tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post8033428860335848983..comments2024-03-19T22:42:04.062+13:00Comments on Bowalley Road: Blood SacrificeChris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-24604655514287349892010-08-19T09:32:26.438+12:002010-08-19T09:32:26.438+12:00I'm sorry you read no further, Piripi. Not bec...I'm sorry you read no further, Piripi. Not because I believe the posting would have convinced you of anything but because you seem to have adopted an approach to politics which precludes even the slightest attempt to understand the motivations and concerns of your ideological opponents.<br /><br />George Bush did not invent the word "terrorist", nor is it's use restricted to discussions of American foreign policy. Plenty of people who were (or are) very far from being "White" practice[d] terrorism and, whether you like it or not, Te Kooti was one of them.<br /><br />Sadly, most of his victims were Maori.Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-61128616698353145782010-08-19T00:55:05.183+12:002010-08-19T00:55:05.183+12:00Well it started off okay but when I saw the word &...Well it started off okay but when I saw the word 'terrorist', a word adopted by the Americans to legitimise their global theft of resources, I knew there would be a nasty White bias from here on out. I read no further. Chris you may want to add words like 'insurgents' and 'evil doers' and phrase like 'mission accomplished' and 'you're either with us or against us'. Who knows - your audience may appreciate it.Piripihttp://www.google.co.nznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-80109978908760309942010-08-15T19:20:42.409+12:002010-08-15T19:20:42.409+12:00Maps
I did not say, nor do I think, that "ON...Maps<br /><br />I did not say, nor do I think, that "ONLY Maori got drunk..".<br /><br />Nor did I say that the "good piss up" motivation might only have applied to anti-colonial Maori fighters.<br /><br />No need to misquote someone just because you might not agree with them. <br /><br />ThanksTimnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-46931200388181887952010-08-13T10:43:09.229+12:002010-08-13T10:43:09.229+12:00And what, Scott, could have stopped those "la...And what, Scott, could have stopped those "large numbers of settlers from the other side of the world" from coming?<br /><br />Once a territory the size of the British Isles, lying in the Earth's temperate zone, had been discovered by Europeans it is pure fantasy to suggest that a neolithic culture, never numbering more than 100,000 - 150,000 persons, could have prevented it's eventual colonisation.<br /><br />And yet, Scott, you write as if another outcome was possible.<br /><br />It wasn't: colonisation, be it by the British, the French, the Germans or the Americans could only (at best) have been delayed - it could not have been prevented.<br /><br />In the greater scheme of things Tonga and Samoa are just specks in a vast ocean. They had a passing utility for the Great Powers as coaling stations, but with the arrival of the Age of Oil that soon ended.<br /><br />As Henry Kissinger brutally remarked of the United States' Micronesian territories: "There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?".<br /><br />New Zealand, on the other hand, was just too big to ignore, or allow to fall into the hands of a rival power.<br /><br />After Cook quite literally put New Zealand "on the map", Maori independence was doomed.Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-34631109494373499952010-08-13T10:05:17.339+12:002010-08-13T10:05:17.339+12:00I'm not sure if I agree even with your tangent...I'm not sure if I agree even with your tangential points Redlogix. <br /><br />The UN gave us the US intervention in Korea, imperialist intervention in the Congo, the first Gulf War and deadly sanctions against Iraq, and the invasion of Afghanistan late in 2001. It's not an imperfect institution - it's an institution dominated by the largest imperialist power, and used by that power for all sorts of unpleasant ends. <br /><br />At the risk of being pedantic, is Tonga all that compact a place? There's a vast distance between Niaufo'ou in the north of the kingdom and 'Eua in the south. Back in the days of imperial expansion the distance was even greater. The Tongans did have a tradition of centralised power that probably made it easier for Tupou I to unite the country. But Tupou's methods were violent. <br /><br />My argument is that pan-tribal unity was growing by the 1840s and that British colonialism sowed disunity and conflict, not the reverse. The last thing likely to stabilise New Zealand in the aftermath of the Musket Wars was the arrival of large numbers of settlers from the other side of the world! Armed conflict broke out only three years after the Treaty at Wairau, and a full-scale war was raging in the north before the end of the 1840s.mapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18209906216745532870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-88785490715492370092010-08-12T20:06:18.140+12:002010-08-12T20:06:18.140+12:00Redlogix is also wrong in insinuating that Tonga d...