Race and Identity in the Tasman World, 1769–1840 by Rachel Standfield

Author:Rachel Standfield [Standfield, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, General, Study & Teaching, World, Expeditions & Discoveries
ISBN: 9781317321767
Google: dV-kCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-09-30T16:10:34+00:00

The Boyd Incident and Representation of Māori

Péron’s account of Aboriginal people thus undermined racial ideas, espoused by British colonists, about Aboriginal people which may now appear to be ‘natural’. In March 1810, as Marsden was preparing to establish his mission in New Zealand, news reached Sydney of an event which threatened to do the same for European representation of Māori, and disrupt the burgeoning trade relationship between Māori and the British. On 10 March the Sydney Gazette reported that the Boyd, a ship which had been in Whangaroa Harbour collecting timber for spars, had been attacked by Māori, its passengers killed and supposedly eaten and the ship burnt. The news of the ‘the Boyd massacre’, as it was termed, shocked the British at Port Jackson, and forced reassessment of the benefits of imperial relationships with Māori.16 Governor Macquarie, having recently arrived to take over the administration of New South Wales, signalled a change of official attitude towards Māori in his despatch on the Boyd to Viscount Castlereagh. He wrote that the King George had brought

melancholy accounts of the loss and capture of the ship Boyd by the New Zealanders, under their chief Tippahee, and the massacre the whole of her crew and passengers, with the exception of two women and a child, who escaped from these merciless savages.17

The fate of the Boyd should serve, Macquarie thought, as an example to whaling and other vessels. He advised that ships ‘should be cautioned … to be very vigilant and guarded in their intercourse with the New Zealanders, as well as with all the natives of the South Sea Islands’.18

Macquarie’s despatch provides a clear indication that former Governor King’s ‘diplomatic initiatives’ towards chiefs such as Te Pahi were perceived to have failed. Despite the gift s, visits to Port Jackson, and attention from governors and other colonists, foremost amongst them Marsden, the Boyd had proved, as Macquarie starkly stated, that Māori were ‘a very treacherous race of people, and not to be trusted’. Macquarie’s solution was not, however, to stop ships taking resources from New Zealand, rather his despatch noted that Simeon Lord and a group of ‘respectable merchants’ had proposed establishing a settlement in New Zealand to collect flax, and that he had given his endorsement to this plan.19 The economic interests of the white settlement were thus paramount, and the solution was to control relations with Māori, not to curtail them. It is in this context that a reprisal raid carried out in April 1810 takes on significance. This raid involved the crew of a number of ships working in New Zealand waters and included the former acting-governor of New South Wales, Joseph Foveaux, and his secretary, Lieutenant James Finucane. Finucane’s journal provides an account of the incident and his impressions of both Māori and their country.20 Given the importance of New Zealand resources to the New South Wales colonial economy at this time, the raid can be read in a similar manner to reprisal raids against Aboriginal people who threatened the margins of white pastoral expansion in resistance against their dispossession.

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