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New Zealand Centennial surveys
XI. New Zealand in the World
New Zealand in the WorldbyF. L. W. WoodWellingtonDepartment of Internal AffairsNew Zealand1940
Author's Note
I wish to thank those in New Zealand and elsewhere who have discussed with me the problems of the Commonwealth, and whose suggestions and criticisms have helped to form the views set out in this survey. In particular I would thank those who read my manuscript and laboured to improve it by friendly but searching comment. To these my debt is great, and to them, but more especially to my most penetrating critic, I offer this fruit of the labour which they have shared.
F. L. W. WoodVictoria University CollegeWellington,March 1940
Contents
Author's NoteIsolation1Into the Imperial Fold17Self-Reliance35Vogelism56Decline of Independence78The Silken Bonds of Empire94The Approach of War113Note on Sources135Index141
Illustrations
New Zealand in its SettingFrontispiece
This map was specially drawn for the present work by J. R. Johansson of the Lands and Survey Department, Wellington.
The Link With Britainfacing page 28
This illustration, showing the deck of the Charlotte Jane, is reproduced from an original sketch made by Dr A. C. Barker on 25 October 1850. The Charlotte Jane was one of the 'first four ships' of the Canterbury settlement.
Maori and Pakeha,1849facing page 32
From a reproduction of the original sketch made by Sir George Grey at Lake Tarawera on 29 December 1849. It illustrates the baptism of Te Ngahue.
The Surrenderfacing page 50
A cartoon reproduced from Punch in Canterbury,17 June 1865. At this time the colonists were inclined to criticise the ineffectiveness of 'regular' soldiers in warfare against the Maoris, contrasting them very unfavourably with local troops. According to some critics, the soldiers' ineffectiveness was partly due to British opposition to the war as a whole, while there was continual controversy between Governor Grey and General Cameron as to tactics. However, though many urged that colonial volunteers could cope with Maoris in a way in which 'the Queen's troops' could not (or would not), colonists bitterly resented the repeated suggestion that they should be taken at their word and left to fight with their own resources.
Sir Julius Vogelfacing Page 66
This caricature by J. Leslie formed one of a collection, Parliamentary Portraits, published in Wellington in 1887.
'Treed'facing page 80
A cartoon by Trevor Lloyd published in The Auckland Weekly News,10 December 1914. The caption to the original runs: 'Sir Joseph Ward has unfortunately chosen to identify himself with the naval subsidy system, which is still in vogue for New Zealand, and to oppose with some bitterness the "local navy" movement which has the support of the Massey Party, and is undoubtedly favoured by the country at large.' At the general election of 1912Massey defeated Ward, and after consultation with the British Government, the Defence Minister, the Hon. (afterwards Sir) James Allen, carried through in 1913 the proposal for a New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, to be partly manned by New Zealanders but to revert to Admiralty control on the outbreak of war. As the cartoon shows, Ward was emphatic in his opposition to the scheme. The cartoon is a good example of the work of Trevor Lloyd, whose topical cartoons were a feature of The Auckland Weekly News from 1903 onwards.
Sir Joseph Ward at the Imperial Conference, 1911facing page 86
Reproduced from an original cartoon by E. F. Hiscocks now in the possession of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. It was at this Conference that Ward produced his grandiose scheme of imperial federation.
William Ferguson Masseyfacing page 102
These lively caricatures by David Low are reproduced here by permission of The Bulletin, Sydney.
This volume is one of a series commissioned and published by the Government of New Zealand. The Government however does not hold itself responsible for any statement made or opinions expressed herein. The responsibility for these is the author's and his alone.
New Zealand in the World
1 Isolation
Throughout her history New Zealand has been curiously detached from her Pacific environment. The voyage to Australia is short though stormy. Groups of islands to the northward in some measure link it on the one hand with Asia and on the other with America. Yet New Zealand thinks and acts as part of Europe, living in virtual isolation from the ancient cultures of the East and from the energetic modern people of North America. To this day New Zealanders see Asia, America, and Europe through the eyes of London. They inhabit a detached outpost, using modern perfection of communications constantly to refresh cultural and economic associations with England, instead of to forge links with Pacific neighbours. Thus has the course of history falsified expectation. Ninety and a hundred years ago colonists of vision were calmly confident that New Zealand was destined to be the centre of a great empire. Through her, British culture and probably British rule seemed destined to spread through the islands of the Pacific. New Zealand's geographical situation, her resources, and climate seemed to them to indicate an imperial destiny so plainly that words were scarcely needed to expound nature's plans. This is a dream that has never quite ceased to haunt New Zealanders; it has its monuments not only in the records of history but in the rule now exercised over small island groups far detached from New Zealand. But in the main Englishmen, like Maoris, have lived in a New Zealand insulated from her South Sea environment. In the case of Englishmen, however, the bond with the motherland has remained vital, and for a period which is long in the life of a modern people it has shown little or no sign of weakening. In the case of the Maori, on the other hand, the bond between those who migrated and those who did not was broken comparatively soon.
This isolation of the Maori is a curious fact in Polynesian history. At times which can only be surmised, the Polynesian peoples spread eastwards through the Pacific islands. Driven by the spirit of adventure and by pressure of over-population, they equipped themselves with great sea-going canoes which, according to some authorities, went as far east as America, and southwards even beyond New Zealand. This eastward movement was in some ways comparable to the great westward movements of those peoples who now inhabit Europe and North America. At times when Normans and Danes voyaged and conquered in European waters, Polynesians voyaged in the Pacific in vessels as finely constructed and skilfully navigated, and with spirit as intrepid. As part of this great movement New Zealand was invaded by Polynesians who had been driven by love of adventure or by pressure of war or hunger to embrace the speculation of distant colonisation. Maoris and Englishmen alike came to New Zealand because home conditions encouraged the enterprising to seek a fuller life elsewhere. The colonists who left Tahiti in the fourteenth century, like those who left England in 1840, set out on a bold, though not a desperate venture. They had faith in the skilled navigators who would guide them to their destination by knowledge of stars, the sun, and currents—as well as of the mysterious spirits who ruled the universe. They went to a land which had already been found, and to some extent settled, by men of their own race.
By the fourteenth century, indeed, New Zealand had already been populated, at least round the northeastern coast, by earlier and more mysterious colonists. Maori tradition paints these original inhabitants as a backward race, perpetually distressed by New Zealand's chilly climate, and hankering after the warmth of their homeland. Little is known of their origins, but it is guessed that among their ancestors were some Melanesians from the New Hebrides, driven hither by a storm. Thus were bequeathed to the Maori race a strain of Melanesian blood, the characteristic curved line in art forms, and the habit of constructing fortified villages or pas. By the fourteenth century a large Polynesian element had already mingled with these Melanesians as a result of small migrations which began, perhaps, one thousand years ago. Certainly the later arrivals in their turn quickly mingled with—and dominated—their backward predecessors.
The main migrations of the Maori's ancestors probably took place between 1250 and 1350, and during that period New Zealand had an organic connection with Polynesia. There was a recognised route from Tahiti to New Zealand, via Rarotonga and the Kermadecs, and canoes went northwards as well as south. But migration and contact both ceased about 1350. This was no doubt partly on account of the exceptionally long voyage involved, but it was partly a matter of general Polynesian history. The force of the great wave of migration had spent itself. There is not much reason to think that the spirit of enterprise had waned, but probably the economic spur which had driven on the migrants was removed. The island peoples found a rough balance between food supply and population, and gradually confined themselves to voyages which were less spectacular, though by no means without danger. As for those who had migrated to New Zealand, they probably found that the work of conquering a new country left little time and inclination for long ocean voyages. However this may be, the period of frequent voyages between Tahiti and New Zealand closed at a time when European sailors, creeping cautiously down the coast of Africa, scarcely dared to go beyond sight of land. Thus it happened that the Maori people lived in New Zealand for four centuries virtually without contact with the outside world. During this period they developed a culture of their own upon a Polynesian base, and a way of life which wrung reluctant respect from Europeans who were only too prone to class all coloured people as barbarians. A cool climate and the need for labour and ingenuity developed in the Maoris qualities of energy, character, and intellect which distinguished them sharply from most of the native peoples of the Pacific.
New Zealand's isolation was scarcely broken by the first recorded European visit, that of the Dutchman, Tasman, in 1642. Tasman indeed had a few days of unhappy contact with the Maoris. They understood no word of the speech which the Dutchmen had gathered from New Guinea and the Spaniards from the Solomons, and a boat was savagely attacked by Maori war canoes. Four Dutch sailors were killed—the name Murderers' Bay commemorated their death—and Tasman sailed northwards without landing. He drew maps of the coast which he skirted but did not closely examine, and guessed that it might be part of that great southern continent believed by some to fill the region which we call the South Pacific Ocean. Thereafter a strip of New Zealand coast appeared on the world's maps, but Tasman's visit was not followed up by other Europeans, and so did nothing to establish any regular contact between New Zealand and the outside world.
However, the tide of European expansion was rising strongly. Scientific curiosity urged that the mystery of the southern Pacific should be probed; merchants looked for gain in the most unlikely quarters; and rivalry between maritime nations spurred all to sustained efforts. Thus in the eighteenth century repeated voyages added each a little more to man's knowledge. But New Zealand remained unvisited until the central problem of the Pacific was firmly grasped by the greatest of modem seamen, James Cook. The occasion of Cook's first voyage was the determination of English scientists that the transit of Venus should be adequately observed, but underlying his instructions are the two eighteenth-century motives: curiosity and commerce. What lay south of the regular track followed by navigators across the Pacific? And might not the unknown present possibilities of fruitful trade to its discoverers? Thus Cook was instructed to sail south after observing the transit at Tahiti and seek the southern continent. Only if he failed to find it was he to sail to the shadowy land whose western coast had been noted by Tasman, and whose one known place of possible refreshment was marked on European maps as Murderers' Bay.
The voyages of James Cook were decisive for this country's relations with the outside world. On the one hand, they made it clear that there was no great wealthy continent lying in the South Pacific. On the other, they made known the basic facts about New Zealand. Scientific curiosity was half satisfied by Cook's reports, and half whetted. As for commerce, New Zealand seemed as promising as any temperate country still unoccupied. Cook mapped the coast with almost miraculous accuracy, and he gave valuable descriptions of the Maoris, of the country's resources in timber and flax, and of possibilities for whaling and sealing. But New Zealand remained a territory of fascinating possibilities for the scientist and for the merchant. Further, the reports of the voyage had great publicity throughout Europe. Other sailors visited New Zealand soon after Cook; but he more than any other man introduced New Zealand to the attention of the civilised world. Indeed Cook was so favourably impressed that there was a distinct possibility of its being colonised almost immediately.
In the years following the War of American Independence, Great Britain was seeking a site for a colony which would enable her to resume the convenient practice of punishing criminals by transportation. A temperate climate was necessary, for convicts sent to tropical Africa incontinently died, and men's thoughts turned to the newly-discovered lands in the Pacific, of which Cook had taken possession in the name of George III. If Cook himself had been asked to recommend a site for a British colony, it is reasonable to think that he would have named New Zealand, which he frequently visited and highly praised. But Cook was dead, and Joseph Banks, his scientist companion of the Endeavour's great voyage, preferred New South Wales, whose barren coasts seemed to him more suitable (even for convicts) than the ferocity and cannibalism of the Maori. Public opinion and Parliament, in so far as they noticed the matter at all, agreed with Banks in this. An effort was indeed made to find an even more promising site near the mouth of the Orange river in temperate Africa. This failing, Banks's plan of using New South Wales was revived, and an expedition hurriedly gathered. Captain Arthur Phillip was appointed first governor of the new territory, and the colony of New South Wales was formally proclaimed at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788.
James Cook had written in 1770 that the Maoris, though cannibals, would make admirable neighbours to colonists who were well armed with physical force and guided by a spirit of justice; but Englishmen, without necessarily doubting Cook's word, felt safer among the backward aborigines of New South Wales, and so New Zealand was not chosen as the new colony's headquarters. For many years after 1788, however, there was a widespread belief that New Zealand was a British possession. The early governors certainly regarded New Zealand as being within their dominion: a territory for which they had some responsibility, and which they could use if they thought fit. As late as 1814 Governor Macquarie claimed formally that New Zealand was a dependency of New South Wales. The Maoris looked to the government at Sydney for protection against their European tormentors, and, in an attempt to afford that protection, Macquarie issued regulations to govern trade with New Zealand, and appointed two senior missionaries to act as magistrates there. These measures were quite ineffective, owing to the lack of force on the spot, and Sydney merchants seem to have accepted this position. They thought of New Zealand as a detached and somewhat unruly dependency—a place where, as was often the case on the mainland, the governor lacked power to enforce his orders, so that the European must fend for himself.
