Abstract
Thus far, this study has charted the emergence of Indocentric frame-works for the analysis of Polynesian, but especially Maori, culture and history. As we have seen, complex webs of correspondence and emerging patterns of institutional exchange spanned disparate parts of the British empire (and reached out into other imperial and institutional knowledge systems), integrating scholars in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Asia, the Malay peninsula, the Pacific islands and Australasia into new interpretative communities. I have particularly stressed the prominence of the Christian converts, scribal elites and other ‘native experts’ who shaped, contested and reinterpreted this thickening archive of ethnological material.
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Notes
Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact: an Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific 1767–1840 (London, 1966).
A similar argument of cultural crisis was elaborated in Harrison M. Wright, New Zealand 1769–1840: Early Years of Western Contact (Cambridge, MA, 1967).
Gordon Parsonson, ‘The literate revolution in Polynesian’, Journal of Pacific History, 2 (1967), 39–58.
Most notably I. C. Campbell, ‘Culture contact and Polynesian identity in the European age’, Journal of World History, 8 (1997), 29–55.
Greg Dening, ‘Writing, rewriting the beach: an essay’, Rethinking History, 2 (1998), 143–72, here 160.
For example, Kuni E. H. Jenkins, ‘Te ihi, te mana, te wehi o te ao tuhi: Maori print literacy from 1814–1855: literacy, power and colonization’, (University of Auckland MA, 1991) and Becoming Literate, Becoming English (Auckland, 1993).
D. F. McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand: the Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, 1985), 15 n. 19.
Judith Binney, ‘Maori oral narratives, Pakeha written texts: two forms of telling history’, New Zealand Journal of History, 21 (1987), 16–28.
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, John and Ann Tedeschi eds (Baltimore, MD, 1992), 27–54, here 32.
Compare the analytical strategies of Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1983), 15,
with James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland, 1986).
For example, Elsdon Best, The Maori as He Was (Wellington, 1952 [1924]), 96.
Douglas G. Sutton, ‘Organization and ontology: the origins of the northern Maori chiefdom, New Zealand’, Man, n. s. 25 (1990) 667;
Raymond Firth, We, the Tikopia (London, 1936)
and Irving Goldman, Ancient Polynesian Society (Chicago, 1970).
Angela Ballara, ‘Porangahau: the formation of an eighteenth-century community in Southern Hawke’s Bay’, New Zealand Journal of History, 29 (1995), 3–18;
Douglas Sutton (ed.), The Archaeology of the Kainga: a Study of Precontact Maori Undefended settlements at Pouerua, Northland, New Zealand (Auckland, 1994).
For example, Angela Ballara, ‘The Origins of Ngati Kahungunu’ (Victoria University of Wellington, PhD thesis, 1991).
See Margaret Orbell, Maori Folktales in Maori and English (London, 1968), xiv;
Katharine Luomala, Maui-of-a-thousand-tricks: His Oceanic and European Biographers (Honolulu, HI, 1949).
Lindsay Cox, Kotahitanga: the Search for Maori Political Unity (Auckland, 1993), 17.
H. W. Orsman, The Dictionary of New Zealand English: a Dictionary of New Zealandisms on Historical Principles (Auckland, 1997), 809–10.
‘For the Maoris to turn to Christianity there had to be things happening which they could not explain in terms of their own culture’: Harrison M. Wright, New Zealand 1769–1840: Early Years of Western Contact (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 143–4.
Keith Sinclair, A History of New Zealand, 3rd edn (London, 1980), 42.
Belich, Making Peoples, 156–178; J. M. R. Owens, The Unexpected Impact; Wesleyan Missionaries and Maoris in the Early 19th Century (Auckland, 1973);
K. R. Howe, ‘The Maori Response to Christianity in the Thames-Waikato Area, 1833–1840’, NZJH, 7 (1973), 28–46.
Thomas Kendall, A Korao no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander’s First Book; being An Attempt to compose some Lessons for the Instruction of the Natives (Sydney, 1815).
Samuel Lee, A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand (London, 1820).
Compare the 19 consonants (including ‘ng’) of Kendall and Lee’s grammar with the nine consonants of the later grammars. Eventually ten consonants were settled upon, with the aspirated form ‘wh’ differentiated from ‘w’. See Colenso’s comments on this process: William Colenso, Fifty Years Ago in New Zealand (Napier, 1888), 24–7, 47–9.
MR (1840), 512 and (1841), 510; Harrison Wright, New Zealand, 1769–1840, (Cambridge, MA, 1959), 53.
For a review of these processes see Tony Ballantyne, ‘Print, politics and Protestantism: New Zealand, 1769–1860’, Information, Communications, Power, Hiram Morgan ed. (Dublin, 2001), 152–76.
D. F. McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand: the Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, 1985), 28.
J. N. Coleman, A Memoir of the Rev. Richard Davis (London, 1865), 61. Davis had only arrived in New Zealand in August of that year.
For example, Michael Jackson, ‘Literacy, Communications and Social Change: the Maori case, 1830–1870’ (University of Auckland, MA thesis, 1967), 135; McKenzie, Oral Culture, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand, 30.
K. R. Howe, ‘The Maori response to Christianity in the Thames-Waikato area, 1833–1840’, NZJH, 7 (April 1973), 39.
R. G. Jameson, New Zealand, South Australia and New South Wales (London, 1841), 260–2.
John Morgan, 16 September 1858, cited in Parr, ‘Maori literacy 1843–1867’, 217. Also see Charles Hursthouse, An Account of the Settlement of New Plymouth (London, 1849) 30; MR (1849), 485.
