John Dunmore Lang (25 August 1799 – 8 August 1878) was a Scottish-born Australian Presbyterian minister, writer, politician and activist. He was the first prominent advocate of an independent Australian nation and of Australian republicanism.
Lang was born near Greenock, Renfrewshire (now Inverclyde), Scotland, the eldest son of William Lang and Mary Dunmore. His father was a small landowner and his mother a pious Presbyterian, who dedicated her son to the Church of Scotland ministry from an early age. He grew up in nearby Largs and was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he excelled, winning many prizes and graduating as a Master of Arts in 1820. His brother, George, had found employment in New South Wales and Lang decided to join him. He was ordained by the Presbytery of Irvine on 30 September 1822. Arriving in Sydney Cove on 23 May 1823, he became the first Presbyterian minister in the colony of New South Wales. On the way back from the second of his nine voyages to Britain (1830–31), he married his 18-year-old cousin, Wilhelmina Mackie, in Cape Town. They were married for 47 years and had ten children, only three of whom survived him. There were no grandchildren.
John Dunmore CNZM (born 1923) is a prominent New Zealand academic, historian, author, playwright, and publisher.
Dunmore was born in Trouville-sur-Mer, France, lived in Jersey under German Occupation during World War II, and then in England, where he received a BA from the University of London. He emigrated to New Zealand in 1950. He completed a PhD under historian J C Beaglehole at Victoria University of Wellington in 1962, studying the French contribution to the exploration of the Pacific Ocean in the 18th century. He was Professor of French, Head of the Department of Modern Languages, and Dean of Humanities at Massey University, from which he retired in 1985.
Dunmore's main field of history is the exploration of the Pacific, particularly by French navigators. He has written two major biographies of La Pérouse, and translated and edited his journals (which he rediscovered after they had been misfiled in the French National Archives). In addition, he has written biographies and edited the journals of both de Surville and of Bougainville. His biography of de Surville, The fateful voyage of the St. Jean Baptiste, won the Wattie Book of the Year award in 1970.
His work is highly regarded by scholars as well as by the public: