HISTORY – SETTLEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

The first published account of Cook's 1769–71 voyage – Hawkesworth's edition – appeared in 1773. New Zealand, previously a mere geographical enigma, became known for its human interest and commercial potentialities. Cook described the belligerent and intelligent natives, the great stands of timber, the flax plant, the seals, and the equable climate. Missionaries were drawn by his description of the people; traders and would-be colonisers by his description of resources.

1769–1840 Trade and Settlement

Initially both evangelical and commercial interest in New Zealand came from New South Wales rather than from Great Britain. Colonies frequently establish further colonies; such was the case with New South Wales, created as a convict settlement in 1788 but soon becoming a centre for South Pacific commerce, both European and American. Whalers, sealers, timber and flax traders, farmers, pastoralists and land speculators, and (in many instances) missionaries and officials, came to New Zealand through or from Port Jackson. Whaling off the New Zealand coasts is first recorded in 1791, sealing in Dusky Sound in 1792, timber and flax trading in the Firth of Thames in 1794–95; through the later 1790s occasional shiploads of timber were sent to India and China. In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor King had two Maoris brought to Norfolk Island to instruct convicts in flax-dressing, and sent presents of pigs, potatoes, and seeds to the Bay of Island tribes. Early in the nineteenth century the Maoris of this area were able to provision the occasional visiting ships. Significant as these beginnings are, for the first quarter of the nineteenth century trading in New Zealand was, with an isolated exception, slight and irregular. The exception is sealing on the south-west coasts of the South Island, a growing enterprise after the entry of American sealers around 1803, with a market in China and later in London. By 1816 the herds were so reduced that the trade died out. The deep-sea whaling industry grew over the same years, especially after the weakening of the East India Company monopoly in 1802, but shore contacts were limited to refreshment and refitting. Flax and timber also brought only irregular contact between European and Maori. Not infrequently these were violent; in 1806 the Venus and in 1809 the Boyd were destroyed by Maoris and their crews killed and eaten.

Nevertheless, contact increased. The ferocious reputation of the Maoris dismayed many, but not, in 1814, either a Sydney syndicate planning (without success) the large-scale exploitation of flax, or Samuel Marsden and his artisan-evangelists who established the first mission station. Marsden pushed through the first recorded transaction in New Zealand land: 200 acres were conveyed to the Church Missionary Society in return for 12 axes. This Anglican mission was unsuccessful for many years; Marsden directed it with more energy than discrimination from Sydney, making occasional visits; the men on the spot, William Hall, a carpenter, John King, a flax-dresser, Thomas Kendall, a schoolmaster, were ill-equipped and (perhaps of necessity) more concerned with commerce than conversion. The arrival of the Williams brothers, Henry and William (both ordained clergymen) in 1823 injected resolve and purpose into the establishment. Converts remained few and tardy; the Maoris valued the mission as a source of goods, muskets, and prestige, not of spiritual guidance; for a long time the mission existed under the protection of the notably bellicose chief Hongi, the first to be well equipped with muskets. The first baptism occurred in 1825 after nine years of effort, and the second not until 1827. By this time the Wesleyans, opening their first station at Whangaroa in 1822, had joined the Anglicans.

The initial importance of the missionaries was more secular than religious. Until the 1830s they were the only permanent white population of any size in the Bay of Islands; over 60 including their many children by 1830, according to one count. In 1833 it was reported that only between 20 and 30 whites other than missionaries lived at the Bay, apart from perhaps 40 “Pakeha-Maoris” (q.v.) living in nearby pas. (The first report of a European's “going native” comes as early as 1802.) At times the population of the Bay would be swelled by visiting whaling and trading ships, American as well as British, but they did not stay. Although the Maoris declined for some time to learn religion from the missionaries, they learned much else: a desultory sort of farming, based on pigs and potatoes, and the use of blankets in place of their traditional clothing, for instance. And, in spite of their pacific intentions, these missionaries, with the crews of visiting ships, were a channel through which the tribes acquired the musket, a weapon which was to turn their rather formalised if sufficiently deadly traditional warfare into a technique of mass slaughter.

