The Treaty of Waitangi

This document -- a treaty between the British the Maori -- established New Zealand as a nation. The spirit of the agreement was to see to the best interests of both the Maori and the Crown, but a hurried translation of the document led to some confusion. Read the show notes here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. So we've
got a lot of people who have asked us to
talk about the Treaty of White Tangy, and this is

(00:23):
including a listener mail that we read on the podcast
a very long time ago in which I pronounced white
Tangy terribly, like really really badly. Somebody later wrote in
and said that I did a good job, and I'm
pretty sure that person was kidding, because I did a
very bad job. I'm behind. Yes, I'm I'm hoping to

(00:47):
do a better job today. I've been listening to a
whole lot of film from New Zealand. So this is
a treaty that was signed by representatives of the British
Government and the Mowing of New Zealand, or as it's
known in the Maori language Ao Taroa, and that means
land of the Long White Cloud. So this is the

(01:07):
document that established New Zealand as a nation. And unlike
with many, many, many other treaties between the British government
and indigenous peoples that had happened earlier in history. The
spirit of this agreement was really to see to the
best interests of both the Maori and the Crown, which

(01:29):
makes it kind of an anomaly UH and kind of
groundbreaking in the words are in the world of like
colonial and indigenous relations. However, the English and Maori texts
of this treaty are so different that they're almost fundamentally
different documents, and so debate over exactly what the treaty

(01:50):
meant and how it should be interpreted started almost immediately,
And given the history of mankind on the earth, it
should also be a surprise to no one that not
everything afterward followed the original spirit of the treaty anyway.
So that's what we're going to talk about today, this
treaty and how it came about and some of what

(02:13):
it led to you. And you know, as with any treaty,
there are pros and cons to it. But when you
look at the grand spectrum um of relations between UH
colonizing governments and indigenous peoples, this one was a lot
of different, a lot different than a lot of what
came before. So we're gonna do a little bit of

(02:35):
groundwork here about New Zealand UH Dutch explorer Able Tasman
first sighted New Zealand in sixteen forty two, and then
James Cook's cabin boy, who was called Young Nick, spotted
it again in seventeen sixty nine. Europeans were fairly slow
to arrive in New Zealand from that point, so the

(02:57):
whalers and the steelers came first, and then missionaries followed
not long after. By the eighteen thirties, they were approximately
a hundred and twenty five thousand Maori living in New Zealand,
and a few British settlers made it a frontier outpost
of New South Wales, which at the time was a
British penal colony. Overall, for the most part, early relations

(03:21):
between the Maori and the Europeans who were arriving in
New Zealand were mostly peaceful. There were occasional disputes and fights. However,
the British law did not extend to New Zealand because
New Zealand wasn't British territory, and so this meant that
there really was not any law governing the British subjects

(03:41):
who wound up there, who naturally did not feel like
they were beholden to Maori law. And so this was
especially problematic given that many of the subjects of the
Crown who made their way to New Zealand were convicts
who had escaped from New South Wales. So you had
people who were convicted criminals making their way to this
other island where there were no laws to govern them.

(04:04):
And as more people moved in, uh, trading efforts started
to grow because people need things, and so more than
one thousand British ships began visiting New Zealand every year,
and New Zealand started to become more appealing to other
European governments as a consequence, including France. Eventually, as the

(04:24):
population of Europeans started to grow, some of them asked
the British government to help establish some kind of official
system to try to maintain order. It was this kind
of lawless place among the European settlers at this point.
They were also a lot of the British subjects were
hoping for protection that would prevent the encroachment of other

(04:48):
European governments, and at first the British were really not
eager to do this. They did not really want to uh,
you know, extend their holdings into New Zealand at all,
so Eventually, in eighteen thirty five, a man named James
Busby was given the official post of British Resident in
New Zealand, and this was sort of like being a

(05:10):
consular official. He was there to represent the Crown, that
was his job, but he really didn't have any actual
power and he had almost no support from the British government,
so consequently people called him the Man of War without guns.
One of Buzzby's acts as British Resident, which kind of
cracked me up as a title for some reason, although

(05:33):
one that was done without any authority to do so,
was to draw up a declaration of Independence of the
Northern Chiefs. And this document declared New Zealand a sovereign
nation under the absolute rule of its hereditary chiefs and
tribal leaders. And his goal wasn't so much to make
the Maori independent as to try to block the French
from making their own treaty and taking the colony over.

