Ngai Tahu Land Report

05 The Background to the Purchases: Crown Policy and Settlement

5.4 The New Zealand Company and the Crown

5.4.1 Several of the Ngai Tahu purchases were a direct consequence of Edward Gibbon Wakefield's New Zealand Company scheme to colonise New Zealand and turn the country into a prosperous version of rural English society. The Otakou purchase in 1844 led to the settlement of over half a million acres by the Scottish settlers of the Otago Association. The Kemp purchase became the location for the proposed Canterbury Association settlement, following the failure of the Crown to purchase land in the Wairarapa, the association's first choice for Canterbury. The Port Cooper and Port Levy purchases were also to provide land for company settlers and investors. Although the North Canterbury, Arahura, Port Cooper, Port Levy, Akaroa and Kaikoura purchases took place after the company's demise, they all in some way resulted from earlier acquisitions for one or other of the Wakefield settlements.

Ngai Tahu land provided the laboratory for Wakefield's experiments in colonisation. Not only was Ngai Tahu land acquired so that these settlements could take place, but Wakefield's ideas were influential in the policy adopted by the Crown in dealing with the Ngai Tahu sellers.

The idea of colonising New Zealand for profit was not a new one. In 1825 an expedition was sent to New Zealand under Captain James Herd to explore the potential for colonisation as a commercial venture. Rapid industrialisation and population growth were seen by many in Britain as dangerous to social order. Colonisation was promoted as a solution to the problems of overcrowding, population explosion and the boom and bust cycles which marked the British economy from the 1820s to the 1840s. Social and economic uncertainty were accompanied by intellectual and political ferment, with any number of radical philosophers offering their panacea for society's ills. It was during this period that the Chartist movement demanded universal male suffrage and that the ideas of Marx and Engels on economics and history were developed. Edward Gibbon Wakefield entered this debate about what was called the "condition of England". Wakefield was a entrepreneur who wove around the idea of systematic colonisation a vision of an idealised rural England, recreated in a new country and better than the original.

5.4.2 Wakefield's views were first expressed in what were described as Letters from Sydney. Although supposedly written by a colonist with first hand experience of the situation in New South Wales, they were actually written while Wakefield was in Newgate prison serving a three year sentence for abducting a fifteen year old heiress. The problem with colonies, according to Wakefield, was that land could be obtained too cheaply. This destroyed the social order of things because labourers, not capitalists, gained access to land. Low land prices were a disincentive to investment and without investment the colony was starved of capital, immigration stagnated and the colony languished. Wakefield's solution was simple. Control colonisation through a single association or company. Keep the price of land high to European investors. Use the proceeds from these sales to encourage the migration of labourers and for public works so that the colony would develop. The price of land would increase as development occurred. The original purchasers would make a tidy profit, and profits would promise even further investment.

The other side of the equation was that land would have to be acquired cheaply from the indigenous proprietors. The cost of the scheme in New Zealand was to be borne by the original Maori owners. But Wakefield saw no injustice in this. Sharing the commonly held European view that only European labour and European capital could give value to land, he saw Maori title as without commercial worth. He argued that Maori interests could be protected by ensuring that 10 per cent of all lands purchased were reserved for Maori. This land would enable Maori chiefs and their immediate families to become part of the gentry classes as they became Europeanised and shared in the increasing value of their estates. It was assumed that the rest of the tribe would become landless labourers like everyone else.

Wakefield and his supporters' self confidence and zeal were as high as their knowledge of Maori and New Zealand was low. One historian described the hyperbole with which the venture was floated:

Like the modern advertising agent, Wakefield and John Ward, the first Secretary of the New Zealand Company, were masters of the gentle art of the puff direct and the puff oblique. Fine phrases flowed smoothly and abundantly from their pens, and although neither of them had ever visited New Zealand, this acted only as a further stimulus to their imagination. 'There is probably no place in the world,' declared Ward, 'which presents a more eligible field for the exertion of British enterprise.... New Zealand is fitted by nature for the production in abundance of those three articles, which have always been the especial signs of plenty, wealth and luxury of a country-corn, wine and oil. The vine has already been found to thrive luxuriantly in the islands, and the possibility of its successful cultivation, both for home consumption and commerce, admits of no doubt...and there is good reason to believe that the wines, not only of Italy, but of Spain, Portugal and the south of France, might be brought to as great perfection as in those countries. Finally, the latitude and climate are suitable to the olive, the plant, par excellence, of the sweet south, and the ancient emblem not less of plenty, than of peace.' Thus argument passed into poetry; reason into faith.{FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.2|29}

Maori were presented in these arguments as a noble race, industrious, peaceful and above all, ready to throw off their own culture and adopt that of the European almost as soon as the first immigrants arrived on their shores.

