Early Victorian New Zealand: a Social History of the Cook Strait Settlements 1839 - 1852

Abstract

The following ‘abstract’ of this thesis is offered with the reservation that it does not claim to be a substitute for the whole or to do justice to the variety and complexity of the strands which, woven together, compose the facts of New Zealand history. In chapter one the Wakefield System is considered as a mechanism of interlocking formulas based on the first principles of the classical economists, more particularly Adam Smith, ‘the great master’. Into this rigid theoretical structure Wakefield dovetails his concept of racial amalgamation. After protracted negotiations, warnings and disappointments the New Zealand Company is founded and an emigrant fleet is despatched to ‘the Cannibal Lands.’ Chapter two is concerned with the Maori background to the colonization of New Zealand, the movements of particular tribes from 1820 - 1839, and the relations of those tribes in August 1839. The history of the displaced Taranaki tribes is especially stressed. Chapter three contains a close analysis the description of Colonel Wakefield’s negotiations with different tribes and shows how the Maoris were in fact kept in the dark as to the Company’s real intentions. A distinction is drawn between those natives who welcomed the Company and those who refused to sell when harassed about their lands. Chapter four shows how the early Victorian emigrants were bounced out of their inherent caution by the Company’s masterly propaganda. Chapter five contains a composite picture of the voyage out, based on the diaries of various emigrants. In chapter six the New Zealand Company’s plan of settlement is shown to be ill adapted to the natural features and contours of the Cook Strait area. Attempts to dispossess the natives led to the growth of Maori resistance to systematic colonization in each of the settlements. Colonel Wakefield is exposed by the Protector of Aborigines. In chapter seven the Tua Marina incident is described in its proper context. The problems of Governor FitzRoy are considered in detail, and attention is drawn to the positive contribution of his administration. The flow and recoil of the first Maori war is presented in the context of Britain’s transmarine military and naval commitments. In chapter eight Grey’s triumph in the north and south is analysed and explained. The continuity of Government policy is stressed. The situation of the Maoris after the war is described in detail: the clash and fusion of cultures – religion, agriculture, commerce, the scourge of disease, and racial discrimination. In chapter nine the Company’s numerous breaches of contract are analysed, the indignation of the original land purchasers is probed, and the agitation that led to their obtaining compensation for their losses is described. In chapter ten the trials of the working class settlers are described in detail. A surplus of labour leads to unemployment and discontent. At New Plymouth the labourers become ‘masters of the settlement’. The labourers are allowed to go on the land on their own account. The economic pendulum swings in favour of ‘the lower orders’. In chapter eleven are described the beginnings of a New Zealand rural community. Attention is drawn to Wakefield’s prejudice against sheep farmers and pastoral runs. Most of the settlers are ‘unacquainted with agricultural pursuits’. They cling to the town. A commercial boom and slump. The whalers. Riotous pot-houses. The sawyers. Grabbing among the stumps. The transition to pastoral farming. The rhythm of the sheep runs. The squatters profit from the Maori war. The sheep speculating boom of the late forties and early fifties.