By the later 1820s a new sort of European was becoming a settler, but not in the Bay of Islands. To the deep-sea hunting of the sperm whale was added the quest for the “right” or black whale, especially when it was calving in the sheltered inlets of Tasmania and New Zealand. Shore bases were established for this purpose; the first in New Zealand by a Sydney whaler in Tory Channel in 1827. In the course of the 1830s 22 shore stations, mostly in the South Island, were established by Sydney firms. The oil and bone so obtained was exported to England via Sydney. The search for the black whale boosted the infant industry, as did an increase of the British demand in the 1820s and a reduction of duties on oil and bone. Though New Zealand was not a British colony, whale products caught in her waters and sent to England via Australian ports were treated, for customs purposes, as British – otherwise crippling duties would have been incurred. In the later 1830s the whaling trade, thus encouraged, grew considerably; perhaps half of the oil sent to the United Kingdom from New South Wales was in fact a New Zealand product. The timber and flax trades continued, less spectacularly; in 1827 a Hokianga trading post was established from Sydney to export flax and timber, and in 1832 over 800 tons of New Zealand flax were sent to Sydney. The Otago stations of the Weller brothers and of Johnny Jones (both Sydney enterprises), set up in the 1830s, dealt in potatoes and flax as well as oil. By the later 1830s these stations were becoming permanent settlements; in 1839 Jones claimed that 280 men were living on his seven stations. He, and other Sydney principals, were sending cattle and settlers, and buying land (see also Whaling).

By that time these infant settlements were threatened with extinction. United Kingdom whaling interests had become alarmed at the quantity of American produce from New Zealand reaching the United Kingdom market as “colonial”; and the New South Wales government was forced to consider whether this convenient fiction could be maintained. It necessarily concluded that New Zealand was in fact “foreign” – this decision threatened New Zealand trade with duties sufficient to cause its extinction. But Australian commercial interests, and the sharply increasing settler (mainly British) population, were such that they could not be ignored. These were important factors in leading the British Government to take an interest in New Zealand, and in the end to annex it.

The Establishment of Sovereignty

New Zealand was not British, but some New South Wales governors, notably Lachlan Macquarie, exploiting a possible ambiguity in their instructions, had in fact tried to extend British authority across the Tasman, seeking to foster the commercial life of New South Wales, to protect the Maoris from vicious influences, and to support the missionaries. Macquarie, in 1814, made Kendall a Resident Magistrate; in 1819 he commissioned the missionary Butler a Justice of the Peace and declared New Zealand a dependency of New South Wales. A British statute of 1817 empowered Macquarie to punish offences committed there, though it also declared New Zealand to be not a British colony. By the 1820s Australians were starting to plan colonies in New Zealand, and in 1823 the jurisdiction of the Courts of New South Wales was extended to New Zealand (for crimes committed by British subjects). These actions did not alter the status of New Zealand, but they did show that she was a matter of concern to New South Wales officials and, to a lesser extent, to the United Kingdom.

Events in the 1830s made it certain that New Zealand would become British. In 1831 the scandalous conduct of Capt. Stewart of the Elizabeth in aiding Te Rauparaha in one of his more bloodthirsty exploits outraged respectable opinion in New Zealand, Sydney, and London. The Colonial Secretary, Lord Goderich, was appalled. In the same year, the presence of a French ship at the Bay of Islands led to fresh rumours of French colonisation and a petition from some chiefs to the King for protection against the “tribe of Marion”. But the upshot was, initially, trivial and ill-contrived. James Busby, an Australian free settler, was appointed Resident by Goderich without consulting the Governor of New South Wales. Thus relations between Governor and Resident were permanently bedevilled. Further, Busby quite lacked any authority other than support he could enlist from chiefs and missionaries. Imperial legislation to increase his powers was contemplated but never passed.

Nevertheless, the mid-1830s continued the movement towards annexation. In 1834 troops intervened for the first time to rescue the captured crew of a wrecked vessel. A year later Busby learned of Baron de Thierry's fantastic plans for the creation of a personal monarchy and secured a Declaration of Independence from 35 northern chiefs. When, in 1837, de Thierry and about 100 followers landed, the hollowness of his pretensions became apparent. In the last three years of the decade the pace quickened. Land speculators from Sydney were making large “purchases” and disputes over land between Maoris and settlers became acrimonious. An increasing number of escaped convicts crossed the Tasman. Over 200 British residents of New Zealand petitioned the Imperial government for protection of property. In 1837 Captain William Hobson was sent on a tour of inspection on HMS Rattlesnake. He recommended the establishment of “factories” (i.e., small areas under direct British rule) to protect British interests and trade. Busby, at the same time, urged that all New Zealand become a British protectorate. There were fresh scares of French initiative, thanks to the presence of French ships and the arrival of a French Catholic Bishop, Pompallier. George Gipps now Governor of New South Wales, argued that either the Residency be ended or made effective, as did the Kororareka Vigilantes Association (an experiment in self-government), and the traders and newspapers of Sydney.