(05:56):
Yes that Britain was not currently at war at Pramp
when this was going on, but they had been in
the recent past and for many many years, so they
were at best a little wary of each other. All
I can think of is the Eddie izard bit where
he does do you have a flag? It is actually
a lot like this for you. Yes, there is real

(06:20):
There was a real discussion about we need to get
the flag. We need to get a flag for the
New Zealanders. People will be more respectful of New Zealand
if it has a flag like that was a real
step in this whole process that we're not going into
a lot of detail about today. So Buzzby presented this
declaration to thirty four Maori chiefs at his home on
the North Island. So additional chiefs then were originally present,

(06:44):
eventually signed the document, and then in ninety six the
Crown officially acknowledged Maori nationhood based on the existence of
this declaration. And before this point, the Maori had not
really had the concept of the state as part of
their worldview. In their social structure, each tribe governed itself
under the leadership of a chief known as rangatira. However,

(07:07):
as word of the declaration of independence spread, it solidified
the idea among the Maori that they were in fact
in charge of their own affairs and able to govern themselves.
So this declaration, though only gave New Zealand a temporary
respite from the influence of all these political factions from Europe.
By the late eighteen thirties there were about two thousand

(07:30):
settlers from Europe living in New Zealand, and a number
of British businesses and shipping companies were planning to scale
up their operations there, and there, of course was also
interest substantially from France. There were also huge amounts of
trade going on between New Zealand and New South Wales,
so the Maori wanted to begin trading with other nations themselves,

(07:51):
but doing so was difficult without being first officially recognized
as a nation, which brings us back to the question
of whether they had a flag, which was a real
point of discussion uh in all of this, in a
move that was definitely as much about protecting its own
interests from France as protecting the Maori from anybody. In
eighteen thirty nine, the British government dispatched William Hobson of

(08:14):
the Royal Navy to go to New Zealand and negotiate
on behalf of the crown, and his assignment was to
establish a treaty with the Maori, and once that was done,
he was to act as Lieutenant governor for any part
of New Zealand that would agree to become a British colony.
Hobson got a lot of direction about exactly what he
was supposed to do, and included in all of this

(08:37):
were these instructions from Lord normanby the Colonial Secretary regarding
this assignment. This is quote. All dealings with the Aborigines
for their lands must be conducted on the same principles
of sincerity, justice, and good faith as must govern your
transactions with them for the recognition of Her Majesty's sovereignty

(08:57):
in these islands. Nor is this all. They must not
be permitted to enter into any contracts in which they
might be ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves.
You will not, for example, purchase from them any territory
the retention of which by them would be essential or
highly conducive to their own comfort, safety, or substance. The

(09:21):
acquisition of land by the Crown for the future settlement
of British subjects must be confined to such districts as
the natives can alienate without distress or serious inconvenience to themselves.
To secure the observance of this rule will be one
of the first duties of their official protector. So if
you know anything about relations with indigenous people in the

(09:45):
world before this point, this is basically the opposite of
how a lot of these treaties were previously carried out,
Like there were many many treaties in the settlement of
what is now the United States and in Africa and
in the South Pacific and in South America that we're
basically like, here is this treaty where we're gonna make
you think you're getting a good deal, but we, the

(10:06):
people who are colonizing, are actually taking you for a
giant ride. So this was specifically at this point the
world having learned that this was a bad thing to
do UH against the rules, like he he was supposed
to get down there and actually put a treaty together
in good faith. And so, considering the tone of a