<em>Redlogix is also wrong in insinuating that Tonga didn't experience its own Musket Wars </em><br /><br />Fair cop Scott...my history is lightweight compared to yours. <br /><br />Still the point I was openly making is that the Tongans, after their own internal power struggle, united politically and militarily under one king. The other essential ingredient was the small geographic area of the main islands of Tonga, making communication and effective rule under a united political entity relatively simple to achieve....compared for example to the completely different situation of the Aborigine, who stood no chance of organising an effective pan-tribal alliance against the colonisers across the vast expanses of the outback.<br /><br />The fact is that the NZ Musket Wars ended, not with Maori united under one leader, but in the unstable 'balance of terror' Chris mentions. <br /><br />In the aftermath of both WW1 and WW2, nightmares that saw the death of tens of millions, the leaders of a chastened Western civilisation were on both occasions motivated to attempt the creation of first the League of Nations, and then the UN... both global governance bodies in which they invested their hopes to prevent a repeat of the tragedies they had just been through.<br /><br />The Maori chiefs of 1840 who in their lifetimes had seen the massacre of a huge portion of their own peoples, where no doubt prompted by a similar desire to prevent such a terror from happening again. Given that no one iwi had been able to impose a pan-tribal unity by force, they opted for the far-sighted course... yielding a portion of their sovereignty to a larger, more global entity. In this case the British Crown. For this stroke of faith and foresight all New Zealanders should hold these signatory chiefs in the highest respect.<br /><br />Neither the ToW, nor the League of Nations, nor even the UN have lived up to the expectations of those who first sponsored their creation. Yet the world would have been a far more dangerous, dissapointing place had they not been brought into existence. While imperfect they have been essential stages of development.RedLogixnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-4228530362036630842010-08-12T11:45:29.625+12:002010-08-12T11:45:29.625+12:00"Consider, for example, the Christainising of..."Consider, for example, the Christainising of the Waikato and Hauraki areas. This took place without much direct input from Pakeha clergy, and it was often spearheaded by Maori nationalists. Near Matamata the great Ngati Haua chief Wiremu Tamihana, who helped bring the new faith into the Hauraki and Waikato regions, established a utopian Christian community called Peria, which also became a focus for discussions about the need for Maori political centralisation and the need for a King."<br /><br />QED - I think, Scott.Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-23466264746444405552010-08-12T10:17:10.414+12:002010-08-12T10:17:10.414+12:00I don't see how Chris can suggest that adoptin...I don't see how Chris can suggest that adopting Christianity meant becoming friendly to the Crown. There was actually no contradiction between the adoption of Christianity and the development of entities like the Waikato Kingdom and Parihaka. The God of the Bible is not a 'Pakeha' God, anymore than he is a Coptic God. Rather like some of the better-known texts of Marx, scripture radically underdetermines its interpretations. Maori adopted Christianity but adapted it to their own needs and preoccupations. <br /><br />Consider, for example, the Christainising of the Waikato and Hauraki areas. This took place without much direct input from Pakeha clergy, and it was often spearheaded by Maori nationalists. Near Matamata the great Ngati Haua chief Wiremu Tamihana, who helped bring the new faith into the Hauraki and Waikato regions, established a utopian Christian community called Peria, which also became a focus for discussions about the need for Maori political centralisation and the ned for a King. <br /><br />Tuhoe offer another example of Christinisation without Europeanisation. By the 1850s most of the Pakeha missionaries were gone from Tuhoe lands - the people who lived there preferred to take their lessons from other Maori. Along with several other iwi, Tuhoe established a 'Council of Seventy' in Opotiki in the early 1860s. The Council's structure was influenced by scripture -seventy was the number of elders of ancient Israel - but its purpose was to advance pan-Maori unity in the face of Pakeha encroachment. <br /><br />Maori took both Christianity and ideas of political centralisation from Pakeha, but they used both to advance their own agendas - and their own agendas usually involved retaining and extending their autonomy and avoiding assimilation.Scotthttp://www.readingthemaps.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-51850525694272894192010-08-12T09:16:01.488+12:002010-08-12T09:16:01.488+12:00No, Scott, that is NOT what Red Logix was saying -...No, Scott, that is NOT what Red Logix was saying - if he'll forgive me for speaking for him (her?).