Raupatu: The Confiscation of Maori Land
400
Raupatu: The Confiscation of Maori Land
400eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
A groundbreaking collection of essays by leading academics and intellectuals, this record examines the confiscation of Maori land in 19th-century New Zealand and the broader imperial context. Based on a 2008 conference entitled Coming to Terms? Raupatu/Confiscation and New Zealand History, this study examines topics associated with land confiscation, such as war, European settlements, colonialism, property rights, and politics. Contributors include Michael Allen, James Belich, Judith Binney, Alex Frame, Bryan Gilling, Mark Hickford, Vincent O'Malley, Dion Tuuta, Alan Ward, and John C. Weaver.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780864736741 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Victoria University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 812 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Raupatu
The Confiscation of Maori Land
By Richard Boast, Richard S. Hill
Victoria University Press
Copyright © 2009 Editors and contributorsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-86473-674-1
CHAPTER 1
Overview: Confiscation in New Zealand
Richard Boast and Richard Hill
The Historiography of Confiscation
This book is a collection of essays dealing with various aspects of the confiscationof Maori land in nineteenth-century New Zealand and the broader imperial context to which confiscation in New Zealand belongs. Earlier versions of these chapters, with the exception of Bryan Gilling's contribution, were presented at a conference called 'Coming to Terms? Raupatu/Confiscationand New Zealand History', held by the Stout Centre for New Zealand Studiesat Victoria University of Wellington on 27–28 June 2008. The subject ofland confiscation is an important one, but it has not attracted the attention itdeserves. In fact, the published historiography relating to the confiscations in New Zealand is remarkably thin, especially when compared to that relating to the similar processes that took place two centuries earlier in Ireland. This collection of essays is thus an attempt to begin filling the gap – although, as a number of contributions acknowledge, much research still remains to be done.
The lack of a published historiography has been made up for, to some extent, by a number of Waitangi Tribunal reports and commissioned research reports prepared by Crown, claimant and Waitangi Tribunal historians for the Tribunal inquiries. The confiscations that have been most thoroughly investigated are those in Tauranga, the Eastern Bay of Plenty, the East Coast and Mohaka–Waikare. Ironically, the one that has been least studied is the Waikato confiscation, the largest and most significant. In terms of complexity and importance, Taranaki comes a close second to Waikato. But this, too, has not been studied as comprehensively as the Bay of Plenty and East Coast confiscations. Even in the case of these latter, however, much of the recent work that has been done is essentially unpublished, existing only in the 'grey literature' of expert reports to the Waitangi Tribunal and not easily accessible.
Land confiscation is significant in what used to be known as imperial history, and is now sometimes called the 'new British' history, or the history of 'Greater Britain'. David Armitage has noted that 'the alliance between the New British History and Atlantic History could ... become the first step towards novel integrative histories of "Greater Britain," as well as new comparative histories of "Atlantic America" and "Atlantic Europe"':
By that means it might be possible to show that 'British' history did not always happen in Britain, or only to Britons, just as 'American' history was not always the creation of Americans, nor did it take place solely in the Americas.
But Greater Britain by the nineteenth century was no longer only 'Atlantic', it was (inter alia) also 'Pacific'. The history of confiscation in this part of the world had links with earlier events in Ireland – always a source of coercive statutory precedent within the empire – and parallels with contemporary developments in the South African colonies. Irish soldier George Grey held governorships in New Zealand and the Cape Colony, and in both places played a vital role in imposing coercive schemes upon indigenous peoples, such as those of soldier-settlement. The confiscation project in New Zealand was also the subject of a great deal of attention at the imperial centre, much of it adverse, something which in turn caused reverberations back in the colony. A full examination of these dimensions of land confiscation is long overdue, especially since the last full-length study of the New Zealand wars as seen from an imperial perspective was published in 1937, although James Belich's The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict completely reinterpreted all of the wars and explained how they had been distorted through the lens of the imperial power and its colonisers.
