New Zealand Journal of History, 2001

Historical accounts of Maori-European interaction have, since the mid-1970s, been driven by the priorities of Treaty/Tribunal research which has essentially sought to reveal Maori suffering and loss due to the failure of colonial authorities to honour Treaty ideals and promises. Tribunal processes may have essential social policy results with financial and related benefits for Maori claimants. But the nature of the Tribunal’s historical justification is more problematic. That is, New Zealand’s contact history tends to be narrowly interpreted as an uneven contest between unscrupulous and powerful colonial authorities/agencies, and passive, innocent Maori victims.

Paul Monin, who cut many of his historical teeth working for Hauraki Treaty claimants, has courageously stepped outside this paradigm and emphasises the complexities and subtleties of the contact process – ‘where interaction outweighed confrontation, where ground was shared as well as contested by European and Maori, and where both races made strategic decisions on how best to advance their respective interests.’ He offers the concept of ‘dual agency’ whereby Maori and European shared initiatives, and responsibilities.

He looks at what happened to people and situations on the ground, so to speak, rather than narrates a predetermined morality tale. Dual agency by no means implies equality in power relationships. Indeed, as Monin powerfully demonstrates, few other tribal groups ‘underwent a greater or more rapid decline in fortunes in the nineteenth century’ than those of Hauraki. His persistent theme is that ‘European things were not so much imposed upon Maori as appropriated by them for their own purposes.’ The Hauraki peoples’ ‘ultimate downfall was substantially wrought by involvement in economic processes beyond their control and understanding’. Monin’s historical explanation ironically offers a more powerful story of loss than those who would simply see hegemonic colonial evil at work. He does not deny examples of colonial evil-doing, but argues for a more multi-dimensional understanding of causation.

This is a ‘regional history’. Monin’s Hauraki incorporates the Gulf and its islands, the Auckland isthmus, Coromandel Peninsula, the lower Waikato and Hauraki Plains. The chapters are arranged chronologically, from early European contact through to the dominance of the gold mining economy by 1875. There is unfortunately very little material on Hauraki before 1769. While much of Monin’s information is local/regional, he is well attuned to broader issues. Each chapter concludes with a few pages of ‘Reflections’. They are thoughtful and thought provoking. Agree with him or not, here we see a historian consciously aware of his position, relating his findings and approaches to understandings of New Zealand contact history and sometimes beyond. Those familiar with Pacific islands historiography will be pleased to see how Monin has sometimes been an adaptive importer.

Among his more useful reflections are those on the nature of Hauraki Maori exchanges with explorers and early traders. Monin challenges some of the more limited anthropological interpretations of indigenous ‘economic’ behaviour, emphasises the degree of shared Maori and European concepts of ‘trade’, and stresses Maori adaptability and control in early dealings. His discussion of the role of muskets in pre-1840 tribal conflicts is a nice counter to those who simplistically assume possession of muskets guaranteed devastating military superiority. His assessment of the state of Hauraki Maori by 1840 steers a sensible course between the extremes that they were decimated and lethargic as a result of Western influences, or that they were still pristine on the fateful eve of the founding of Auckland.

As he has done elsewhere, he argues that Maori played a major economic role in the early Auckland economy, and became involved in the export trade with Australia, participating ‘in their own economic colonisation … within indigenous parameters, largely untroubled by a colonial state that remained relatively remote, benign and peripheral.’ But the tide began to turn in the 1850s. The Australian export market collapsed in 1856, and it also became apparent that active Maori participation in capitalism did not turn Maori in to successful capitalists, especially regarding issues of investment and debt. Nevertheless, he argues that until the outbreak of war in 1863, ‘European settlement in Hauraki had proceeded on the basis of negotiation and compromise. The resort of the colonisers to war and land confiscation changed all that. In 1864 the people of Hauraki did not so much surrender as acknowledge the futility of further armed resistance.’ It was the gold economy that saw them finally lose initiative. Monin stresses the crippling consequences of debt in the period to 1875. Where pre-war debt had been caused by ‘over investment’ combined with the collapse of the Australian markets, the debts of the later 1860s came more from spending gold and town rents on ‘European food, clothes and whaleboats’, and on the provision of hakari. Such debts resulting from ‘under-production and … over-consumption’ precipitated the sale of much of the Coromandel Peninsula and the Piako region, and excluded Maori from the potential economic benefits of goldmining.

Monin’s careful research and thoughtful analysis makes a significant contribution not only to our understanding of a region, but to the historiography of culture contact in New Zealand. In particular, it is one of the first studies to move beyond the simplistic historical moralising that has dominated Tribunal related research over the past twenty or so years.

Land Loss Documented In New Edition of Hauraki History

Historical land losses suffered by Hauraki iwi were highlighted in recent Waitangi Tribunal findings. The story is vividly told in Paul Monin’s award-winning book Hauraki Contested, 1769–1875, just released in a new edition.

The Waitangi Tribunal has determined that Hauraki iwi are owed substantial redress following their loss of land and other taonga. But, as Paul Monin shows, this is not a simple case of Maori grievance pitting passive innocent victim against unscrupulous colonial authority.