<br /><br />What is being asserted is that the devastating experience of the Musket Wars drove home to Maori leaders their tribal community's acute vulnerability to the effects of the new weapons, crops, animals, implements and economic relationships introduced by the Pakeha.<br /><br />Yes, a rough "balance of terror" had been achieved by about 1830 - but at an enormous cost - and the tribes were very close to physical and moral exhaustion.<br /><br />One of the more important responses to the latter was the conversion of an increasing number of tribes to Christianity. It is difficult to see how this process of accepting the Pakeha God could not, at the same time, have been extended to accepting Pakeha notions of a Christian social and political order.<br /><br />By winning the protection of the British Empire (i.e. by signing the ToW) the Chiefs provided themselves with a breathing-space in which to reconfigure those elements of their culture and politics which no longer made sense within the new world that was opening up to them.<br /><br />I find it odd, Scott, that you do not seem to be willing to concede that the Maori could or would behave in this way. You appear to be suggesting that it was all "the evil white man's" doing - and that the Maori, like children given too many sweets by an irresponsible care-giver, bear no real responsibility for what happened next. <br /><br />In other words, all the negative consequences of Maori interaction with European civilisation was the fault of the latter - not the former.<br /><br />This is a very odd position to maintain, since you are, at the same time, perfectly content to heap praise on Maori for all their positive adaptations to that same civilisation (Waikato flourmills, Parihaka's gardens).<br /><br />But, maybe, all these contradictions are just an entirely forgivable manifestation of your romantic identification with the underdog ;-)Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-75046259352750277292010-08-11T23:15:05.582+12:002010-08-11T23:15:05.582+12:00What I was countering Chris was the claim that the...What I was countering Chris was the claim that the TOW ended the Musket Wars, which Redlogix put forward. That is patently not the case.<br />Redlogix is also wrong in insinuating that Tonga didn't experience its own Musket Wars - they raged over the same period, and only ended when Tupou I came to power, unifying the country. The Tongans didn't need whites to stop them wiping themselves out; nor, I think, did Maori. <br /><br />Here's what I wrote in a recent discussion thread at Reading the Maps about the nature of the Musket Wars:<br /><br />The Musket Wars do not tell us much about pre-contact Maori culture. Before contact, Maori warfare was a relatively small-scale affair, and slaves were taken in relatively small numbers. There was no economic basis for a large-scale slave society or massive war. <br /><br />The huge slave raids of the Musket Wars period occurred because white colonists in cities like Sydney, Port Nicholson, and even San Francisco had created a market for exports of agricultural products. The conquerors of the Moriori put their subjects to work growing spuds for Pakeha, who didn't complain about their methods. <br /><br />In many areas of the North Island I think that the growing of potatoes for sale or trade, rather than just for domestic consumption, was necessitated by the need to acquire arms, in particular, as well as less destructive commodities offered by traders. <br /><br />I think the raids on different parts of the country by Nga Puhi, after Hongi Hika returned from his trip abroad with Thomas Kendall with a large supply of new-fangled guns, forced iwi to modernise or die. Hongi slaughtered iwi who had never seen firearms before, and in the aftermath of his raids these iwi cleared huge areas for the cultivation of potatoes so they could have something to trade with or sell to Pakeha, and thereby get their own guns. <br /><br />Maori therefore began to move away from a pure subsistence economy into a mixed subsistence and cash/barter economy which was reliant for its existence on Europeans, and on the primitive version of the capitalist system Europeans brought to these islands in the early nineteenth century. Eventually Maori in places like the Waikato Kingdom and (later) Parihaka worked out a way to combine traditional methods of social organisation and traditional collective ownership of land with the brave new world of the market, and the system which some scholars have called the Polynesian mode of production was born. There was a discussion about the Polynesian mode of production here:<br />http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2010/05/first-white-marxists-reach-tuhoe_11.html and here:<br />http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2010/04/history-necessity-and-new-zealand-wars.htmlScotthttp://www.readingthemaps.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-13232991861595841562010-08-11T11:18:51.802+12:002010-08-11T11:18:51.802+12:00Oh, come ON, Scott!
