Fatal Impact : The Development of Historical Theory
Condiffe, J.B., and Airey, W.T.G., A Short History of New Zealand, 7th ed., Auckland, 1953, pp. 29, 35.
THE DARK SIDE
It was easy enough to see some of the evil consequences. Many of those who came to New Zealand were wayward, unscrupulous men who had little regard for their fellow men, white or brown. Even when they were decent enough people at heart, sailors who had to endure the terrible conditions of sea-life in those days were not likely to be a good influence when on shore among native peoples, far from the opinion of their fellow-countrymen and the authority of the law. Moreover ignorance of Maori customs led to actions which, innocently intended, might cause bitter feelings. Reprisals by the Maoris looked like wanton cruelty and led to further treachery and vengeance by Europeans.
THE BRIGHTER SIDE
But beside this unhappy picture, all too common among the more primitive peoples of America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific as Europeans spread their power and their persons during the last four and a half centuries, a more hopeful prospect was also presented. The Maoris saw the advantage of the things the Europeans brought and before long were learning to make use of them.
New tools, such as steel axes and spades, were valued, while the mission stations became centres of improved knowledge in such things as carpentry. The pakeha-Maoris -white men who lived with the Maoris under their protection-played an important part in this adjustment of Maori ways to European methods. They acted as trade agents and advisers in the use of new things. They shared with the missionaries the most important influence in helping the Maori to improve his economic life.
The Maori's success in this was very considerable. Inaddition to producing new foods for his own consumption or for trade with Europeans, the Maori began to use whaleboats instead of canoes for coastal trips; he built or acquired larger types of European vessels. Maoris served on ships and became good sailors, boatmen, and whale-harpooners. Thus, while Europeans were still relatively few, the Maoris were showing a considerable capacity to gain from their contact with the greater knowledge and superior equipment of the Europeans.
Sinclair, K., A History of New Zealand, rev. ed., Auckland, 1969, pp. 35-42.
At this time the Maoris had their first opportunity to observe closely the ways of civilization. Needless to say, since the people theymet (including a very few sealers, deserters or escaped convicts who settled down with them) were generally of the most brutalized or degraded sort, what they saw was rarely edifying. Visiting seamen infringed Maori law in innumerable ways - defied the tapu, stole the crops, filched weapons or mats for sale as ‘curiosities’ and kidnapped men or women without scruple.
Relations between the two peoples soon deteriorated into what New Zealand’s first historian, Dr A. S. Thomson, in the Story of New Zealand (1859), called ‘a war of races’. In the South Island about 1810, after a few years of friendly intercourse, the Maoris began to attack isolated sealing gangs and boats’ crews. In 1809 a Maori who was working his passage back to New Zealand induced his tribe to revenge the insults and ill-treatment he had suffered. Almost everyone on board the Boyd, which brought him home to Whangaroa, was killed and eaten. And the same fate befell the crew of another ship wrecked off CapeBrett. For the next few years shipping, kept away from the northern ports. New Zealand had acquired the reputation of being one of the most dangerous places in the Pacific.
This was the period [1810-1820] which a recent historian has appropriately called ‘the Maori domination’. Maori culture was as dominant over European as the Maoris were over local European settlers. The Maoris were not converted to European civilization or its religion. They made use of European goods, but for Maori purposes. A nail would be flattened for a chisel. Red cloth was pulled to pieces to weave into cloaks. European blankets were used as cloaks. Soon muskets were in demand to pursue the traditional objectives of Maori society. The Maoris were still completely confident in the merit and rightnessof their own culture.
During the eighteen-twenties and even more so in the thirties, as a result of increasing contacts with Europeans, the northern Maoris came to feel the weight of western civilization pressing on their lives. Their community began to pass through a moral and technological revolution more comprehensive and more painful than contemporary industrialization in Europe. Old customs, everyday habits of eating or dress, eventually traditional beliefs, were abandoned or altered, not always for the better. In some places the tribal structure itself was tottering.
Ideas were as destructive as bullets. The traders gave the Maoris the means of self-destruction: the missionaries set out to change the constitution of Maori life.
Belich, J., Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders, Auckland, 1996, p. 127.
Empire, conversion, conquest and fatal (or, at least, crippling) impact did happen, at particular times and places in New Zealand history. They were actual historical forces. But they were also myths. Their kernels of truth might be large, but there was a built-in tendency to exaggerate them. All implied favourable roles for Europeans: rulers of subjects, teachers of converts, masters of the conquered, heirs to the dying. The general sense of superiority they supplied gave confidence to those washed up on alien shores, instructed them on how to behave to native peoples and on how natives should behave to them. For these and other reasons they were cherished beliefs, not to be questioned lightly. Because it was important to the European self-image that contact should have such outcomes, there was an over-readiness to assume that they had happened, were happening or would happen.