The question of whether New Zealand was legally a dependency of New South Wales depended on a vague phrase in the governor's commission. He was given authority over the mainland of Australia within prescribed limits, and 'over all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean' within the latitudes assigned to New South Wales itself. As the greater part of New Zealand lies within those latitudes, the governor's authority depended on the word 'adjacent', which was repeated in the commissions issued to governors of New South Wales for half a century. Nor was the matter settled in 1825 when the southern boundary of New South Wales was moved to 39° 12', for the part of New Zealand then most important for British colonisation lies north of the new boundary-parallel. It passes roughly through New Plymouth and Hawke's Bay. Therefore, as far as the governor's commission was concerned, the doubt remained. By allowing certain elasticity for the word 'adjacent' as applied to islands in the South Pacific, one may argue plausibly that after 1788 the Governor of New South Wales had as much legal authority in New Zealand as in any other part of the colony where there was as yet no regular white settlement.
No man can tell what lay in the mind of the clerk who wrote and the minister who approved the word 'adjacent'. Probably neither they nor their immediate successors gave any particular thought to the matter, but before it began to cause difficulties the policy of the British Government had become clear. In 1817 Parliament passed an Act (57 George III, c. liii) which included New Zealand among 'those islands and territories not within His Majesty's Dominions'; and the Government's replies to would-be settlers made it plain that it neither regarded New Zealand as British nor intended to claim any authority over it. There was then little impulse towards colonisation, and in England it was above all the missionaries who were interested in such territories as New Zealand. But the missionary societies, already influential with the Colonial Office, were impressed by the evils of European colonisation rather than with the benefits which it conferred upon native peoples. Convinced as they were of the white man's duty to succour the heathen, they regarded secular officials and secular merchants alike as hindrances to the great work. The occasional visit of a ship-of-war in New Zealand waters might serve a useful purpose: but on land chieftain and missionary should reign supreme.
In England then, the Government, probably without deep consideration, made up its mind that New Zealand was not British, but in those days of slow communication and unanswered despatches a policy decided (or taken for granted) in Whitehall was not necessarily acted upon in the South Pacific. As seen from Sydney, the legal position remained somewhat obscure even after the Act of 1817. In 1825, for example, the New South Wales attorney-general asked in vain for a ruling whether or not the governor's commission give him authority in New Zealand. From the first, too, the men on the spot had an optimistic view of the possibilities of the trade whose beginnings they had watched, and a less acute fear of incurring expenditure than was natural in London.
When the colonisation of New South Wales was first seriously suggested, those interested assumed that commerce would soon build a solid connection across 'the mere fourteen days' run' which separated Sydney from New Zealand. Thus could Englishmen command New Zealand's limitless supplies of timber, which grew at the water's edge in unexampled size and quality, and of flax from which (it was said) could be made everything from finest linen to canvas and rope stronger than those made from European material. In some measure, these hopes materialised, for within a few years there sprang up a brisk trade in New Zealand products, a large proportion of which passed through Sydney. As early as 1792, a party of sealers was deposited at Dusky Bay, where in the space of a year they collected 4,500 seal-skins, built themselves a boat of 150 tons burden, and reported with enthusiasm on local game, timber, and climate. Other sealers followed, sending their skins largely to the China market, and killing so efficiently that before many years the trade itself was dead. By this time, however, New Zealand had developed another trade. About 1829 whalers, who had hitherto operated mainly on the high seas, took to the bays of the New Zealand coasts, where the 'right whale' was known to calve. This trade brought to New Zealand waters fleets of whaling ships, mainly English and American, but also French, Portuguese, and Dutch, through whom New Zealand entered the main stream of world commerce.
The whale trade naturally helped to link New Zealand with the neighbouring coasts of Australia, but the main articles of commerce between the two countries were the two native products of timber and flax. Timber was cut for the navy, as well as for private trade. Vast quantities of scraped flax were also sent from New Zealand to Sydney, where the demand for flax was so great that the labour involved in satisfying it injured the health of the Maori race as a whole. Sydney merchants could sell that which the Maori must have or perish: muskets and ammunition with which to wage their traditional tribal warfare. This had now become, as never before, a matter of life and death, of dominance or of extinction. Therefore the women slaved at the production of flax, and European weapons poured into the country. With it there came a certain amount of material for whalers; but muskets and flax formed the essentials of a trade which brought wealth to powerful groups of Sydney merchants.
The activities of whalers and merchants naturally helped to bring New Zealand to the attention of the government of New South Wales; and so did the activity of missionaries. British missionary effort had a worthy representative in Sydney in the person of Samuel Marsden, since 1793 chaplain in the convict settlement. He became interested in New Zealand through meeting numerous Maoris who, with the old adventurousness of their race, joined British ships, and so passed to Sydney and beyond. Marsden conceived the ambitious aim of converting this magnifi-cent race to Christianity, and in 1814 the first mission settlement was established in the Bay of Islands. The earliest missionaries were not models of perfection. Like lesser men, they bought land, traded, and sometimes had friction with natives and with fellow Europeans. But at least they could present European culture in a higher light than could most of the whalers, merchants, and escaped convicts. In the years following 1814, then, European penetration of New Zealand proceeded through two main streams of influence—the commercial and the missionary. Merchants and missionaries were given grudging support from London; but both could command whatever assistance the Governor of New South Wales could afford.
From the first, indeed, some of the colony's leading officials had taken a keen personal interest in New Zealand and its affairs, and in 1793 a curious episode brought a British lieutenant-governor on a visit to New Zealand. Lieutenant-Governor King, then in charge of Norfolk Island, pleaded earnestly that he should be provided with some Maoris to show his convicts how to treat the New Zealand flax which abounded on that island. At length his request was officially heeded, and two Maoris were duly kidnapped and forwarded to him. They were 'Woodoo' and 'Tookee', whom King reported to be a warrior and a priest respectively, and who in an hour taught all that they knew of the women's art of flax scraping.
However, the Europeans were impressed by their guests, and in the faith that the Maori would report well of British hospitality, Lieutenant-Governor King determined to return them himself to their native land. This he did in November 1793, and during a ten days' visit did some brisk trade and made the first recorded compact between a Maori chieftain and a representative of the British Crown.
Historical Records of New Zealand, Vol. i, p. 173.
He also gathered material for an enthusiastic report about New Zealand. 'From the North Island,' he wrote, 'enough flax might be procured to clothe all the inhabitants of New South Wales, for trifles such as axes, hoes and carpenters' tools, knives, and good lead'; and he threw in the direction of the British Government the broad hint that this promising country might well be settled with himself in charge. This well-meant suggestion brought no response that has been recorded, but the argument in favour of settling the country remained. Governor Macquarie urged it as a step towards increasing trade, which he thought would make a military settlement a paying proposition. Some years afterwards it was urged again by Governor Darling, in whose view the chronic disorder of the whaling settlements was a scandal crying for remedy. These were official recommendations, and they were echoed in different forms by missionaries, merchants, philanthropists, and would-be officials, who for their several purposes desired that British authority should be firmly established in New Zealand.
To all suggestions that it should take a lead in the matter the British Government returned cold answers or none at all. In its view the value of the prospective trade was exaggerated, and if merchants, thinking otherwise, proposed to make money through permanent settlement in New Zealand, let them do so —without the help of British soldiers. As to disorder arising from the whaling trade, that was plainly deplorable, but after all, wrote the Admiralty in 1832, most of New Zealand's trade was carried on by Americans. Thus did British authorities damp down local enthusiasm. It is significant that when James Busby came to New Zealand as a 'man-of-war without guns', his lack of armament was entirely due to the policy of Whitehall, not to that of Sydney. The local legislative council said that it was useless to send a Resident without armed force. Every governor who reported on the matter agreed. Even the missionaries recognised that it was folly to have a Resident without power to enforce his authority. Yet in face of this, when the Admiralty was asked to 'afford such assistance as may render the presence of the British Resident effective', it directed that a ship of war should 'occasionally be sent to New Zealand', and when there should limit its activity to receiving on board those British subjects who asked for this form of protection.
2 Into the Imperial Fold
Between 1788 and 1830 the British Government ponderously made up its mind that it did not wish to colonise New Zealand; meantime, however, European influence penetrated New Zealand. Whalers of many nations skirted its coasts, but owing to the colonisation of New South Wales, British influence predominated on land. Neither the governor in Sydney, nor the occasional presence of warships at the Bay of Islands could prevent this British penetration from producing the most violent disorders, which meant that New Zealand, in spite of the intelligence and courage of its native people, suffered the evils without the benefits of European colonisation. These facts, realised in Sydney, penetrated slowly into official consciousness in London. The process was all the slower because missionary headquarters in England, like the Colonial Office itself, were slow to follow the opinion of men with the local knowledge. The result was a period of hesitation, during which official reluctance to do anything at all was gradually overcome by the increasingly evident impossibility of leaving things in New Zealand as they were. During this period the fate of New Zealand hung in the balance.
The main outward and visible sign of hesitation was the British Resident, James Busby. He was sent to the Bay of Islands because the contact of Europeans with Maoris could no longer be left entirely unregulated, but he was left without power to fulfil his mission. The title of 'Resident' was adopted from Indian practice. It was given to British agents associated with Indian princes, who in fact ruled states of a kind understandable by Europeans. Busby, however, was accredited to an indefinite number of Maori chieftains, who were not organised at all, and who had neither the will nor the power to place the resources of a native state at Busby's disposal. He had therefore to rely on whatever support he might get from his superiors in Sydney, supplemented by help from visiting warships. He asked that two of the carpenters who, he hoped, would build his house, should be appointed constables, but this modest request was turned down. Busby therefore had to deal single-handed, aided by such moral force as he could muster, with his difficult task.
That task was not only to supervise, in some sort, the intercourse of Englishmen and natives, but also to deal with the added complication of conflicting European influences. Of these the most important was that of the French, for French whalers came to New Zealand waters in increasing numbers, and the fear that France had ambitions in these parts was strengthened by her activity elsewhere in the Pacific. As with England, her attention was turned again towards colonisation in the first half of the nineteenth century, and for the same reasons. There was commercial depression in the motherland and talk of overpopulation; it seemed that remedy for both might be found in colonisation. France, it was argued, could only maintain her growing population by expanding her trade, and colonies rightly placed would protect the existing whaling industry, and open the way to further commerce. Thinking thus, colonial-minded Frenchmen followed with attention and envy the course of British expansion, including the plan of convict-colonisation; they hoped that France might some day follow or even anticipate British action. This line of thought pointed to New Zealand, in which Frenchmen had long been interested. Indeed, if the Maoris remembered well their encounter with the 'tribe of Marion', that tribe in turn preserved memories of Maori ferocity, and of the wealthy land wherein the Maori dwelt. Some Frenchmen at least grieved to think that yet another promising territory was apparently being devoured by British greed, and urged (apart from economic arguments) that the prestige of France and the interests of the Catholic church demanded that Britain should in this instance be forestalled.
As was the case in England, the Government was indifferent and slow to move, but there were plentiful rumours of French colonisation. To some extent these rumours definitely helped Busby in the eighteen-thirties. They were sceptically regarded in London, but were naturally taken much more seriously by the men on the spot. In particular, the missionaries, hitherto the most zealous opponents of British colonisation, had no intention of keeping Britain out merely in order to open the way to France. They positively encouraged the chieftains to look to London for protection against the 'tribe of Marion', and their attitude was bound to bear fruit in time. The Maoris' petition for British protection in 1831 produced no more impressive result than the appointment of Busby. But the fear of French colonisation, if London could be induced to take it seriously, would be bound to produce the same effect as in previous years, when scattered settlements were founded round the coasts of Australia, not because England wanted more Australian colonies, but because she was determined that France should not have them.
To this extent, then, French interest in New Zealand smoothed the way for Busby by giving a basis of co-operation with local missionaries. But it also provoked him to actions of doubtful wisdom. The period of Busby-hesitation was naturally one of compromise, disappointments, and curious unworkable suggestions. One of the most interesting of these suggestions was that some reality might be given to the official theory of Maori independence by organising the tribes into a state which would be virtually under the control of competent Europeans. The plan was tried not long afterwards in various Pacific islands, for example in Fiji and Samoa. In New Zealand it was hastily improvised to deal with the adventurer Baron de Thierry, whose grandiloquent language at that time concealed his impotence (at least from ill-informed Englishmen in New Zealand), and who gave concrete expression to the constant threat of French interference. To confront the Baron with a fait accompli, Busby organised the 'United Tribes of New Zealand' in October 1835, with a national flag and an elaborate constitution based on that of Great Britain herself.