A period as devastating to t...Oh, come ON, Scott! <br /><br />A period as devastating to the Maori people of New Zealand as the Thirty Years War was to the people of Germany, or WWII was to the Russians, fundamentally remakes the country's political geography, lays waste its tribal infrastructure, and kills between one third and two-fifths of the population - and you dismiss it it with an airy: "Once all the iwi were tooled up with guns there was little to be gained from further war."<br /><br />As a response to Red Logix's argument, this is woefully inadequate. <br /><br />A social disaster on the scale of the Musket Wars inflicts enormous trauma on individuals and communities. It cannot be put behind them like a bad dream. They cannot simply "move on" - not when so many of their best and their bravest are dead; not when they have been uprooted from their traditional lands; not when so many people are carrying debilitating memories of personal terror, horrific slaughter and sudden devastation.<br /><br />Your dismissal of Red Logix's case - so lacking in historical sensitivity - does you no credit.Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-86364468251968369112010-08-11T09:56:46.482+12:002010-08-11T09:56:46.482+12:00The Musket Wars were virtually over by 1840, Red L...The Musket Wars were virtually over by 1840, Red Logix - have a read of Ron Crosby's book on the subject for a timeline. Once all the iwi were tooled up with guns there was little to be gained from further war.mapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18209906216745532870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-64613757376924487042010-08-10T19:47:04.696+12:002010-08-10T19:47:04.696+12:00In reading the first comments I cannot but help be...In reading the first comments I cannot but help be reminded of Michael King's statement that during the period 1800-1840, Maori inter-tribal warfare killed almost 40% of their OWN population. A fact almost completely airbrushed from the contemporary narrative.<br /><br />Few people ever ask the obvious question as to why so many Maori chiefs so readily signed the ToW at all. Maori were never a politically naive or culturally backward people; they were aware of the immense changes they faced in transitioning from being a collection relatively isolated Stone Age tribes to entering a rapidly changing global Industrial era.<br /><br />Events were moving rapidly in their world. Muskets, metals and faster transport had rendered the old pa defenses ineffective and shattered the established tribal balances of power. Visitors were arriving in unstoppable numbers. Without legal standing, nor any pan-tribal mechanisms to enforce any form of law outside of the iwi, Maori had no effective means to control their borders.<br /><br />The record of the French colonials was to be deplored, the Americans had yet to fight the Civil War and it was only a matter of time before internal Maori slavery became an external trade. There was also the dreadful example of what was happening to the Aborigine.<br /> <br />It's easy also to overlook the global context of events. The period 1840-1890 saw an explosion of technology, trade and communication on an unprecedented scale. The world was about to enter it's first and most dramatic round of globalization that would transform life for peoples everywhere. Far-sighted chiefs could see both enormous threat and opportunity.<br /><br />When the global superpower of the day, England offered a Treaty that offered Maori citizenship, protection from the global slave trade (Victoria had abolished slavery for her subjects), legal rights and status in this rapidly changing world and a means by which they might aspire to navigate a future for their peoples, they jumped at it. <br /><br />However imperfectly it has been subsequently observed, not signing the ToW Maori would have condemned the 60% remnant of Maori who had survived their own internal genocide to almost certain extinction by external forces over the next 50 years or so. <br /><br />Aboriginals were all but exterminated in the desirable areas. It was pure geographic good fortune that allowed Aborigines to survive in retreat to the outback. By contrast the Tongans had two advantages, they were a single people united as one political and military entity, and the small island they lived on was not a sufficiently valuable military target worth the effort of conquering them for. There were softer, more rewarding targets for colonisation ...such as New Zealand. And while Maori would have undoubtedly put up a grim resistance, in the end sheer numbers and irresistible technological advance would have eventually pushed them into unviable pockets of deep backcountry.RedLogixnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-59505061422127454182010-08-10T19:36:21.538+12:002010-08-10T19:36:21.538+12:00Dear Chris,
