The New Zealand Wars: The History and Legacy of the British Empire’s Conflicts with the Indigenous Māori by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2023-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Exploration of New Zealand’s Interior

From the moment Europeans saw the the North and South Islands rising out of the Pacific, the assumption was that New Zealand would be a venue for European emigration. It was perceived as largely empty, and its fertile aspects and pleasant climate were immediate attractions. Settlers began to accumulate at the coast long before any kind of formal administration or control, and certainly before any efforts to explore the interior.

The early explorers were simply ordinary people, driven by curiosity looking around. This was very different from the professional exploration of Africa, for example, which was driven by geographic conundrums such as the Source of the Nile, and Australia, where the question was one of survival against the elements. In New Zealand, the exploration drive was fundamental to settlement, identifying resources, discovering areas of arable land, and finding practical routes to get to them.

Familiar names were given to places and features that offered a comforting familiarity to those who might want to move to New Zealand. To the many reading the promotional literature of the New Zealand Company as it sought to promote the territory as a home for impoverished and wealthy Englishmen alike, names like Wellington, Nelson, Invercargill, Auckland and Christchurch all seemed very welcoming. Artists rendered landscapes for reproduction that were wild enough to be exotic, but green enough to be a fair substitute for England.

The first to arrive with a view to permanent settlement were the missionaries, and interestingly, they did their best to discourage commercial activities and other settlement activities on either of the islands, believing that their presence alone was beneficial to the natives while all others were corrosive. Ironically, it was in the search for fresh missionary fields that the missionaries contributed most to an early understanding of the territory. Samuel Marsden, who was the first missionary to make landfall in New Zealand, arrived in the Bay of Islands in December 1814. The expedition set off from Port Jackson in New South Wales as an outreach of the Australian Anglican missionary movement, and it set off with the support and endorsement of the New South Wales Governor. Marsden purchased land at Rangihoua, and there the first formal mission in New Zealand was established.

Thereafter, Marsden himself, when visiting New Zealand, tramped for hundreds of miles across North Island, visiting remote communities, preaching the gospel, and familiarizing himself with the population. In general, he was kindly received, and in his journals and reports, a picture of the interior geography of North Island began to emerge.

In his wake came earnest and committed missionaries, and from their amateur scholarship, and from their notes and journals, the first anthropological study of the Māori began. A written form of their language was developed, and a greater understanding of them was promoted, albeit based on the belief that the ideal future lay in their Anglicization and conversion to Christianity.

Marsden never based himself in New Zealand, and apart from numerous visits, he remained domiciled in New South Wales.

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