In England, the government was preparing to act. A House of Lords committee favoured British possession in 1838, and in the previous year a New Zealand Association had been formed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his associates for the colonisation of the country. The government regarded it with suspicion, but in 1839 it (transformed into the New Zealand Company) made its intentions clear by the dispatch of an advance party aboard the Tory. By this time Hobson had already been offered the post of British Consul, and in 1839 he accepted the position of Lieutenant-Governor and Consul under the government of New South Wales. The Law Officers reported that the United Kingdom could properly annex New Zealand, and Gipps's commission was enlarged with this step in view.

The stage was set for annexation, though the official actors moved with a circumspection not equalled by private interests. The New Zealand Company had sent the Tory in haste to buy land before annexation should introduce a Crown monopoly of land purchases; Sydney “land sharks” drove bargains with Maoris in Sydney for immense areas “acquired” upon trivial considerations – the most ambitious was W. C. Wentworth, who claimed to have bought 20 million acres. Gipps's counter measures were effective; land dealings were prohibited, and past transactions were to be subjected to an official inquiry. Early in 1840 Hobson arrived in New Zealand, Lieutenant-Governor of a colony yet to be acquired. His instructions required him to take possession of the country only with the consent of the Maori chiefs. This emphasis upon consent arose from the influence of evangelical Christian views, especially as urged by the Church Missionary Society and its secretary, Dandeson Coates, upon the Colonial Office. It represented an attempt to combine the extension of British authority with a policy designed to safeguard the well-being of the native people. The Treaty of Waitangi of 6 February 1840 was the instrument of such consent, for the chiefs who signed it agreed to place themselves under the sovereignty of the Queen in return for her protection. After the initial signing Hobson annexed that part of the country down to 36°S, and apparently planned a progressive southwards annexation as signatures were collected. The resident missionaries of the Church Missionary Society were a numerous body whose cooperation was essential to the Government. Together with the Wesleyans, they assisted Hobson in urging upon the chiefs the acceptance of the treaty. Some even were dispatched southwards in the Herald to collect further signatures, normally cementing the new relationship with gifts. Hobson was forced into greater speed by the action of the newly arrived Company settlers at Port Nicholson (Wellington) in organising their own government, and possibly by a renewed threat of French intervention — the ships carrying the French settlers who were to colonise Akaroa had arrived. On 21 May Hobson issued two proclamations announcing British sovereignty over the whole country, the North Island by right of cession, the two southern islands, where the Maori population was very slight, by right of discovery. The expansion of British influence, largely from Australia, and reinforced by the Church Missionary Society and by the New Zealand Company at the eleventh hour, had brought a new British colony into existence.

1840-55 Early Problems

New Zealand's history as a British colony opens with five inglorious years, characterised by weak administration, bitter internal divisions, and insufficiently flexible policy. The first two Governors, Hobson, who died in 1842 after a lengthy illness, and Robert FitzRoy, well-intentioned but unstable, were surrounded by officials whose wisdom (and honesty in some cases) was not above question. Further, they were plagued by the importunities and unscrupulousness of the New Zealand Company in London and its settlers in Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, and Wanganui, districts which were all founded in the early 1840s. These governors, following their instructions, attempted to rule in the interests of the native race, and they had every reason to believe that settlement, as it was managed by the Company, would not be conducive to native well-being. Nevertheless, the Company settlements were a growing fact, and so demanded official attention other than mere hostility. All the early Governors, in fact, were faced by a dilemma: how to balance Maori with settler welfare. FitzRoy's infinitely abler successor, George Grey, found no lasting answer to a problem which was probably insoluble. Maori and settler could not but clash.

But while Hobson and FitzRoy were reviled by settlers, they did not enjoy any notable success with the Crown's new Maori subjects – it is unlikely, indeed, that many Maoris before 1846 would have acknowledged their subjection to the Queen. It is hard to say what the Maoris understood by the Treaty of Waitangi; it is unlikely that they realised that their independence was in any way infringed. From 1840 to 1845 few tribes took any notice of the government, and the government was without means to alter their disposition. For all the idealism of the Treaty, British rule depended upon armed force; governors who lacked it were powerless; the one who possessed it, Grey, enjoyed spectacular success. That, in addition, Hobson was ill and FitzRoy foolish, while Grey was both energetic and resourceful, merely heightened the contrast between the years before and after 1845.

The colony's troubles came to a head during FitzRoy's governorship. From Hobson's death in September 1842 until FitzRoy's arrival in December 1843, the colony was administered by the inept Willoughby Shortland; FitzRoy ruled for nearly two years, until his abrupt replacement by Grey in November 1845. Shortland's and FitzRoy's problems would have set back much abler men; to settler animosity and Maori independence was added economic depression. Revenue depended upon customs duties and land sales; depression made both dwindle to the point where the government faced bankruptcy and could not pay its own servants. FitzRoy tried to stimulate the economy by issuing debentures and making them legal tender, by freeing trade and replacing customs with direct taxation, and by stimulating land sales and settlement through a limited waiver of the Crown's right of pre-emption. These measures produced no relief – only the antipathy of settlers and the condemnation of the British Government.

