Bookhabit - Auckland, August 1908: A Stop on the Great White Fleet World Cruise By Robert Garry Law - This booklet places the visit of the Great White Fleet to Auckland in its New Zealand context and its geopolitical context - that of great power riva

Not archaeology but:

1769

The detailed publication in the 1950s and 60s of the diaries of the British voyagers to New Zealand reduced the heroic version of James Cook to one having a stain of violence to Māori. Since then evaluations here have been more nuanced, but a great navigator and mapmaker certainly.

The earliest European voyages to New Zealand were met by Māori warriors. There were frequent challenges: Come ashore and we will eat you, was one. With all male crews what were the Māori to make of the ships? –  they were not obviously peaceful. While many contacts resulted in a peaceful exchange many did not. Of the contacts up to and including Cook’s third voyage, of one Dutch, three British and two French expeditions, crew members were killed by Māori on three of them. Retaliation was undertaken in all cases though Māori loss of life is only certain for one. Cook arriving later to one incident had the opportunity for further retaliation. To the dismay of his crew he did not then act.

The officers of these ships were from the age of enlightenment, undertaking scientific enquiry with the most modern of instruments and were often under instructions to treat any persons met well. But the crews were less constrained. They came from violent, vindictive societies. Many no doubt were illiterate with no enlightened concepts. With arms in their hands their immediate response to kidnap, theft or threat could be a quick resort to violence. Their lives were cheap. They treated others the same.

All the three nations, British, Dutch and French had expanding colonial empires. They populated those colonies by slaves, convicts, or at one stage removed from that, ticket of leave convicts, indentured labour, or the descendants of colonists who took local wives. The latter had low status. All took part in the west African trade that engaged local warlords to initiate the capture of slaves. The Dutch did the same from east Africa and from islands through their eastern empire. Later blackbirding in the islands for labour in Australia was the last echo of that, in which New Zealand vessels and captains were complicit.

Māori society also sustained a form of extreme low status where the subjects had little agency. It no doubt expanded during the musket wars but in the 18^th century they were a nation that had the germ that could have been exploited to start a slave trade. Where might they have been used? Perhaps here, had the Dutch landed near where they sailed and observed the goldfields of Golden Bay, or in exploiting timber or flax, which the British tried with convicts on Norfolk Island. It was a risk if there was 18^th century colonisation here while overt European slavery still existed.

While these exploration voyages were not of themselves colonial in intent, their nations saw it as a norm. Two of the three nations were to attempt it here later but a most immediate consequence of Cook, triggered by the loss of the American colonies, was the British penal settlement of Australia. Cook and the others were the harbingers of colonisation, not the direct agents.

By 1826 British convict settlements were in three sites in New South Wales, east and western Tasmania, Brisbane and Norfolk Island. There had been earlier abandoned penal settlements on Norfolk Island and near Melbourne, but none in New Zealand, despite the similarity of the climate to Britain. Isolation is not the explanation for the lack, for it was a desired quality for such colonies. The decisive factor clearly was the Māori response to the first voyages. The next arrivals, sealers, were remote from most of the Māori population and the first missionaries were inspired more by faith than pure commercial calculation to accept the risks. They certainly vividly reported the nature of Māori society and its warrior aspect.

So let us not get too precious or one sided about the violence that characterises our history. Beware of imposing today’s values on either side. The events of 1769 are only a part of the story. Māori often reacted violently to Europeans, but a near certain consequence of that is we avoided a convict settlement inheritance, likely much less accepting of Māori sovereignty than what did occur. Perhaps also avoided was even an alternative where a slave trade was inflicted on Māori. So the process of colonisation here had its horrors, which continue to have consequences, but it was not all the possible futures. Let’s remember those Māori warriors who resisted as well. By their own lights they have no need to apologise.