Colonization and Development in New Zealand between 1769 and 1900: The Seeds of Rangiatea

353 Pages·2015·4.057 MB·English

by  Ian Pool (auth.)

Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic
Development 3
Ian Pool
Colonization and
Development
in New Zealand
between 1769 and
1900
The Seeds of Rangiatea
Demographic Transformation
and Socio-Economic Development
Volume 3
Editors-in-chief: Yves Charbit and Ian Pool
This dynamic series builds on the population and development paradigms of recent
decades and provides an authoritative platform for the analysis of empirical results
that map new territory in this highly active fi eld. Its constituent volumes are set in
the context of unprecedented demographic changes in both the developed—and
developing—world, changes that include startling urbanization and rapidly aging
populations. Offering unprecedented detail on leading-edge methodologies, as well
as the theory underpinning them, the collection will benefi t the wider scholarly
community with a full reckoning of emerging topics and the creative interplay
between them.
The series focuses on key contemporary issues that evince a sea-change in the
nexus of demographics and economics, eschewing standard ‘populationist’ theories
centered on numerical growth in favor of more complex assessments that factor in
additional data, for example on epidemiology or the shifting nature of the labor
force. It aims to explore the obstacles to economic development that originate in
high-growth populations and the disjunction of population change and food security.
Where other studies have defi ned the ‘economy’ more narrowly, this series
recognizes the potency of social and cultural infl uences in shaping development and
acknowledges demographic change as a cause, as well as an effect, of broader shifts
in society. It is also intended as a forum for methodological and conceptual
innovation in analyzing the links between population and development, from fi nely
tuned anthropological studies to global, systemic phenomena such as the
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nations’ socio-economic rise, the editors are actively seeking studies relating to this
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policy makers with a state-of-the-art appraisal of our understanding of demographics
and development.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8813
Ian Pool
Colonization
and Development
in New Zealand between
1769 and 1900
The Seeds of Rangiatea
Ian Pool
National Institute of Demographic
and Economic Analysis
University of Waikato
Hamilton , New Zealand
Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development
ISBN 978-3-319-16903-3 ISBN 978-3-319-16904-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16904-0
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To my mokopuna (grandchildren),
Caroline, Charlotte, Fiona and Nicholas

