New Zealand history and the Treaty of Waitangi--Part II

Please visit Part I several blogs back for the start of this college history essay by Angela.

In the mid-1800s the localized wars initiated by the Maori continued. Finally, in 1863-4 the government decided it should punish the rebel Maori. They would do so by taking their land; a scheme was developed to confiscate Maori land as punishment, borrow millions from England on the security of the profits expected from the sale of the confiscated land to new immigrants, and then sell that land, paying off the debt. “The rebels would thus pay not only for the war but to extend ‘the legitimate progress of colonization.’” Exactly what the Maori were fighting against.

Keith Sinclair (author of the book I'm reading, see Part I) says, “as a measure of Maori policy [taking the confiscated lands] was a crime.” Land was taken disproportionately from different tribes; tribes who fought lost little, tribes who didn’t fight lost more, all dependent on the location of the land. In numbers, the Maoris had already sold about seven million acres in the North Island, and an additional three million were confiscated.

Of course this wasn’t the end of the Maori land loss. From Sinclair: “The land laws, which Parliament passed by the score, became a legal jungle within which the Maoris lost themselves and were preyed on by its natural denizens, the land speculators or their agents and shyster lawyers. Land agents would incite Maoris to apply to the courts for a title and would advance the cost of surveying and legal fees. Only too often the Maoris would discover that they had mortgaged the land to pay for the Crown title. Storekeepers would give Maoris credit to the extent of thousands of pounds, and then force them, under threat of imprisonment, to hand over their land in payment. There was nothing illegal about most of these practices, they were good business.”

Sinclair points out also that the Maori are partially to blame for this process too, they did sell their lands to the English despite vowing not to. They used the land sales as a way to earn income, not keeping up with the English way of industrialization and exportation. The Maori had very little to use to keep up with the economic times, and so always resorted to selling land ultimately.

Colonization continued rapidly into the 1870s. From about 1879-1895 New Zealand experienced its first economic depression, after many years of rising exports in the dairy and wool industries. These exports resumed again come the early 1900s, and Maori history seemed to follow the rest of New Zealand history during this time.

It is worth noting, as an aside, that the late 1800s and into the early 1900s the Liberal political party ruled New Zealand and brought great economic development and socioeconomic change, including passing in 1893 women’s suffrage—just before Wyoming in the U.S. Not Maori history, but women’s history! And also, like much of the rest of the world, New Zealand went through its industrialization period during this time as well.