Wakefield's ideas were taken up by many influential parliamentarians, and by a number of associations promoting emigration and colonisation. In 1832 some of these theorists turned their attention to the possibility of a colony in South Australia and after various negotiations with government, an Act was passed in 1834, which incorporated Wakefield's ideas about emigration based on a land fund. Wakefield was not involved in the implementation of the scheme and was critical of the compromises being made with his theoretical principles. His attention turned to New Zealand.

5.4.3 Between 1837 and 1839 three organisations were established to promote colonisation in New Zealand; the New Zealand Association, the New Zealand Colonisation Company and the New Zealand Land Company. By this stage intervention by the British government was becoming inevitable. The high enthusiasm of prospective colonists and investors became channelled into a race to establish a stake in New Zealand before the country became a British colony. On 12 May 1839, the Tory left England to purchase land in New Zealand. In September 1839, before any word could have reached England about the success of the mission, four boat loads of colonists were farewelled from England, many of the emigrants firm in the belief that they possessed a secure title to lands in New Zealand.

In attempting to turn the New Zealand Company vision into reality William Wakefield, Edward's brother, entered into a number of deeds with Maori from Taranaki to Cook Strait in late 1839. These deeds made provision either for a tenths reservation or for the reservation of sufficient lands for Maori endowment. When Colonel Wakefield was sent by the company to purchase land in New Zealand before the Crown arrived he took the following instructions:

you will take care to mention in every booka-booka, or contract for land, that a proportion of the territory ceded, equal to one-tenth of the whole, will be reserved by the Company, and held in trust by them for the future benefit of the chief families of the tribe .... you will readily explain that, after English emigration and settlement, a tenth of the land will be far more valuable than the whole was before. And you must endeavour to point out, as is the fact, that the intention of the Company is not to make reserves for the native owners in large blocks, as has been the common practice as to Indian reserves in North America, whereby settlement is impeded, and the savages are encouraged to continue savage, living apart from the civilized community-but in the same way, in the same allotments, and to the same effect, as if the reserved lands had been purchased from the Company on behalf of the natives. (C2:4:20-21){FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.3|30}

The Tory arrived at Te Whanganui a Tara (Wellington) in August 1839. Within two months Colonel Wakefield claimed to have purchased twenty million acres of land on both sides of Cook Strait and at Taranaki. Although tenths were not specifically identified in all these deeds, there can be little doubt from Wakefield's instructions that this was what was intended.

There was no intention that these reserved lands would be held directly by Maori, at least not in the foreseeable future. The sections were to be selected by ballot in the same way as all the other sections in the new settlements. An agent of the company would collect every tenth (or every eleventh) section balloted and this was to be held by the company in trust for the Maori sellers. Just who would manage this trust became a matter of debate. Under an agreement made between the Crown and the company in late 1840, the Crown took over responsibility for providing reserves for Maori. We now consider this agreement in the light of the relationship between the Crown and the New Zealand Company.

5.4.4 The Colonial Office was not impressed with the company's frantic rush to establish a foothold in New Zealand before the Crown arrived and it remained hostile to the plans of the New Zealand Company to colonise New Zealand as a private capitalist venture. Hobson was told that the governor of New South Wales would be instructed to have the claims of private purchasers of Maori land investigated by a commission to determine:

what are the lands in New Zealand held by British subjects under grants from the Natives, how far such grants were lawfully acquired and ought to be respected, and what may have been the price or other valuable considerations given for them. The commissioners will make their report to the Governor, and it will then be decided by him how far the claimants, or any of them, may be entitled to confirmatory grants from the Crown, and on what considerations such confirmations ought to be made. (A8:I:14-15){FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.4|31}

On 30 January 1840 Hobson issued a proclamation declaring that Her Majesty did not:

deem it expedient to recognise as valid any titles to land in New Zealand which are not derived from or confirmed by Her Majesty.(A8:I:23){FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.4|32}

This was followed up by the appointment of land claims commissioners with wide powers to investigate the nature of pre-Treaty purchases. If these purchases were found to be valid, the commissioners were able to recommend that Crown grants be issued up to a maximum of 2560 acres.