At the same time native unrest became explosive close to centres of settlement, the Bay of Islands and the Cook Strait region. In June 1843, a clash occurred in the Wairau district between settlers from Nelson and the chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata. Title to the land in question was disputed between the Company and the chiefs; the settlers' attempt to dislodge the Maoris showed that for the moment the tribes had the superior force. Twenty-two settlers, including Arthur Wakefield, were killed in a fight of their own making. The effect was considerable; in England the news of violence countered the Company's immigration propaganda; in Wellington and Nelson the settlers talked wildly, and unrealistically, of revenge. FitzRoy, in any case pro-Maori, condemned the settlers for their aggression and refused to take counter-measures. This was merely realistic, for he had no force at his disposal. But the manner of his refusal was impolitic; the settlers were further outraged, and the Maoris contemptuous alike of FitzRoy's weakness and his idealism.

Later in 1844 FitzRoy averted an outbreak in Taranaki by reversing an official award which would have given a large block of disputed land to the Company. But war was unavoidable in the far North, where two chiefs, Hone Heke and Kawiti, headed an uprising which brought the destruction of Kororareka in March 1845. Though economic causes played their part, the rising arose from fears for the security of tribal land and anger at the increasing numbers and arrogance of the settlers. The Governor was powerless; the fact that the rising did not become general in the north was due to the continued loyalty of rival chiefs, notably Waka Nene.

In the midst of these disasters, and stimulated by a flood of petitions from settlers and a debate in the House of Commons initiated by two “colonial reformers”, Joseph Somes and Charles Buller, the Colonial Office replaced FitzRoy with George Grey, fresh from his accomplishments in South Australia. The plight of the colony was indeed grave. The authority of the Crown was hardly acknowledged among Maoris, and among settlers the colonial government was subjected to calumny and obstruction. None of the bright dreams with which the Company had set about the colonisation of New Zealand had been realised; in the place of the envisaged stable society of squires, professional men, and labourers based upon agriculture, industry, and commerce, guided by an organisation exercising the powers of the Crown, there existed a handful of impoverished settlements, lacking any significant economic enterprise, in no way resembling the “epitome” of English society planned by Wakefield, hemmed in by hostile tribes, and short of land due alike to government limitations and Company cupidity, and at serious odds with the Colonial Office in London and the government at Auckland.

Grey's Administration

Grey was favoured by fortune and talent. The British Treasury relaxed the stringency which had frustrated his predecessors; he had sufficient troops at his disposal to make some head against rebellion; and for a time he had the goodwill of the settlers. Even the economic climate favoured his reputation; by the early 1850s a gold rush in Australia created a market for foodstuffs and livestock for the New Zealand farmer, Maori and Pakeha. But Grey's success was not all a matter of favourable circumstances; he knew well how to exploit his advantages, cover up his weaknesses, and avoid the consequences of his errors.

His first task was to subdue Maori discontent. By January 1846 Heke and Kawiti were defeated; Grey had over 1,000 men as well as Maori allies. His peace settlement, at once firm and conciliatory, brought a peace to the North which was never subsequently broken. But the troubles around Wellington were not to be so expeditiously ended. At no time did Grey have sufficient forces for a decisive offensive; he contented himself with the defence of Wellington and its northern access routes, and relied upon Maori allies to isolate and neutralise the rebels. By August 1846 this policy had succeeded; in the following month some minor rebels were executed as an example. The leader of Maori disaffection, Te Rangihaeata, contrived to elude capture and punishment. The less implicated and ageing Te Rauparaha was, indeed, seized and held without trial, and this extra-legal action contributed greatly to Grey's success. In July disturbances around the tiny settlement of Wanganui had come to an end. The vigorous opening of the new governorship had established a peace which was to last until the end of the 1850s.

Grey enjoyed nothing like the same success with the settlers. If the Company had failed in all else, it had at least brought a great number of settlers to New Zealand (of over 11,000 settlers in 1842, 7,500 lived in southern (Company) settlements; 3,700 of them in Wellington; of the 3,500 non-Company settlers in the north, nearly 3,000 lived in Auckland).

