New book on colonisation provides insight into past

23 October 2015

New book on colonisation provides insight into past

Ian Pool’s new book Colonisation and Development in New Zealand between 1769 and 1900: The Seeds of Rangiatea has just been published.

The book covers interactions between New Zealand’s Māori population and Europeans from 1769 until 1900. It provides a case-study of the way Imperial era contact and colonisation negatively affected a naturally evolving society and imposed economic conditions that thwarted development by precursor peoples wherever European expansion occurred.

The book focusses on critical elements such as health and population trends and the economic and social development of Māori. It raises theoretical questions about how populations react to the introduction of diseases to which they have no natural immunity, and what happens when on society’s development is superseded by those of a more powerful force. It also explores how health and development interact.

This is Pool’s third book on Māori.

“The previous two published in 1977 and 1991 were more technical. In this book I’ve looked more into wider colonisation and development issues. This book has particular relevance for other societies that have been colonised and it provides background that will be important to Waitangi Tribunal claimants”.

Pool says that, in spite of contact then the Musket Wars, Māori were developing well until about 1850 in business, supplying New Zealand and Australia with food. But because of land loss through colonial confiscation and the Native Land Court, by the end of the century they were in an under-development trap. They had little land to farm, and so they were poor.

“When Māori came to the table at Waitangi (1840), they brought with them a huge dowry. This was all their land and also thriving businesses. I contrast this with Queen Victoria’s 60th Jubilee in 1897 by which time they were a marginalised New Zealand population.”

In the 1890s Māori were barely surviving, one of the key factors being that the effects on them of introduced diseases.

“The taking of land was intentional. By contrast, the impact of foreign diseases was unintended. Medical knowledge was so inadequate then that the government could not really do much to improve Maori health.”

To justify the displacement of Maori, Pool says Victorian settlers often demonised Māori. Unfortunately, this demonisation has recently been resurrected by revisionist “tabloid historians”, in Australia and America as well as New Zealand.

“They focus on the lurid, rather than the day-to-day aspects of life, and they exaggerated the extreme.”

Ian Pool, CNZM, was a professor at the University of Waikato from 1978 until retiring in 2009. He set up the Population Studies Centre at the University in 1980. Since 1960, he has conducted research and taught in Australia, Burkina Faso, Canada, England, Ghana, New Zealand, Niger, France and the United States. He has published more than 150 books, monographs and scientific papers. The University awarded him the title of Emeritus Professor in 2010 and he is a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Colonisation and Development in New Zealand between 1769 and 1900: The Seeds of Rangiatea is published by Springer and is available at www.springer.com.

ENDS

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