tramper, weary sometimes and frustrated like all of us, but gently chastising himself and us with his genial, skeptical humour, tweeking the tail of Apollyon – but always with the right word, the constructive thought. Some of his most sensitive writing is in the field of New Zealand nationhood and culture – I am thinking more particularly of a moving fragment of autobiography, The New Zealand Scholar – and the task of the next generation should be easier.

All this is of the record, but no community is healthy without endless activity of small groups and individuals ho have little publicity and less honour – labourers in the vineyard who provide willing hands for the thankless task which must be done if ideals are to live. We his friends knew something of his activities in this background work, and I shall not list them, but two stand out in my mind. The first is his fight for civil liberties – patient, wise, restrained, but unfailing. It was for him, I think, one aspect of his fight for liberty in its broadest sense, the kind of liberty that enables the mind and the spirit to expand. The second is his work for the Historic Places Trust – that obscure little institution which strives to preserve for New Zealanders the scattered and vulnerable evidences of their past. This was part of his quest for New Zealand’s nationhood. It demanded and received from him time and sound judgement, historical experience and artistic discrimination, and genial skill in human situations.

To the university community which he loved and which in the end gave him generous opportunities for his major work, he gave unstinted service, and a discriminating, stimulating loyalty. His care for students is legendary – meticulous criticism of work done, the stimulus of new ideas, and sound thinking and the spectacle of a real craftsman at work. No call for help – not hint that help was needed – by students or colleagues lacked response. Perhaps the fruits of formidable research left unfinished by the untimely death of a former pupil had to be rescued; perhaps someone wanted guidance in a delicate negotiation, or a start in tackling a difficult topic, or a watch-dog to see that publications were clothed in print worthy of the occasion; often it was just an individual caught in a personal crisis. When the need was there, time was no object. To the solution of problems great and small he brought humanity and broad wisdom – forged in stress and adversity, for he had known these things – and matured in the happiness of his family circle and in the solid achievement of his own later years.

When he was a younger man his criticism could have a devastating quality: he was shy, but could fight for his ideals with sharpness and tenacity; in a stuffy world some called him a stormy petrel. Yet in those difficult times, a capacity for friendship as well as integrity and outspokenness – softened and reinforced by a subtly quizzical look – won him devoted support, not only among contemporaries, and smoothed the way for well-merited recognition in university and community.

Latterly he was a father figure, a senior statesman, but of an unusual kind. Something of a symbol and a legend in his own lifetime, he remained nevertheless accessible, an active teacher of privileged groups when in the midst of major research, a man with whom young and old could debate fruitfully. He was never a man for the casual or the soft answer. The Beaglehole technique was that of the honest answer, courteous, perceptive, and constructive, straight from the shoulder but lubricated by an increasingly kindly wit, and leading to a dialogue of mind with mind. But humanity never obscured principle, and to the end he retained his capacity for righteous indignation. His unfailing friendship was robust, a health-giving reflection of his moral stature. In the words of the Maori proverb which he quoted lovingly: “A veritable man is not hidden among many”.

Publications on the past professors

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