(10:29):
lot of earlier treaties between the British UH and Indigenous
People's or later Americans and Indigenous People's or whoever and
indigenous people's UH, this was hugely progressive um. But at
the same time, some of the flavor of the instruction
was also kind of racist, since a big underlying tone
of all of it was that from the British point

(10:51):
of view, the Maori were not actually capable of handling
their own affairs, so they're Although it was a big
step forward in relations with indigenous people, it was not
entirely free from problems. Hobson arrived on January twenty nine,
eighteen forty, and he had been corresponding with George Gipps,
who was Governor of New South Wales, about what exactly

(11:14):
should go into the treaty, and once he arrived, Hobson
also worked with his secretary, who was named James Freeman,
as well as James Buzzby, who we discussed earlier on
completing this treaty. So they basically got completely down to
the wire on putting the treaty together. They had summoned
all of these chiefs to a big meeting uh but
they didn't have a draft of the treaty to actually

(11:37):
have translated until the night before. So on the eve
of this meeting they handed the treaty over to Henry Williams,
who was a missionary, and Williams translated the text into
Maori with the help of his son Edward. At this point,
the Williams had established relationships with the Maori, and they
spoke the Maori language, but they really did not have

(11:58):
a lot of time to put their translation together. On
February five, once again in Buzby's home, the representatives of
Britain presented the treaty to about five hundred assembled Maori,
and while there was extensive discussion, no agreement was actually signed.
The next day, which was February six, after a little
more discussion, forty five chiefs did sign the treaty. The

(12:22):
first to sign was the chief named hona Heke, who
was also called Hone Pocai, and he felt a treaty
with the British was their best option. The day before
the treaty was signed, he reportedly said to Hobson, Governor,
you should stay with us and be like a father.
If you go away, then the French and the rum
sellers will take us Maori over. So hana Heck's support

(12:44):
was really instrumental in getting a lot of the other
chiefs to sign the treaty, and from there the original
treaty as well as copies of it, were sent around
the islands to gather additional signatures, and in the end,
uh more than five hundred Maori signa jurors were applied
to the document, and thirteen of the signatures were from women. Overwhelmingly,

(13:05):
the Maori who signed the treaty signed a Maori language version,
with at least one British subject signing as well. And
who this British signatory was varied from place to place.
Not every rangatira signed the document. Some of them never
got a chance to, because while copies of the treaty
were distributed, they didn't make it to every single part

(13:27):
of the islands that make up New Zealand. There were
also definitely chiefs who opposed the treaty on the grounds
that the protections that were being granted were just not
enough to outweigh the independence that they would be giving up.
There were also chiefs who were suspicious of the British
government's intent about the whole thing. And then farther inland,
there were chiefs who just didn't see the point because they,

(13:49):
not being from the more coastal areas, hadn't actually had
a lot of contact with people from Europe by then.
And even though not every chief had signed, the British
government felt that the treaty applied to all Maori, whether
they had signed it or not. They also almost universally
viewed the English language version of the text as the
true version of the text. Within a few years, British

(14:12):
officials admitted that crown sovereignty would outweigh Maori leadership when
the two were in conflict. Uh, hey, treaty, Do you
want to pause for a moment from our Pacific adventure
for a word from a sponsor? So to get back
to this treaty itself. The Treaty of Whitangy opens with
a preamble and that's followed by three articles. Article woman quote.

(14:35):
The chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of
New Zealand and the separate and independent chiefs who have
not become members of the Confederation, seed, to Her Majesty,
the Queen of England, absolutely and without reservation, all the
rights and powers of sovereignty which the said Confederation or
individual chiefs respectively, exercise or possess, or may be supposed

(14:56):
to exercise or to possess over their respective territory as
the sole sovereign thereof. So the extremely short and oversimplified
version of this is basically, you, the British, are the
boss of us the Maori as of now yeah. So
Article two reads, Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms
and guarantees to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand,