I couldn't agree more. There were...Dear Chris,<br />I couldn't agree more. There were some poor decisions made by some iwi regarding which side they supported in the wars, and the consequneces they endured were sometimes terrible as a result. Maybe the quote of mine you used from the Morning Report interview is a bit out of cintext in so far as I was responding to a specific question.<br />I hope I have not fallen into the 'Liberal elite' as you put it. Certainly, complaints against me to the Race Relations Office, the Human Rights Commission, and the Broadcasting Standards Authority might suggest otherwise.<br />All the best,<br />Paul MoonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-39333930925538546242010-08-10T15:57:25.532+12:002010-08-10T15:57:25.532+12:00Yes, Tim seems to think that only Maori got drunk ...Yes, Tim seems to think that only Maori got drunk and rowdy in the nineteenth century. Te Kooti was certainly a boozer - he was apparently drunk during the battle at Te Porere - but so were the troops that invaded the Waikato. They trashed virtually every building in their path, whether it was Pakeha or Maori-owned, in a drunken spree that lasted months. When they were sent to Raglan to 'protect' the town from a possible Maori attack they got drunk and looted it instead. After the war the Pakeha government was forced to set up a special commission to organise compensation for some of the Pakeha who got their property trashed by Crown forces. <br /><br />Victor, I agree that there are lots of good stories about Pakeha and Maori relations too.<br />But the reason why colonial policy in Samoa, Niue, and the Cooks is so interesting is that it represented the will of the New Zealand state, not the feelings of ordinary Pakeha. And colonial policy, as detailed in books like Michael Field's Mau and Dick Scott's Would A Good Man Die?, was premised on the notion that, for both cultural and racial reasons, whites were vastly superior to the native population. <br /><br />In Samoa, the Germans had also treated the natives as inferior, but their top administrators were sentimental ethnographers, and they chose to shelter the Samoans from much of the modern world, so that they could continue to live 'like children'. The Kiwis were also determined to keep the races apart, and passed a series of apartheid-style laws, but they also wanted to turn the Samoans into brown Pakeha - and fast. They embarked on a breakneck modernisation programme whose goals included smashing the traditional extended family, breaking up communal lands, and spreading capitalism. As I found when I visited Samoa last year, it's still possible to see some of the bizarre legacy of this modernisation programme, which ended up sparking a very Polynesian sort of national liberation struggle:<br />http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2009/08/who-needs-beach.html<br /><br />I'm sorry to go on about Samoa, when it's not the subject of Chris' post, but I think it's significant because it shows the patent racism of the New Zealand state in the early twentieth century, and because it shows that cultural assimilationism can go hand in hand with discrimination and segregation.mapshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18209906216745532870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-21770214781739343372010-08-10T12:33:46.400+12:002010-08-10T12:33:46.400+12:00Tim
The good piss-up interpretation of history ha...Tim<br /><br />The good piss-up interpretation of history has a lot to recommend it. But I suspect it applied to both sides in this, as every other, conflict.Victornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-56366784081706105712010-08-10T12:26:46.372+12:002010-08-10T12:26:46.372+12:00Chris
You are obviously right in suggesting that ...Chris<br /><br />You are obviously right in suggesting that New Zealand's colonial history was influenced by its distance from the equator. <br /><br />But whilst latitude ensured the Maori tribes would not prevail politically, topography was a crucial factor in preventing their elimination. <br /><br />Dense bush, high mountains and rugged wet uplands prohibited recourse to the field howitzers, Gattling Guns or rifle fusillades used with such devastating effect on the American prairies or the High Veldt. <br /><br />Even when defeated and/or dispossessed, there were always places to go that were hard or profitless for the Pakeha to spend too much time accessing or bringing firmly under the 'rule of law'. <br /> <br />Scott<br /><br />The choice of starting point for judging a cycle of killing and retribution is almost always subjective and arbitrary.<br /><br />But I would agree that a key factor in making an ethical assessment of the events of the 1860s and 70s is that it was the settlers who were seeking to make a wholesale change to the status quo.<br /><br />BTW I appreciate your comment about the racism of New Zealand's colonial administrations in the South Pacific.<br /><br />Some years ago, I had a long chat with a senior public servant and amateur historian in Samoa. He suggested that the replacement of the comparatively benign Imperial German administration with NZ colonialism had been traumatic. History, as we know, is not devoid of irony. <br /><br />However, for every example suggesting that early twentieth century white New Zealanders were inveterate racists, there is a counter example pointing in a different direction.