These included many who were zealous advocates of the rights of the subject. They chafed under the single-person rule of the Governor and utilised the security Grey had given them to agitate for self-government. An Act conferring representative institutions, and also dividing the colony into two provinces, New Ulster and New Munster, had been passed by the Imperial Parliament in 1846; it was a cumbersome and futile piece of doctrinaire planning, and Grey persuaded the Colonial Secretary to have suspended all provisions except the provincial division of the colony. But this suspension, in 1848, further inflamed settler agitation, carried on through meetings, banquets, and a vigorous press. From 1848 to 1852 Grey tried to introduce popular elements into the autocratic Crown Colony system, but the settlers, especially in the Company settlements and Canterbury, held out for full representative institutions. Such institutions, Grey knew, were sure to come, but (perhaps) he had for his part no desire to govern through them. And further, he held that some crucial problems needed his solution before the settlers could safely take over the country. These were the questions of land settlement and native policy.

His land policy was twofold; first, to speed up the process of settlement and, secondly, to guide it into proper channels. To effect the first he bought land in quantity from the Maoris for sale and lease to settlers: nearly 30 million acres in the South Island at a cost of £13,000, some 3 million acres in the North at three times the cost. Thus purchases in 1847–48 at last gave Company settlers a title to their land in and around Wellington, the Taranaki, and Wanganui districts; the largest single purchase, of 20 million acres in 1848, cleared the way for the Otago and Canterbury settlements; 1851 saw the Hawke's Bay area open for settlement, while the 1853 transactions opened the Wairarapa, Southland, and substantial districts around Auckland. In these dealings Grey was aided by his reputation with and understanding of the Maoris, and not less by abundant funds. Further, the income from sales to settlers, together with customs, brought buoyancy to the public finances and eased the burden on Government.

In land sales policy, Grey sought to secure a place for the small independent farmer, while stimulating sales and also encouraging the large pastoralist, while not attempting to curb land speculation. The Regulations of 1853, gazetted a full year before the first meeting of the General Assembly in an effort to present that body with a fait accompli, certainly lowered the price of land and provided for small farmer settlement, but it placed no limit on total purchases and provided for large leasehold runs. There was some radicalism in the scheme, well tempered by realism.

By 1853 Grey was as unpopular among settlers as his predecessors had been, chiefly for his maintenance of autocratic rule. Two major settlements had been founded since his rule began: Otago in 1848 and Canterbury in 1850, both by quasi-religious associations, the former Presbyterian and the latter Anglican, acting under the aegis of the moribund New Zealand Company. The Otago plan was the humbler, but even so this Scottish settlement did not fulfil expectations for a number of years. The Canterbury founders planned for little less than an Anglican Utopia, and though they painlessly set up a substantial colony, it fell far short of their dreams. The chief distinguishing feature of these settlements was the appropriation of part of the purchase price of land to religious and educational purposes; the uniform religious establishment contemplated in either case did not emerge, but in Otago public money in some quantity was devoted to the beginnings of an educational system.

The Canterbury Association sent some able and spirited men to lead their colony: three of them, John Robert Godley, Henry Sewell, and James FitzGerald, quickly became leaders in the anti-Grey campaign; Sewell and FitzGerald were later notable in politics. But while Grey was being reviled for autocracy he was in fact laying the foundations of the Act of 1852 conferring representative institutions. He was in no hurry; he wanted to push through his native policy untrammelled by what he believed to be settler greed and folly.

Grey aimed at the cultural and economic welfare of the Maori people through their rapid assimilation to European civilisation. Without doubt he overestimated the speed with which such a process could be carried through and, further, his innovations were not on a scale sufficient to effect any major change. But public money was spent on education, health services, and agricultural instruction, while administration was put on a sounder footing by the disbanding of the Protectorate Department set up in 1840 under George Clarke. Grey personally took charge, using the best talent he could find, and receiving advice from Maoris as well as officials. A magistracy and a racially mixed police force were to take European law into Maori districts; Grey reversed FitzRoy's policy of exempting Maoris from the normal operation of the law. This policy had some effect on the fringes of Maori New Zealand, but the remoter parts remained untouched. Further, its beneficial effects could not outweigh the factors causing Maori apprehension for the future; such fears had become marked by the end of Grey's term, in 1853.

Constitutional Government

Convinced that his land and native policies had made their mark, Grey planned to leave the country once he had put into effect the 1852 Constitution Act. By this Act New Zealand was divided into six provinces – Auckland, Wellington, New Plymouth (Taranaki), Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago – each with a superintendent and a council, separately elected, to govern locally. Roughly, each province corresponded to a particular area of settlement. At the centre, government was in the hands of a legislature consisting of a Governor, a Legislative Council nominated by the Crown, and a House of Representatives elected on a broad property franchise. There was no rigid distribution of powers, though some functions were reserved to the general government. For most purposes – including the crucial question of land policy – the general government, in the first few years, empowered the provincial governments to legislate for their districts. Two further steps completed the structure of government: in 1856 a division of revenue (from land sales and customs) between general and provincial governments was agreed to, giving the lion's share to the provinces; and in the same year responsible government was introduced after a protracted controversy.