These actions, dismissed as a silly farce by the Governor of New South Wales, were approved by the British Government, which claimed paternity of the new state and promised continuing support. Actually, 'this attempt to federate man-eaters under parliamentary institutions' was merely the logical conclusion of the British Government's policy, and had no more substance than had the Baron de Thierry's empire. But the policy on which it was built lived on. Nor was it merely ludicrous. Guided, no doubt, by ill-informed humanitarianism, it was at least the result of an attempt to base European relations with coloured peoples on something higher than commercial greed, racial prejudice, or mere chance. In those days, Englishmen whose business it was to deal with natives took enormous pains to inform themselves of facts, and thus to understand and to avoid the evils which had obviously attended recent colonisation. This atmosphere of honest though not always successful effort was the background to Busby's constitution for Maori warriors and also to the Treaty of Waitangi.
Nevertheless, in spite of all the efforts made on the spot or in London, British policy was based on a misconception, namely, the belief that Maori independence existed or could have been maintained if once established. European weapons and the needs of European trade had transformed Maori life before Busby landed at the Bay of Islands. So much Maori land had been sold in that region, and so much settlement had taken place, that control was actually being transferred from the Maori to the white man. This process continued at an accelerating pace during Busby's term of office, particularly after 1837. 'Land sharks' trained in the technique of speculation in Australia, bought with all the greater vigour when the trend of events made it increasingly plain that British colonisation could not be long delayed. These facts were clearly understood by the government of New South Wales, by the missionaries in New Zealand , and by those in London who read and gave due weight to their despatches. However, eloquent as were the facts that could be produced by those with local experience, New Zealand's fate was decided by events in Europe rather than in New Zealand herself. Maori and missionary, merchant and settler, played a passive part in this final drama which decided the terms on which New Zealand was to enter the European system.
The main battle for New Zealand was fought on the outskirts of British politics. Only the British Government could establish a new colony, and the Government's official advisers were the officials of the Colonial Office. These, headed by James Stephen, had excellent reasons for scepticism about the judgment of colonial enthusiasts. Their knowledge of recent colonial history showed only too clearly how ardent hopes had been perpetually disappointed, and how derelict colonies had been painfully nursed back to life at great expense to the British taxpayer. Stephen, moreover, was not only an official guardian of that taxpayer's interests; he was also a distinguished representative of British philanthropy. The white man's burden was for him no euphemism for commercial exploitation. It was indeed a heavy burden, to be carried neither with pleasure nor with profit but with a grim satisfaction, and not to be recklessly increased. And if Stephen's historical knowledge argued that colonisation was bad business, it argued no less forcibly that it was bad philanthropy; for native peoples European colonisation seemed to be merely the prelude to slow and painful extermination.
Stephen was, therefore, the formidable opponent of official intervention in New Zealand. Its formidable champion was Gibbon Wakefield. He, like Stephen, was deeply influenced by the utilitarian and philanthropic movement, but his conclusions from recent colonial experience were totally different. Both agreed as to the evils that had occurred. Stephen was inclined to argue that these evils arose inevitably when colonisation was once undertaken; Wakefield found in an analysis of their causes a ground of hope for the future. According to his principles, he said, colonisation in the future could be both excellent business and successfully humanitarian. The actual details of his principles are well known. By selling land at a 'sufficient' price, he hoped to introduce into the new country capital and labour, blended in the right proportion, so that English society could be transplanted in its essential features to the new world. His colonists were not to be pioneers, suffering the hardships of a crudely creative life. They were to be English gentry, churchmen, and labourers, who could live in a new country the life to which they had been reared. This new country, moreover, would present opportunities for fruitful and balanced development, which would appeal to all those who wished to see the British character developing in an atmosphere free from the stresses and inevitable drawbacks of an old and depressed society. Fresh from the disappointment of seeing the South Australian plan escape from his control and thereby suffer shipwreck which was perhaps deserved, he turned to New Zealand—which, as he rightly pointed out, was already being colonised with utter lack of system, but which might still be saved and give shining proof of the soundness of his principles.
However, Wakefield's success in promoting the colonisation of New Zealand was due less to the questionable scientific cogency of his arguments than to the skilful propaganda with which he supported them. In particular this enabled him so far to hasten British action as to defeat a last-minute challenge from France.
In 1838 the old arguments in favour of French colonisation were suddenly focussed by the arrival in France of a whaling captain, Langlois, who reported that he had actually bought from the natives of Banks Peninsula a promising site for a new colony. Like Wakefield in England, he set out to organise support for the venture, and he succeeded in enlisting the support of men of much the same type. The Ministry of Marine was interested, partly perhaps because of the underlying possibility of forming a new convict settlement in some part of the new colony. A number of merchants and prominent statesmen including the King himself took up the idea, and eventually there was organised the Nanto-Bordelaise Company to carry out the plan in co-operation with the French Government. There followed a campaign for support; emigrants were gathered; and eventually an expedition was sent forth under the protection of a capable and tactful naval officer, Lavaud.
If this expedition had been promptly organised and well supported, it is possible that New Zealand—or at least the South Island — might have become French.
In May 1840, the month in which Hobson proclaimed British sovereignty over the whole of New Zealand, the British Government said it had no objection to French colonisation there.—Sweetman, The Unsigned New Zealand Treaty, Chapter i.
However, Langlois's little group of merchants and politicians, though in many ways similar to the New Zealand Company, lacked a propagandist of Wakefield's genius. They were on the whole more mercenary, and at once less experienced and less enthusiastic than their English counterparts. The natural result was, that of two colonising expeditions, the British was organised a little more quickly and a little more efficiently; while, of two indifferent governments, that of Britain acted first. Therefore, just as a few years afterwards France won Cochin-China almost without noticing it, so between 1838 and 1840 she quietly abandoned New Zealand to England, unnoticed in France except by a few enthusiasts, and some politicians who were glad to find another ground of complaint against an unpopular government. When Lavaud reached New Zealand waters he found Governor Hobson in charge, and seems quickly to have decided that there was little to be done. A more pugnacious officer or a more enthusiastic coloniser might have struggled with greater determination against British sovereignty, and might even have produced hostility between Britain and France for possession of an island in which neither country was seriously interested. As it was, Lavaud established his little colony at Akaroa, leaving the two governments in Europe to decide whether the soil was British or French.
The decision favoured Britain; and even if Lavaud's men had been allowed to establish themselves quietly under the French flag, it is doubtful whether France had then enough colonising energy to develop the settlement in a way comparable with British enterprise farther north. Indeed, as was soon to be shown in such places as Tahiti and Hawaii, French ideas of colonisation were still very different from those gaining strength in Britain, and if Akaroa had been left undisturbed it might for the time being have proved to be merely a large-scale whaling station of a type already familiar. As it turned out, the net result was the establishment of a small group of Frenchmen in a British colony. Akaroa flourished for some years as a port of call for whalers and kept its French atmosphere. But as the whaling trade decayed so did Akaroa. The children of settlers did not learn the French crafts which had been practised by their fathers. As people drifted away, the town became a picturesque survival, a French garden-village which could bring no element of French culture into the Anglo-Saxon fibre of New Zealand.
Wakefield's despatch of the barque Tory in May 1839 virtually compelled the British Government to send Captain Hobson; the publication of Hobson's instructions in the French press precipitated the despatch of Lavaud; Lavaud's arrival at the Bay of Islands led Hobson to dispel by strenuous effort any remaining doubt as to whether the whole of New Zealand was British. Thus was the sequence complete, and New Zealand's place in the world was settled. After 1840 she was a British country. Her inhabitants were British subjects, ruled despotically by a governor who was himself under the absolute control of the British Government and Parliament. Their relations with each other and with the outside world were subject to British law, administered by British officials, and the hesitation and confusion of the earlier period seemed to have vanished in the clarity of legal definitions. Yet this clarity was an illusion: a figment of the lawyer's imagination. In actual practice the links between citizen and governor, like those between governor and London, were so weak that it is misleading to think of New Zealand as a 'country' in 1840. Like Italy in the same year, she was little more than a geographical expression; and so she remained for some critical years. In fact, the formal proclama-
tion of British sovereignty at first made surprisingly little difference in the country's life, trade, and government.
This was in part a legacy of the past. Though last-minute hesitations were cast aside, the conditions on which New Zealand entered the Empire were governed by the broad policy of which those hesitations were the symptom. For example, the fiction of Maori independence was kept up to the last. Hobson negotiated the Treaty of Waitangi with Maori chieftains and their missionary advisers, and obtained (with some difficulty) the cession of sovereignty over New Zealand, in return for legal recognition of the natives' ownership of their land. The whole transaction, as seen by the eye of the law, is somewhat obscure. Its broad result, however, was that New Zealand became a British colony with the consent of the principal Maori chiefs, who with their people received a status which was new in British colonial experience. The way was thus opened for a continuation of that humanitarian native policy which animated both the missionaries and the Colonial Office. British rule, in short, was not designed to enable Europeans to exploit the people and resources of New Zealand with greater ease and perfection. Rather it was intended to be the instrument for creating a new and just balance between the two races, which would preserve all that was good in Maori life. This view of native policy, followed with greater or less consistency and intelligence by the early governors, brought British authority into frequent conflict with colonists and settlers, and even with natives willing to sell their land recklessly; for it led to continual irritation on the part of enterprising men who saw the operation (to their benefit) of basic economic laws being tampered with, even obstructed, in the name of a treaty rashly concluded in order to placate 'naked savages'.
However, the attitude of mind which prompted Hobson to negotiate the Treaty of Waitangi was fundamental in British colonial policy at that time, and even if that had not been the case it is doubtful whether Hobson could have adopted a policy radically different. The British Government, in spite of local opinion, continued to neglect Captain Cook's sensible advice that Europeans who settled in New Zealand must possess overwhelming physical force. Its traditional policy was otherwise, and, moreover, it hoped in defiance of experience that the new colony would cost it nothing. Hobson was therefore instructed to spend as little money as possible, and was sent to New Zealand as yet another 'man-of-war without guns'. The hundred soldiers later provided by the Governor of New South Wales would obviously have ceremonial rather than military importance in the event of trouble. Accordingly, Hobson (and his immediate successors) had to govern by the cunning of their diplomacy, together with their own prestige and that of a distant sovereign. For years after 1840 the Maoris possessed an overwhelming military superiority over the whites. They were also, in fact, the country's most active citizens. As wage-earners, producers, consumers, and taxpayers they were the backbone of New Zealand's economy in the years when the European colonist was slowly and painfully winning his way to security. Accordingly the early governors had to face the fact that the vast majority of their subjects were Maoris, who were entrenched in a strong legal position, who had the physical force and determination to protect their rights, and whose co-operation was indispensable if the colony was to survive.
Maori strength in New Zealand and humanitarian impulse in London made it remotely possible that New Zealand would become a totally new kind of colony, based on a genuine partnership of races; for there was in the minds of thoughtful men an idea somewhat similar to that underlying Lord Lugard's 'indirect rule'. In 1846 Earl Grey on behalf of the British Government expressly instructed the governor to set apart 'Aboriginal Districts', in which native law and custom should be obeyed.
See British Parliamentary Papers, 1847, xxviii [763], presented on 28 August 1846, and Governor Bowen to Duke of Buckingham, 30 June 1868.
These districts, it was laid down, 'will be governed by such methods as are in use among the native New Zealanders. The chiefs or others should be allowed to interpret and to administer their own laws.' If white men should penetrate within Aboriginal Districts, they must respect native law. On the other hand, disputes between natives, even outside these districts, should be settled by native law, not by European. Thus, in principle, native society would have been left intact, subject only to the removal of those native customs 'repugnant to the general principles of Humanity', and subject to the governor's acceptance of the chiefs whom native custom indicated as rulers or magistrates.
The governor to whom these instructions were addressed was Sir George Grey, who during his first governorship established some real authority over the Maori people. He persuaded the British Government to grant to him that which it had denied to his predecessors: a sufficiency of money and of military strength. Thus he could convince the Maoris that he was strong as well as just, and by his personality and sympathy win their confidence. His influence was, however, personal to himself, not to be bequeathed to his successor, and he blandly disregarded the suggestion that British authority should be exercised through native law and institutions. Accordingly, so far from giving the Maoris an organisation which might survive his own period of office, he helped decisively to destroy such organisation as they had. Like most of his contemporaries, he was convinced that European culture was best, not only for Europeans, but for all other races as well. Therefore he strove to give his Maori subjects the benefit of this superior culture: a process which in practice involved the destruction of their native social organisation without (in the time available) putting anything in its place. Here, as in other matters, the British Government accepted the policy of the man on the spot, and a suggestion full of interesting possibilities was quietly dropped.
