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Centers of Progress, Pt. 24: Wellington (Suffrage)

Introducing the city that first granted a country's women the right to vote.

Chelsea Follett — Mar 19, 2021

Today marks the twenty-fourth installment in a series of articles by HumanProgress.org called Centers of Progress. Where does progress happen? The story of civilization is in many ways the story of the city. It is the city that has helped to create and define the modern world. This bi-weekly column will give a short overview of urban centers that were the sites of pivotal advances in culture, economics, politics, technology, etc.

Our twenty-fourth Center of Progress is Wellington during the late 19th century, when the city made New Zealand the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote. At the time, that was considered a radical move. The reformers who successfully petitioned New Zealand’s parliament then traveled the world, organizing suffrage movements in other countries. Today, thanks to the trend begun in Wellington, women can vote in every democracy, except for the Vatican, where only cardinals vote in the Papal conclave.

Today, Wellington is best known as the capital city of New Zealand and the southernmost capital in the world. The windy bayside city has a population of just over 200,000 people and a reputation for trendy shops and cafes, seafood, quirky bars, and craft breweries. It has quaint red cable cars and its historic Old Government Building, constructed in 1876, remains one of the world’s largest wooden structures. Wellington is also home to Mount Victoria, the Te Papa Museum, and a wharf with frequent pop-up markets and art fairs. Young and entrepreneurial, Wellington has been ranked as one of the easiest places in the world to start a new business. It is also a creative arts and technology center, famed for the nearby Weta Studios’ work on the Lord of the Rings movie franchise.

According to legend, the site where Wellington now stands was first discovered by the legendary Māori chief Kupe in the late 10th century. Over the following centuries, different Māori tribes settled in the area. The Māori called the area Te Whanganui-a-Tara, meaning “the great harbor of Tara,” named after the man said to have first scouted the area on behalf of his father, Whātonga the Explorer. An alternative name was Te Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-Māui, meaning “the head of the fish of Māui,” referencing the mythical demi-god Māui who caught a giant fish that transformed into the islands of New Zealand.

Noting the site’s perfect location for trade, an English colonel purchased local land in 1839 from the Māori for British settlers. A business district soon blossomed around the harbor, transforming it into a busy port. The following year, representatives of the United Kingdom and various Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which brought New Zealand into the British Empire and made the Māori British subjects. Wellington was the first major European settlement in New Zealand, named after Arthur Wellesley, first duke of Wellington—one of many tributes to the famed Prime Minister and military leader who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Interestingly, New Zealand has no widely agreed-upon “Independence Day.” Rather, the country’s sovereignty seems to have come about gradually, with key events in 1857, 1907, 1947, and 1987. It was not until that last year that New Zealand “unilaterally revoked all residual United Kingdom legislative power” over the nation.

The colonial nation’s demographics changed rapidly. By 1886, the majority of non-Māori residents were New Zealand-born rather than British-born immigrants, although the latter continued to stream into the country. While many people thought of themselves as British, the term New Zealander was becoming more common. By 1896, New Zealand was home to over 700,000 British immigrants and their descendants, as well as close to 40,000 Māori people.

Throughout most of history, women were largely excluded from politics, though it is important to remember most men were excluded as well. Political power tended to be concentrated among a small group, such as a royal family, while the majority of people, both male and female, lacked any meaningful say in political decisions. However, while history has certainly had its share of politically powerful women, from the Byzantine Empress Theodora to the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian, the majority of rulers in all major civilizations have been male.

In other words, in a world with highly exclusionary political institutions that left almost everyone out, women were even more likely to be left out than men. Likewise, when a wave of democratization expanded the pool of political participation to an unprecedented share of the population in the 19^th century, the voting rolls still excluded women.

Young New Zealand was no exception, and women were initially denied the right to vote. A popular belief was that women were suited only to the domestic sphere, leaving “public life” to the men. But by the late 19th century, as more women entered professional fields previously staffed solely by men, women began to be seen as more capable of participating in the public sphere.

These changes helped to galvanize the suffrage movement in New Zealand. Suffragettes such as Kate Sheppard gathered signatures to provide evidence of growing public support for female suffrage. In 1891, 1892, and 1893 the suffragettes compiled a series of massive petitions calling on parliament to enact female suffrage. The 1893 petition for female suffrage gained some 24,000 signatures, and the sheets of paper, when glued together, formed a 270-meter roll, which was then submitted to the parliament in Wellington.

