Charlotte Macdonald: Travelling the ‘garrison world’ — 19th century history that speaks to the 2020s

Hear from Charlotte Macdonald as she embarks on a journey of what she terms the ‘garrison world’ — soldiers, sailors, and their families stationed across the British empire in the 19th century.

Join us at the Library or online.

The garrison world and imperial control

In this Friends of the Turnbull event, historian Charlotte Macdonald will give an extensively illustrated lecture, travelling across what she has termed the ‘garrison world’. This is the world of redcoat soldiers, their officer commanders, and the small number of women who existed in and around the regiments.

Charlotte will explore why this military world is significant beyond the history of imperial wars, and how it speaks to us in the 2020s.

Items in the Alexander Turnbull Library provide crucial navigation points for their travels, from Taranaki and Auckland to Sydney, Kolkata (Calcutta), Jamaica, Dublin, London, and beyond.

About the speaker

Charlotte Macdonald, FRSNZ, is Professor Emerita at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author of Garrison World. Redcoat Soldiers in New Zealand and Across the British Empire (BWB, 2025). She has recently become co-editor of the New Zealand Journal of History with Dr Keri Mills (AUT).