In Empire: the making of native title, Prof Bain Attwood explains with excruciating attention to contemporary documents, that Britain was reluctant to take responsibility for NZ as a new colony on account of colonial demands elsewhere but was determined not to allow the dreadful treatment of indigenes it was witnessing in the US, Canada and Australia. When the Colonial Office and the British government finally decided Britain had to intervene in NZ (remember, rangatira and missionaries had been pleading for British law and order), the matter of legal authority to do so had to be settled. That was a driving imperative for the Treaty, and for Hobson’s instructions to obtain the consent of rangatira to govern as sovereign authority. He was instructed to desist with efforts to obtain consent if rangatira rejected the treaty. They didn’t. And so, they ceded sovereign authority to the Crown (Britain) in return for protection under British law.
Attwood is careful to avoid imputing today’s values and politics to his appraisal of historical evidence. In fact he is critical of his peers of today who have, in his view, betrayed the defining principles of historical analysis to reinterpret the treaty.
Very good read . Thanks. Never ceases to amaze me what those very early settlers took on. My wife and I have a mix of ordinary working people, doctors (2) RA artists (2), and an engineer as well as the daughter of a BoP Maori chief among our ancestors.
If hazard a guess that Each iwi/hapu chief not only wanted protection from those who might exploit them (The NZ Coy?)but from each other as well?
The late great Michael King's "Penguin History of NZ" is another good even-handed source on the same matter. Meanwhile in the US, where religious fundamentalism runs amok...
In Empire: the making of native title, Prof Bain Attwood explains with excruciating attention to contemporary documents, that Britain was reluctant to take responsibility for NZ as a new colony on account of colonial demands elsewhere but was determined not to allow the dreadful treatment of indigenes it was witnessing in the US, Canada and Australia. When the Colonial Office and the British government finally decided Britain had to intervene in NZ (remember, rangatira and missionaries had been pleading for British law and order), the matter of legal authority to do so had to be settled. That was a driving imperative for the Treaty, and for Hobson’s instructions to obtain the consent of rangatira to govern as sovereign authority. He was instructed to desist with efforts to obtain consent if rangatira rejected the treaty. They didn’t. And so, they ceded sovereign authority to the Crown (Britain) in return for protection under British law.
Attwood is careful to avoid imputing today’s values and politics to his appraisal of historical evidence. In fact he is critical of his peers of today who have, in his view, betrayed the defining principles of historical analysis to reinterpret the treaty.
Very good read . Thanks. Never ceases to amaze me what those very early settlers took on. My wife and I have a mix of ordinary working people, doctors (2) RA artists (2), and an engineer as well as the daughter of a BoP Maori chief among our ancestors.
If hazard a guess that Each iwi/hapu chief not only wanted protection from those who might exploit them (The NZ Coy?)but from each other as well?
Thank you for this.
The late great Michael King's "Penguin History of NZ" is another good even-handed source on the same matter. Meanwhile in the US, where religious fundamentalism runs amok...
https://archive.is/20230721101249/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/history-of-book-bans-in-the-united-states