The suffrage movement was aided by widespread support from New Zealand’s men. As a “colonial frontier” country, New Zealand had far more men than women. That happened, because single men were generally more likely to immigrate abroad. Desperate for companionship, the country’s men sought to attract more women to New Zealand and often romanticized the latter. Many New Zealanders believed that an influx of women would exert a stabilizing effect on society, lowering crime rates, decreasing rates of alcohol use, and improving morality.

Indeed, research suggests that highly unequal sex ratios can cause problems: societies with far fewer women than men see higher rates of male depression, aggression, and violent crime. It is most likely that those negative effects stem from tensions that arise when a large number of men in a society feel that they have little hope of ever finding a wife.

However, the popular view in 19th-century New Zealand was that women were in some ways morally superior to men, or more likely to act for the good of society. Building on that belief, suffrage-supporters cast women as “moral citizens” and argued that a society where women could vote would become more virtuous. In particular, the women’s suffrage movement was closely connected to the alcohol prohibition movement. Men who supported alcohol prohibition on moral grounds were thus highly likely to support giving women the right to vote.

New Zealand was not an outlier—the other places that granted women the right to vote early on were also typically “frontier” societies. Like New Zealand, those places had a large male surplus and were motivated by a belief that female voters were morality-minded and would rally against social ills. The most prominent of those perceived ills were alcohol and, in the western United States, polygamy—as practiced by some adherents of the young Latter-Day Saints movement. It was also believed that women would oppose unnecessary wars and promote a more dovish foreign policy. Among the earliest adopters of female suffrage in the United States were the frontier western mountain states Wyoming (1869), Utah (1870), Colorado (1893), and Idaho (1895). The frontier territories of South Australia (1894) and Western Australia (1899) followed the same pattern.

But New Zealand led the way as the first country to give women the right to vote. Moved by the suffragettes’ tireless efforts and their numerous male allies, the government embarked on a radical experiment. In Wellington, the governing Lord Glasgow signed a new Electoral Act into law on September 19th, 1893. The Act gave women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

Ever since then, women have taken an active role in governing the country from the capital of Wellington. New Zealand has not only had three different female prime ministers, but women have held each of New Zealand’s key constitutional positions in government. At times, New Zealand has had a female prime minister, governor general, speaker of the House of Representatives, attorney general, and chief justice. The country remains proud of the pioneering step toward legal gender equality enacted in Wellington, even featuring suffragette Sheppard on the $10 banknote.

After her legislative victory, Sheppard and her allies toured several other countries and helped to organize suffrage movements abroad.

While women voting and running for office may seem commonplace now, at the time, it was revolutionary. For perspective, the United Kingdom did not grant women fully equal voting rights until 1928. Spain only granted women universal suffrage in 1931. France did so in 1945. Switzerland waited until 1971. Liechtenstein held out until 1984. And Saudi Arabia refused to budge until 2015. Today, women can vote almost everywhere.

As New Zealand’s seat of government, Wellington was at the center of the first successful campaign to grant a country’s women the right to vote. For playing host to a groundbreaking legislative victory for women’s suffrage, Wellington is rightly our 24th Center of Progress.

Blog Post | Urbanization

Lessons From Adam Smith’s Edinburgh and Paris

Examining the places where major advances happened is one way to learn about the conditions that foster societal flourishing, human achievement, and prosperity.

Chelsea Follett — Mar 14, 2024

Summary: Amidst the turmoil of modern times, evidence reveals significant progress across various metrics, from rising life expectancy to declining global poverty. Cities have emerged as epicenters of innovation and progress throughout history, fostering collaboration, competition, and freedom of thought. By exploring the unique environments of cities like Edinburgh and Paris, where intellectual liberty thrived, Chelsea Follett uncovers the vital role of peace, freedom, and population density in driving human achievement and societal advancement.

This article appeared in Adam Smith Works on 2/8/2024.

Has humanity made progress? With so many serious problems, it is easy to get the impression that our species is hopeless. Many people view history as one long tale of decay and degeneration since some lost, idealized golden age.

But there has been much remarkable, measurable improvement—from rising life expectancy and literacy rates to declining global poverty. (Explore the evidence for yourself). Today, material abundance is more widespread than our ancestors could have dreamed. And there has been moral progress too. Slavery and torture, once widely accepted, are today almost universally reviled.

