ECONOMIC CONFLICT AND RACIAL TENSION

Te Ao Hou, June 1959, Page 11

ECONOMIC CONFLICT AND RACIAL TENSION The racial conflict which led to the wars of the 'sixties was mainly economic in origin. Economic conflict, in the northern part of the island, was a direct result of the expansion of the European economy—mercantile and agricultural—centred on Auckland. It was aggravated by the success of Maori agricultural production. Auckland merchants wanted to invest profits from the Maori trade in land; and the Maoris, now that they were successfully cultivating their land, did not want to give it up. Increased immigration increased the European demand for land. Auckland farmers resented Maori competition because Maoris were undercutting them in the market. The Maori tribes, while growing European crops and using European equipment, retained their traditional group methods of organised work. They did not farm as individuals. This was the secret of their success, enabling them to produce crops at lower costs than the European farmers. Some European farmers could compete by employing cheap Maori labour; but this embittered unemployed European labourers.

The fact that the bottom fell out of the agricultural export market in 1856 did not lessen economic conflict. European farmers changed over to pastoralism, which needed more land, and made incessant demands for the fertile Waikato. The Maoris stuck to agriculture and were annoyed when the merchants reduced prices for wheat and potatoes. Moreover the growth of two different styles of farming led to numerous petty squabbles. Maori pigs rooted in European pastures and their dogs worried European sheep; European cattle destroyed Maori crops. European merchants went in for trading arms, ammunition and liquor and Maoris in their eagerness to buy these got into debt. The merchants wanted land to pay the debts. Maori opposition to land selling was increasing. The various Waikato tribes, having seen Ngatiwhatua swamped by selling their land in the ‘forties, were determined to halt European expansion into their own district. They had already sold land at Mangere and Waiuku but in the early ‘fifties they agreed to ban land sales south of the Mangatawhiri. In Auckland itself suspicion and racial antipathy were growing It was found that contact with Europeans was not an unmixed blessing. Restrictions against selling liquor had become a dead letter. European publicans sold the deadly waipiro openly in the town and out-settlements; even in the Waikato where they held “bush licences.” Drunken Maoris became a regular sight in the streets of Auckland There was no proper accommodation in town for Maori visitors from the country. If they did not camp at Orakei they had to put up with one miserable hovel in the town, described as no better than a pig sty. Europeans ignorant of Maori customs failed to treat chiefs with courtesy. Often there were drunken brawls; sometimes inter-racial fights, as at Otahuhu in 1857 when a group of military pensioners and some Waikato Maoris came to blows. In this, according to one newspaper which admitted it did not have all the facts, the Maoris got “a well-merited thrashing.” Such episodes aggravated racial friction. The King Movement developed in the Waikato. It was primarily an attempt to save the land, but it was spurred on by the treatment Maoris received in Auckland. Speakers at King party meetings frequently referred to the evils of liquor, the prostitution of their women and ill-treatment in Auckland. Wiremu Tamihana Tarapipi became the leading promoter of the movement after being badly treated by a Government official in Auckland. Potatau Te Whero Whero, who had lived for some years at Mangere as a reliable friend of the Government and Europeans, withdrew to Ngaruawahia in 1858 to accept the Kingship. Many of his kinsmen went with him.