For example, William Yate, An Account of New Zealand and of the Church Missionary Society’s Mission in the Northern Island (London, 1835), 239–40;
Richard Taylor, The Past and Present of New Zealand: with its prospects for the future (London, 1868), 20.
Atholl Anderson, The Welcome of Strangers. An Ethnohistory of Southern Maori A. D. 1650–1850 (Dunedin, 1998), 220–4.
On this dynamic see Ann Parsonson, ‘The expansion of a competitive society’, NZJH, 14 (1980), 45–60
and F. Allan Hanson and Louise Hanson, Counterpoint in Maori Culture (London, 1983).
See Ruth Finnegan, Literacy and Orality: Studies in the Technology of Communication (Oxford, 1988).
See J Belich, Making Peoples, 140–155; James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland, 1988).
Barry Mitcalfe, Maori Poetry. The Singing Word (Wellington, 1974), 7.
For example, Lawrence M. Rogers ed., The Early Journals of Henry Williams 1826–40 (Christchurch, 1961), 456.
Belich, Making Peoples, 168–9; Philip Turner, ‘The Politics of Neutrality: The Catholic Mission and the Maori 1838–1878’ (University of Auckland, MA thesis, 1986).
Bronwyn Elsmore, Mana from Heaven: a Century of Maori Prophets in New Zealand (Tauranga, 1989), 44.
Maori in the north of North Island were consistently wary of the ‘Wiwis’, the French, in the wake of reprisals following the death of the explorer Marion du Fresne. Hugh Carleton, The Life of Henry Williams (Wellington, 1948), 254–5. British missionaries also feared that the French might pre-empt the annexation of New Zealand, and in the wake of annexation French influence was suspected to lie behind Maori resistance to the Treaty of Waitangi and the northern war of 1845–6.
William Colenso, The Authentic and Genuine History of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, 1890), 34; James Stack to CMS, 4 April 1840, HL, CN/O78.
William Colenso, He Pukapuka Waki; he wakakite atu i nga henga o te Hahi o Roma [A Book of Errors, revealing the errors of the Church of Rome] (Paihia, 1840); Ko te tuarua o nga Pukapuka Waki [The Second Book of Errors] (Paihia, 1840).
Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier, Early History of the Catholic Church in Oceania (Auckland, 1888), 44.
W. B. Ullathorne, The Autobiography of Archbishop Ullathorne with selections from his letters (London, 1891), 177–8.
Jane Thomson, ‘The Roman Catholic mission in New Zealand, 1838–1870’ (Victoria University of Wellington, MA thesis, 1966), 230–2.
See Kay Sanderson, ‘Maori Christianity on the East Coast’, NZJH, 17 (1983), 175.
Frances Porter (ed.), The Turanga Journals (Wellington, 1974), 592.
Sorrenson emphasizes this: ‘It was an attempt to forge the tribes into a Maori nation — a nation within a nation.’ Sorrenson, ‘Maori and Pakeha’, The Oxford History of New Zealand, W. H. Oliver ed. (Wellington, 1981), 180.
Lyndsay Head, ‘Te Ua and the Hauhau Faith in the light of the Ua Gospel Notebook’ (University of Canterbury, MA thesis, 1983).
James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars. A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period, 2 vols (Wellington, 1922), I, 446.
This relationship was communicated in the Kingitanga symbol of two upright sticks, one symbolizing the Maori King and one the British Queen, joined by a third representing the law. Alan Ward, A Show of Justice: Racial ‘Amalgamation’ in Nineteenth Century New Zealand (Auckland, 1973), 101.
Claudia Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington, 1987), 143.
Cox, Kotahitanga, 50; Thomas Buddle, The Maori King Movement (Auckland, 1860), 8. This flag, a red St George’s cross on a white background with a blue field containing a red cross and four white stars in the upper left corner, became a powerful symbol for Maori. Not only did it allow the chiefs’ ships duty-free entry into Australian ports, but the chiefs believed that the flag recognized New Zealand as a separate country but affirmed a special tie to England.
On Te Rauparaha see W. T. L. Travers, The Stirring Times of Te Rauparaha (Chief of the Ngatitoa) (Christchurch, 1906 [1872]);
T. Lindsay Buick, An Old New Zealander, or, Te Rauparaha, the Napoleon of the south (London, 1911).
Cleave, ‘Tribal and state-like political formations’, JPS, 92 (1983), 58–62, the quote is at 58.
Head and Mikaere note that Christianity and literacy were essential in this new political order: ‘After about 1850, no Maori leader with more than local aspirations was unable to read and write’. Lyndsay Head and Buddy Mikaere, ‘Was 19th century Maori society literate?’ Archifacts, 2 (1988), 19.
John Gorst, The Maori King (Auckland, 1959 [1864]), 103.
Paul Clark, ‘Hauhau’: the Pai Marire Search for Maori identity (Auckland, 1975), 17.
Lyndsay Head, ‘The Gospel of Te Ua Haumene’, JPS, 101 (1992), 14–15, 16–17, 28–9.
William Greenwood, The Upraised Hand, or The Spiritual Significance of the Rise of the Ringatu Faith (Wellington, 1942), 15.
J Greenwood, The Upraised Hand, 25; W. Hugh Ross, Te Kooti Rikirangi: General and Prophet (Auckland, 1966), 52.
Binney, ‘Myth and explanation in the Ringatu tradition’, JPS, 93 (1984), 368–70.
L. G. Kelly, ‘Some problems in the study of Maori genealogies’, JPS, 49 (1940), 241.
See Jean Comaroff, ‘The colonization of consciousness’, Economy and Society, 18 (1989), 267–96.
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© 2002 Tony Ballantyne
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Ballantyne, T. (2002). Print, Literacy and the Recasting of Maori Identities. In: Orientalism and Race. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508071_6
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