Pref ace
I have already published papers, research monographs and several books on Maori
population, most more technical than the present book. To my great satisfaction they
have been read by three separate audiences. The fi rst are New Zealand scholars,
particularly historians, a discipline I admire greatly as it has played a major role in
building New Zealand’s cultural identity and documenting its story. Secondly, there
are overseas scholars, above all in Australia and North America, not just those car-
rying out research in indigenous studies, but also in related fi elds such as anthropol-
ogy, colonial history and development. But in many senses, the most rewarding
constituency has been the third, members of i wi (tribes) preparing claims for New
Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal. Seeing your own scientifi c text open before claimants,
at meetings as you build a technical case for its users, is a very special experience to
which relatively few scientists are exposed.
T he most immediate motivation to write this book came from the Central North
Island Waitangi Tribunal’s hearing at Ohinemutu in February 2005. After a long and
particularly adversarial cross-examination by the Crown, I was approached by
Counsel for some of the claimants, who, as only a lawyer can do, ‘instructed’ me to
reissue my last book, T e Iwi Maori. But, as might be expected, the challenge was not
as straightforward as I fi rst thought it might be. It became a totally different book,
not in terms of the arguments I had made or the techniques I had used in T e Iwi
Maori , but because of other factors.
Inspiration came from a phrase used many years ago, in a seminal paper by the
New Zealand expatriate demographer Wilfred Borrie. He called the Maori popula-
tion ‘a microcosm of the New World’. He was referring to a period of recuperation
and very rapid growth, driven by rapid declines in mortality, across the Third World
immediately after World War II, and represented in New Zealand by Maori. But the
phrase also has resonance for earlier decades as the nineteenth-century Maori his-
tory is a microcosm of the colonial experience of many other peoples.
The interest of researchers from other ‘Anglo settler societies’ was not entirely
unexpected. The histories of those countries have a lot in common with New
Zealand’s, especially in terms of relationships between the settlers, who eventually
vii
viii Preface
became the majority populations, and the indigenous people who became the
minorities in their own countries. In all cases, there was massive resource loss by the
native peoples; indigenous populations were struck by pathogens, against which
they had no immunity, introduced and diffused – generally by accident – and which
produced demographic ‘collapses’ that threatened their very survival; there were
wars of conquest and extension of empire, including the westward expansion of the
United States, which was also empire-building at the expense of native Americans;
there was displacement of ‘precursor peoples’ by settlers, who turned these domains
into extensive pastoral estates and grain farms; and everywhere there was the
demonisation of the original inhabitants.
But as I wrote this book, I also became aware of other comparators, not only in
much of Latin America, especially its southern cone (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay),
but also in peripheral, Celtic Britain. They were subject to the ‘Clearances’, which
were still continuing in Scotland – as New Zealand was being colonized – in the late
Victorian era. Even the ‘enclosures’ in the metropole, England itself, carried out in
the name of progress and effi ciency, had some similarities with displacements
occurring in the peripheries, whether in Britain or the colonies. Moreover, it did not
take much more imagination to see resonance with Tsarist Russia’s relentless march
eastward, converting the territory of nomads into grain farms, or even the coloniza-
tion of many territories in Africa. Displacement and collapse were also widespread
in Africa – the history of the demographic decline of the Congo is a case in point,
perhaps one of the more extreme. This book then is a case study of the ‘displace-
ment’ of one set of peoples by others, and the ‘internal colonialism’ that allows this
domination to continue even after colonization p er se may have fi nished.
I thus had the motivation and possible audiences for a book on colonization,
Maori population and development. The next question was what form it should take.
Here I had some clear goals in mind.
First, I wanted any ‘new’ book to be far less technical and more easily accessible
to a wider range of audiences than my last book. Fortunately, my earlier books pro-
vided the methodologies and substantive results that I could draw on to avoid tech-
nical analyses. That said, the estimates and techniques I had used there had been
gradually refi ned, often by developing or adopting new techniques, mainly in
response to the requirements of cross-examined expert evidence for the Waitangi
Tribunal, plus for entries I authored/co-authored for the offi cial online E ncyclopedia
of New Zealand. Recent papers by other authors, cited in the text here, also raised
issues that needed addressing; for example, in the light of new evidence, especially
the arguments of economist Brian Easton, I have lowered my estimate for the num-
ber of Maori in 1769, when Captain James Cook ‘discovered’ New Zealand.
S econd, and far more importantly, I felt there was a need to pay greater attention
to the ‘development’ side of population and development. This became a mega-task,
simply because, with some very notable exceptions, formal economics has virtually
ignored the non-monetized sectors of nineteenth-century New Zealand develop-
ment. Indeed, in the post-contact but still precolonial epoch until 1840, there is very
little written on any of the sectors of the New Zealand economy apart from extrac-
tive industries, in which Maori are seen as ‘bit players’: the ‘hewers of wood and
Preface ix
scrapers of fl ax’, with the more instrumental aspects of trade and shipping in the
hands of Europeans. Even in our most authoritative histories, the question of what
ordinary Maori were doing in their daily lives is virtually a missing element. By
contrast, the intertribal wars of the period are paid much attention – perhaps they are
inherently more exciting than the daily grind of horticulture, hunting, gathering and
fi shing; muskets are more newsworthy than hoes; and cannibalism is more easily
sensationalized than normative events such as marriage. Not surprisingly, we also
know a great deal about the missionaries and the rapid conversion of Maori to
Christianity – the missionaries were great chroniclers, often exaggerators, of their
own successes. Some were strong advocates for colonial annexation as a counter to
the lawlessness apparently surging around the oases of calm formed by the mission
stations. To many European journal writers, Maori were inherently childish and/or
savage and, as ‘Aborigines’, had to be protected from debauched sailors, escaped
convicts from Australia, whalers and sealers. This selectivity in the accounts avail-
able to researchers always had nuggets of truth, but those reports have often been
adopted uncritically by some sensationalist, revisionist historians who have written
‘tabloid’ accounts of Maori in this period. By contrast, the ‘business historians’
have restricted themselves to ‘tangibles’ but have shown how very successful Maori
were as international traders in commodities.
T he colonial period from 1840 until 1907 is easier to document. But I have had
to ask how and why the successful Maori ‘businesses’ were virtually eliminated.
This leads to a key question: what was the economic and social situation of Maori
at the end of Victoria’s reign?
I t is an oft-forgotten truism that for an indigenous population all development
depends on their very survival, which is a function of their health and exposure also
to confl ict. To address this issue I had to document more elaborately the way in
which Maori health suffered from contact and the diffusion of pathogens, then how
Maori gradually gained resistance to these; in an era in which biomedical science
was so primitive, there were virtually none of the preventive or curative measures
that became commonplace in the twentieth century. Confl ict could be analysed by
drawing on the authoritative book of Ron Crosby on the intertribal wars, 1810–
1840, on James Belich’s history of the various lethal colonial wars and confl icts,
1842–1898, plus more recent detailed research by Vincent O’Malley. To explain
decreases in Maori life-expectancy and numbers, so severe that their extinction was
predicted by most pundits in late Victorian New Zealand, and then to account for
their eventual survival, factors of health occupy much of the space in this book.
Taking the lead from the principles being enunciated by the ‘Bretton Woods’ and
other international agencies, health is seen here as an integral factor of development,
not as some fi scally burdensome ‘social sector’ off to one side, as was too often the
attitude of neo-liberal economists over the past three to four decades.
As I have indicated already, the subject matter of this book has a wider interest
beyond New Zealand. The knowledge base on Maori in the nineteenth century is
still far from complete; I hope that this book signifi cantly extends it in an area where
until now there have been major gaps. But New Zealand’s story is probably far more
detailed and better documented than those for many other territories facing European