Where did all this progress come from? Certain places, at certain times in history, have contributed disproportionately to progress and innovation. Change is a constant, but progress is not. Studying the past may hold the secret to fostering innovation in the present. To that end, I wrote a book titled Centers of Progress: 40 Cities that Changed the World, exploring the places that shaped modern life.

The origin points of the ideas, discoveries, and inventions that built the modern world were far from evenly or randomly dispersed throughout the globe. Instead, they tended to emerge from cities, even in time periods when most of the human population lived in rural areas. In fact, even before anything that could be called a city by modern standards existed, progress originated from the closest equivalents that did exist at the time. Why is that?

“Cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace,” urban economist Edward Glaeser opined in his book The Triumph of the City. Of course, he was hardly the first to observe that positive change often emanates from cities. As Adam Smith noted in 1776, “the commerce and manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.”

One of the reasons that progress tends to emerge from cities is, simply, people. Wherever more people gather together to “truck, barter, and exchange,” in Smith’s words, that increases their potential to engage in productive exchange, discussion, debate, collaboration, and competition with each other. Cities’ higher populations allow for a finer division of labor, more specialization, and greater efficiencies in production. Not to mention, more minds working together to solve problems. As the writer Matt Ridley notes in the foreword he kindly wrote for Centers of Progress, “Progress is a team sport, not an individual pursuit. It is a collaborative, collective thing, done between brains more than inside them.”

A higher population is sufficient to explain why progress often emerges from cities, but, of course, not all cities become major innovation centers. Progress may be a team sport, but why do certain cities seem to provide ideal playing conditions, and not others?

That brings us to the next thing that most centers of progress share, besides being relatively populous: peace. That makes sense, because if a place is plagued by violence and discord then it is hard for the people there to focus on anything other than survival, and there is little incentive to be productive since any wealth is likely to be looted or destroyed. Smith recognized this truth, and noted that cities, historically, sometimes offered more security from violence than the countryside:

Order and good government, and along with them the liberty and security of individuals, were in this manner established in cities, at a time when the occupiers of land in the country, were exposed to every sort of violence. But men in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their necessary subsistence; because, to acquire more, might only tempt the injustice of their oppressors. On the contrary, when they are secure of enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition, and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the conveniencies and elegancies of life. That industry, therefore, which aims at something more than necessary subsistence, was established in cities long before it was commonly practised by the occupiers of land in the country. […] Whatever stock, therefore, accumulated in the hands of the industrious part of the inhabitants of the country, naturally took refuge in cities, as the only sanctuaries in which it could be secure to the person that acquired it.

Of course, not all cities were or are peaceful. Consider Smith’s own city: Edinburgh. At times, the city was far from stable. But the relatively unkempt and inhospitable locale emerged from a century of instability to take the world by storm. Scotland in the 18th century had just undergone decades of political and economic turmoil. Disruption was caused by the House of Orange’s ousting of the House of Stuart, the Jacobite Rebellions, the failed and costly colonial Darien Scheme, famine, and the 1707 Union of Scotland and England. It was only after things settled down and the city came to enjoy a period of relative peace and stability that Edinburgh rose to reach its potential. Edinburgh was an improbable center of progress. But Edinburgh proves what people can accomplish, given the right conditions.

During the Scottish Enlightenment centered in Edinburgh, Adam Smith was far from the only innovative thinker in the city. Edinburgh’s ability to cultivate innovators in every arena of human achievement, from the arts to the sciences, seemed almost magical.

Edinburgh gave the world so many groundbreaking artists that the French writer Voltaire opined in 1762 that “today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening.” Edinburgh gave humanity artistic pioneers from the novelist Sir Walter Scott, often called the father of the historical novel, to the architect Robert Adam who, together with his brother James, developed the “Adam style,” which evolved into the so‐called “Federal style” in the United States after Independence.

And then there were the scientists. Thomas Jefferson, in 1789, wrote, “So far as science is concerned, no place in the world can pretend to competition with Edinburgh.” The Edinburger geologist James Hutton developed many of the fundamental principles of his discipline. The chemist and physicist Joseph Black, who studied at the University of Edinburgh, discovered carbon dioxide, magnesium, and the important thermodynamic concepts of latent heat and specific heat. The anatomist Alexander Monro Secondus became the first person to detail the human lymphatic system. Sir James Young Simpson, admitted to the University of Edinburgh at the young age of fourteen, went on to develop chloroform anesthesia.

