After Te Tiriti
‘Nominal sovereignty’
It is “[a] legal fiction (without any supporting historical facts) to assert that the common law applied
to the whole country in 1840 or in 1847 ... In reality, tikanga Māori prevailed as the only law in the
country in January 1840 (before the Treaty of Waitangi) and continued operating as the only legal
system in some areas, especially in the interior of the North Island, for many decades to come. Belich
has written compellingly of the distinct difference between British claims of 'nominal sovereignty' and
'actual control’.” - David Williams
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To state the obvious, Māori did not cease to live according to their customs and traditions the
day Te Tiriti was signed.
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Throughout the 1840s, British settlers were a small proportion of the total population, te reo
Māori was the dominant language, and English law effectively applied only in the few Pākehā
settlements.
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Crown officials and machinery of state were thin on the ground. The reality was the Crown
did not have the capacity to assert its position against Māori objections – many iwi were also
well-armed.
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A time of pragmatic compromises.
Changing demographics
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After 1840 a period of mass British migration to New Zealand would see Māori reduced to a
minority within two decades.
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In 1854 a Parliament was instituted without Māori representation
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“As settlers started to sense the balance of power shifting in their favour, the old order, based
on a kind of ‘middle ground’ where both parties mostly managed to rub along with each other
most of the time, gave way to a new and darker phase in relations” Vincent O’Malley.
The demand for land
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The 1850s was a decade of uneasy peace. Settlers and sheep spread across the South Island,
but in the North Island, most colonists were largely confined to coastal settlements.
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In 1860, Māori still owned 80% of the North Island., but acquiring Māori land ‘waste land’ –
was now a key policy.
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Waste land = bad land that bcoems yours through cultivation and farming etc
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Maori saw cultivation as less mantiaing but more making the most of seasonal crop
Moving into the 1860s rangatira became increasingly concerned that the country was slipping
out of their hands, piece by piece.
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Stady encorucment on lands resulting in maori not being bale to control their people
as settlers would use divisive tactics and purchase land particularly so the ranitaria
ofver the land was diminished
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Land and sovereignty were inextricably intertwined: Māori became concerned that they
would lose not just the land but effective control. Fundamentally the matter was about the
place of Māori in the colony.
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Panakareao at the Treaty’s signing stated: ‘What have we to say against the governor, the
shadow of the land will go to him but the substance will remain with us’.
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Only a year later a missionary recorded he had reversed his position: ‘now he fears the
substance of it will go to [the British] and the shadow only be [the Māori] portion.’
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Government officials and missionaries also had serious misgivings about how the land
purchases were happening and impact on maori
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HW said that he would not have been involved if the crown was going to engage in
the purchasing of the land in this manner
New Zealand Wars (1845-1872)
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The New Zealand Wars were “a series of British attempts to impose substantive, as against
nominal, sovereignty’ over Māori.” (Belich)
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Land wars = misleading, rather about sovereignty (Belich)
The “Sovereignty wars”? (Moana Jackson)
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Misleading to see this as wars between Crown and Māori:
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Māori fought on both sides in pursuit of their tribal aspirations
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British imperial troops who did most the fighting until 1865 had their own reasons for
enlisting – up to 2/3 of rank-and-file troops came from Ireland
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Signif bc this was in wake of potato famine, so idea that these people who
came from Ireland came under free will is debatable
Military settlers, local militia and volunteers supported
George Orwell Shooting an Elephant
It was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness,
the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing
in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was
only an absurd puppet pushed to and from by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this
moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a
sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule
that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives’, and so in every crisis he has got to do
what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the
elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a
sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that
way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away,
having done nothing — no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life,
every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
The first cracks in NZ wars
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Ngāpuhi chief Hōne Heke was an influential supporter of the Treaty in 1840
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But four years later in disillusionment he ordered the cutting down of the flagpole at the
British settlement of Kororāreka (Russell) to show his displeasure at the British government.