As can now be perceived, the policy of Europeanisation made it virtually impossible for the British Government to attain the objective which it sincerely desired: the incorporation of the Maori race within the Empire on equitable terms. It also helped directly to precipitate the wars which broke that race's military strength in the eighteen-sixties. The causes of the Maori wars cannot be discussed here in detail. It must be recognised, however, that the object of one of the most influential groups of Maori 'rebels' was to build up a solid organisation which could enforce law and order through native agencies; for Europeans reigned but did not rule. It is certain, too, that so long as natives remained unorganised they would become easy prey, piecemeal, to insatiable European speculators; nor could the good will of governor and secretary of state protect them. However, the attempt by the Maoris themselves to set up an influential Maori king failed, as it was in the long run bound to fail, before the combined force of British arms and British culture. By 1870 it was abundantly clear that for the outside world New Zealand was to be a country of Europeans and of Europeanised Maoris. Maori culture was, indeed, not dead. In later years it was to make its mark in the national life with a new confidence, when Europeans and Maoris alike turned at last from the fatal policy of race-fusion based on uncritical native acceptance of all things English. But this renewed understanding of the value of Maori culture in the people's life has had no appreciable influence on her relations with overseas countries.
3 Self-Reliance
By 1870 the problem of controlling its Maori citizens was solved for New Zealand governments by the extinction of Maori military power; and by that year (or soon afterwards) the attitude of the Europeans towards their own government and towards the mother country had become clarified along more or less orthodox lines. In the colony's earliest days European settlers were not more easily governable than the Maoris themselves. From the first they had been scattered round the coast in substantial townships, where public opinion could become formidably coherent. These settlements were so separated geographically, and their development was so different, that for practical purposes they were almost separate colonies. Moreover, the inhabitants of each settlement (with the possible exception of Auckland) were politically minded to a remarkable degree. No doubt the numerical majority of immigrants were mechanics and farmers, too busy earning their living to be greatly concerned with the rights of man, but the tone was set by an active minority, which normally controlled the local press, and, later, the provincial councils. This minority was the fruit of deliberate policy. Wakefield aimed at transplanting to the new world a slice of British society, complete in its hierarchy. If the transplanting process were skilfully performed, he argued, colonists could avoid the usual bitter period wherein the amenities of life must be sacrificed in the mere struggle for existence. On the contrary, in a colony rightly planned those amenities could be fully preserved in the safe hands of British gentlemen, whose status would be protected by the possession of adequate land, and the provision through ingenious devices of docile and industrious labourers.
These ideas were widely accepted and acted upon. Gentlemen from England, Ireland, and Scotland transported themselves, their way of life, and their material possessions to the new antipodean Britain. They took it for granted that the fields of prosperous farmers would be enclosed by hedges of gorse and hawthorn, across which gentlemen would hunt: 'Deer and hares we must positively have,' wrote J. R. Godley, 'as well as partridges and pheasants', and in the meantime, exiles gathered what pleasure they could from wild pigs (reputed descendants of those landed by Cook) and native duck. Over their solid English breakfast, those fortunate enough to receive it read a belated Times with meticulous care, and all praised the local press because it showed signs of offering a passable substitute. Ambitious ladies strove to follow the fashion of London, if not of Paris, and struggled to preserve the culture that lived in pianoforte music and elegant needle-work. True, these efforts to live in New Zealand the life which would have been normal in Surrey did not altogether succeed. Economic pressure was powerful, and even the chosen leaders of society tended to succumb to the life of rude and uncultured plenty. Much remained, however, and up to the present time overseas visitors find in New Zealand, to their own delight and that of their hosts, the unmistakable atmosphere of provincial England.
The transference of British ideas to New Zealand was of capital importance in the political sphere. In spite of economic crises—even of starvation—in the British Isles, the middle of the nineteenth century was a time of solid self-confidence for the British people. The navy ruled the waves, and thus made easy the distribution of British manufactured goods throughout the world's markets. Parliamentarianism, Liberalism, nationalism seemed to spread visibly and without opposition except from the worn-out forces of the past. Nation after nation approached gradually to the British formula of solid materialist hierarchical democracy. Indeed, many Englishmen assumed that this formula had an ultimate value for humanity which would ensure universal triumph just as soon as less enlightened races had passed through the necessary but (probably) short period of tutelage. British ideas, then, might be expected to survive because of their evident rightness; but right was well armed. Foreign soldiers had not successfully attacked Britain since 1066. No Englishman could remember in all modern history a war which had ended with British acknowledgment of defeat, except on that one occasion when Englishmen living in America—with the notable help, it is true, of Frenchmen and Spaniards—had vindicated the basic principles of Britain's own constitutional liberties. Trafalgar and Waterloo seemed to sum up a tradition of unbroken success in war which was unique among nations of the nineteenth century, and which made it in the literal sense unthinkable that Britons might become slaves.
Racial self-confidence enabled the gentleman-pioneer to look with a critical eye on the conduct of any Englishman less exalted than the Sovereign herself. Governor and secretary of state were fellow citizens, as much subject to criticism by New Zealanders as by Londoners. And criticism was not restrained by the thought that obedience might be the condition on which Englishmen overseas enjoyed their own way of life. Colonists could talk of independence, even of abandoning the mother country when she was hard pressed by powerful enemies, without any great sense of personal risk. They took for granted that, come what might, they would in fact still enjoy that freedom and prosperity which was bound up with British citizenship.
This assumption permitted wide freedom of speech and action, and men with such ideas in mind found much to criticise in early New Zealand. Within the country they were not free, for they were ruled by a governor over whom they had no control whatever; and the country as a whole was ruled despotically from London. Therefore New Zealand constitutionalists fought a twofold battle: to gain control over the local executive, and to free that executive from British interference. Their ample fund of indignant vituperation was shared between 'Nero on the spot' and Nero's inaccessible superiors of the Colonial Office. Abuse was, of course, spiced by occasional gratified praise, and to say the least it is doubtful whether the majority of colonists shared fully in the discontent of their political spokesmen. However, by 1854 there was a chorus of criticism from all the settlements of New Zealand. Attacks against autocratic government on the spot were given spice by the bitter distrust felt by many colonists for Governor Grey, and, as for the Colonial Office, they described it as ignorant, careless, and meddlesome. Unworkable instructions were sent to governors, they complained, and doctrinaire secretaries of state regarded New Zealand as a convenient social laboratory wherein experiments could be tried without risking the explosions which similar action would produce in Australia.
The New Zealander,31 January 1846, 23 October 1847, 4 March 1848.
As late as 1853 a journalist could not find words to express his detestation of British colonial policy. When thinking of it, he said, his fellow colonists 'pace to and fro, with hasty stride, with clenched hands and blanched cheeks, vowing they will not submit.'
The Otago Witness,14 May 1853.
The clamour against the Colonial Office was to a considerable extent based on an inevitable ignorance of the facts. The vocal minority assumed on the one hand that the colonists could govern themselves, and on the other, that they were in a real sense being governed from London; and both assumptions were only partly justified. When self-government was granted, the difficulty of finding sufficient men to work the necessary institutions was plainly revealed. The truth was that in a young colony—even though planned by Wakefield — the ordinary colonist was much too busy managing his farm or business to give his time to politics. As time went on, the numbers of those willing and able to be full-time politicians declined, and it became increasingly hard to infuse into New Zealand politics that spirit of public service which pioneers assumed would be the automatic result of establishing British institutions. As to the Colonial Office, its most influential officials were not as ignorant of the essential facts of colonisation as was assumed by their critics. In particular, colonists greatly exaggerated the extent to which their discontents arose from detailed supervision of the governor by London officials.
In practice the link between governor and Colonial Office was much weaker than it appeared on the surface. Mails were irregular and desperately slow, and a governor who wrote urgently to London for advice and instructions might have to wait a year or more for an answer. Further, even in that age when letters were of enormous length and men were not afraid to enter into the minutest details of complicated problems, the most conscientious official could merely attain to book knowledge of the difficulties which faced the governor from day to day, and of the reasons which guided his decision. It was, then, impossible to administer New Zealand from London. The only possible plan was to choose governors carefully, and then trust them until it was shown that wrong appointments had been made. In general, and in spite of irritating interference upon occasion, this fact was recognised in the Colonial Office, notably by the two men who have been most savagely criticised on the ground of interference, namely, James Stephen and Earl Grey. They both stated emphatically that the governor must use his discretion, subject of course to British supervision and British control of general policy: but even in matters of general policy the advice of an able governor was often decisive with his official superiors.
This position was only dimly apprehended by politically minded colonists. It was clear to them that constitutional principles were violated, for New Zealanders lived without representative institutions. It was clear, too, that there were endless and irritating delays in communicating with the governor in Auckland and with the Colonial Office in London. Finally, for whatever reason, policies were enforced which did not have local popular approval. It seemed to colonists that London stood in the way of New Zealand's development by its undue sympathy for natives: the case for humanitarianism generally seemed more convincing to officials than to colonists. Similarly with the case for a high price for land. In short, practical grievances added warmth to constitutional controversy, and without ceasing to specify each detailed complaint, colonists summed up the whole in a comprehensive demand for full self-government.
This demand was partly met by the prospect of representative government under the Constitution Act of 1852, but—re-defined in terms of responsible government—was theatrically presented in 1854 by the first House of Representatives, led by Wakefield himself, and was referred to England by Acting-Governor Wynyard. By this time no British cabinet would be likely to resist on principle a colony's demand for self-government in local affairs. The British Parliament's attitude towards colonies then and for years afterwards was basically indifferent —even bored. Humanitarianism had modified indifference by the addition of a sense of duty: it was not decent to throw colonies out of the Empire before they wished to go, and while they remained British possessions care must be taken to see that the white man's burden was worthily borne. Again, the Colonial Reformers, who fought with robust energy for a recognition of the Empire's importance desired on principle that which most of their contemporaries desired through apathy: that colonists should be left to manage their own affairs. They were, moreover, allied with the Cobdenites, who believed that political control was not necessary to preserve for England the profits of colonial trade. In short, such Englishmen as took any interest in the matter agreed, for one reason or another, that New Zealand should be allowed to govern herself. Accordingly, the British Secretary of State answered Wynyard by return post, cordially agreeing that 'the system known as responsible government' should be set up.
Almost overnight New Zealand ceased to be a remote dependency almost without political rights, and became a self-governing colony. She was, however, still very far short of independence. At that time statesmen could face with equanimity the idea that the Empire must break up; but till the moment for separation arrived all agreed that the mother country must retain some control over her colonies. Even the most vehement Colonial Reformer agreed that foreign policy must be controlled from London, and most people went much further. As it was cogently argued, a colony must either be inside the Empire or outside; and being inside meant British control over matters of imperial concern, and even a certain right to be interested in a colony's domestic policy. After all, it could be said, colonies were immature societies which could benefit greatly from the mother country's political wisdom if the fruits of that wisdom could be tactfully brought to their attention; while their mistakes must, if sufficiently serious, be corrected.
Such reasoning was accepted by the vast majority of those who reasoned on the matter at all, whether in England or in New Zealand. Consequently, though New Zealand was given 'self-government' in 1856, her colonial status was admitted by all. The legal subordination of her Parliament was clear. It could work only within the field allotted it by Britain. Its daily proceedings were under the eye of an imperial officer. Its laws must not be repugnant to the laws of England, and could be disallowed by the British Government. Foreign relations were controlled from London; naturally enough, for though New Zealanders eagerly read European news, they felt no personal concern. For example, the outbreak of the Crimean war passed almost unnoticed in press and Parliament, beyond an emotional loyal address and the suggestion that the Maoris might be tactfully prepared to repel a Russian invasion; there was no sign of the panic felt in Sydney and Melbourne. In general, war and peace, and all matters which concerned the Empire as a whole were trustfully left in the hands of those whom they concerned, and who had leisure to attend to them: the British Government and its representative, the governor.
Under the new regime the governor's position was complicated and sometimes delicate. In the main he was simply a constitutional sovereign. In so far as the very small may ape the very great, he played the same part in New Zealand as Queen Victoria herself played in Britain, and his constitutional powers were modelled upon hers: that is to say, they were vague but large, and were only defined after hard thought and painful controversy. It was never intended, however, that the governor should be a gilded rubber-stamp; on the contrary he was an important element in a balanced constitution, and his action might, on occasion, be decisive in internal politics. For example, he was always entitled to ask for full information about policy, and his ministers, if intent on action he disliked, must at least face the disagreeable task of listening to and answering his comment. Again, if ministers asked that Parliament should be dissolved, or additional members appointed to the Legislative Council, or a criminal pardoned, there was at first no absolute rule to show the governor whether they should be given their way or not. He had to consider the circumstances and use his discretion. However, in such cases his judgment could not be, like that of the Queen, theoretically independent. She was appointed by no visible agency to whom she could apply for advice on practical issues: he was chosen by a British cabinet minister whose enquiries, advice, and reproof pursued him continually. Accordingly he naturally reflected the general ideas of the British Cabinet and the Colonial Office. He was in fact the main channel by which British wisdom could permeate the councils of colonial statesmen, and cases of difficulty could be referred to London for decision. Therefore, constitutional sovereign of New Zealand as he was, he necessarily acted to some extent as representative of an outside authority in cases where the Queen might be compelled to act independently.