5.4.5 The New Zealand Company's claims were similar to hundreds of other European claims. But because the company's claims involved hundreds of settlers already in the country, it was essential that the Crown and the company come to some special arrangement. The British government was forced to acknowledge the company and in late 1840 it negotiated an agreement which gave Crown sanction to the company's colonisation scheme (C2:4:1-4).{FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.5|33} This led the way for the company to receive a Royal charter. The agreement included provisions for:

- a government-appointed accountant (James Pennington) to examine the company's total expenditure on colonisation;

- the granting to the company four acres for every pound spent; and

- the lands to be granted in the parts of the colony already settled with 160,000 acres available for the company around Port Nicholson and New Plymouth.

A lead was taken from the Aborigines Protection Society, which maintained that Maori rights could be protected by the kinds of safeguards promised by Wakefield under clause 13 of the agreement. The Crown assumed responsibility for implementing the Maori reservations intended in the original company deeds of purchase. It also provided for:

the Government reserving to themselves, IN RESPECT OF ALL OTHER LANDS, to make such arrangements AS TO THEM SHALL SEEM JUST AND EXPEDIENT FOR THE BENEFIT of the natives.(C2:4:3){FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.5|34} (emphasis added)

On 22 April 1841, after representations from the company, Russell allowed the company to exchange their grants for land outside the original deed boundaries, but subject to existing provisions for Maori reserves and not for lands in the vicinity of Auckland.

5.4.6 In entering this agreement with the company, Russell assumed that their deeds of purchase had in fact extinguished title to substantial areas of the colony. This was soon found not to be the case. William Spain, sent to investigate the purchases, found all the company purchases around Cook Strait to be seriously flawed. The tribes involved informed Spain that they had not agreed to sell all their rights to the lands involved and they refused to shift from their traditional places of occupation onto the company tenths set aside for them. The issue become serious, since the lands most desired by the settlers at Pipitea and Te Aro were occupied by Te Atiawa, who refused to abandon them. Professor Alan Ward described the situation in Wellington as it applied to these tenths reserves:

Notwithstanding the deeds, which purported to convey some 20 million acres of land to the Company, the resident Maori clearly had no intention of handing over both ownership and control of this vast territory and putting themselves at the disposition of the Company's officers. Whatever they had intended (those who in fact marked deeds) they did not mean that. However well-intended the 'tenths' scheme, the Wellington Maori in particular, declined to vacate their pa and their cultivations within the new town boundaries in favour of the subdivisions that were selected on their behalf upon some of which they were supposed to reside. (T1:75)

By 1842, then, it was clear that the company had not extinguished Maori title to the lands it had sold to settlers and that Maori were refusing to abandon their pa and cultivations for tenths which they did not directly own or control.

5.4.7 The uncertainty continued while the Crown and the company argued over who would be responsible for purchasing the lands to be granted to the company under the Pennington award. Finally on 12 May 1843, the company's offer to provide funds to buy further land from Maori was accepted (P3:180).{FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.7|35} Meanwhile the impatience of the Wellington and Nelson settlers increased. With the question of the company's rights to land at Wairau still being considered by Spain, the settlers attempted to occupy the valley. In an armed and violent confrontation on 17 June 1843, four Maori and twenty-two Europeans were killed. The dead included Te Rongo, the wife of Te Rangihaeata, and Captain Arthur Wakefield, a brother of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.{FNREF|0-86472-060-2|5.4.7|36} Governor FitzRoy arrived in New Zealand at the end of 1843 and was forced to consider the situation on his first visit to Wellington in February 1844. He acknowledged the injustice of the settlers' attempt to occupy the lands still being considered by Spain, and earned the ire of many Europeans by taking a conciliatory line with the tribes involved. However he had little alternative: his powers were limited, his lines of communication difficult and he had few troops at his disposal to enforce his will against Ngati Toa and Te Atiawa, had he decided such a course was justified.

The Wairau affray further heightened uncertainty about the state of affairs in New Zealand. A fortnight after the confrontation, George Rennie's scheme to establish a Scottish colony was accepted by the New Zealand Company in Britain. The scheme was eventually abandoned when 11 months later news of the Wairau reached Scotland and startled investors and prospective colonists. It was not known in New Zealand until mid-September that the settlers were not coming. By this time the company had completed its purchase of lands at Otakou.

Armed with greatly increased resources in money and troops, Grey was able to restore some optimism to the company's British investors and prospective immigrants. In 1847, the Otago Association was able to send immigrants to take up the land purchased in 1844. In the same year plans were advanced to establish a high church, Anglican settlement to be called Canterbury. Grey's apparent success in dealing with Ngati Toa and Ngai Tahu in 1847 and 1848 was a major factor in his ability to sustain this confidence.