In 1794 Samuel Marsden arrived with his family at Port Jackson to start a position as colonial chaplain in the expanding colony of New South Wales. He worked as colonial chaplain in New South Wales from 1794 until his death in 1838. Marsden was a major figure in the development of the Australian wool industry. He lobbied the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to establish the first mission to New Zealand, and travelled there as superintendent of the mission seven times from its establishment in 1814. He had a profound influence on religious evangelization, racial thought and imperial expansion in the region. In the historiography of New Zealand he is accorded a special, even revered, place as the ‘father’ of missionary endeavour, whereas in Australian national histories he is vilified as the ‘flogging parson’ and known as a magistrate who punished convicts harshly. This chapter explores Marsden's early career in New South Wales as colonial chaplain from his arrival in the colony in 1794 until his journey to England in 1810, during which the CMS decided, on Marsden's recommendation, to establish the New Zealand mission. I suggest here that to understand his whole career, and to bring the separate historiographical traditions that have developed around Marsden in Australia and New Zealand into dialogue, it is necessary to consider his work within the context of British imperial interest in the region and the developing hierarchy of racial thought in the Tasman world.