Two of the greatest gifts that Edinburgh gave humanity were empiricism and economics. The influential philosopher David Hume was among the early advocates of empiricism and is sometimes called the father of philosophical skepticism. And by creating the field of economics, Smith helped humanity to think about policies that enhance prosperity. Those policies, including free trade and economic freedom that Smith advocated, have since helped to raise living standards to heights that would be unimaginable to Smith and his contemporaries.

That brings us to the last but by no means least secret ingredient of progress. Freedom. Centers of progress during their creative peak tend to be relatively free and open for their era. That makes sense because simply having a large population is not going to lead to progress if that population lacks the freedom to experiment, to debate new propositions, and to work together for their mutual benefit. Perhaps the biggest reason why cities produce so much progress is that city dwellers have often enjoyed more freedom than their rural counterparts. Medieval serfs fleeing feudal lands to gain freedom in cities inspired the German saying “stadtluft macht frei” (city air makes you free).

That adage referred to laws granting serfs liberty after a year and a day of urban residency. But the phrase arguably has a wider application. Cities have often served as havens of freedom for innovators and anyone stifled by the stricter norms and more limited choices common in smaller communities. Edinburgh was notable for its atmosphere of intellectual freedom, allowing thinkers to debate a wide diversity of controversial ideas in its many reading societies and pubs.

Of course, cities are not always free. Authoritarian states sometimes see laxer enforcement of their draconian laws in remote areas, and Smith himself viewed rural life as in some ways less encumbered by constraining rules and regulations than city life. But as philosophy professor Kyle Swan previously noted for Adam Smith Works:

Without denying the charms and attractions Smith highlights in country living, let’s not forget what’s on offer in our cities: a significantly broader range of choices! Diverse restaurants and untold many other services and recreations, groups of people who like the same peculiar things that you like, and those with similar backgrounds and interests and activities to pursue with them — cities are (positive) freedom enhancing.

The same secret ingredients of progress—people, peace, and freedom—that helped Edinburgh to flourish during Smith’s day can be observed again and again throughout history in the places that became key centers of innovation. Consider Paris.

As the capital of France, Paris attracted a large population and became an important economic and cultural hub. But it was an unusual spirit of freedom that allowed the city to make its greatest contributions to human progress. Much like the reading societies and pubs of Smith’s Edinburgh, the salons and coffeehouses of 18th‐century Paris provided a place for intellectual discourse where the philosophes birthed the so‐called Age of Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment was a movement that promoted the values of reason, evidence‐based knowledge, free inquiry, individual liberty, humanism, limited government, and the separation of church and state. In Parisian salons, nobles and other wealthy financiers intermingled with artists, writers, and philosophers seeking financial patronage and opportunities to discuss and disseminate their work. The gatherings gave controversial philosophers, who would have been denied the intellectual freedom to explore their ideas elsewhere, the liberty to develop their thoughts.

Influential Parisian and Paris‐ based thinkers of the period included the Baron de Montesquieu, who advocated the then‐groundbreaking idea of the separation of government powers and the writer Denis Diderot, the creator of the first general‐purpose encyclopedia, as well the Genevan expat Jean‐Jacques Rousseau. While sometimes considered a counter‐Enlightenment figure because of his skepticism of modern commercial society and romanticized view of primitive existence, Rousseau also helped to spread skepticism toward monarchy and the idea that kings had a “divine right” to rule over others.

The salons were famous for sophisticated conversations and intense debates; however, it was letter‐writing that gave the philosophes’ ideas a wide reach. A community of intellectuals that spanned much of the Western world—known as the Republic of Letters—increasingly engaged in the exchanges of ideas that began in Parisian salons. Thus, the Enlightenment movement based in Paris helped spur similar radical experiments in thought elsewhere, including the Scottish Enlightenment in Edinburgh. Smith’s many exchanges of ideas with the people of Paris, including during his 1766 visit to the city when he dined with Diderot and other luminaries, proved pivotal to his own intellectual development.

And then there was Voltaire, sometimes called the single most influential figure of the Enlightenment. Although Parisian by birth, Voltaire spent relatively little time in Paris because of frequent exiles occasioned by the ire of French authorities. Voltaire’s time hiding out in London, for example, enabled him to translate the works of the political philosopher and “father of liberalism” John Locke, as well as the English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton. While Voltaire’s critiques of existing institutions and norms pushed the boundaries of acceptable discourse beyond even what would be tolerated in Paris, his Parisian upbringing and education likely helped to cultivate the devotion to freethinking that would come to define his life.

