Grey, George (1812 - 1898)

Summary

George Grey is known as a colonial governor in three jurisdictions and an explorer in remote Australia. He earned a considerable reputation as a scholar of indigenous cultures, and his extensive and varied natural history collections (including Ancestral Remains) are now in several British repositories. Aged 16 he enrolled in the Royal Military College, Sandhurst U.K.), and was gazetted Ensign in 1830. Finding military life not altogether congenial, and inspired by the exploration of Charles Sturt in Australia, he persuaded he Colonial Office to permit him to lead an exploration of northwest Australia. Landing at Hanover Bay in December 1837, Grey led an ill-prepared expedition, members of the party having little experience of Australian conditions. The expedition was a chapter of accidents. Undeterred, in 1839 Grey led another party in Western Australia which, despite the discovery of the Gascoyne and Murchison Rivers, was equally unsuccessful. They survived through exertions of Kaiber, a Whadjuk Noongar man. Grey learned the Noongar language: the journal of the expedition, included much information on traditional land tenure of the Nanda people, suggesting they engaged in agriculture and built substantial settlements. Appointed Governor of South Australia in 1840, Grey was successful in repairing the colonial finances and oversaw the revival of the colony's economy. He was noted for his practical assistance to those in need, and attempted to contain the hostilities between Aborigines and settlers. From South Australia he went to New Zealand where, during his first term as Governor, he presided over the unsettling times of the Māori Wars. As he had in Australia, Grey interested himself in the local indigenous culture, becoming fluent in Māori language and writing a study of Māori mythology. Further colonial appointments were as Governor of Cape Colony and a second, less propitious, term as Governor of New Zealand. Grey was a member of the New Zealand parliament for 20 years and Prime Minister from 1877 to 1879.

Details

Chronology

1826

Career event - Joined Royal Military College, Sandhurst, United Kingdom

1830

Career event - Gazetted Ensign, 83rd Regiment in Ireland

1833

Career event - Promoted to Lieutenant in Regiment

1836

Education - First-class certificate at the examinations of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst

1837

Career event - Led expedition in Kimberley region of Western Australia

1839

Career event - Promoted to Captain

1839

Career event - Led expedition from Shark Bay to Perth

1839 - 1840

Career position - Resident magistrate, King George Sound, Western Australia

1840

Career event - Resigned from the army

October 1840 - 1845

Career position - Governor of South Australia

18 November 1845 - 3 January 1853

Career position - Governor of New Zealand

1848

Award - Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB)

1854 - 1861

Career position - Governor of Cape Colony

4 December 1861 - 5 February 1868

Career position - Governor of New Zealand (2nd term)

1874 - 1894

Career position - Member of the New Zealand Parliament

13 October 1877 - 7 October 1879

Career position - Prime Minister of New Zealand

Related entries

Published resources

Books

• Cadogan, Bernard, "A terrible and fatal man": Sir George Grey and the British southern hemisphere (Wellington: Victoria University Wellington, ), 326 pp. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/stout-centre/research-units/towru/publications/A-Terrible-and-Fatal-Man-Sir-George-Grey.pdf. Details
• Cadogan, Bernard, Sir George Grey: inside the mind of a terrible and fatal man (Auckland: Penguin Books (NZ), 2012), 416 pp. Details
• Grey, G., A vocabulary of the dialects of south Western Australia (London: T. & W. Boone, 1840), 140 pp. Details
• Grey, George, Journals of two expeditions of discovery in north-west and western Australia, during the years 1837, 38, and 39, describing many newly discovered, important, and fertile districts, with observations on the moral and physical condition of the Aboriginal inhabitants, etc. etc, 2 vols (London: T. and W. Boone, 1841). Details
• Henderson, G. C., Sir Geo. Grey: pioneer of empire in southern lands: syllabus of a course of six lectures (Adelaide: Adelaide Uinversity, 1905), 27 pp. Details
• Milne, James, The romance of a pro-consul: being the personal life and memoirs of the Right Hon. Sir George Grey, K.C.B. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1899), 214 pp. Details
• Rees, William Lee; and Rees, L., The life and times of Sir George Grey, K.C.B., 2 vols (Auckland: H. Brett, 1892). Details
• Spittle, Bruce, Sir George Grey and the moa (Dunedin, N.Z.: Paua Press Limited, 2015), 70 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Anon, 'Grey, Sir George (1812 - 1898) explorer, governor and politician' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 1: 1788 - 1850 A-H, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1966), pp. 476-80. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/grey-sir-george-2125. Details
• Dale, Leigh, 'George Grey in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa' in Writing, travel and empire: in the margins of anthropology, Hulme, Peter; and McDougall,, Russelll, eds (London & New York: Tauris, 2007), pp. 19-42. Details
• Goldhahn, Jaokim; Harper, Sam; Veth, Peter; and Ouzman, Sven, 'Histories of rock art research in Western Australia's Kimberley, 1838 - 2000' in Histories of Australian rock art research, Taçon, Paul C.; May, Sally K.; Frederick, Ursula K.; and McDonald, Jo, eds (Canberra: ANU Press, 2022), pp. 173-204. https://doi.org/10.22459/TA55.2022.10. Details
• McGlashan, H., 'George Grey's expeditions 1837 - 1838: first European penetration of the Kimberley interior' in Kimberley history: people exploration and development, Clement,, C.; Gresham, J.; and McGlasha, H., eds (Perth: The Kimberley Society, 2012), pp. 61-9. Details

Journal Articles

• Chisholm, A. H., 'Some Letters from George Grey to John Gould', Emu, 38 (2) (1938), 216-26. Details
• Grey, George, 'On the languages of Australia : being an extract of a dispatch from Captain G. Grey, Governor of South Australia, to Lord Stanley', Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 15 (1845), 365-77. Details
• Gump, James, 'The imperialism of cultural assimilation: Sir George Grey's encounter with the Maori and the Xhosa, 1845-1868', Journal of World History, 9 (1) (1998), 89-106. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078714. Details
• Lester, Alan, 'Settler colonialism, George Grey and the politics of ethnography', Environment and planning D: society and space, 34 (3) (2015), 492-506. Details
• O'Leary, John, '"Zambesi seeds from Mr Morris": Sir George Grey as imperialist botanist', International review of environmental history, 5 (1) (2019), 129-40. https://doi.org/10.22459/IREH.05.01.2019.08. Details
• Rainsbury, Michael P., 'Lt George Grey's "script": journal, plate and painting', Rock art research, 38 (1) (2021), 229-31. Details
• Tee, Garry J., 'George Grey and Mathematics', Mathematical Chronicle, 19 (1990), 137. Details

Resource Sections

• Sinclair, Keith, 'Grey, George', in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 1990, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1g21/grey-george. Details

See also

• Favenc, Ernest, The history of Australian exploration from 1788 to 1888: compiled from state documents, private papers, and the most authentic sources of information, issued under the auspices of the governments of the Australian colonies (Sydney: Turner & Henderson, 1888), 474 pp. Details
• Feeken, Erwin H. J.; Feeken, Gerda E. E.; and Spate, O. H. K., The discovery and exploration of Australia (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson (Australia), 1970), 318 pp. Details
• George, Alex S., Australian botanist's companion (Kardinya, W.A.: Four Gables Press, 2009), 671 pp. Details
• Pybus, Cassandra, A very secret trade: the dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2024), 318 pp. https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Cassandra-Pybus-Very-Secret-Trade-9781761066344. Pages 144, 160. Details