Again, in matters which concerned the Empire as a whole, the governor was definitely a British agent. Just what these matters were remained uncertain, for both mother country and colonies as a whole preferred to be vague and to muddle through to clarity only when the need arose. As regards New Zealand, however, it was clearly understood that native policy remained an imperial affair. In 1856 this was probably inevitable. The British Government traditionally thought of itself as guardian of native interests, and itdistrusted the colonists. With some reason it suspected them of being more interested in separating the Maoris from their land than in promoting Maori welfare. On the other hand, colonists, while irritated by British sympathy for natives, realised the military importance of British troops and the economic importance of military expenditure in a young colony. Therefore, though in 1856 New Zealand took control over most of her own internal affairs, native policy, which was clearly of fundamental importance for the colony's future development, was kept nominally in imperial hands.
In short, in 1856, New Zealand was admittedly a dependency; but evolution at once began in direction of that anomalous position called 'Dominion status', an evolution shared by all the other 'self-governing colonies'. In the main it has not been New Zealand who has fought for greater independence, and she has rarely felt aggrieved merely on principle. Her complaints have generally had a practical basis, and she has been eager to allow troublesome questions of constitutional principle to be quietly forgotten. 'We do not object to England retaining the power to interfere. We only ask that the power should not be exercised.' On such a basis it was natural that relations with an indulgent mother country should develop comparatively smoothly: and with some notable exceptions the issues that did arise were settled without serious friction. However, though New Zealand rarely crusaded for colonial rights, she shared the fruits of her more energetic brethren's efforts. As years passed the powers of the governor were destroyed or allowed quietly to die: the Imperial Government interfered less and less with local affairs: and the colonies assumed increasingly the powers and posture of independent countries. Such was the general trend of imperial development in which New Zealand shared, not on the whole as a pioneer, but as a partner who ultimately became extremely uneasy at the enterprise of her colleagues.
The main instance when the smoothness of New Zealand's relations with Britain was seriously disturbed arose between 1856 and 1870. In 1856 it was inevitable that native affairs should have been left nominally in the hands of the governor, but the arrangement never worked well. New Zealand could only prosper if good relations were maintained between Maori and white man while the land passed smoothly from the former to the latter. But the interlocking problems of land purchase and Maori welfare were placed under divided control. The governor was responsible for native policy in general; his ministers were responsible for finding the money, as well as for controlling the rest of New Zealand's affairs: and no one quite understood who was to control the imperial and colonial troops whose services would be necessary if trouble arose. In these circumstances, and in view of the problem's inherent difficulty, it is scarcely surprising that mistakes were made for which the colonists and British Government blamed each other vehemently, especially after blunders had been crowned by the disaster of the second Maori war (1860-1870); and in an atmosphere of bitter controversy the truth gradually emerged that division of authority must be abandoned. If peace were to be secure, Britain must either resume full control over native affairs, or else hand it over to the colonists. Many colonists favoured the first alternative, and urged that self-government should be suspended; in the phrase of one intemperate citizen, this would end the absurd attempt 'to set up the British Constitution in a country where all the landed gentry are savages, and, for the most part, hereditary or relapsed cannibals'
Bowen, Thirty Years of Colonial Government, Vol. i, p. 345.
; but it would have taken greater disasters than the Maori war to persuade any British Government to resume direct rule of so troublesome a dependency. The only possible solution was, therefore, Self-Reliance, 'that true old English policy'— the colony must accept full control over native affairs, and full responsibility (financial and military) for the war. Such a policy had been accepted in principle by the British and local governments at the end of 1861; but there followed a period of hesitation both in Britain and New Zealand with abrupt reversals of policy. Time was needed to overcome the scruples of those in England who hesitated to confide to colonists the fate of a native race; while time alone did not suffice to convince the colony that she must shoulder unaided the burden of reducing natives to obedience. In the end 'self-reliance' was forcibly imposed on an indignantly protesting colony by the withdrawal of the last imperial troops in 1870.
By this time the crisis had passed, and the soldiers' departure was not followed by the disasters which had been confidently predicted; a fact which, to the irritation of colonists, was duly pointed out. This was, perhaps, the last shot in a verbal war which in 1869 and 1870 reached a climax of bitterness. During those years British ministers came to feel that imperial troops might be asked to fight indefinitely to win wars caused by colonial folly, and to impose on native peoples the harsh terms dictated by colonial avarice; they felt that in return for such prospective benefits, colonists so far from expressing gratitude incessantly complained of surly treatment by the Colonial Office, and denounced the military inefficiency of imperial troops. The colonial governments, on the other hand, claimed that the trouble with the natives was due primarily to British policy, and that whatever might be the rights and wrongs of the case, Britain owed generosity to the struggling community to which she had given birth: not disciplinary hardships inflicted with the complacent remark that suffering turns Children into Men. Despatches from England were often framed with a patronising scorn and dialectic skill which mercilessly exposed local politicians' tactical blunders, but which naturally failed to carry conviction. Colonial replies made up in vigour what they lacked in finesse, and by a touch of unashamed mendicancy at once obscured sound arguments and exposed their authors to crushing retort from men who in dealing with children, believed at once in discipline and laisser-faire. Thus, in the phrase of an indignant colonist, did New Zealand ministers bark and snarl at the heels of the Secretary of State; while in reply, the noble British lion, without so far forgetting himself as to roar, did 'most unmistakably snarl and growl, to our discomfort.'
In this heated atmosphere colonists talked of separation from the motherland, just as they had done twenty years before when indignation against the autocracy of Governor Grey reached fever-heat and the English language lacked words to describe the iniquities of the Colonial Office. But in 1869 and 1870 the talk seemed more serious. In those days it was a dogma widely accepted in both colony and mother country that separation was only a matter of time. Their minds full of misleading analogies drawn from family life, statesmen argued that young nations, like young men, must if healthy wish in due course to set up homes of their own, assuming the privileges and burdens of manhood. If, then, separation must come some day, why not now? Many colonists believed sincerely that the British Government in 1869 wished to hasten the day; and that, if it did not, at least it took care to withdraw from New Zealand all possible benefit from its dependent status. Of what use was it to belong to a great empire if no help was forthcoming when (on its own showing) a colony was fighting for its very life against insurgent natives? The question was asked by responsible politicians, and the answer given that the imperial connection was profitless. It brought a promise of defence to the last man and the last shilling in case of foreign war. But, it was argued, foreign war could only come through British interests, which might expose New Zealand to attack from a Russo-American alliance; and against such an attack Britain could only afford a negligible defence. It followed that the promise of protection was in fact worse than useless; New Zealand would be safer as a small independent state.
Such arguments naturally pained the Imperialists of 1869-70. Even more painful was the suggestion of friendship with the United States, a country then regarded with traditional suspicion in England and with traditional friendship in New Zealand. Twenty years before, colonists, when consumed with irritation against the Colonial Office, professed to think longingly of the United States, whose flag was seen so often on visiting whalers, and whose gold-mining outpost in California provided so promising a market for New Zealand foodstuffs. So again in 1869 they told each other that the United States gave generous help to frontiersmen struggling with Indians at a time when Britain brutally told New Zealanders to manage the Maoris as best they could. In both England and New Zealand it was widely believed that an independent New Zealand would gravitate towards the American sphere, perhaps through commerce, perhaps through outright annexation. In 1870 Fox, as Premier, tried somewhat ostentatiously to promote that gravitation. His hope was for increasing trade, beginning with duty-free admission of New Zealand wool to the American market, and he scandalised the Foreign Office by suggesting that the New Zealand and American governments should discuss the matter directly, instead of through London. To him the opening up of the San Francisco route seemed destined to speed up the separation from England and the drift towards America; and, said a member of Parliament apparently with general approval, if an infusion of American blood should be added to New Zealand's existing advantages, none could doubt that she would soon become one of the world's greatest countries.
In short, in 1869 and 1870 colonial irritation with British policy led to widespread talk about separation and about the advantages of remaining independent if thrown out of the Empire, or of joining the United States with whom, it seemed, New Zealand might share a tradition of hostility to Britain. However, such talk, though picturesque and forceful, was superficial and transitory. No colonist, however indignant, thought of 'cutting the painter' hastily or cheerfully. New Zealand's wish was clearly not that the imperial tie should be broken, but that its terms should be modified to her advantage. Nor were her spokesmen unanimous in indignation. In the middle of 1870 both Houses of the New Zealand Parliament debated with lengthy eloquence whether or not to censure the Imperial Government for its recent conduct. The net result was a resolution by the Council that it was in New Zealand's interest to remain within the Empire, and, for the rest, to bury the hatchet; but in the preceding discussion distinguished men expressed the view that the various New Zealand governments had made a great fuss about nothing, and had most indecently striven to insist that the whole British Empire should be managed according to the notions of its smallest and most distant dependency. Indeed, the main point on which all speakers agreed was that 'the great heart of Britain' still beat to a friendly and imperial note, whatever might be the tone adopted by transitory secretaries of state: and there was an unmistakable underlying hope that 'our great mother at home' would by a frank imperial gesture win again the hearts of her children overseas.
The hope was promptly gratified by the granting of the colony's 'last prayer to the mother country': the guaranteeing of a loan which was at first intended to finance the repression of natives but which (this proving unnecessary) was applied to immigration and public works. This concession was hailed as a small 'sign of contrition and reform' on the part of Britain; and 'that little gleam of light, that little tendency towards softness of manner' was followed by a marked change in the tone of imperial despatches. The result was almost instantaneous. In August 1870 Governor Bowen could report that New Zealand's old loyalty had been rebuilt; that 'even those who, five months ago were all agog for separation from England and annexation to the United States are now loyal again.' Thus within a few months Britain and New Zealand were reconciled: the fire of colonial indignation had died down to a warm imperial glow. The prodigal had returned.
4 Vogelism
The small concessions made by the Imperial Government in 1870 should perhaps be regarded as the first-fruits of a profound change which was gradually modifying British attitudes towards life in general and colonies in particular. This change was mainly due to developments abroad. The nineteenth century was a period of strengthening national consciousness. During the first half of the century the efforts of small European nations rightly struggling to be free were viewed with calm benevolence from the Olympian heights of mid-Victorian England. But by 1870 two of these emerging nationalities had assumed giant, if for the present friendly, shape in the form of Germany and Italy. By the same year the United States had destroyed the last possibility of disruption, and the mighty force of pan-Slav sentiment had already disturbed central and eastern Europe. Pride of race was in the air, as a challenge to established powers, quite apart from the military dangers of a world where, it seemed, the future lay with great powers and not with small. Further, political and strategic challenge was matched by economic competition. French, German, and American industry progressively undermined the British assumption that Britain would remain indefinitely the workshop of the world. Economic depressions arose which could no longer be regarded as a passing scourge rightly inflicted by inexorable economic laws upon the improvidence of the poor. In short, by 1870 life challenged the British race more openly and effectively than at any time since Napoleon had fled from Waterloo.
The response to the challenge was, among other things, the growing conception of Greater Britain. There awoke a new sense of pride in the imperial efforts of the British race which ushered in one of Britain's recurrent waves of patriotic fervour. It is true that the main stream of British political and economic development moved onwards with triumphant complacency towards its climax in the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, when 'England became intoxicated at the sight of her own greatness'. Nevertheless a handful of enthusiasts, whose efforts were soon to be focussed in the Royal Colonial Institute and the Imperial Federation League, strove to win public interest in Greater Britain, and a growing minority began to think there might be more truth than at first appeared in the colonists' rather insolent claim that in them resided the strength of England. (England without colonies, said a New Zealander in 1870, is like Samson without hair; and it was grievous to watch Samson acting as his own barber.) Thus there arose among some British thinkers a new interest in colonies, and in a vague, sentimental way, the idea of so planning the Empire that in it the British race would find the answer to continental pan-racialism.
On the political side, this conception meant relaxing those forms of imperial control which still irritated colonies: in the seventies the Colonial Office learnt how to comment at length on colonial despatches in non-committal phrases that expressed no opinion at all. There was also a quickening interest in the share likely to be taken by colonies in the work of imperial defence. On the economic side it meant a somewhat irrational hope that industrialists would find colonial markets to replace those lost through foreign abandonment of free trade. As the optimistic argument ran, trade is equally valuable, whether with foreigners or colonists; but in one's own colonies one can rely on getting fair play: 'the natural field will not be narrowed by the unwise proceedings of men.' Further, it was argued, one's own colonies were obviously the safest place for investing the capital which was then accumulating uncomfortably fast in the mother country; and they were equally obviously the most suitable home for those would-be emigrants for whose poverty England seemed to have no remedy.
