Raupatu: The Confiscation of Maori Land

Raupatu:

The Confiscation of Maori Land

Edited by Richard Boast and Richard S. Hill

Contents

Maps, Figures and Illustrations

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. Overview: Confiscation in New Zealand — Richard Boast  and Richard Hill

The Historiography of Confiscation

The Contributions

Acknowledgements

Chapter 2. Raupatu: the Punitive Confiscation of Maori Land  in the 1860s — Bryan Gilling

Introduction

Confiscation of Land for Rebellion

Justification for Confiscation

The Confiscation Model

A Tale of Six Districts: Raupatu in Practice

Taranaki

Waikato

Tauranga

Eastern Bay of Plenty

Mohaka–Waikare

East Coast

Conclusion

PART TWO: INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

Chapter 3. Riders of the Whirlwind: Tribal Peoples and European  Settlement Booms, 1790s–1900s — James Belich

European-Indigenous Contact

Myth and Reality of Empire

Explosive Settlement

Dispossession

Case Studies

Conclusion

Chapter 4. Land Seizures and Aftershocks: ‘A True History Lesson’  on Anglo-colonialism — John C. Weaver

Introduction

The Challenges and Appeal of Writing ‘True History’ Lessons

‘A True History Lesson’ on Colonization’s Core Value Set

Lifting the Past’s Dead Hand from ‘A True History Lesson’

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

Imperialism

Maori-European Interaction

Law and War

Comparisons

The Fate of ‘Amalgamation’ in New Zealand

The Waitara Purchase

Kingitanga and the Crown

Governor Grey’s Policies

Invasions

Raupatu

Conclusion

Chapter 6. An Illusory Power? Metropole, Colony and Land  Confiscation in New Zealand, 1863–1865 — Michael Allen

Introduction

The Shift to Responsible Government in New Zealand

Confiscation Proposals of Grey and the Domett Ministry, June–October 1863 

Grey and the Whitaker–Fox Ministry, November 1863–April 1864

Grey and the Whitaker–Fox Ministry, April–November 1864

Grey and the Weld Ministry, November 1864–September 1865

Implementation of Confiscation in Waikato and Taranaki

Conclusion

PART FOUR: RAUPATU AND LAW

Chapter 7. ‘An Expensive Mistake’: Law, Courts, and Confiscation  on the New Zealand Colonial Frontier — Richard Boast

Confiscation and Law

Statutory Confiscation in New Zealand

The Compensation Court and Special Commissioners

Confiscation as Tenurial Revolution

Confiscation and Law: Some Reflections

Directions for Research

Chapter 8. Strands from the Afterlife of Confiscation: Property  Rights, Constitutional Histories and the Political Incorporation  of Maori, 1920s — Mark Hickford

Introduction: Legal-Historical Narratives of ‘Confiscation’ and the ‘Autonomy’  of the Crown

Confiscation, Law and Politics within the Crown

Towards a Royal Commission on Confiscation, 1922–1925: ‘the ventilation  of these alleged grievances before some tribunal’

‘The mote having been removed from their eyes’: the Sim Commission, 1925–1928

Conclusion

PART FIVE: CASE STUDIES

Chapter 9. ‘A Mild Sort of Confiscation’? War and Raupatu on  the East Coast — Vincent O’Malley

Introduction

Arrival of Pai Marire

Taking the Land

Native Land Court Operations

Conclusion

Chapter 10. Te Upokokohua: The Curse of Confiscation on  Te Urewera — Judith Binney

Introduction

The Significance of Orakau

Invasion, Raupatu and Resistance

The Second Raupatu

The Aftermath of Raupatu

Conclusion

PART SIX: LEGACIES OF RAUPATU

Chapter 11. Perpetual Leasing in Taranaki, 1880–2008 — Dion Tuuta

Introduction

1865–1892

1892–1955

1955–1975

1976–1996

Maori Reserved Lands Amendment Act 1997

Effects of Dairy Industry Restructuring

Conclusion

Post Script

Chapter 12. Raupatu Settlement – Legal Finality and Political  Reality — Alex Frame

The Background and a Declaration of Interest

The Situation of Raupatu Claims in 1989

The Post-World War Two Settlements

Establishing the Principle of Redress

Getting Negotiations Under Way

The Deed of Settlement in 1995

Finality under the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act 1995

Conclusion

Appendix: Confiscation Legislation in New Zealand  — compiled by Richard Boast

Notes on Contributors

Combined Bibliography

Acts of Parliament

Archival Sources

Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (ATL)

Archives New Zealand, Wellington (ANZ)