(15:19):
and to the respective families and individuals thereof, the full,
exclusive and undisturbed possessions of their lands and estates, forest, fisheries,
and other properties which they make collectively or individually possess,
so long it is as it is their wish and
desire to retain the same in their possession. But the

(15:39):
chiefs of the united tribes and the individual chiefs yield
to Her Majesty the exclusive right of preemption over such
lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate
at such prices as may be agreed upon between the
respective proprietors and the persons appointed by Her Badesty to
treat with them on that behalf. So the oversimplified summation

(16:03):
on that one is, UH, you can keep your land
and your stuff unless you want to give it to us. Uh.
If you want to do that, we'll figure out a price.
Article three is in consideration thereof her Majesty, the Queen
of England extends to the natives of New Zealand, her
Royal protection and imparts to them all the rights and
privileges of British subjects. That one's already pretty short, but

(16:26):
it basically it exchange for giving up their sovereignty, the
Maori get the protection of the crown and the rights
and privileges that are due to British subjects. And the
document ends with an epilogue which essentially states that both
parties have entered into the spirit of the treaty, which
has been important in determining whether future acts violated the treaty.

(16:47):
Uh it's the spirit, not the letter. So that's the
English parts. But there are some huge and important and
meaningful differences between the English and the Maori texts in
almost every part of the entire treaty, and those differences
start right from the beginning. The English preamble is focused
on providing for British settlement of New Zealand while also

(17:09):
protecting the Maori's interests as well as setting up a
government in the interest of maintaining peace and order. But
the Maori preamble is focused on securing Maui claims to
land and tribal governance and autonomy or Tino rangatira tanga.
In Article one of the English version, the Maori chiefs
are seating quote the rights and powers of sovereignty to

(17:31):
the Queen of England. But in the Maori translation, the
word sovereignty was translated to a word that's closer to governorship,
which is a much less encompassing concept than sovereignty. There
was no exact translation for the word sovereignty in the
Maori language. The English version of the article of Article

(17:51):
two grants the Maori quote the full, exclusive and undisturbed
possession of their lands and estates forest fisheries and other properties,
but the Maori translation UH used a phrase that meant
quote the full essence of chieftainship, again suggesting that the
Maori were more or less getting full control over their
own affairs. The translation of forest, fisheries and other properties

(18:15):
is problematic too, since it was translated into a Maori
word that more closely means treasures. Yeah. There's been a
lot of UH discussions about what is included in treasures.
Is like, is the Maori language a treasure. Yeah, that's
a pretty culture that treasure. Yeah, that's a word of
nebulous meaning it's very nebulous, and so with huge differences,

(18:38):
like huge meaningful differences in the overwhelming bulk of this treaty.
The debate about what the treaty was really supposed to
mean and about what the Maori believed that they were
signing started almost immediately. And on top of that, there
is significant speculation about how exactly those discrepancies between the

(18:58):
two texts came to be. There. Was it a simple error,
you know, due to this sort of rush translation that
had to happen, or was it actually a more orchestrated
effort to slant the text uh in an effort to
make it more palatable to the Maori? And there is
really no clear documentation, although there's loads of speculation. There's

(19:19):
also a big subject of speculation around how much the
British signatories were even aware that these discrepancies existed. There
had been lengthy meetings and discussions about the treaty and
the text, and the williams Is were, as we said before,
familiar with the Maori language. Um, but you know, they
didn't have a lot of time to put this all together.

