Titokowaru's war and its place in New Zealand history

Abstract

Titokowaru's War occurred in Southern Taranaki in 1868-69. Historians have, in effect, portrayed it as an insignificant if marginally interesting little police action, heavily outweighed in importance by earlier, larger-scale, episodes of the Maoris "hopeless" struggle against British might. This study argues that such a picture of Titokowaru's War is utterly inaccurate. It is held that the War saw Pakeha control of the North Island genuinely threatened by what was, given the scale of the forces involved, amongst the worst series of defeats troops of British lineage had ever suffered at the hands of non-European peoples. The causes and background of the War are briefly considered - mainly in the context of the apparently insoluble military problem which they initially presented to Titokowaru and his people. The means by which this problem was in fact solved are then traced, and it is claimed that they consisted largely of Titokowaru's grasp of strategy and of his capacity for tactical innovation. The case for a new picture of the War is coupled with a brief examination of the creation and perpetuation of the old picture. It is suggested that many white contemporaries tended to misread the various actions and manoeuvres in a way which sustained their ideas of intrinsic superiority, and that this laid the basis for the misunderstanding of the nature and significance of the War by posterity. It is concluded that the conflict was of a peculiar nature in that the side traditionally considered to be the more primitive of the two made up for its inferiority in resources with more sophisticated and innovative military techniques. Finally, some guesses are made as to the significance of the War in a wider historical context.