Auckland University

Crown Law Office, Wellington

Hocken Library, Dunedin

Land Information New Zealand, Wellington (LINZ)

Maori Land Court

National Archives, Kew, London (NA)

Parliamentary Counsel Office, Wellington

Waitangi Tribunal

Deeds of Settlement

Government Sources

Legal Cases

Newspapers

Published Literature

Research Reports Presented to the Waitangi Tribunal

Theses and Unpublished Papers

Index

Copyright

Maps, Figures and Illustrations

Chapter 6

Map 1: Sketch map showing proposed roads and military settlements,  October 1863, reference B-K 921-A8A, Alexander Turnbull Library 117

Table 1: Estimated numbers of military settlers and ‘rebel’ Maori in  Waikato and Taranaki and proposed allotment of land 121

Map 2: Sketch map for confiscation along the ‘frontier line’, May 1863,  reference B-K 922-E2C, Alexander Turnbull Library127

Map 3: Provisional military settlements as proposed by the Whitaker–Fox  ministry, June 1864, reference B-K 922-E2, Alexander Turnbull  Library 128

Map 4: Sketch map showing proposed districts for Waikato, Taranaki and  Whanganui, October 1864, reference B-K 922-E2A, Alexander  Turnbull Library 132

Chapter 9

Map 1: Plan of the Wairoa Deed of Cession, 1867213

Map 2: The Four Southern Blocks Defined in the Locke Agreement, 1872 217

Chapter 10

Map 1: Map of the Urewera marking the confiscated lands. It also shows the  borders of ‘Te Rohe Potae o Tuhoe’ for the period of the wars, 1866–72227

Chapter 12

Fig 1: Some of the Crown team for ‘scoping’ discussions, about to travel on  the Waikato River, July 1989258

Part I

Introduction

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,¹ especially when compared to that relating to the similar processes that took place two centuries earlier in Ireland.² 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 reports³ and commissioned research reports prepared by Crown, claimant and Waitangi Tribunal historians for the Tribunal inquiries.⁴ 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.⁵ 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,⁶ or the history of ‘Greater Britain’.⁷ 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.⁸

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 1937,⁹ 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.¹⁰

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.¹¹ 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 at least 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.¹² 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 between contemporary 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.

While all the essays in this book stress, in their various ways, the complexities of confiscation, their authors are aware that it is not enough to say that the process was complex and to leave it at that. Most history is complex, after all. As editors whose own work has covered such subjects as coercion, indigeneity, land and the law, we stress that raupatu was a coercive process, even if the colonial regime passed ‘laws’ (local statutes) to facilitate the taking of land. The political background to the confiscation process may well be a difficult one to analyse, but the prime motivation, at least, could hardly be more clear. The plan was to take land for settlement and to remodel Maori land tenure. As such, the plan had affinities elsewhere in the world, outside as well as within the British empire. On the ground, however, confiscation was not so easy to implement. What confiscation policies and practices created was, in fact, a tenurial and ownership mess. The tenurial and land management problems in present-day Taranaki, described so eloquently and succinctly by Tuuta, are but some of the many outcomes of the process.

Finally, most scholars seem agreed that a lot more research needs to be done. This need was discussed in a typically lively and robust way during the conference. Some in the audience felt that enough basic research had been done, and that what were really needed were more generalising thematic discussions. The editors, while agreeing that broad interpretations and understandings are important, also lean towards the viewpoint that not nearly enough is known about the details of confiscation in New Zealand. We would like to think that understanding has been significantly advanced by this book, but acknowledge that both broad and detailed studies (and, of course, the two are interconnected) are further required. The functioning of key institutions such as the Compensation Court needs much more research, for example, as do the Taranaki confiscations and that of the Waikato in particular. Although the Crown’s 1995 agreement with Waikato-Tainui pioneered the modern rohe-based Treaty settlements process, this was based by mutual consent on the known outlines of what had occurred in the past rather than on the type of in-depth research generated by Waitangi Tribunal hearings. As a consequence of the current Waitangi Tribunal Rohe Potae (King Country) Inquiry, the Waikato confiscation may finally receive detailed attention.

Acknowledgements

The editors wish to thank the members of the conference committee, convened under the auspices of the Stout Research Centre’s Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit (TOWRU), which Richard Hill directs. The committee comprised (apart from the editors of this volume) Bryan Gilling, Danny Keenan, Donald Loveridge and Cathy Marr, together with support from TOWRU members Maureen West, Lana Le Quesne, and Kesaia Waigth. We would also like to thank the following for their committed support: Lydia Wevers and Louise Grenside (Director and Administrator, respectively, of the Stout Research Centre); the Marsden Fund for its support for international dimensions of this research; Piri Sciascia, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Maori) at Victoria University, and his Pou Hautu, Paul Meredith; Victoria University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Neil Quigley; and Peter Adds, Head of School, Te Kawa a Maui/School of Maori Studies, Victoria University.