The Maori term raupatu has generally meant 'conquest'. It now carries a secondary meaning referring to the Crown confiscations from Maori, and especially of Maori land, dating from the 1860s (this meaning is implicit, for example, in the massive Raupatu Document Bank compiled within the Waitangi Tribunal). Raupatu in this sense implies taking property as punishment. Public-works takings, however unjustified, and however niggardly the compensation paid, have to be distinguished from raupatu/confiscation, although the distinction may often be lost on the owners. As practised in Ireland and on the imperial frontiers, 'confiscation' was also linked with settlement, especially military settlement. It is no accident that the main statute relating to confiscation in New Zealand was the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863. Land was not just to be taken off 'rebels', but was taken to be settled ('planted' was the term used in Ireland). The taking and the settling were linked, part of a single policy.
Several further things need to be noted. First, Waitangi Tribunal enquiries have revealed that 'confiscation' was much larger and more sprawling a process than was earlier thought. Rather than there being five confiscation areas (treating the Auckland and Waikato confiscations as separate), there were essentially six, if the East Coast events are seen as constituting raupatu (which we believe to be the case). Secondly, confiscation and Crown purchasing were not discrete processes but, in many areas, interconnected ones. One might ask whether in Wairoa, for example, we are dealing with a confiscation or purchase or both? Thirdly, and this is where the Irish experience most closely parallels events in New Zealand, the neatness of confiscation on the statute books often turned into disorderly chaos on the ground.
The Contributions
The essays in this book, all written by specialists in their various fields, approach the phenomenon of confiscation in diverse ways. Some of the essays, such as those by James Belich and by John Weaver, focus on the broader imperial scene. Others, such as the contributions by Judith Binney and Vincent O'Malley, concentrate on local intricacies – but from very different perspectives. Others, again, look at particular aspects of confiscation in a thematic way, by focusing on the law (Richard Boast and Mark Hickford) or on more contemporary aspects of the subject (Alex Frame and Dion Tuuta).
The book is divided into six parts: an introductory section (this chapter and Gilling's overview); a section on the international context (Belich and Weaver); a section on confiscation in colonial New Zealand (Ward and Allen); a section on confiscation and the law (Boast and Hickford); a section of New Zealand case studies (O'Malley on the East Coast and Binney on Te Urewera); and a final section on contemporary legacies (Frame and Tuuta).
Bryan Gilling's essay in Part One provides a brief overview of the confiscation process and an introduction to the more detailed chapters that follow. Gilling emphasises, as well, the special nature of confiscation which the whole book demonstrates: its connection with a broader imperial scene and its intricate implementation. He outlines the six main confiscations in New Zealand, all of which were marked by local confusions and complexities. Some of these are analysed in depth in the chapters of this book.
The two chapters written on the broader imperial scene are by internationally prominent specialists on nineteenth-century imperial history. James Belich's chapter sets our subject in the broadest of possible contexts. His chapter is an essay in world history. It discusses the expansion of Europe since the Renaissance and the resilient resistance of the indigenous peoples of the world to that process of expansion and colonisation. Readers of Belich's earlier books will detect clear continuities between those studies and this chapter. He writes not only about New Zealand and the Pacific, but also about the Americas, and Spanish America in particular. His insistence on the relevance of Latin American parallels seems to us to be of particular interest and worthy of much further consideration by New Zealand historians.
John Weaver also deals with a very large canvas, but more specifically considers aspects of the 'great land rush' of the nineteenth-century. Like Belich, Weaver stresses the complexity of the story and the need to avoid resorting to stale and outmoded generalisations. He focuses not just on indigenous resourcefulness and military success in defying, frustrating or atleast delaying the ambitions of the colonisers, but also on the complexity of the colonial project itself. He explores its rich variations within a broad framework of expansion and land acquisition, and notes, especially, the importance of not neglecting the emergence of independent and self-conscious nation states such as Canada and South Africa. These new states have had, in turn, to deal – in all senses of the word 'deal' – with the indigenous peoples residing on their national territory. Recently, they have had to develop mechanisms of redress for the dispossession of the past. Such broad themes have clear relevance for the unfolding of the drama of land confiscation in colonial New Zealand. Maori resistance, accommodation and political complexity had very clear ramifications for the actual implementation of confiscation in New Zealand. This country, too, has had to develop redress mechanisms for the land dealings of the past, as the chapters by Frame and Tuuta indicate.