<br /><br />If I may share a piece of anecdotal family history with you....long before I ever thought of moving to New Zealand, I knew about the sense of friendship and comradeship between Maori and Pakeha from my father who had served alongside Kiwis during World War Two. <br /> <br />He would tell me with gleeful approval of how, when a cinema in a British colonial outpost, refused entry to Maori servicemen, every New Zealander on the base turned up and wrecked the joint. <br /><br />That story (plus meeting my Kiwi girl 30 years ago) is probably why I live here.Victornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-37914978782407237922010-08-10T11:52:03.321+12:002010-08-10T11:52:03.321+12:00You're right in tune with the Victorians, Tim ...You're right in tune with the Victorians, Tim - the main explanations for Te Kooti's war in the Pakeha press of the 1860s and '70s were his innate Maori savagery and love of violence, and his predilection for alcohol. His discontent could have had nothing to do, of course, with being exiled to a sub-Antarctic island without trial for something he didn't do and with having his land ripped off while he was away.Scotthttp://www.readingthemaps.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-24562525262494570082010-08-10T11:23:18.573+12:002010-08-10T11:23:18.573+12:00Chris, tell that to the Native Hawaiians. European...Chris, tell that to the Native Hawaiians. Europeans havent had any trouble colonising and all but obliterating the indigenous culture of Hawaii, the northern parts of Australia (and the rest), or the larger and strategically significant islands of Micronesia (Let alone Central and South America). Tonga and Samoa are also well out of the malaria zone and are relatively benign in terms of nasty tropical bugs. I think your argument about climate is weak.Jononoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-60319682594974660422010-08-10T11:04:55.562+12:002010-08-10T11:04:55.562+12:00I suppose it is the worst sin possible that Chris&...I suppose it is the worst sin possible that Chris's post appears on Kiwiblog, after all there is only one side to <i>this</i> story.jhnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-89299649935027678502010-08-10T04:49:46.593+12:002010-08-10T04:49:46.593+12:00Nice blog, Chris. Many learned visitors, obviously...Nice blog, Chris. Many learned visitors, obviously.<br /><br />On a less scholarly note, I note I see no mention of the degree to which some Maori might actually have simply coveted the trappings of the "invading" culture. I mean, blankets are real nice on a cold night, and save a shit load of boring feather plucking. And some folks just love a good old scrap, too. No philosophising, just get into it because it gives them a kick - who knows, might even be genetic (- oooh, I bet that will shake the old ivory tower.) <br /><br />"agonising deliberation", "highly skilled warrior-politicians", "debating the pros and cons of collaboration" sounds good in an anthropology lecture, but for my money, the immediate gratification of a good piss up should not be ruled out as a motive simply because it doesn't fit with the 'noble savage paradigm' which appears to prevail on this blogsite.Timnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-72179753938172556462010-08-10T00:38:03.291+12:002010-08-10T00:38:03.291+12:00Thanks for clarifying your remark about civil war ...Thanks for clarifying your remark about civil war Chris, but I'm not the only one who interpreted it as referring to Maori-on-Maori violence. I found out about this article of yours through kiwiblog, where the host and most of the more virulently anti-Maori commenters believe that you were drawing attention to the fact of Maori vs Maori violence. <br /><br />Do you really think that Te Urewera doesn't see that the wars of the 1860s were a contest about sovereignty? That seems a bit of a tricky argument. Doesn't the report explicitly say the Crown didn't control Tuhoe Country in 1865?<br /><br />I don't think the kupapa of the 1860s necessarily rejected what we call today tino rangatiratanga. The example of Ngati Porou is an interesting one. They joined with the Crown against Tuhoe and against Te Kooti's army, but they kept the guns the Brits gave them and when the government considered ripping off some of their land as part of the confiscations after the war, as 'punishment' for the actions of the hauhau Ngati Porou, they threatened to start a new war. They also seriously considered invading Northland and getting some utu on Nga Puhi with their flash weapons. These are hardly the actions of a people who feel bound by fealty to the regime in Wellington and its laws. <br /><br />As an aside, I wonder whether it wouldn't have been better to begin your article in 1865/66, rather than 1869. You can construct reasons for the 1869 invasions by pointing to the fact Tuhoe were hostile to the Crown and sheletered Te Kooti, but can you find any justification, however paper-thin, for the original invasion of Tuhoe Country and the original confiscation of Tuhoe land in the aftermath of the slaying of Volkner? Given the lack of involvement of Tuhoe in that act, the actions of the Crown in 1865/66 seem motivated by pure opportunism. And the aggressive and avaricious actions of the Crown in 1865/66 are what causes Tuhoe hostility in 1869 - they are, if you like, the 'original sin'. By starting in 1869 I feel you rob your readers of the proper historical perspective. <br /><br />I think Victor's points are quite fair. There was definitely an exterminatory quality to the way some Pakeha thought about Maori in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This quality manifested itself in some ruthless rhetoric and actions during the wars (Whitmore's genocidal invasion of Tuhoe Country is the classic example of the latter), and in the 'smoothing the pillow of a dying race' attitude of the fin de siecle period. I made this point with reference to Hochstetter a couple of years ago, in a review of an exhibiton devoted to him:<br /><br />http://books.scoop.co.nz/2008/10/26/whitewashing-genocide/<br /><br />I think the same ultra-racist quality comes out in New Zealand's colonial adventures in the first half of the twentieth century. Our administrators in Samoa and Niue were quite unbelievably racist, and created apartheid-style systems. They were no apostles of the Enlightenment, that's for sure.Scotthttp://readingthemaps.