We owe a big debt to Gwyn Williams, who handled liaison with the authors, assisted them with their contributions, and provided copy editing services. Thanks also to Sarah-Jane McCosh, who typeset the book and (with Gwyn Williams) later helped keep production on track. We thank the very many conference attendees for their support, and the session chairs for controlling what were often animated discussions. We thank Fergus Barrowman of Victoria University Press for his enthusiastic response to our suggestion for a publication, and Noel Harris, Mapping Officer, Waitangi Tribunal, for providing map images. We would also like to thank the Hon. Mahara Okeroa, MP for Te Tai Tonga, who opened the conference in his capacity as Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, and whose impassioned speech as a member of a raupatu-affected iwi set the tone for the conference and this publication.

Especial thanks are owed to Heather McKenzie of Victoria University Press, who sadly died while this book was in production. As this is one of her last books, we would like to record our heartfelt sympathies to her family, friends and colleagues, and acknowledge our debt to her for this and previous books we have published through Victoria University Press.

1 . There is no focused monograph on the confiscation process in New Zealand. A very useful survey article is Michael Litchfield, ‘Confiscation of Maori Land’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review , 15 (1985), pp.335–60. For a brief discussion see Richard Boast, Buying the Land, Selling the Land: Governments and Maori Land in the North Island 1865–1921 , Wellington, 2008, pp.49–61. General accounts of war and politics during the 1860s deal with the confiscations to some extent, especially B.J.Dalton, War and Politics in New Zealand, 1855–1870 , Sydney, 1967, pp.211–19, a very reliable guide to the political background to confiscation. A useful earlier account is A.J.Harrop, England and the Maori Wars , London, 1937. Some local histories also throw some light on aspects of the process, notably Evelyn Stokes, A History of Tauranga County , Palmerston North, 1980. There is one major book and a number of articles which explore the effect of confiscation on particular iwi: Tony Sole, Ngāti Ruanui: A History , Wellington, 2005; Judith Binney, ‘Te Mana Tuatoru: The Rohe Potae of Tuhoe’, New Zealand Journal of History , 31, 1 (1997); and Evelyn Stokes, ‘Pai Marire and Raupatu at Tauranga, 1864–1867’, New Zealand Journal of History , 31 (1997). Finally, there are two key books on events in Taranaki in the late 1870s and early 1880s which, although not focused on the earlier Taranaki raupatu itself, do investigate some of its after-effects: Dick Scott, Ask That Mountain , Auckland, 1975; Hazel Riseborough, Days of Darkness: Taranaki 1878–1884 , Wellington, 1989.

2 . On confiscation in Ireland, see particularly Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British 1580–1650 , New York, 2001 (see also the review by Brendan Bradshaw, English Historical Review , 117 (2002), pp.910–13). Other key studies are T.C.Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English Government and Reform in Ireland, 1649–1660 , Oxford, 1975; Barnard, ‘Planters and Policies in Cromwellian Ireland’, Past and Present , 61 (1973); ‘New Opportunities for British Settlement: Ireland, 1650–1700’, in Nicholas Canny, ed., Oxford History of the British Empire , Vol. 1, Oxford, 1998; T.W. Martin, F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne, A New History of Ireland: Vol. III: Early Modern Ireland , Oxford, 1976 (especially chs 8 and 9 by P.J. Corish); J.G. Simms, The Williamite Confiscations in Ireland, 1690–1703 , London, 1956. On the historiography of early modern Ireland and its relationships with the ‘New British history’ and Atlantic history, see generally Nicholas Canny, ‘Writing Early Modern History: Ireland, Britain, and the Wider World’, The Historical Journal , 46 (2003), pp.723–47.

3 . Confiscation was a central or very important focus of The Ngati Awa Raupatu Report , Wai 6, Wellington, 1999 (Eastern Bay of Plenty Confiscation); The Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi , Wai 143, Wellington, 1996; The Mohaka ki Ahuriri Report, Wai 201, Wellington, 2004 (Mohaka–Waikare confiscation); Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: Report on the Tauranga Confiscation Claims , Wai 215, Wellington, 2004 (Tauranga confiscation); and Turanga Tangata, Turanga Whenua: The Report on the Turanganui a Kiwa Claims , Wai 814, Wellington, 2004 (Poverty Bay confiscation). The key omission is, of course, the Waikato confiscation, which was never the subject of a Waitangi Tribunal inquiry and which was settled by means of a deed of settlement negotiated between Waikato-Tainui and the Crown and implemented in legislation. The Waitangi Tribunal has recently (May 2009) commenced reporting on its Urewera (Wai 894) Inquiry; one of the main issues in this inquiry was the effect of the Eastern Bay of Plenty confiscation on Tuhoe and other Urewera groups.