By allowing for an unusual degree of intellectual liberty and providing a home base for the Enlightenment and the far‐ranging Republic of Letters, Paris helped spread new ideas that would ultimately give rise to new forms of government—including modern liberal democracy.

Surveying the cities, such as Edinburgh and Paris, that built the modern world reveals that when people live in peace and freedom, their potential to bring about positive change increases. Examining the places where major advances happened is one way to learn about the conditions that foster societal flourishing, human achievement, and prosperity. I hope that you will consider joining me on a journey through the book’s pages to some of history’s greatest centers of progress, and that doing so sparks many intelligent discussions, debates, and inquiries in the Smithian tradition about the causes of progress and wealth.

Blog Post | Science & Education

Introducing Our Upcoming Book, Heroes of Progress

Human Progress Team — Feb 27, 2024

Over the past two centuries, humanity has become massively more prosperous, better educated, healthier, and more peaceful.

The underlying cause of this progress is innovation. Human innovation―whether it be new ideas, inventions, or systems―is the primary way people create wealth and escape poverty.

Our upcoming book, Heroes of Progress: 65 People Who Changed the World, explores the lives of the most important innovators who have ever lived, from agronomists who saved billions from starvation and intellectuals who changed public policy for the better, to businesspeople whose innovations helped millions rise from poverty.

If it weren’t for the heroes profiled in this book, we’d all be far poorer, sicker, hungrier, and less free―if we were fortunate enough to be alive at all.

Considering their impact on humanity, perhaps it’s time to learn their story?

Heroes of Progress book advertised on Amazon for pre-order

Heroes of Progress Book Forum

On March 21st, the author of Heroes of Progress, Alexander Hammond, will present the book live at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. He will be joined by Marian Tupy, the editor of Human Progress, and Clay Routledge, the Archbridge Institute’s Vice President of Research, who will speak on the individual’s role in advancing human progress and the need for a cultural progress movement.

Learn more about the event here.

Praise for Heroes of Progress

Making an inspiring case for progress at this time of skepticism and historical ingratitude is no easy feat. Yet, by relentlessly outlining the extraordinary ability of individuals to shape our world for the better, Alexander Hammond does just that.
— Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Innovation is a team sport achieved by people working together, using precious freedoms to change the world, so it’s sometimes invidious to single out one person for credit. But once an idea is ripe for plucking, the right person at the right time can seize it and save a million lives or open a million possibilities. Each of these 65 people did that, and their stories are both thrilling and beautiful.
— Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

The figures in this book are the overlooked and often unknown figures who have transformed the lives of ordinary people, for the better… This book is a correction to widespread pessimism and is both informative and inspirational.
— Dr. Stephen Davies, author of The Wealth Explosion: The Nature and Origins of Modernity

Superman and the Avengers are all very well, of course, but the real superheroes are thinkers, scientists, and innovators of flesh and blood who saved us from a life that used to be poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Alexander Hammond tells their inspiring stories in this magnificent book that will leave you grateful to be living in the world these men and women created.
— Johan Norberg, author of Open: The Story of Human Progress

The 65 innovators honored here made us happier, healthier, and longer-lived. Indeed, it is thanks to some of them that we are here at all. Their story is the story of how the human race acquired powers once attributed to gods and sorcerers―the story of how we overcame hunger, disease, ignorance, and squalor. I defy anyone to read this book and not feel better afterwards.
— Lord Daniel Hannan, president of the Institute for Free Trade

The 65 fascinating stories in Heroes of Progress are
testaments to the ingenuity of humankind in delivering a richer,
healthier, and hopefully freer world. Alexander C. R. Hammond
provides an inspirational reminder that when individuals are
free to speak, think, innovate, and engage in open markets, the
heroic potential of humanity knows no bounds.
— Lord Syed Kamall, Professor of politics and international relations, St. Mary’s University

In Heroes of Progress, Alexander Hammond reminds us that human minds are the fundamental driver of every discovery, invention, and innovation that has improved our lives. By telling the stories of pioneering men and women who have advanced civilization, this book not only honors past heroes of progress, but also provides inspiration for the next generation to use their uniquely human imaginative and enterprising capacities to build a better future.
— Clay Routledge, Vice President of Research and Director of the Human Flourishing Lab at the Archbridge Institute