Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
original problem was a discrepancy between British and Maori understandings of it. The
English version promised Maori full equality as British subjects in return for complete
rights of government. The Maori version also promised that Maori would retain their
chieftainship, which implied local rights of government. The problem was not great at
first, because the Maori version applied outside the small European settlements. But as
those settlements grew, conflict brewed.
Similarities in language between Maori and Tahitian indicate close contact in historical
times. Maori is about as similar to Tahitian as Spanish is to French, despite the 4294km
separating these island groups.
In 1840 there were only about 2000 Europeans in NZ, with the shanty town of Koror-
areka as the capital and biggest settlement. By 1850 six new settlements had been formed
with 22,000 settlers between them. About half of these had arrived under the auspices of
the New Zealand Company and its associates. The company was the brainchild of Ed-
ward Gibbon Wakefield, who also influenced the settlement of South Australia. Wake-
field hoped to short-circuit the barbarous frontier phase of settlement with 'instant civil-
isation', but his success was limited. From the 1850s his settlers, who included a high
proportion of upper-middle-class gentlefolk, were swamped by succeeding waves of im-
migrants that continued to wash in until the 1880s. These people were part of the great
British and Irish diaspora that also populated Australia and much of North America, but
the NZ mix was distinctive. Lowland Scots settlers were more prominent in NZ than
elsewhere, for example, with the possible exception of parts of Canada. NZ's Irish, even
the Catholics, tended to come from the north of Ireland. NZ's English tended to come
from the counties close to London. Small groups of Germans, Scandinavians and
Chinese made their way in, though the last faced increasing racial prejudice from the
1880s, when the Pakeha population reached half a million.
Much of the mass immigration from the 1850s to the 1870s was assisted by the pro-
vincial and central governments, which also mounted large-scale public works schemes,
especially in the 1870s under Julius Vogel. In 1876 Vogel abolished the provinces on the
grounds that they were hampering his development efforts. The last imperial governor
with substantial power was the talented but Machiavellian George Grey, who ended his
second governorship in 1868. Thereafter, the governors (governors-general from 1917)
were largely just nominal heads of state; the head of government, the premier or prime
minister, had more power. The central government, originally weaker than the provincial
governments, the imperial governor and the Maori tribes, eventually exceeded the power
of all three.