4 . These reports include Heather Bauchop, ‘The Aftermath of Confiscation – Crown Allocation of Land to Iwi: Taranaki, 1865–1880’, research report commissioned by the claimants, Wai 143, I18, 1993; Judith Binney, ‘Encircled Lands: Part One: A History of the Urewera from European Contact until 1878’, research report commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Wai 894, A12, 2002 (Eastern Bay of Plenty confiscation, with particular reference to Tuhoe); Richard Boast, ‘The Mohaka–Waikare Confiscation, Consolidated Report’, 2 vols, research report commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Wai 201, J28 and J29, 1995; Cecilia Edwards, ‘Implementing a Policy of Confiscation in Turanganui a Kiwa (Issues 5, 7 and 8)’, research report commissioned by the Crown Law Office, Wai 814, F18, 2002 (Poverty Bay confiscation); Bryan Gilling, ‘The Policy and Practice of Raupatu in New Zealand, Part A’, research report commissioned by the claimants in association with the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Wai 201, J27, 1996; Gilling, ‘The Policy and Practice of Raupatu in New Zealand, Part B: The Practice of Raupatu – the Five Confiscations’, research report commissioned by the claimants in association with the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Wai 201, M9, 1997; Vincent O’Malley, ‘The Aftermath of the Tauranga Raupatu, 1864–1981: An Overview Report’, research report commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Wai 215, A22, 1995; Gilling, ‘Great Sufferers Through the Cession: Te Whanau a Kai and the Loss of Patutahi’, research report commissioned by Te Whanau a Kai Trust in association with the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Wai 814, C1, 2001; Gilling, ‘Dispossession and Exile: Ngati Koheriki of Hunua’, research report commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal, Wai 686, T4, 2002; Gilling, ‘I Raised a Flag over Them for Their Protection: The Development of an Alliance between East Coast Maori and the Crown 1840–1872’, unpublished report, Te Kura Takai Puni/Crown Forestry Rental Trust, 2007; Vincent O’Malley, ‘East Coast Confiscation Legislation and its Implementation’, research report commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Wai 894, A34, 1994; Ann Parsonson, ‘Nga Whenua Tautohetohe o Taranaki: Land and Conflict in Taranaki 1839–1859’, research report commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal, Wai 143, A1(a), 1993; Evelyn Stokes, ‘Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: The Confiscation of Tauranga Lands’, research report commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal, Wai 215, A2, 1990. For a full bibliography, see Tim Shoebridge, Waitangi Tribunal Bibliography 1975–2005: Tribunal Reports, Research Reports, and Other Publications , Wellington, 2006.

5 . Although the Waitangi Tribunal has reported on the Taranaki confiscation, and a number of important reports were written for that claim, the Taranaki confiscation was a massively dislocating and complex process, and much remains to be learned about it. Some understanding of the consequences for the iwi of Taranaki of the years of conflict, invasion by the British army, confiscation and confusing purchasing can be obtained from Tony Sole’s Ngāti Ruanui , a history of one of the South Taranaki iwi.

6 . See J.G.A. Pocock, ‘British History: A Plea for a New Subject’, New Zealand Historical Journal , 8 (1974), pp.4–21; Pocock, ‘History and Sovereignty: The Historiographic Response to Colonization in Two British Cultures’, Journal of British Studies , 31 (1991), pp.361–4, 380–89.

7 . See David Armitage, ‘Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?’, American Historical Review , 104 (1999), pp.427–45. A probably inevitable reaction to an emphasis on ‘Atlanticism’ is now becoming apparent. This can be seen, for example, in Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783 , London, 2007. For a new and broader ‘Anglo-world’ approach, see James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World , Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.

8 . Armitage, pp.444–5.

9 . Harrop, England and the Maori Wars . This is a book which suffers from a bad case of intellectual timidity and which is little more than a collection of extracts from newspapers, parliamentary debates and official papers (for this reason, it is actually still rather useful). For a valuable and more recent comparative study, see W.P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the Mid-Victorian Age: South Africa, New Zealand, the West Indies , Oxford, 1969.