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Previously had been tribe and UK flag flying to together to symbolise equality but
when it was just the UK flag this was interpreted as being under Birtish rule
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Over the following months, the flagpole was re-erected and cut down again three times. The
final felling, in March 1845, signalled war between British troops and some northern Māori.
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Kingitangi instituted in 1958 under Te Wherowhero who had previously refused to sign the
treaty
Ngāi Tahu
Friends, my dearest friends, to the people who live in this island, listen here. Those of you from one
point of this land, to the other point, to those that dwell in between, to all white people, to those who
live in Te Waipounamu, and all who inhabit the Island where the fire of Mahuika burns. To the Māori,
you must all listen. Raukawa is the boundary. Let not the people of the Northern Island, come across
to this island and treat the law with contempt; neither the people of this island lay down and allow it.
There is a large dividing space between them and us, like unto that between Jacob and Laban, which
leaves this to continue as a perpetual testament for us. That island has been divided for your King.
There is another King of this island, he is Tuahuriri. Although he is dead his authority remains with
us his descendants. We have great mountains on this island, Tapuae-o-Uenuku, Kai-taurau, Maungatere, Ahu-patiki, Tarahoua, Mihi-waka and Rakiura. Friends, let not the people of that Island no
longer come over to this and work deceitfully.
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-exmaple of tribes using chritisian missionary theoires but making them their
own under moari custom
"Te Whiti and Tītokowaru Discuss the Question, 'What is Peace?'
Tītikowaru – bodied the dialectic between war and peace
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Grew up in the shadow of the musket wars.
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Between 1850 and 1854 Tītokowaru turned away from pacifism and missionary Christianity
and fought for the Kingitanga
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Around 1866 he turned once more to peace - 1867 was ‘the year of the daughters … the year
of the lamb’.
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In 1868, he rejected peace in response to Crown aggression and led a number of successful
campaigns
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James Belich: ‘Arguably the best general New Zealand has ever produced.’
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Well known for ambushes
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Supporter of Parihaka movement and led peaceful occupations of land leading to periods of
imprisonment. Died in 1888.
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Shows how chiefts responding to the idea in the lose of their land and authority
New Zealand Wars (1845-1872)
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These were not skirmishes (ppl sometimes downplay the scale of the warfare) - around 18,000
British soldiers served in New Zealand between 1840 and 1870. This makes it one of the
biggest military conflicts ever waged by the British empire.
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Māori defenders were significantly outnumbered, typically by a ratio of three or four to one
and the British had far superior military arms.
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Māori drew upon their military and strategic skills - modern pā system’ and highly skilled
with firearms
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Many of the so-called Crown victories were ‘paper victories’ to Belich, i.e., the crown won
but to significant costs to itself
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Maori rebel flag
The end of large-scale war – but no peace
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Mass land confiscations – 3 million acres taken
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One of the largest greviances to Moari
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Conflict did not end in 1872 – storming of Parihaka in 1881 where people who had a peaceful
protest – hundreds imprisoned in the South Island, many dying from exposure, disease and
malnutrition.
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Continued resistance - but Māori power much diminished. Through a series of agreements the
remaining strongholds were brought under Crown control.
Final thoughts
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New Zealand was settled peacefully (John Key)
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The history of war is never a simple remembering, because its truth always jostles uneasily
with what people think about themselves and their past – Moana Jackson
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“Though I am killed, yet I shall live. The future is mine, and little children will answer in the
future when questioned as to the author of peace, ‘Te Whiti,’ and I will bless them” – shortly
before his arrest in 1881. Little Bushman - Peaceful Man – YouTube
Readings
Essential readings
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Moana Jackson: Facing the truth about the wars (17 September 2016, E-tangata)
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Important reflection on what the wars mean to us in the 21st cnet
Non-essential readings
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Vincent O’Malley The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (Bridget Williams
Books, 2019)
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George Orwell Shooting and Elephant (1936)
<https://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph>