It might be a whopper, coming in at 650 pages, but Michael Belgrave’s sweeping history of New Zealand is a fluent, authoritative, and often revisionist page-turner.
While not as enjoyably idiosyncratic as Brian Easton’s underrated Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand (2020), Belgrave’s book is a worthy successor to Michael King’s mega-hit Penguin History of New Zealand (2003). Belgrave, like King, is a deeply erudite historian who knows how to engage ordinary readers.
Any new history of New Zealand needs to contend with work into the effects of colonialism, and the relationship between the state and Māori as tangata whenua. It needs to be thronged with Māori historical figures, and not the usual parade of mutton-chopped politicians.
As a Waitangi Tribunal historian, Belgrave is well equipped for the task, with his deep understanding of individual iwi histories. His chapter on the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi is almost cinematic, exploring not only the signing of the treaty itself, but the jostling for power and influence between Europeans.
Hobson, it turns out, had a burning desire to be lieutenant governor before anything was decided or signed, and this, writes Belgrave, “completely changed the nature of the negotiations”. Debate began by focusing not on sovereignty, but on whether Hobson should stay or go.
James Busby, [New Zealand’s first jurist] “made it clear that Hobson’s [desire to be treated as instant governor] was specious. Captain Joseph Nias, who had shipped Hobson across the Tasman on HMS Herald, doesn’t seem to have taken to Hobson. He ‘crammed’ Hobson and his retinue into his cutter and ‘His Excellency was shoved ashore’ at Kororāreka.
“’Had it not been that 11 guns had been fired from the Herald, His Excellency would have been left to read his proclamation to the wooden walls and his suite.’ (The 11-gun salute was the entitlement of a consul, not the 21 guns for a lieutenant governor). Nias’s scornful response had been both visually and audibly demonstrated to everyone on the Kororāreka foreshore.”
Meanwhile, the Anglican and Wesleyan missionaries were disturbed to see Bishop Pompallier, the French Catholic bishop with a different agenda to their own, plumping himself down next to Hobson – elbowing them out.
Today there are plenty of self-appointed experts on the Treaty of Waitangi. You might have seen a campaign by lobby groups using their version of history to abolish the partnership between the Crown and Māori, get rid of Māori electorates, abolish the Waitangi Tribunal, restrict tribal powers and remove all references in law and in Government policy to Treaty partnership and principles.
But Belgrave really is an expert, and his history is persuasive because he knows his subject so well, and, seemingly, the often surprising backstory of everybody involved. Māori were willing to further a relationship with the British Crown to safeguard their land, but not at the cost of their chiefly authority. Some early missionaries fervently opposed colonialism, without seeming to realise they were an important part of it.
There is far more in here than the years of Te Tiriti and the subsequent betrayal of Māori. While light on environmental change (perhaps because it would have made the book too heavy to lift), Belgrave’s history covers a lot of national ground, ranging from the arrival of the first waka, to Covid and the Wellington anti-mandate protests. Such a vast sweep of
history requires the author to pull on many hats: economist, political analyst, biographer, social historian. From a mountain of dusty data, Belgrave has drawn a fresh perspective
on the history of Aotearoa which is a joy to read. I loved the sense that over every line hovered his light wit, ready to pounce.
Hobson, Belgrave writes, promised to control settlers and protect Māori chiefly authority. Sadly “he possessed no military power and little more than a half-dozen police – enough to salute him, but insufficient even to defend him from an angry crowd.”
Jenny Nicholls
Waiheke Weekender
