[lbo-talk] History, necessity and the New Zealand Wars

[Mike Beggs]

On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 9:01 PM, James Heartfield
<Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> As I read it, the Governor Grey flip-flopped between supporting Maori land-rights as a limit on settler expansion at first, then shifting ground to attack the Maori the next. The British position was for many years very ambiguous, and the British army reluctant to back the settlers' campaign against the Maori. One of Grey's campaigns was to prevent Maori from selling land to settlers, which they were often keen to do, only later to make the greatest purchases as Governor. I agree that Trotter's argument that if the English settlers had not taken the land, others would is a bit of a red herring, but Scott ought to explain why it was that the Governor, and the Crown were willing to endorse Maori land-rights: if he did, I think he would discover that the colonial office was often in conflict with the settlers over the terms and pace of settlement

Yeah - but I don't think that's out of line with Scott's argument - in
fact, doesn't he say that himself? The argument is that the alienation
by force of Maori land was neither (1) inevitable nor (2) progressive.
It seems that the ambivalence of the Crown is one crucial reason why
it wasn't inevitable. It seems hard to believe Maori could have held
out indefinitely militarily against the full force of a determined
British Empire. But that's not what they faced. It's much less of a
stretch to think of a counterfactual in which a few battles went
differently, settlers were spooked and the flow from the mother
country slowed down and made do with the existing enclaves.

At the time of the Waikato war European and Maori populations were
evenly balanced, although Maori were declining. The wars were nothing
like two sided struggles between Maori as a whole and the Crown -
rather they were local battles with shifting tribal alliances, with
Maori on both sides. The King movement centred on the Waikato was
about uniting the tribes and presented the biggest threat to the
colonies. Mostly Maori did not want pakeha (Europeans) to leave the
islands, because they wanted to trade. And because Maori were not
politically unified, within the dynamic of inter-tribal competition
advantage could be got from alliance and trade with the colonies, so
there were always Maori on both sides.

At the same time, there were millenarian religious movements sweeping
through the islands with the potential to galvanise resistance along
different lines. For example, Pai Mariri -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pai_Marire. The later wars involved
prophet-led guerillas, and seriously freaked out the colonists. Te
Kooti's War is a pretty incredible story, starting with an escape from
an island prison 800 kilometres from the mainland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Kooti%27s_War These things could have
worked out differently.

Mike