This revival of British interest in colonies was particularly opportune for New Zealand, where there had arisen a prophet of economic imperialism whose influence over her destiny was comparable with that of Wakefield himself. Julius Vogel, indeed, brought Wakefield up to date in an attractive system which gave concrete form to generally current ideas. As an empty and undeveloped country, New Zealand needed immigrants and the economic equipment to give them employment. That is, she needed loans with which to build railways, roads, and bridges, and to finance immigration. Such loans could only come from Britain, and be raised by pledging the public credit; and in 1870 Vogel boldly proposed that £10,000,000 should be raised and spent in this manner during the next ten years.
There was nothing new in this plan except its magnitude. For years the provinces had been borrowing for public works, and during the Maori wars there had been frequent suggestions that borrowing for development should be made systematic. England, it was said, should remove her troops, who were virtually useless in the New Zealand bush, and send loans instead; for New Zealand's resources were cheerfully assumed to be inexhaustible, and only in need of capital for rapid development. Already New Zealand was one of Britain's best customers, sending wool and gold in exchange for manufactures, and in colonial borrowing an impressive beginning had already been made: was not 'the seven millions of money we owe to the British bond holder' a useful guarantee that in the last resort Britain would not allow New Zealand to sink into utter ruin? What, then, might not be hoped for if London's purse-strings were really untied? Such arguments were taken up and crystallised by Vogel. They sounded all the more persuasive in New Zealand because the prosperity arising from the gold rushes was manifestly on the point of collapse: and London responded freely to the appeal. The result was a period of borrowing, public works, and immigration which altered the face of New Zealand.
Details of the 'Vogel boom' and subsequent reaction do not belong to this study: the broad effect was, however, to tie New Zealand to the economic system of Great Britain more firmly than ever before. Between 1870 and 1880 New Zealand's public debt grew from £7,841,891 to £28,583,231, and her population from 248,400 to 484,864; and the volume of her trade enormously increased. For example, the value of her exports of wool increased from £830,000 in 1863 to £2,702,000 in 1873, and (in spite of a disastrous fall in prices) to £3,014,000 in 1883. Thus the economic bond between colony and mother country, which was naturally slender when colonists were struggling for mere existence, grew really strong when New Zealand (often under leadership of enterprising Australians) developed her sheep industry for overseas markets. Further, refrigeration after 1882 gave New Zealand two new exports: frozen meat and dairy produce. She accordingly organised herself, on the whole with remarkable efficiency, to supply Britain with the products of the sheep and the cow. British demand seemed inexhaustible, and production steadily increased. By 1900 New Zealand, with a population of three-quarters of a million, sent to Great Britain goods worth £10,000,000 each year; and in return Britain sent manufactured goods—and capital. By 1900 the public debt was nearly £50,000,000: and both debt and export trade grew formidably in the remaining years before the Great War. Thus the economic dependence of New Zealand on Great Britain, which was not decisive in 1870, became a living reality, and in fact governed the whole of the colony's internal development and social structure; and there appeared a material impulse, of enormous strength, to fortify the sentimental bond with the home country.
Sentiment, economic advantage, and a sense of isolation which grew with foreign colonial enterprise in the Pacific: these bound New Zealand closely to Britain, and since 1870 she has generally been of all colonies the most 'loyal' to the imperial connection. However, loyalty has often been consistent with a shrewd eye to her own interest and a sharp tongue to scold when those interests appeared to be sacrificed by Britain. This was, of course, particularly clear in the years immediately following the sharp anger of 1869-70, when the feeling remained strong that the imperial connection brought more danger than benefit to New Zealand. True, that connection made it easier to borrow money: a fact recognised in 1870 by the most indignant as one of the few solid arguments against separation. But membership of the Empire restricted New Zealand's freedom in trade policy; therefore she pressed in 1871 and again in 1887 the embarrassing request that she should be allowed to negotiate her own commercial agreements with foreigners. Again, it remained an uncomfortable thought that British policy (over which New Zealand had no influence) might expose the colony to destruction by a country with which she had no quarrel. In 1870 this risk seemed too high a price to pay for 'the advantage of forming part of a great Empire', and accordingly New Zealand made the interesting but premature suggestion that her neutrality might be recognised in wars caused by British policy. Failing this, she asked for a share in determining the foreign policy by which she was to be bound; a demand which would involve some reorganisation of imperial relations.
Thus New Zealand became an advocate of what was then loosely called imperial federation amongst those who in England and overseas were groping for a new conception of the Empire. The aim was to give the colonies something approaching equality of status as partners, though junior partners, in a co-operative concern. In the seventies and eighties this conception was more attractive to the prospective senior partner, Britain, than to most of the self-governing colonies, who were anxious to buttress their autonomy and were suspicious of any constitutional arrangement which would place them in a permanent minority. New Zealand, however, saw in such plans to strengthen the imperial tie a means by which she might share more effectively in controlling the wealth and power of the Empire as a whole. Vogel and his contemporaries were conscious of the disadvantages brought by membership of the Empire, and they proposed to make the most of the benefits. In particular they wanted from Britain capital and migrants (which she was willing enough to furnish) and British support in winning an island empire in the Pacific.
This last was another matter, for it involved the alteration of British foreign policy to suit the wishes of colonists; but it was extremely important for New Zealand. By 1870 the vision of an island empire with New Zealand as the political and economic centre was already a matter of national tradition.
Appendices to Journal of House of Representatives, 1877, A-10; Masterman, Origins of International Rivalry in Samoa, Chapter iv and pp. 174 ff.; Scholefield, The Pacific, passim.
As early as 1848 Grey had tried to entice the Colonial Office into adopting it as a practical policy. Successful administration in New Zealand, he wrote, had shown new possibilities in Polynesian colonisation. While Maori loyalty was retained, native military skill would suffice not only to protect New Zealand and neighbouring Australia but also to conquer and hold the Pacific possessions of France. Why not then extend the principle? It would still be possible to annex a great island kingdom without offending any European power, and with the universal approval of natives who could be organised into a military force of overwhelming strength under British leadership. Thus the whole Pacific could be turned into a British lake for the mere cost of annexation. Even that outlay would soon be recouped, for trade would infallibly follow the flag, and meantime 'young men whose time is now wasted in hopeless and discontented idleness' could be employed with pleasure to themselves and profit to the Empire.
This rosy vision did not attract the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The expense, he wrote, would be considerable, and the benefits, such as they were, could be gathered in more cheaply by a system of consular agents, who would give 'instructions and assistance to the native authorities towards the establishment of a regular government' to protect British interests, and who might even suggest to chieftains involved in disputes with foreigners that they should refer the facts to Queen Victoria and follow her advice; without, of course, involving the Queen in any responsibility or danger of expenditure. So the matter rested: but Grey's idea did not die. On the contrary it found vigorous life in the Melanesian Mission organised among innumerable islands by Grey's friend, that muscular Christian and skilful navigator, Bishop Selwyn. His ambition to make New Zealand the spiritual capital of the Pacific was the complement of Grey's more militaristic approach: and it gave to his New Zealand flock some knowledge of islanders and their problems, and some sense of responsibility. With his own eyes, and through those of Patteson, his friend and successor in the missionary field, he saw the havoc wrought in island life by European commerce and by the unscrupulous recruiters of black labour: and the knowledge so gained (crowned by Patteson's martyrdom in 1871) provided a moral basis for New Zealand's imperial ambitions.
Accordingly, when the close of the Maori wars released New Zealand's energies once more, the way had been prepared for adventure; and adventurous leaders were at hand. By this time, of the islands which had fallen within her proposed sphere of influence, New Caledonia had gone, snatched in 1851 from beneath the nose of an indignant Governor Grey to avenge 'the insult inflicted on France when an Englishman twelve years ago stole New Zealand from a French captain.' Samoa remained, however, also Tonga, the New Hebrides, and Fiji; but New Zealand had neither the power, nor as a dependency the right, to act alone. She could point the way, argue and persuade: but the decision lay in London. Therefore between 1870 and 1885 New Zealand ministers offered to Britain a stream of impassioned advice in favour of a crusade of annexation in the Pacific.
The basic arguments were of the same type as those which had justified the colonisation of New Zealand herself: economic and strategic advantage, the danger of foreign expansion, and the misdeeds of irresponsible Europeans amid chaotic native society. The master mind was that of Vogel, whose boundless optimism and plain-spoken vigour irritated, alarmed, and amused the officials of Downing Street. To the head of the Colonial Office Vogel was 'the most audacious adventurer that perhaps has ever held power in a British Colony', and by 1872 the British Government had concluded that his ambitions would be satisfied by nothing less than the exclusion of all other powers, European and American, from the South Pacific. This was, perhaps, an exaggeration, for New Zealand statesmen were slightly more cautious. They merely desired Britain to annex all the islands which remained unappropriated by some foreign power, and at intervals expressed a wish to help actively in carrying out that 'great national work'.
In this campaign to mobilise the Empire behind her Pacific ambitions New Zealand found enthusiastic allies in the Australian colonies, who shared her concern about the Pacific islands, and who in addition felt acutely uneasy about eastern New Guinea. The result was a period of close collaboration between New Zealand and Australia. Relations between the two had long been close and friendly. In her times of trouble with the Maoris, for example, men and material were sent to her assistance from Australia. Both depended for their external defence on the same British navy: and as early as 1856 a leading New Zealand statesman suggested that a squadron should be jointly maintained by Britain and the colonies—and kept in Australasian waters. With the gold rushes in Australia in the fifties New Zealand farmers found sudden prosperity in feeding miners; this prosperity continued and increased in the next decade with the discovery of gold in New Zealand herself. Population leapt up, and with it the demand for food. Enterprising men came from Australia, some to trade, some to dig, and some to invest their new won capital in large-scale sheepfarming. Thus New Zealand found herself more and more closely associated with Australia by kinship of peoples, and by the development of kindred economic organisations. As was natural, all the colonies tended to take the same point of view on current issues. For example, the fight for local self-government took place at the same time throughout Australasia. The colonists used the same arguments, and won their victory at the same time. But in the sixties it was gradually realised that, when it came to dealing with the British Government, union was strength. The way to win concessions was not to press a just cause individually, but to join 'in one universal roar of astonishment and abhorrence.' The Australians did this on the constitutional issue; New Zealanders joined with them in the roar against continued transportation of convicts to Australia: and between 1870 and 1885 the whole group strove to shout in unison about British foreign policy. Thus the habit of inter-colonial conferences grew strong, and it was at such a conference in 1883 that the 'Monroe doctrine of the South' was formulated most clearly and aggressively. In Siegfried's phrase, 'the programme of Australasia for the Australasians developed into Oceania for the Anglo-Saxons.' Thus did the Empire's junior partners formulate a policy and bluntly call on Britain to execute it.
The Australasian chorus was heard in London with cool scepticism, even with indifference. In spite of reviving interest in the Empire after 1870, the colonial-minded were still in a small minority both in government circles and among the people as a whole. Overseas politicians visiting the mother country to test public opinion about themselves were scandalised to find that, though they were occasionally lionised, thoughtful public opinion about colonies simply did not exist. If noticed at all, they were seen by the ordinary citizen as curious and distant human specimens about which touring Englishmen sometimes wrote interesting books; and as for New Zealand in particular, during the Maori wars she was vaguely conceived as a remote dependency, somewhere near Australia, in which there were interminable troubles for reasons which were quite unintelligible. Thus, British politicians could not take the Pacific problem as seriously as did Australians and New Zealanders, and were by no means willing to place the navy at the disposal of colonists who had no disposition to contribute towards its expenses. Till the age of Rhodes, Chamberlain, and Kipling the Empire remained a side-line for British statesmanship. It was the fad of enthusiasts rather than a central point of policy. The feeling remained strong against careless extension of British territory, and for the time being determination to count the cost had dissipated that absence of mind through which, wrote Seeley, Britain had conquered and peopled half the world.
In these circumstances the Australian-New Zealand campaign had moderate success only. After a long fight the colonies won in 1873 the right to grant each other tariff preferences — a hard-won concession which they were remarkably unanimous in ignoring—and in the following year Fiji was annexed by Britain. This last, however, proved a disastrous victory. The British Government argued (as was true) that Fiji had been annexed because of pressure from Australia and New Zealand, and in order to serve their interests rather than those of the Empire as a whole. It accordingly invited New Zealand, New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria to contribute towards the cost. Its professed object was not to get money, but 'to give trial and effect to the principle of joint action among different members of the Empire', and to give the thriving Australasian colonies an opportunity to assume 'their membership in the common duties of the Empire.' But the colonies refused. New Zealand, which had asked that Fiji should be included within her boundaries, would not contribute without sharing control. To ask her to do so, explained Vogel in 1876, was 'a novel proceeding, connected only with the presumed policy of casting the colonies adrift'; and he added that Britain should have made her bargain with contributing colonies before acting, instead of passing round the hat afterwards. If this were done, he said, governments must be guided by the general rule: not to 'indulge in any expenditure that can with honour be avoided.'
