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

[James Heartfield]

Mike writes: '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.'
Yes, most definitely, it was not inevitable, nor progressive.

I have been working on a comparative history of Aborigine protection policies that suggests to me that the Crown's on-off support for native land rights indicates a substantial difference with the colonists over settlement, and also had the effect of entrenching the division between settlers (which ultimately worked against natives, though the policy was of the face of it more generous than the settlers' own).