The next group of essays deals with a rather different set of questions connected with the emergence of war and confiscation in mid-nineteenth century New Zealand. Policies had to be formed step by step by a specific process of decision-making. War and confiscation are, under the New Zealand Settlements Acts, obviously interconnected, even if the nature of these interconnections is not always easy to unravel. While insisting on the complexity of the process, Alan Ward argues as well that the Marxist theory of capitalist imperialism retains great value as an explanatory model (a proposition that neither of us would disagree with, although some of the other contributors to this book might). Ward dwells in detail on the decisions taken in New Zealand, especially during the administration of Governor Browne, and suggests that the wars and the polarisation that accompanied them were not necessarily inevitable. Michael Allen traverses similar ground, but focuses more specifically on the period from 1863–65, critical years when the key decisions relating to confiscation policy were taken both in New Zealand itself and in London. While Ward concentrates on Browne, Allen trains his spotlight on Governor Grey and his troubled relationships with colonial politicians.
The next two chapters deal with confiscation and the law. One of the editors (Richard Boast) has contributed a chapter on the confiscation statutes themselves and their almost baroque proliferation. Mark Hickford has written about the Sim Commission which enquired into the confiscations in the 1920s as the first step in a long process of engagement, debate and attempted redress that has continued to the present. Both essays stress, once again, the need to grapple with a very untidy reality and to avoid a tendency to resort to simplistic generalisation. Boast's chapter shows how and why confiscation law evolved from general programmatic statements embodied in the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 into later enactments that reflected local, particular and pragmatic deals done on the ground, far from the centres of official power and legal authority. Indigenous resistance and, just as importantly, the need for indigenous support structured 'the law' in quite significant ways – for a time, at least.
Mark Hickford's essay stresses the willingness of an evolving and adapting New Zealand state to enter into dialogue with Maori (and Maori willingness to enter into dialogue with the state). Hickford explores the intricate and intellectually sophisticated outcomes that this process of engagement and dialogue could sometimes lead to. He looks also, and for the first time, at the legal rhetoric employed by the lawyers involved in the Sim Commission's inquiries, and finds this rhetoric to possess a perhaps surprising level of depth and interest. Yet, in the end, Hickford argues, this early process of redress and inquiry was inherently political: 'law was not a driver, although the language of law and legal sources were drawn upon as resources in argument'. Boast and Hickford, both primarily legal historians, seek, perhaps paradoxically, to downplay the significance of 'law' in any ordinary normative sense, and insist, instead, on the importance of local engagement and local politics.
The section on the law is followed by two local case studies. Both these chapters focus on confiscation experiences which have been neglected by historians to date. The effects of the Eastern Bay of Plenty and other confiscations on the Tuhoe people of Te Urewera are discussed by Judith Binney, author – amongst much else – of a respected biography of resistance prophet Te Kooti. More than any other essay in this volume, Binney looks at confiscation, in a sense, from Maori eyes. She takes up a standpoint within Tuhoe's own world and looks out to the external pressures and processes that impacted upon Tuhoe Maori in a highly fraught and difficult time. She is able to do this with a density of detail and insight that only many years of sympathetic engagement and immersion in Maori sources can achieve. Quite specifically, her essay 'evokes Tuhoe's perspective on raupatu'; it 'does not debate the intricacies ... of government, nor the entanglement of laws'. Vincent O'Malley's essay on the East Coast, while equally concerned with local, on-the-ground intricacies, is quite different from Binney's in style and tone. O'Malley focuses on the role of local officials and politicians in an especially complex zone of interaction where 'confiscation' itself took many slippery forms.
Finally, the last two chapters explore the legacy of confiscation to the present day. Alex Frame's essay deals with his own experiences of working – on the Crown side of the table – on the negotiations over the Waikato-Tainui confiscation claims in the early 1990s. Frame blends historical analysis with personal experience, creating a very distinctive approach to the legacy of confiscation. His essay looks in depth at earlier attempts to negotiate and settle Tainui claims in the 1940s, and thus his essay bridges the space betweencontemporary developments and Hickford's analysis of the Sim Commission inquiries in the 1920s. His chapter also connects with Weaver's introductory chapter, which explores the evolution of modern nation states out of British colonial expansion and their need to develop redress mechanisms for land-takings that occurred during the colonial process.