However justifiable, the unanimous decision of the colonies that they could with honour avoid contributing to the expenses of Fiji was bad tactics. The incident confirmed the British Government's natural suspicion that colonists always wanted everything for nothing, and whenever they pressed again for annexations, Britain took Vogel's line, and before acting asked for a guarantee that expenses would be met; preferably a joint guarantee from the whole group of Australasian colonies. But by the time they had virtually accepted this principle, in 1883, foreign colonisers had become increasingly interested in the Pacific, and the British Government was strongly inclined to win their friendship by graceful concessions in a sphere so distant from herself So it turned out. A valuable part of New Guinea fell to Germany, in spite of Australian protest, and Samoa, which New Zealand regarded as her special preserve, seemed to be going the same way.
New Zealand fought hard against this conclusion. Apart from pressure for outright annexation, Vogel made in 1874 the interesting suggestion that a great chartered company, to be controlled from New Zealand, might 'earn for a reluctant Great Britain—without committing her to the responsibilities she fears—a grand island Dominion, and in the meantime save the Mother Country much danger and risk. I speak, of course, of the danger and risk of expenditure, which weigh so much with the rulers of Great Britain.' This plan, urged with vehemence and backed by a significant remark that New Zealand would have acted on her own responsibility if independent, was nevertheless firmly shelved by the British Government. So was the Act of 1883—passed under Grey's leadership in answer to a petition from Samoa—which would have given New Zealand power to annex any unappropriated island whose occupation by 'any foreign power would be detrimental to the interests of Australasia.' London still had the last word, and the colonies, when it came to the point, were still remote dependencies without a voice in the direction of imperial affairs.
The British Government had, perhaps, some reason for its wish that Vogel's 'highly speculative scheme should be promptly snuffed out' in 1874; it could scarcely have placed in the rash hands of New Zealand statesmen the powers asked for by Grey in 1883; in any case German trade predominated in Samoa, and for Britain to have annexed the islands at that stage would have been a foolish affront to a friendly if ambitious country. Still, the fact remains that in dealing with Samoa (as with New Guinea and later the New Hebrides) the British Government did not take the colonies into its confidence. Thus, while negotiations were being concluded, there was a brisk agitation in Samoa—organised by private citizens who were New Zealanders—for the islands to be annexed to New Zealand. When reports reached the colony of the agreement of November 1884, which gave Germany control over the native Samoan government, intense indignation shook the New Zealand ministers and they proposed to take the matter into their own hands by sending an official expedition to Samoa. This dangerous plan was crushed by the British Government: but to placate the colonists Britain drew from Bismarck a promise not to annex the islands. Thus there was preserved the confusion of nominal Samoan independence, with everyone dissatisfied; and New Zealand was invited to pocket her pride, recognise frankly 'the good claims of a great friendly power', and co-operate with Germany in developing Samoan trade.
The year 1885 was a turning point in New Zealand's attitude towards the Empire. On the one hand it was clear that she had not benefited from the imperial connection in the way planned by Vogel. Prosperity based on borrowing had subsided into prolonged economic depression, and Britain persistently refused to carry out the colonists' policy in the Pacific. On the other hand, a few months after New Zealand's maximum indignation about Samoa the threat of war against Russia caused her to see her relations with Britain from a new angle. Fifteen years before, when contemplating just such a war—caused by British policy, and against a country with which New Zealand herself had no quarrel—New Zealand had suggested that she might remain neutral. But when war actually threatened, the result was a sudden tightening of imperial sentiment. The fact was that the mere thought of war sapped that confidence on which the previous independence of spirit had been based. With Russian warships in the Pacific it was somehow no longer obvious that New Zealand would be safer as a small independent state than as an Empire country entitled to protection from the navy. Therefore, when faced in 1885 with an apparent crisis, New Zealand chose her path without hesitation. Vogel, some of whose dearest hopes had just been crushed by British policy in Samoa, penned an able document advocating not separation, but imperial federation. The Government (of which he was a member) promised an expeditionary force of '1000 well-trained men, one fourth to be Maoris' and offered to pay handsomely towards the cost of 'a powerful man-of-war cruiser for the special defence of New Zealand.' This last offer was hailed by Governor Jervois as the first concrete sign of a colony's willingness to contribute towards its own naval defence; and two years later the governor's hopes were shown to be justified. At the Colonial Conference of 1887, New Zealand joined Australia in promising to find each year the sum of £126,000, in part-payment for the maintenance of Britain's Australasian squadron — a small contribution towards easing the imperial malaise which accompanied the change-over from wood to iron and from sail to steam; and, like Australia, she set about fortifying her main ports.
The Russian war scare clarified imperial relations in more ways than one. It showed that New Zealand was less critical in her loyalty than her spokesmen had suggested, and it stung the Australasian colonies into real co-operation for imperial purposes; on the other hand the sequel marked clearly a growing difference of opinion and policy between New Zealand and her principal Australian neighbours. When the naval agreement of 1887 was brought before the various parliaments, the Australians were restive. There were vehement protests to the effect that the Australian colonies should maintain and control fleets of their own (a plan actually discussed at a conference of Australasian colonies in 1883) instead of paying tribute to another country in such a way as to involve the new world in the quarrels of the old. One colony, Queensland, flatly refused to ratify the agreement and deposed the Premier who had accepted it. The remainder ultimately paid up, but only after outvoting a determined minority. In New South Wales, for example, the debate was protracted for two weary nights. When at length the motion was carried, exhausted members greeted the dawn with three cheers for Australia and three for England—apparently in that order. By contrast, there were no such scenes in New Zealand.
Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 59, pp. 980 ff., 993 ff.
There was, indeed, a certain amount of criticism. One member revived the 1870 suggestion of neutrality: let there be a colonial flag, internationally recognised, 'which without indicating any severance from the Mother country, would give security' in wars which did not concern the colonies directly. But only one speaker expressed himself strongly; and though his language was mild compared with that of some Australians, succeeding speakers found it impossible to express their opinions of him in parliamentary terms.
In this debate Atkinson, the Premier, and Vogel, his principal critic, significantly agreed as to objectives and disagreed as to methods of obtaining them. Both men wished to draw tighter the bonds of empire and at the same time to give New Zealand some influence in deciding the great issues of peace and war. For Atkinson the naval contribution was a step in this direction. It was the soundest approach to some form of imperial federation, for it would in time awaken the British people to the fact that New Zealand existed, had some importance, and was entitled to a voice in imperial councils. For Vogel, on the other hand, there was bad psychology in making a generous concession in the hope that the grateful recipient would in due course respond. In imperial as in personal affairs, he said, one must negotiate and strike a bargain before paying. Such, indeed, had been his own attitude in imperial negotiations: and he pointed out in some detail the one-sided nature of the proposed naval agreement. After all, he said, was it not true that naval defence in the Pacific was needed principally because Britain had allowed foreign powers to establish themselves, in spite of sound advice poured homewards by Vogel himself and his Australian colleagues? Was not the mother country trying to cast on the colonies the burdens resulting from her own mistakes? And had she not singled out the Australasian colonies to pay tribute while the rest of the colonial Empire went free? Surely, all this was not reasonable, however much it might be gilded by imperial sentiment. Vogel did not, indeed, oppose the contribution. He merely criticised the spirit in which it had been asked for and promised; and he suggested that before long Britain might have a chance of making an imperial gesture by granting a tariff preference to her colonies. His only fear was that the concession might come too late through the development of colonial taste for independent action.
Thus in 1887 New Zealand spoke with two voices. That of Vogel was the voice of the past. It was confident and independent, willing if need be to face the world alone because in a sensible universe reason and not sentiment governed politics. But Atkinson spoke with the voice of the future: conscious that New Zealand was small and weak in a world full of potential menace, but conscious also that she was safe behind the shield of British power. In the years that followed, the spirit of Vogel was gradually ousted by the impulse towards uncritical loyalty which was fed by sentiment, by trade and finance, and by the slow decay of the sense of unshakeable security.
5 Decline of Independence
In 1887 the crucial problem of naval defence brought out the difference between the New Zealand and the Australian points of view. That difference was fundamental, and was accentuated as Australia (particularly after federation) pressed for a navy of her own. Admiralty experts pointed out in vain that separate navies would be less efficient and more costly than a single fleet under central control. Australian national dignity would no longer permit her to pay tribute to another country; and that political argument, once formulated, was unanswerable. The Admiralty accepted it just before the Great War with a fair grace—but with a reminder to the Empire as a whole that fighting efficiency had been sacrificed to colonial sentiment; and New Zealand's conduct was held up in contrast as an example to self-governing colonies.
New Zealand had in fact publicly dissociated herself from each stage of Australia's action. When the matter was discussed in Parliament in 1902
Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 122, pp. 507 ff.
the acting Prime Minister roundly condemned the plan of separate navies, and none of the following speakers questioned the wisdom of the existing tribute to the Admiralty. Most members wanted the payment to be increased, without too close enquiry into the value received for the money: ('we do not want that odious spirit of huckstering to come in and mar our Imperialism'), and those very arguments which stung Australians to demand a navy of their own were used to rally New Zealanders round the Admiralty: 'If we are loyal subjects of the Empire, if we have a spark of independence in us, we should increase our contribution to the British navy.' In 1907, when Australia took the plunge and demanded 'ships altogether Australian in cost and political control, both in peace and war', New Zealand accepted faithfully the principle of 'one sea, one Empire, one navy', and was willing to 'trust the Admiralty' without limit. In 1909, moreover, when Australia ordered her first warships, Sir Joseph Ward on New Zealand's behalf thrust upon a grateful Admiralty the offer of 'at least one, and if necessary, two first-class battleships … to be controlled both in peace and war-time absolutely by the British Government.' In 1913, it is true, passing discontent with British naval policy, together with the wish to recruit local personnel, led New Zealand to order a cruiser for the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy. Even then, however, it was understood that this division, though administered by New Zealand in times of peace, 'shall automatically pass under the direct control of the Admiralty immediately on the outbreak of hostilities.' By contrast, the Australian navy remained under local control in war as in peace, until such time as the Australian Government should deliberately hand it over to the Admiralty.
Actually, when the test came in 1914, the practical difference between the two arrangements was nil, for the day before war was declared Australia offered her new navy unconditionally to the Admiralty. But the difference in principle was great: New Zealand had deliberately accepted the Admiralty view almost in its entirety at a time when Australia made the principle of naval independence a point of pride for her developing sense of nationhood. Indeed, New Zealand's loyalty to the British view of naval defence was part of her general reaction against that nationhood, and marked the extent to which the two Dominions had drifted apart by the eve of the Great War.
As we have seen, the early relations between New Zealand and her Australian neighbours were always close, and nearly always friendly: but as the movement for an Australian federation gathered strength, New Zealand held aloof. The old ties of course remained strong through kinship of men and ideas. The labour movements throughout the colonies were closely linked, for example; land policy and social service legislation followed the same lines; and the whole group of colonies took similar action against Asiatic immigrants. Again, it was widely realised that co-operation was essential in defence: only by holding together, it was said in 1885, can the Australasian colonies meet Bismarck squarely by his own methods of blood and iron. In spite of all, however, New Zealand never seriously wavered in the determination expressed at the beginning of her career as a self-governing colony, to cling to her 'separate and independent power and destiny'.
The arguments against joining with Australia were forcibly defined by Stout as early as 1885.
Appendices to Journals of House of Representatives, 1886, A-1, p. 14.
New Zealand, in his view, should only join in an Australasian federation, 'if the desire to do so was widespread amongst the colonists, and the love of such a union was strong.' As yet, he wrote, the colony's feeling for Australia did not go beyond 'a warm feeling of sympathy and kindliness': a feeling which gave a sound basis for free co-operation, but which might be destroyed by an attempt at organic political union. By such a union, moreover, New Zealand would sacrifice 'her influence in the Pacific, of which she is naturally the trade centre'; and above all, she would imperil 'her local autonomy and legislative power'. This was, indeed, the crux of the matter: the fear of being swallowed up by a country which was close enough to dominate, in spite of the 1,200 miles of ocean which would prevent really intimate co-operation. And as Australia became progressively more conscious of her nationality and individual point of view, so New Zealand naturally disliked increasingly the idea of sacrificing her kindred but subtly different conceptions. After all, her climate, social tradition, and economic interest all drew her towards England rather than towards Australia; and it was perhaps of some importance that the economic arguments against federation seemed to strengthen during the critical years between 1890 and 1900. In particular, wheat farmers and manufacturers, who feared Australian competition, clung to the protection which only an independent tariff could give. Thus it is not surprising that, though New Zealand postponed decision to the eleventh hour or beyond it, in 1900 she finally stood aside from the new Commonwealth.