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-64903392287872461712010-08-09T23:03:34.170+12:002010-08-09T23:03:34.170+12:00Come on. Scott, I made no reference to the Report&...Come on. Scott, I made no reference to the Report's handling of inter-tribal conflicts, what I said was : <br /><br />"[Y]ou’ll not find anything on those thousand pages remotely resembling the Mohaka Massacre as I have described it."<br /><br />And:<br /><br />"There is a peculiar reticence on the part of the Tribunal’s historians to acknowledge that the war which spilled over into the Tuhoe people’s territory in the 1860s and 70s was a civil war."<br /><br />By "civil war" I was, of course, referring to the conflict over who, ultimately, would exercise sovereignty over the whole of New Zealand: The indigenous Maori tribes, or the British Settlers? And drawing attention to the fact that there were many Maori tribes who understood that it could only be the British, and that the sooner the hold-outs were defeated the better it would be for them all.<br /><br />As for Tonga and Samoa, these were tropical islands upon which the Europeans never constituted anything like a majority. <br /><br />That combination: tropical heat (and diseases) plus small numbers of colonists was always a pretty effective protection against cultural obliteration.<br /><br />The misfortune of the native Americans - and the Maori - was that they inhabited real estate in the planet's temperate zones. When Europeans come to those places - they come to stay.Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-83553611070072352432010-08-09T21:40:36.373+12:002010-08-09T21:40:36.373+12:00We can play that game another way Chris. Compare t...We can play that game another way Chris. Compare the situation of Maori with that of the Tongans, who managed to hold on to their culture, their land, and their political independence, or the Samoans, who held off New Zealand imperialism and emerged with their indepdence and with most of their land still owned collectively. How often do you hear Maori on the streets of Auckland, and how often do you hear Samoan on the streets of Apia, or Tongan in Nukualofa? <br /><br />In any case, the relative success of Maori in holding off colonisers has little to do with the goodwill or otherwise of the colonisers, and much more to do with objective factors like the weakness of the Kiwi borgeoisie compared to its counterpart in mighty America, and the extreme difficulty of using a hunter gatherer society like the one that existed in Australia as the base for large-scale armed resistance to invasion. <br /><br />But let's leave these matters aside for a minute. Are you sure you're correct in saying that there is no reference to Maori-on-Maori violence in the TOW report Te Urewera? I was just looking at it and in five minutes I found plenty of references to the civil war inside Ngati Porou in 1866.Scotthttp://www.readingthemaps.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-55534599479524208852010-08-09T21:20:49.689+12:002010-08-09T21:20:49.689+12:00Chris
I'm only an ignorant Pom. But I always...Chris<br /><br />I'm only an ignorant Pom. But I always understood that one of the reasons Maori fared less horrendously than other indigenous peoples during the age of European expansion was the skill and tenacity with which some of them resisted.<br /><br />I would have thought that the history of the Tuhoe in the latter part of the nineteenth century testified to this. <br /><br />Of course, it wasn't the full story. Other Maori showed similar skill and tenacity in collaborating with and profiting from the expansion of Pakeha influence, both before and after the 1860s.<br /><br />It probably also helped that large scale British settlement in New Zealand commenced in the high-minded (if quintessentially hypocritical) Victorian 'Age of Reform' and not, as in North America and Australia, in an earlier,less conscience-ridden epoch. <br /><br />It's certainly always seemed to me that Victorian Liberalism was one New Zealand's most significant cultural roots. <br /><br />And I would agree with you that both Maori and Pakeha can claim some credit for a comparatively benign and hopeful, long-term outcome, as compared to other places where indigenous peoples faced the onslaught of Anglo-Celtic imperialism.<br /><br />However, I would venture to suggest that this was not the outcome for which colonial militias or British regulars fought in the 1860s, anymore than the feudal notables who backed Henry Tudor against Richard Plantagenet desired modern capitalism, an industrial revolution or a constitutional monarchy dominated by the middle classes. <br /><br />Sorry for an even longer sentenceVictornoreply@blogger.com