Dion Tuuta, the general manager of the Parininihi ki Waitotara Incorporation (PKW), has written about the vexed problems of administering the perpetual leasing of 'returned' confiscated land in Taranaki. His paper connects with Boast's paper on the law and the comments made therein about the return of confiscated land: land may have been returned, but not on the same tenurial basis that applied when it was taken. The Taranaki perpetual leases provide an extreme example. The legal regime governing these lands is intricate in its own right, as Tuuta shows. Moreover, PKW, as he points out, 'is not an iwi', rather 'it is a corporate entity which manages the interests of some 8500 shareholders'. By no means are all descendants of those affected by the original confiscation actually owners of shares in the incorporation. Some Taranaki Maori people, understandably frustrated, have accused PKW of being a Crown entity. The only thing to be done, Tuuta ruefully concludes, is to 'attempt to do the best we can with what we have at the time'.
As can be seen, then, the essays here deal with confiscation in a rich variety of ways. Readers of this book will have to engage with them and draw their own conclusions about the confiscation process as a whole. The editors have made no attempt to suggest any particular theme or methodological approach to any author, and the net result is diversity rather than uniformity. While the essays do not overlap significantly or traverse the same ground, some interconnections have been suggested already. One that particularly stands out is the inherently complex nature of the confiscation process: it is imperial, and colonial, and also local. At the local level, given that the Maori world is (among other things) always local, there are Maori as well as non-Maori perspectives to be addressed, and different historiographies and different kinds of source materials to be taken account of. Some raupatu-affected iwi were not able to attend the conference from which these essays arose because of other commitments in what proved to be a highly significant year for negotiating Treaty of Waitangi settlements with the Crown. Future essays into the subject might well, like Binney's, explore the impact of confiscation on specific iwi and from iwi-focused perspectives.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Raupatu by Richard Boast, Richard S. Hill. Copyright © 2009 Editors and contributors. Excerpted by permission of Victoria University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Maps, Figures and Illustrations,PART ONE: INTRODUCTION,
Chapter 1. Overview: Confiscation in New Zealand — Richard Boast and Richard Hill,
Chapter 2. Raupatu: the Punitive Confiscation of Maori Land in the 1860s — Bryan Gilling,
PART TWO: INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT,
Chapter 3. Riders of the Whirlwind: Tribal Peoples and European Settlement Booms, 1790s–1900s — James Belich,
Chapter 4. Land Seizures and Aftershocks: 'A True History Lesson' on Anglo-colonialism — John C. Weaver,
PART THREE: CONFISCATION IN COLONIAL NEW ZEALAND,
Chapter 5. A 'Savage War of Peace'? Motives for Government Policies Towards the Kingitanga, 1857–1863 — Alan Ward,
Chapter 6. An Illusory Power? Metropole, Colony and Land Confiscation in New Zealand, 1863–1865 — Michael Allen,
PART FOUR: RAUPATU AND LAW,
Chapter 7. 'An Expensive Mistake': Law, Courts, and Confiscation on the New Zealand Colonial Frontier — Richard Boast,
Chapter 8. Strands from the Afterlife of Confiscation: Property Rights, Constitutional Histories and the Political Incorporation of Maori, 1920s — Mark Hickford,
PART FIVE: CASE STUDIES,
Chapter 9. 'A Mild Sort of Confiscation'? War and Raupatu on the East Coast — Vincent O'Malley,
Chapter 10. Te Upokokohua: The Curse of Confiscation on Te Urewera — Judith Binney,
PART SIX: LEGACIES OF RAUPATU,
Chapter 11. Perpetual Leasing in Taranaki, 1880–2008 — Dion Tuuta,
Chapter 12. Raupatu Settlement – Legal Finality and Political Reality — Alex Frame,
Appendix: Confiscation Legislation in New Zealand — compiled by Richard Boast,
Notes on Contributors,
Combined Bibliography,
Index,
Copyright,