John Dunmore (1923–2023)

Professor John Dunmore, CNZM, Honorary Doctor of Massey University (2006), and one of only three New Zealanders ever to have been named Officier de la Légion d’honneur (2007), died on 1 May 2023 only a few months before his 100th birthday.

I first met John Dunmore in 1968 when he was the Head of the Department of Modern Languages, the founding and already prestigious Professor of French, and Dean of Humanities at Massey University. The Department of Modern Languages that he had been appointed to develop in 1961 was already teaching a full programme of French. Eight years later, on my return from Europe with two very small children in tow, John re-employed me, with a humorous, if cryptic, comment (as was his wont): ‘Better the devil you know than the one you don’t’. For John was pre-eminently a scholar but also, significantly, a gentleman; a feminist before his time, discreetly very concerned for the wellbeing of all his colleagues. When he retired in 1985, somewhat early in my view, he observed to me, with his usual understatement, that ‘it was probably time to give Glynnis a go’. Glynnis Cropp then became one of the few female Professors, at a moment when the current in-joke at Massey was to deliberately mistake the new woman ‘Professor of Banking’ for the ‘Professor of Baking’.¹

So, this quiet gentleman, born in Trouville-sur-Mer in 1923, brought up in Jersey in the Channel Islands, something of an early resistance fighter, perhaps despite himself (allegedly setting fire to the hay the occupying German army used to feed their horses), brought his dual French and Anglo inheritance, his intellectual and social acumen, as a new immigrant, to develop the teaching of languages at Massey, and from there to deeply enrich the cultural world of Aotearoa New Zealand over more than half a century.² John completed his BA at the University of London and his PhD, on the contribution of the French to the exploration of the Pacific, under Professor J.C. Beaglehole at Victoria University of Wellington.³ His access to a full-time university position and a Chair at Massey University (in 1966) was through the challenging by-ways of running a corner-store with his wife, Joyce, and teaching French language in a secondary school before going on to establish French at Victoria University and introducing modern languages to the new Massey University.

John will be known by readers of the Journal of Pacific History predominantly for his other meticulous and pioneering work, often from primary sources, translating and editing the journals of French explorers in the Pacific in a plethora of publications that spanned the period between 1969 and 2006.⁴ These included biographies of Bougainville, La Pérouse, and de Surville and, indeed, of Monsieur Baret: First Woman around the World, 1766–68, alongside the recovery from the French archives, translation and editing, of the journals of these early French observers of New Zealand.⁵ The Fateful Voyage of the St. Jean Baptiste won the Wattie Book of the Year award in 1970.⁶

Beyond his scholarly research on ‘Who’s Who’ in Pacific navigation, John’s writing, and his influence on people, largely exceeded his notable academic career.⁷ He founded the Dunmore Press (1969–84), sustained with the help of his son Paul, and daughter, Patricia, and later, the Heritage Press (1985–2004), not only to encourage work on the French presence in New Zealand and first contacts with Māori, with a particular interest in the Pompallier Mission (also establishing the Dunmore Medal for this purpose), but to support New Zealand academic research and publication in general.⁸ He drew on both a considerable breadth of knowledge and of life experience to publish a political biography of Norman Kirk, a number of plays, and, in his retirement, under the pseudonym, Jason Calder, a series of murder-mysteries, work infused with his vision of greater political and social justice.⁹ The whimsical collection Mrs Cook’s Book of Recipes with (some) recipes from the logs of explorers, illustrates another face again of a simply indefatigable researcher and writer.¹⁰

In remembering Professor Dunmore, we pay homage to an understanding of the nature and purposes of ‘research’ that might well give thought to contemporary university administrators today, in a period where European languages, and indeed the humanities, are fighting for survival in almost all New Zealand universities. This pioneer, who sailed to New Zealand in 1950, giving up an early career in banking for teaching and a field of historical research that has given some balance to our limited anglophone approaches, will be remembered with admiration, affection, gratitude, and some hope.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raylene Ramsay

Raylene Ramsay – Professor Emerita, Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland, New Zealand [email protected]

Notes

¹ See her own tribute to Dunmore in Glynnis M. Cropp, ‘Introduction’, in Pacific Journeys: Essays in Honour of John Dunmore, ed. Glynnis M. Cropp et al. (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005), 9–14.

² John Dunmore, I Remember Tomorrow: An Autobiography (Waikanae: Heritage Press, 1998).

³ Published as the two-volume John Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific: I. The Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) and John Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific: II. The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).

⁴ For example, John Dunmore, ‘Manuscript X: A French Account of Port Praslin, Solomon Islands, in 1769’, Journal of Pacific History 9 (1974): 172–82.

⁵ John Dunmore, Storms and Dreams, Louis De Bougainville: Soldier, Explorer, Statesman (Auckland: Exisle Publishing, 2004); John Dunmore, Where Fate Beckons: The Life of Jean-François de la Pérouse (Auckland: Exisle Publishing, 2006); John Dunmore, Monsieur Baret: First Woman around the World, 1766–68 (Auckland: Heritage Press, 2002).

⁶ John Dunmore, The Fateful Voyage of the St. Jean Baptiste: A True Account of M. de Surville’s Expedition to New Zealand & the Unknown South Seas in the Years 1769–70 (Christchurch: Pegasus Press, 1969).

⁷ John Dunmore, Who’s Who in Pacific Navigation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1991). For a fuller list of relevant publications up to 2005, see ‘John Dunmore: Scholarly Publications Dealing with the Pacific’, in Pacific Journeys, ed. Cropp et al., 15–19.

⁸ John Dunmore, ed., The French and the Maori (Waikanae: Heritage Press, 1992).

⁹ John Dunmore, Norman Kirk: A Portrait (Palmerston North: New Zealand Books, 1972); Jason Calder, The Man Who Shot Rob Muldoon (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1976); John Dunmore, Playwrights in New Zealand: A Short History of the Playwrights Association of New Zealand (Auckland: Heritage Press, 2001); Jason Calder, A Wreath for the Springboks (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1977); Jason Calder, The O’Rourke Affair (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1978); Jason Calder, Target Margaret Thatcher (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1981).

¹⁰ John Dunmore, Mrs Cook’s Book of Recipes: For Mariners in Distant Seas (Auckland: Exisle Publishing, 2006).