Grey had set the provinces functioning and had also arranged for the election and meeting of the General Assembly. With that, he departed (in December 1853), leaving an acute problem for the administrator, R. H. Wynyard, who held office until the arrival of the next Governor, Thomas Gore Browne, in September 1855. This problem was the demand voiced by colonists' leaders, Frederick Weld, Sewell, William Fox, FitzGerald, Godley, E. W. Stafford, and I. E. Featherston joined by Edward Gibbon Wakefield himself, that effective power be given to ministers supported by a majority of the elected House. Wynyard refused to act on his own initiative; while the colony awaited directions from London, the General Assembly embarked upon a series of bickerings given distinction only by the brief political career of Wakefield, flouting nearly all his principles in an effort to gain political power, and being bitterly opposed by his erstwhile disciples of the Company and Canterbury settlements. In 1856 the Colonial Office agreed that responsible government should be granted (it had already been granted in Canada) and with Gore Browne's arrival the full ship of state was tardily launched. One domestic function was withheld from the responsible ministers – native affairs. For Gore Browne decided that the Governor, as representative of the Crown, should act independently of his elected advisers in this sphere. The decision was to bring confusion and divided counsels in the future.

1855–70 Provincial Politics

By the mid-1850s the colony was established; its future would be troubled, but secure. Settlers, though still outnumbered by Maoris, had become very numerous. Out of some 31,000 in 1853, 20,000 lived in the North Island where were the great majority of the Maoris. European population was densest around the original settlements, and immense areas were left untouched. Economic life was coming to centre upon sheep; much of the South Island and, in the North, Wairarapa, and Hawke's Bay, flourished as the flocks expanded.

Between the Governor, retaining native affairs, and the Provincial Councils, concerned with day by day government, the General Assembly had little to do and initially met infrequently. Its early confusion was resolved by the administration of Stafford which lasted from 1856 to 1861. Provincialism dominated politics simply because the provinces were the immediate reality to most colonists; Stafford's success (repeated when he returned to power for a second long spell from 1865–69 after an interim of renewed flux) was due to his ability to balance faction against faction, to reconcile province with province. But the initial provincial framework did not long suit the necessities of the colony; by the end of the decade settlement had expanded into regions which felt little identity with the provinces in which they were set: Hawke's Bay, Southland, and Marlborough became separate provinces under an Act of 1858 and the West Coast followed suit later.

Permitted to exercise wide powers, each province went its own way, especially in land policy. In Canterbury the residual Wakefieldians, notably Sewell and FitzGerald, tried by a high-price policy to retain the hierarchical pattern of the original plan; in Otago a low-sale price was instituted, with supposedly rigid qualifications governing occupancy; in Auckland much land was given away to emigrants, and much passed through the hands of speculators; in Wellington the pastoralist generally had things his own way. The chief battles in provincial politics were over land policy, the advocates of small holding in conflict with the defenders of the large owner or lessee. The pastoralist sought generous leases, and protection from subdivision and sale; usually he had his way, and, in the 1860s was able to freehold his considerable estates.

Taranaki was the waif of the provincial family. While others, notably Canterbury and Otago, grew wealthy on land sales, the Taranaki settlers were confined to small areas (Grey had been able to buy only some 27,000 acres) surrounded by Maoris increasingly reluctant to part with their land. It is not surprising that the Maori Wars began here in 1860. Grey had bought enough land to maintain the progress of settlement and, though his 1853 sales had been conducted in a high-pressure manner that augured ill for the future, typically he had taken care to satisfy all Maori claimants. Donald McLean, responsible to the Governor alike for native policy and for land purchases, imitated the speed of Grey's 1853 purchases rather than the caution of his earlier years. He was impelled by heightened settler demands for land (by the end of the 1850s there were 34,000 Europeans in the North Island out of a total of 75,000); settler demands made more and more Maoris reluctant to sell; their reluctance, in turn, inclined McLean to hole-in-corner transactions, treating only with those native possessors who were willing to sell, ignoring the claims of others. McLean acted directly under the Governor, but he was as responsive to settler pressure as any minister. In fact the politicians were not ready to leave native (i.e. land) policy alone; from 1856 C. W. Richmond, significantly a Taranaki settler, was effectively (and, in 1858, titularly) Native Minister. This duality of authority had unfortunate results.