(19:40):
So you know, at this point in history, it's kind
of unclear exactly how much both sides knew about the
differences between what one was signing and what the other
was signing. But regardless of the differences, with this treaty
in place, New Zealand became a British colony, at first
as part of news South Wales and later that same

(20:01):
year as its own colony. So, because this was the
document that established New Zealand as a nation, to try
to recap everything that happened as a result of the
Treaty of Whitangy would basically require summing up basically the
entire history of New Zealand from the time that it
was signed, so so extremely briefly summarized. With the door

(20:26):
now opened to settling from Britain, a lot of settlers
from England, Ireland and Scotland started making their way to
New Zealand, with thousands of people arriving over the next decade.
Within a few years, Hona Heck had withdrawn his support
for the treaty. He was feeling disillusioned that it was

(20:47):
not in fact as beneficial for the Maori as he
had believed it was going to be. As an act
of protest, he had the flagpole at a British settlement
repeatedly cut down. In the eighteen fifties, the European settlers
in New Zealand established their own government, and in eighteen
fifty three the first Parliament convened in New Zealand. But
at that point the Maori were completely excluded from holding

(21:10):
seats are from voting, following a pretty British tradition. Um
landownership was a requirement for both of these and most
property ownership among the Maori at that point was communal
instead of individual, so it took a while for that
to shift, so that was more compatible um with the
Maori worldview to allow the Maori to participate in the government.

(21:34):
Uh In eighteen sixty seven, Maori men gained the right
to vote in the Maori people actually gained four seats,
and that was intended to be a temporary move. Today, however,
the Maori continue to have seats in Parliament and can
choose to vote among the general or the Maori electorate.
The number of Maori seats in Parliament varies depending on
how many choose to vote in the Maori electorate. I

(21:56):
think right now there are seven based on that number
UM and there's a lot of bait about whether having
specifically Maori seats are whether that's a good thing. Or
a bad thing. There's debate on both sides, UM and
I can see both sides of that argument. There are
people who feel like maybe the Maori would have more
representation if they UH did not have these pre arranged seats,

(22:18):
or people who feel like having these seats at all
is racist in some way. Like there's a lot of
ongoing discussion about that. UH. In nineteen seventy five, the
White Tangy Tribunal was established, and this investigates claims by
Maori on breaches of the Treaty. For the first ten
years of its existence, this tribunal only investigated issues that

(22:39):
happened since it was established. However, in nine five its
scope was expanded to include everything that has happened since
the treaty was signed in eighteen forty and only Maori
can make claims and these are against either the Crown
or against legislation. They can be contemporary or historical. There's

(23:00):
also a special Land Court to deal specifically with Maori land.
So today, New Zealand has grown into a parliamentary democracy
with three official languages, English, Maori and sign Language. The
House of Representatives, which is a body of elected officials,
makes the laws it's also simultaneously a constitutional monarchy, with

(23:20):
the reigning Sovereign of Great Britain being the Sovereign of
New Zealand as well. So as we are recording this,
Queen Elizabeth two is the Queen of the United Kingdom
as well as being Queen of New Zealand. So in
this whole arrangement that's a separate thing. New Zealand is
not just part of the United Kingdom. The Queen's involvement
in the government is also mostly symbolic. She's represented by

(23:43):
the Governor General, but a Prime Minister handles the day
to day running of the government. Um. I know most
of our listeners are from the United States, and this
sounds like very complicated system of government, considering uh what
what a lot of our listeners used to Yeah, it's
a lot of layers of different branches of government sort

(24:04):
of all theoretically playing nice together to make it even
a little bit more complex. The name New Zealand does
not even come from the British. It comes from the Dutch.
So when the Dutch cited it, they named it after
the Netherlands province of Zealand because at that point Australia
was called New Holland, which you know is another part

(24:26):
of Netherlands, and the treaty itself was actually almost lost
or destroyed a number of times over the years, including
by fire and by efforts to preserve the document that
we're actually damaging. Uh. Now, these documents are in the
Constitution Room at the Archives of New Zealand in Wellington.
I like this story because it does represent such a

(24:48):
big step forward in relationships between colonial governments and indigenous peoples,
but at the same time, like it's not perfect and
there's still colonialism happening in this whole situation san so
like I've really have two minds about it. But without
this treaty, like when you uh look at documents about
New Zealand or if you ever visit New Zealand, like

(25:10):
you see, it's sort of a multicultural place in a
lot of ways at this time, and I don't think
that would exist without this treaty having been created and signed.
And this story is also a sort of a nice
snapshot of how issues of government can become extremely complex.
But you know, based on one thing like that one

