In 1835 a British House of Commons Select Committee met to assess British imperial activity and its impact on indigenous peoples around the world. The Parliamentary leader of the abolitionist movement and prominent evangelical politician, Thomas Fowell Buxton, led the Select Committee. Once the abolitionists had won their battle against British slavery in 1833, they turned their attention to the condition of indigenous peoples in the British colonies as well as those connected to the empire through the action of imperial agents. The Committee published their report in 1837, and this document, the Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements); with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index, is the subject of this final part of this book. The Report has been described by Alan Lester as ‘the definitive humanitarian analysis of the evils of settler-led colonialism and of unreconstructed colonial government’. It is the most significant example of British humanitarian thought in relation to both Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, the Aborigines Committee recommended the creation of a ‘native policy’ applied in both countries, the Protectorate system. As such, the Report is of crucial significance in the histories of both Australia and New Zealand.

The Committee developed out of concerns about another British colonial site, that of the Cape Colony in South Africa. Since 1827 Buxton had corresponded with the Director of the London Missionary Society in the Cape Colony, John Philip.