The Drift to War

Some Maoris, and among them notable men, came to fear for their future in the later 1850s. Tribe and land were intimately bound together; the spread of colonisation threatened the very existence of the tribes. Wiremu Kingi, a chief of Te Atiawa, returned to Waitara in 1848; here he made himself the leader of those Taranaki Maoris who refused to sell land. Other Maoris wished to sell; thus Taranaki in the later 1850s was rent by violence between sellers and non-sellers. Not unnaturally, the influence of settlers was thrown behind would-be sellers.

In the 1850s two young Otaki Maoris conceived the idea that the tribes should unite to protect Maori life by the preservation of Maori lands. They propagated the idea throughout the North Island, especially in the largely untouched interior. From the Waikato tribe a claimant to national leadership emerged in 1858, Te Wherowhero, ruling as King Potatau I. His suzerainty was neither wide nor effective but wherever his title was acknowledged resistance to land sales grew. This movement was strongest south of the town of Auckland, the second area in the colony where settler land hunger was at its most acute, for earlier Crown purchases had been taken up and were often held by speculators waiting for high prices.

It was in these two areas, Taranaki and the Waikato, where covetous settlers faced obdurate Maoris, that the explosion came. Two New Zealands were facing each other, the one essentially Maori, the other European, expansive and aggressive, demanding control of the whole country so that it might have the use of the best parts. Inevitably the latter prevailed, but only after a decade of sporadic fighting.

The outbreak became certain in 1859, when the Governor, probably in ignorance of the consequences of his action, accepted an offer to sell the Waitara block made by a minor chief, Te Teira. The land was occupied by Kingi's Atiawa people, and he imperiously forbade the sale, not on grounds of his own claims to the land, which were real enough, but on the authority (previously respected) of the chief to veto sales of any part of tribal land whether he had personal claims to it or not. The Taranaki settlers rejoiced that a pretext for war had at length been found. Gore Browne, a touchy and rigid man, convinced himself that Kingi was defying the authority of the Queen and, after a pretence at an investigation, sent in the troops to dislodge Kingi in March 1860, just a year after Te Teira's fatal offer. That McLean, Richmond, and Robert Parris, the local land commissioner, were involved in the whole affair seems certain, but just in what manner, indeterminable.

Relations between the Taranaki Maoris and the Kingites of the Waikato were so close that this engagement in fact opened the whole Maori war, though hostilities did not begin in the Waikato until 1863. Fighting in the Taranaki region in 1860–61 ended with Kingi's defeat and his flight to the King districts. This area to the south of Auckland was the real heartland of Maori resistance, resistance which Grey, arriving for his second term as Governor in 1861, was determined to crush. With one hand, and ineffectually, Grey attempted pacification through a new law enforcement system seeking Maori cooperation; with the other he prepared for the worst and began the construction of a military road south to the Waikato. Grey ordered General Cameron's advance in July 1863 in the belief that an attack upon Auckland was under preparation. For nearly a year there was constant fighting in the Waikato, until the King Maoris were finally defeated at Orakau in April 1864. This engagement was decisive, though small-scale fighting persisted elsewhere for many years.

Under the impetus of Pai Marire or Hauhauism, an adjustment cult which blended Christian and traditional Maori beliefs and practices and stimulated resistance of a most fanatical kind, fighting flared up again in 1864 around New Plymouth, spread to the Bay of Plenty and towards Napier in the following year. There were further outbreaks in 1866 and 1868 around Taranaki and Wanganui. But the lead in the fighting of the closing years was taken by Te Kooti Rikirangi, who emerged in 1868 as a leader of striking abilities. Unfairly deported to the Chathams, he had substantial revenge in a series of small-scale campaigns in the east between 1868 and 1872. He took refuge with the Kingites in the latter year, still themselves powerful in spite of defeat, and though his continued existence was ominous, in fact neither he nor they caused more trouble.

Aftermath of War

For the settler, the victory meant the removal of obstacles to settlement, for victory was accompanied by legislation which eased the expansion of the European economy. Of the many later nineteenth century Acts affecting Maori land, one is pre-eminent. Francis Dillon Bell's Native Lands Act of 1862 provided for a European Court to determine individual claims to communally owned tribal land, and empowered Maori owners to sell direct to European purchasers – the honourably intentioned policy of Crown pre-emption was discarded. Over 40 years, this Act and subsequent legislation was utilised to separate the Maori from the greater part of his better quality land, frequently under conditions of manifest unfairness to the seller. And in the wake of land sales came demoralisation, disease, a high death rate, and general hopelessness.