Paul Monin draws on his own extensive historical research, including work for the Waitangi Tribunal, to describe two vigorous societies engaged in a tight interaction, each dependent on the other. Yet by the mid nineteenth century Hauraki iwi retained only 1 per cent of their original domain. Participating in economic processes beyond their control, a proud and energetic people living in a region rich in resources found themselves landless, poor and marginalized. Land-loss was exacerbated by government confiscations in the 1860s, for which the iwi received little or no compensation.

Hauraki Contested is a powerful and poignant account of a region in transformation. It is a history that offers much to present-day politics, and one which has resonance in all parts of New Zealand.

First published in 2001,Hauraki Contested was the joint winner of the J.M. Sherrard for regional history. Paul Monin has been researching history in the Hauraki Gulf area for many years, and worked for the Waitangi Tribunal on the Gulf Islands and Maori Claimant Commission (Wai 355).

Four hundred and fifty copies of the new edition of Hauraki Contested have been donated to New Zealand secondary schools by the Deane Endowment Trust, in memory of Elizabeth Stevens, a Ngati Maru woman born on Beeson’s Island (Whanganui Island) in Coromandel Harbour in 1838.

The intriguing sponsorship sees an historian’s academic study linked with a family’s personal journey to uncover details of an ancestor born into early colonial society. It is a story which mirrors the rich cross-cultural dynamics of New Zealand past and present.

Gillian Deane worked with publisher Bridget Williams to support a new edition of Hauraki Contested. Sponsorship from the Deane Endowment Trust included the donation of 450 copies to New Zealand secondary schools. The dedication to Elizabeth Stevens on the reverse of the title page adds another dimension to an eventful life reflecting Maori-Pakeha interaction in Auckland during the mid nineteenth century.

Attached: details of the life of Elizabeth Stevens and the family connection which led to the sponsorship by the Deane Endowment Trust.

For further information contact: Bridget Williams: info@bwb.co.nz; 04 4738 128

Elizabeth Stevens

The second edition of Hauraki Contested 1769-1875, (2006), was made possible by generous sponsorship resulting from its special interest to a reader in search of an ancestor.

Published by Bridget Williams Books (BWB), this acclaimed regional history was first published in 2001 under the longer title, This is My Place: Hauraki Contested, 1769-1875. The new edition received a grant from the Deane Endowment Trust in memory of Elizabeth Stevens, Ngati Maru.

The grant was made to the ‘Books Into School Libraries’ scheme, which BWB is in the course of developing, whereby 450 copies out of a print-run of 1,000 will go to schools free of charge. Schools will have access to books important to the intellectual life of the nation, while the publisher and authors will be able to complete books that might otherwise not be commercially viable.

Two research journeys lie behind this publishing event, coincidentally, both begun in about 1980: that of historian Paul Monin into the history of Waiheke Island and later the Hauraki region as a whole; and that of Natalie Blair into her great-grand mother Elizabeth Stevens, who was born at Coromandel Harbour in 1838. A general history is no more than the product of many individual histories, with the addition of setting.

Elizabeth Stevens, from what little we know about her, could not have been closer to the cross-cultural dynamics of the early colonial decades. She was born on Beeson’s Island (Whanganui Island in Coromandel Harbour) in 1838. Her father was William Stevens, a shipwright, and her mother, whose name is unknown, belonged to Ngati Maru/Ngati Whanaunga.

Beeson’s Island was then the base of William Webster, an enterprising American who controlled virtually all European activities in the Hauraki Gulf, as agent of a Sydney mercantile company. William Stevens was probably engaged in building cutters and schooners on the island for Webster. Nothing else is known about the lives of Elizabeth and her parents at Coromandel.

Elizabeth Stevens married Edward Hill at St. Paul’s in Auckland on 18 August 1858. Edward, a lawyer educated at St. John’s College, Oxford, came to New Zealand in 1852. How this part-Maori girl came to meet and marry a highly educated young Englishman is a story lost to us, barring the slim chance of a research breakthrough.

Elizabeth and Edward were close friends of the Fulloons, Elizabeth and her brother James, who attended their wedding. It is a connection that links the couple with a troubled chapter in the history of race relations in the Bay of Plenty. James Fulloon, an interpreter who supplied information on Maori politics to the colonial authorities, was murdered by Maori opponents at Whakatane in 1865.

Elizabeth is buried in the cemetery of the Church of St Bride’s at Mauku, close to Waiuku on the Manukau Harbour. Edward died days later of a broken heart and is buried alongside her. A ‘Selwyn church’ built in 1859, St Bride’s was fortified and loopholed for rifles during 1863 to 1864.

Three years ago Natalie persuaded her cousin, Gillian Deane, to join in the search for Elizabeth, recommending that she start by reading Paul Monin’s book. Gillian then contacted Paul for advice on possible new leads. The two journeys finally met. But, unfortunately, Paul has been unable to help directly and Elizabeth remains a little known figure in Coromandel and Auckland at a difficult time in our country’s history. Whatever the external circumstances, the relationship of Elizabeth and Edward, a union between the two races, stood fast.

The dedication to Elizabeth Stevens on the reverse of the title page adds a new dimension to the ongoing life of Hauraki Contested.

Paul Monin, 16 June 2006