Nonofficial Asset by William Sewell5/21/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() A solicitor from the Isle of Wight who seemed a failure at home, beset by family financial embarrassments, he made something of a mark in New Zealand, where he was also able by modest land dealings to recoup his finances. Henry Sewell was a man who faced this dilemma. ![]() The emigrants' dilemma was that success, comfort and respect could be found only in a distant colony, while ambition, aspiration and identity were focused on 'Home'. While countless emigrants became reconciled to exile-found fulfilment undreamt of in their homelands-there were many who always aspired to metropolitan celebrity, who hoped to end their days in the land of their birth. Few successful, contented, established men would emigrate-that was for the discontented, the discredited and the failures. It is also often the story of men who regarded themselves as failures. We need to remember that the history of colonisation is the story of obscure men and women, a few of whom were sometimes called to fulfil unexpectedly exalted roles. Yet the successful transplantation of branches of European civilisation in the Americas, the Antipodes and elsewhere should not blind us to the harshness and drabness of the pioneering life. The idea of the 'frontier' has had as deep an impact on some historians as it has on film-makers. THE HISTORY of colonisation has often been portrayed in romantic, even heroic terms. ![]()
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