(25:32):
translation led to a great deal of discussion and all
of these sort of bizarre layers of government that happened
as a consequence. Yeah. So when this when the White
Tangy Tribunal looks at cases where people have filed a
grievance against the government or against the law, it's sort
of looking at okay, what was the spirit of the
treaty supposed to be in this case and was the

(25:53):
spirit of the treaty followed um. I tried to find
some data about how many cases the tribunal has heard UM,
and I was not able to find that before we recorded.
So if someone knows and you send us, we will
probably read it on a future listener mail. Do you
have some listener mail now? I do. So. We have
gotten so much male about our recent episode about the

(26:17):
Spanish flu pandemic UM. A lot of it has been
from people who are sharing personal stories about grandparents and
other relatives who died during the flu or her who
survived the flu. UM. This one is from Abbey Babby says, Hey, ladies,
I'm a grad student in history and I'm writing my
thesis on a pandemic flu. I loved the Spanish flu episode,

(26:40):
and I just wanted to add a bit of knowledge
I have collected about flu. I'm studying the eighteen eighty
nine to eighteen ninety four Russian flu, the pandemic that
immediately preceded the Spanish flu. It has some shocking similarities,
a similar death curve, although it was less dramatic, it
was very virulent to the extent that it shut down
and impacted services, telegraph operators, stores, postal workers, and policemen,

(27:03):
and the panic the pandemic caused. For context, I'm studying
this pandemic's effect on the British medical community. I don't
have the numbers in front of me, but it affected
millions of people. Newspapers tracked the flues progress across Europe
and led the Young Public Health Board in the UK
to tract in what was Victorian real time, the disease

(27:25):
across Europe and with the country and within the country
people freaked out. It was luckily a mild flu, but
touched many people's lives in many ways. It was a
milder Spanish flu, although it is unlikely that the two
virus strains are related. During this pandemic, the Bacillus was identified,
and bacterial pneumonia and bronchitis are linked to influenza. This

(27:47):
influenza was also associated with depression to those who survived.
Doctors noticed an uptick in the rate of suicide of
influenza survivors, although this may also have some cultural factors.
My thesis advice there is an epidemiologist and don't worry. Ironically,
the more flu strains you get, the better prepared for
a major pandemic your body is. Kind of that's simplistic,

(28:09):
but a major pandemic, rather than an annual epidemic cold
and flu season generally results from the appearance of a
new strain, and before two thousand and nine would result
in the new strain of placing the old strain, so
the new strain doesn't have immuno markers to save people.
This has changed recently with the newer vaccine practices and technology.
One theory for why older generations a better survived large

(28:33):
scale dramatic pandemics is that they have more exposures to
the older viruses that were replaced. So when the new
virus A is replacing old virus B in a pandemic,
those exposed to even older virus C may have better
ability to to survive virus A. You should still get
a flu shots and this will help your immune system

(28:53):
even more. But the more strains you're exposed to, your
body is better prepared for taking an entirely new strain.
The She goes on to talk a little bit more
about vaccination technology and how the flu is very scary,
but you're probably going to survive. So um, thank you
very much, Abby. Yes, I like how many people have
written to reassure us that I will not die of flu. Yeah.

(29:16):
I also like, I genuinely appreciate it. I'm not being
facetious when I say that. I also like how many
people have written to us about Plague Incorporated, which I
talked about um previously, which that has scenarios now um,
And there is a swine flue scenario that is based
on being having things in common with the Spanish blue epidemic,

(29:37):
and I have not played that one yet. I've pretty
much immediately played Black Death and Small Marx like you do.
You know, Hey, so if you would like to write us,
you can totally do that thing. Uh. And our email
is a little bit different. It's all still the same.
It comes to us just the same as it always has.
But the email now is history podcast at how stuff
Works dot com. You can connect with us on Facebook

(29:58):
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(30:19):
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(30:40):
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