10 . James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict , Auckland, 1986.

11 . Some readers will be familiar with Weaver’s book The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900 , Montreal, 2003.

12 . Judith Binney, Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki , Auckland, 1995.

Chapter 2

Raupatu: the Punitive

Confiscation of Maori Land

in the 1860s

Bryan Gilling

*

Introduction

Other than in terms of actual physical harm and loss of life, greater harm was probably done to Maori in New Zealand by the confiscation of their land in the 1860s than by the wars that preceded it. Some 3.2 million acres of land were taken. This was about five percent of the country’s land mass and more than 15 percent of the area then in Maori customary ownership. Studies of the wars are well known, but the confiscations receive barely a mention in the historiography. One exception is the dramatically worded Taranaki Report of the Waitangi Tribunal, published in 1996.¹ The report used the term ‘holocaust’ to describe the impact of the fighting and confiscations on Maori of the region. This has caused ongoing division, many feeling that as tragic and reprehensible as the Taranaki situation has been, the term ‘holocaust’ is counter-productively emotive.²

The Maori term raupatu has come to be generally used to describe the confiscation process. It does not equate neatly with the English ‘confiscation’ of property, however. Raupatu evokes the various Acts through which confiscation was brought about, along with armed invasion, killing and the general trampling on the psyche of the Maori victims.

Confiscation of Land for Rebellion

Confiscation of land and property as a punishment for treason is a venerable tradition in the British legal heritage. It may in fact go back to imperial Rome, where it was felt that the crime of treason tainted a man’s posterity and memory. In order to purge this ‘bad blood’ from society, the state cut off the culprit’s heirs (if any were permitted to live) from any possibility of inheritance, which was, in any case, considered to be a privilege conferred by the state. By the early Middle Ages, kings such as Alfred the Great and Canute were defining high treason as crimes against the monarch in justifying confiscation, as the concept developed that all land was held from the Crown. The Normans strengthened the practice of confiscation in Britain, taking the lands of the followers of the ‘rebel’ Harold.

As feudalism strengthened, based upon the reciprocal obligations of lord and man, the breaking of those obligations by the latter cut entitlement to the land. In the case of petty ‘treasons’, including most felonies, the lands reverted by escheat to the immediately superior lord, although the Magna Carta provided that they would initially escheat to the king for the first year and a day. High treason resulted in lands being confiscated directly by the Crown. In Europe, Roman law, including the concept of ‘damnation of memory’, remained stronger, and in France, not only did the traitor suffer confiscation and death, but his innocent children could be executed due to the assumed ‘corruption of blood’.

The dynastic warfare of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries resulted in English lands changing ownership many times, although realism often prevailed, and rebels could be permitted to redeem their lands through payment of fines. In 1352, Edward III’s Statute of Treason formally defined crimes justifying forfeiture. The Wars of the Roses saw Parliament developing Acts of Attainder to allow for judgments on traitors and rebels which involved land confiscations, although power changed hands so frequently that the majority of these were reversed.

Confiscation of land was also a crucial tool in the English quest to conquer and subdue Ireland. Norman expansion under Henry II superimposed nominal English law over Irish Brehon law, rendering the Irish systems effectively invisible and the Irish themselves aliens and chattels. Henry VIII was all the more aggressive about asserting English claims to sovereignty. He confiscated the huge Kildare estates, while accepting the surrender of Irish clans on condition that they were regranted their tribal lands under English feudal tenure, exposing them to the penalties this included. Often the regrant was to the chief alone, making the clans even more vulnerable. The Tudors subsequently expanded this technique, Elizabeth I linking confiscation to English settlement in Munster. James I then repeated the formula in six more counties, as courts declared English law to be supreme. Most infamous was Oliver Cromwell’s suppression of all Catholic opposition the English Republic’s Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652. This Act not only punished open rebels and their covert supporters, but every Catholic who had not ‘manifested their constant good Affection to the Interest of the Commonwealth of England’ lost one-third of their land, and, for good measure, everyone who had not actually served Parliament lost one-fifth. In the Court of Claims which the Republican regime set up, proprietors had to prove their innocence. Throughout Ireland, only 26 Catholic landowners managed to do so. Irish people were forcibly transplanted on pain of death to wherever Parliament thought fit, usually the easily dominated County Connaught. Military settlers were introduced from England as frontiersmen, to populate the confiscated territory and to guard the transplanted Irish. Another Act in the following year encouraged Protestants to settle the land as recompense both for those who had financed the suppression of the rebellion and the soldiers who were owed huge arrears of pay.³ Ireland was clearly in the minds of officials in