Further, the war altered the balance within the political system; the central, rather than the provincial institutions of government, took first place, even if for a long time the pretence was maintained that the war, and notably its expense, was the care of the Imperial government acting through the Governor. But though, through a series of stratagems over the course of a decade, the colonial government managed to keep the Imperial government responsible for the cost of Imperial troops, it had, nevertheless, increasing expenses of its own, and so was drawn into conflict with provinces accustomed to a lion's share of the revenue. The 1856 arrangement had given the major share of colonial revenue to the provinces; the central government could only tax and raise loans. Taxation automatically raised cries of protest from South Islanders unable to see why they should be taxed for a North Island war. In extreme cases protest bred a demand for the separation of the two islands. Overseas loans seemed at first a more attractive expedient. In 1863 a complicated scheme was implemented whereby an immense quantity of land was confiscated from “rebel” Maoris and used as the security for a £3 million loan to be raised in the United Kingdom. The British Government, only with great reluctance, refrained from vetoing the scheme. Those behind the scheme, notably a group of Auckland financiers headed by Frederick Whitaker and Thomas Russell, had high hopes of personal advantage, and believed as well that the plan would stimulate the colonial economy, that of Auckland in particular. To some extent both expectations were disappointed. Some 3 million acres of Maori land were confiscated in the Waikato, Taranaki, and the Bay of Plenty, and the legacy of bitterness the policy left behind – for the innocent suffered along with the guilty – was its most important consequence.

These important steps were taken in the early 1860s while a rapid succession of ministries grappled with the problems of war. Stafford had fallen in 1861, a victim of provincial jealousies, and had been succeeded by four ministries, each of about a year's duration, headed by William Fox, Alfred Domett, Frederick Whitaker (together with Fox), and Frederick Weld. Thereafter Stafford returned at the head of another lengthy administration from 1865 to 1869. From 1861 to 1868 Grey was again Governor, and the extent of his authority in native and war policy and that of his ministers was for long obscure. Grey, as ever, believed in his own rectitude, but the Colonial Office believed that colonists should pay for their own wars and so be responsible for policy. Consequently, in 1861, Grey passed over responsibility for native affairs to his ministers, declaring that he would act in this sphere on the advice of his ministers as in all else, and believing (without reason as it proved) that he could still retain the initiative. But ministers, realising that with responsibility went the cost of the war, rejected this attempt to confer upon the colony full responsible government. The result was that during the 1860s the conduct of the war and native policy was bedevilled by deep divisions and by the constant effort of those making policy to avoid responsibility for it. Stafford, by masterly evasion and obstruction, contrived to secure effective control of policy while leaving much of the expense to the British taxpayer.

1870–90 Economic Progress

While the development of the North Island was slowed by fighting, that of the South Island accelerated thanks to pastoral farming and gold mining. During the 1850s and 1860s the eastern plains and hills, normally tussock covered and so immediately useful, were opened to sheep. In the North Island only the Wairarapa and Hawke's Bay districts showed a comparable development. Wool exports became, and have remained, basic to the country's economy. Sheep did not entail intensive settlement, but with a handful of men to manage them, spread on immense runs from the coast to the mountains. Agriculture was mainly confined to the neighbourhood of towns.

In the 1860s the gold rushes vitalised the South Island, especially Otago and the West Coast. In 1861 Gabriel Read, attracted by a bonus offered by the Otago provincial government, stumbled upon the rich Tuapeka field. Subsequent prospecting and discoveries drew men west and north into Central Otago, to the Dunstan mountains and the area of the great lakes. Miners from Australia, where the goldfields were petering out, swarmed across the Tasman, to the advantage of the shipping companies. Otago's population and exports sky-rocketed, though the great boom was over by 1865. But by that time the remote West Coast had become the magnet, as its rivers and beaches proved rich in gold. By 1867 some 30,000 people lived where there had hardly been a settler a few years before.

Understandably, the South Island was rich in the 1860s. Land settlement went ahead; pastoralism, agriculture, grew; and the commercial life of the towns quickened. Gold brought wealth to many – to traders, bankers, businessmen, and farmers rather than to the diggers themselves. Even North Island farmers felt the benefit of a new market for foodstuffs.

For its part, the North Island made considerable progress during the decade of war: population grew, farming expanded, imports and exports increased, especially in the later 1860s after the end of resistance in the Waikato. Military expenditure had its advantages, and in 1868 the Coromandel gold discoveries brought prosperity to Auckland at a time when Otago and Canterbury were suffering from depression. But the overall pattern of development was unmistakable: whereas in 1860 Auckland led in population and economic activity and the North Island as a whole outweighed the South, 10 years later the South Island had more than trebled its population to over 150,000 while the North Island had merely grown from over 40,000 to nearly 100,000, exclusive of the Maoris, and Otago, prince among provinces, had a quarter of the colony's total population and provided a third of its exports.