From the first New Zealand set the conception of imperial federation against that of a regional arrangement with Australia; if she were to surrender anything of her independence, it should be in order to become an effective part of a great world power. As opposed to mere regionalism, her statesmen even looked forward to a reunion of all the English-speaking peoples, and in 1885 they actually invited the Queen to organise a conference in London or Washington to consider such a project. With such ideas in the minds of her leaders, and with the under- lying conviction that (to use Vogel's phrase) 'the benefits that would follow imperial federation are as certain as those of colonial federation are doubtful', New Zealand argued an unpopular cause in imperial affairs during the last twenty-five years before the Great War. During those years Canada, and to a less extent Australia, fought for colonial autonomy, and the Empire as a whole stumbled towards a new ideal: that of permanent alliance between virtually independent nations which (in the mystic phrase) were 'equal in status though not in stature'. New Zealand shared modestly in this process; but at the same time she, alone among self-governing Dominions, pressed the case for a much closer political bond than that represented by periodical imperial conferences. At the Imperial Conference of 1897, for example, the vast majority of delegates thought that the then existing political relations within the Empire were satisfactory. The time might come, they allowed, for colonists to be given 'a voice in the direction and control of those questions of Imperial interest in which they are concerned equally with the Mother-country'. But they were in no hurry, and feared that if they were allowed a voice in their own foreign affairs, there might be money to pay. As against this resolution, Seddon formed the more vocal half of a minority of two. He deplored that nothing had been done 'to more firmly secure the political ties between the United Kingdom and the colonies'; and he denied that improved ties would mean colonial subsidies towards imperial expenses. At the next conference (1902) Seddon himself, and in 1907 his successor, Sir Joseph Ward, urged different plans for tightening imperial bonds; and finally, in 1911 Ward presented an elaborate plan for an Imperial Defence Parliament (or Council) in a speech which (it has been suggested) was the longest ever made at an Imperial Conference.
Keith, Speeches and Documents on British Colonial Policy, Vol. 2, p. 247.
These proceedings, taken in conjunction with New Zealand's comparative docility in naval matters, earned for this Dominion an outstanding reputation for imperial enthusiasm which was refreshing to English statesmen jaded by the independent spirit of Canada and Australia.
On the whole that reputation was justified; New Zealand was an outstandingly 'loyal' Dominion. Yet the ambitious and questioning spirit of Vogel was not dead in these pre-war years. It is clearly to be seen, for example, in the attitude of Ward himself, who was by no means willing to follow blindly in the imperial wake of Great Britain. It was he, for example, who said in 1907 that 'we should be above all things strenuous to preserve our entity and individuality in the control of our own country', and that New Zealand wanted to 'keep clear of being drawn into what one might term Continental troubles with England itself. We want to have a distinct line of demarcation drawn in that respect between the responsibility we accept of our own free will and the responsibility that may be imposed upon us without our having had any opportunity of conference or discussion with regard to it.' As late as 1911 when Ward, as a minority of one, advocated imperial federation to a critical audience, one theme continually recurs: that under the existing system colonies were committed to war without the smallest chance of influencing the decision. It was right and inevitable, he thought, that they should shoulder this responsibility; but in return, 'they are entitled, as a matter of right, not as a matter of appeal, to have some say, even although they may be in a minority, upon some properly constituted body that is going to decide the question as to whether there is to be peace or war'. Just how this 'properly constituted body' was to function Ward was comparatively vague, as he showed under a bombardment of critical interjections by Australians, Canadians, and Englishmen. But he clung firm to his general conclusions: that the present system was wrong, that no scheme of imperial federation could increase the colonies' responsibility because they were involved up to the hilt already; and that even the smallest influence which they might exert under a new scheme would be a gain, because at present their influence was literally nothing.
These arguments were typical of New Zealand's approach to the problem of imperial relations. They had in fact been anticipated almost word for word in the parliamentary debate of 1883,
Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 44, p. 243.
and in the writings of Vogel and Stout. They were also typical in that they were clear in general intention, but were not embodied in a workable system. Such concrete details as they contained were probably due primarily to the Round Table movement, and certainly did not represent the considered opinion of New Zealand statesmanship, let alone the New Zealand electorate. In fact, Ward placed before the Conference a vehement wish that something should be done rather than a well thought-out scheme of how to do it, and in doing so he expressed the general Dominion point of view more accurately than is suggested by the volume of criticism hurled at him then and since. Though he spoke the language of imperial federation and the rest spoke that of Dominion nationalism, they all had the same grievance at heart and the same vaguely conceived remedy in mind.
All the Dominions felt with Ward that there was something wrong with a system which imposed on them responsibilities without a chance to influence policy; and this consensus of Dominion opinion bore fruit. Asquith, the British Prime Minister, answered Ward by the famous declaration that control of foreign policy could not be shared, so that in fact colonists must always fight in Britain's wars without a voice in their own fate; but at the same time he did much to give in practice that which he formally refused. Hitherto, Dominions had been given information about particular negotiations which concerned them directly, but by a revolutionary development the Conference of 1911 was given a full survey of British foreign policy in general—a fuller survey, it is said, than had been placed before the British Cabinet itself—and this was followed up by close consultation on the technical problems of defence. This development was welcomed with enthusiasm by Dominion spokesmen, who felt that in these confidential discussions they had been at last given a real share in imperial policy; and it paved the way for the active co-operation of Dominion Prime Ministers in the Imperial War Cabinet, as well as for the systematic exchange of information (including information about Dominion views) in later years.
New Zealand's championship of imperial federation which flamed up in 1911 was, then, not a mere surrender of judgment to British leadership. It was historically connected with a crusade to win for her some real influence in imperial affairs: and the same can be said of certain other acts of policy which were rightly hailed as proof of New Zealand's loyalty to the mother country. It is true, for example, of the whole episode of Seddonian imperialism. There can be no doubt of the spontaneous will of New Zealand as a whole to help Britain in the Boer War. Seddon, however, was clearly conscious that in leading the colony to war at Britain's side he was helping to earn the right to a 'direct part in the government of a federated Empire'; and, taking up Macaulay's famous remark, he said that in the legendary future 'the New Zealander will be advising in council, not croaking on London Bridge' as he surveyed the ruins of the Empire's capital.
Harrop, My New Zealand, p. 201, and in Cambridge History of British Empire, Vol. vii, Part ii, p. 219.
Seddon himself, for that matter, was eager to advise Britain (or anyone else) forthwith, without awaiting the formalities of imperial federation; and the conferences of 1897 and 1902 gave him a ready-made public platform in Britain, South Africa, and Australia. To all he gave broad hints on social reconstruction, based on the idea that they might well copy New Zealand; but to the mother country in particular he gave impressive counsel on general policy.
He had a genuine sympathy for human suffering, and was shocked to find in Britain tragic evidence of that biting poverty which was almost unknown in New Zealand. His remedy for this situation was, naturally, that Britain should be more receptive to new ideas, and in particular adopt social services along New Zealand lines, and by devices similar to hers establish confidence between employers and workers. Further, he urged, let Britain, having thus secured the home front, wage war against foreign protectionists with their own weapons, set up a tariff system, and cleave to the Empire by granting mutual preferences to the self-governing colonies. Thus Seddon in 1902 was one of the most vocal leaders of an energetic colonial campaign to persuade the mother country to abandon her traditional free trade in order to build up an imperial customs system which, like the German Zollverein of the nineteenth century, would weld together independent but kindred peoples.
The results were disappointing. Chamberlain, it is true, launched a powerful campaign in Britain for 'tariff reform'. But the idea of free trade was deeply rooted in the British mind, which felt that the solid benefit of cheap food was not to be lightly risked, even in order to please such forceful colonials as Seddon. As he complained, therefore, there was much talk about imperial consolidation, but little action in the directions he desired. Nor were Englishmen much more responsive to his practical gestures. New Zealand's tariff of 1903 gave a substantial preference to Britain; shortly afterwards commercial agreements were negotiated with Australia and South Africa, and Canada and New Zealand granted each other a tariff preference. According to New Zealand spokesmen these changes together made up an impressive contribution towards an imperial tariff system: and the only thing really lacking was British co-operation. But Britain made no move. Apart from the free-trade principles of her Liberal Government the fact was that Seddon's preferences had only a small effect on trade. As Asquith, speaking for Britain, gently reminded Ward in 1907, they only affected one-fifth of Britain's exports to New Zealand. Moreover, duties against British goods had not been lowered; an additional burden had been imposed on foreigners, but the British exporter faced the same barriers as before. In short Seddon's arguments for imperial preference were weakened by the fact that his own application of them illustrated the difficulties rather than the possibilities of genuine imperial customs co-operation. The suggestion which pleased Mr Chamberlain and British manufacturers was that of a Zollverein, or free trade within the Empire, which would knock down Dominion barriers against British trade. The Dominions, however, were determined to keep those barriers high against British manufacturers.
Though it should be noted that, as compared with Australia and Canada, New Zealand was and remained a low-tariff country.
What interested them was the suggestion that the British market for their food and raw materials should be protected by taxing foreign imports: a suggestion naturally distasteful to manufacturers who wanted cheap materials and to politicians whose constituents clamoured for 'a free breakfast-table'. Between these contradictory points of view the field for an imperial customs system was narrow indeed.
In short, Seddon failed to drag Britain into imperial preference; nor did he fare much better with his energetic revival of Vogel's Pacific imperialism. Under his leadership New Zealand made a last effort to gain Samoa, and in 1899 offered to send an expeditionary force there to end in favour of the Empire the unsatisfactory compromise which followed the agreement of 1884. In the same year, however, Britain without consulting New Zealand agreed to the alternative solution of German annexation, and he penned a vigorous protest, explaining that this disagreeable result had followed from British neglect of New Zealand advice thirty years before, and suggesting that the Cook, Fiji, Friendly, and Society islands should at once be brought within the boundaries of New Zealand. 'Some definite action of a forward kind is required in the Pacific at the earliest opportune moment,' he wrote, 'for the surrender of Samoa has disheartened the natives of the Islands, disappointed the people of Australasia, and lowered the prestige of Great Britain in this part of the globe.'
Mr Chamberlain answered this outburst with tact. He recognised 'the legitimate disappointment of New Zealand in regard to the settlement of Samoa, and the loyalty with which it has been accepted by the colony', and, as to islands asked for by Seddon, he hinted that the time might come when 'the great self-governing colonies' might be allowed to relieve Great Britain of a burdensome responsibility. The only practical result, however, was the annexation to New Zealand of the Cook Islands and Niue (1901). Fiji remained a Crown colony, in spite of an energetic agitation for federation with New Zealand in 1900-1, when Seddon and the Governor of Fiji waged a wordy battle across the waters of the Pacific; Tonga became a British protectorate, not administered by New Zealand; and thus was Seddon frustrated. The Auckland islands (1863), the Kermadecs (1887) and the Cook islands formed a meagre empire compared with the visions of Grey, Vogel, and Seddon himself. Towards the end of his life Seddon wrote in some bitterness of the way in which British muddlement and folly had frustrated New Zealand's sensible ambitions. Samoa had gone, though all had been prepared in 1885 for New Zealand's annexation, and 'the steamer was there tearing at her hawsers' when Downing Street's veto arrived. The Sandwich islands had gone to the United States, and the Philippines also were American. New Caledonia had gone, and the New Hebrides were apparently going. 'These losses were incalculable,' he wrote, 'and it was a pity that such statesmen [as had allowed them] should ever have been entrusted with the destinies of Great Britain.'
Drummond, Life and Work of Richard John Seddon, pp. 324-6.
When Seddon died in 1906, New Zealand's ambitions in the Pacific had apparently been finally defeated. Samoa was remembered: but during the years of European tension that preceded the Great War it would have been mere folly to have tormented the British Government with optimistic advice to annex Pacific islands. As this question was settled, there remained no issue in foreign affairs in which New Zealand felt a burning interest, and she was increasingly willing to leave the rest to Britain. Accordingly she sank more and more completely into that happy state described and envied by Siegfried: to a thoughtful European, what could seem more idyllic than to live in a country whose problems of 'foreign military and financial policy' were solved for it by a benevolent mother country? True, New Zealand rendered some return; for in her relations with the mother country the spirit of Atkinson gradually prevailed over that of Vogel. New Zealand learnt to give in the confident hope that she would in return receive; but she trusted to generosity rather than to business-like bargaining. The 'dormant Englishman' whom Siegfried perceived (in Seddon's lifetime) beneath 'the noisy self assertion of the New Zealander' awoke to life and to renewed influence. By this time, it is true, he had a proper pride in the social experiments which had been carried through in God's Own Country; but his sentiment for the mother country (viewed, from a distance, through a rosy haze) helped to overcome the last influence of early turbulent independence of spirit, and so enabled the flame of imperial loyalty to burn as steadily as if Grey, Vogel, Stout, and Seddon had never hurled abuse and complaint at an unsympathetic Colonial Office.
6 The Silken Bonds of Empire
The outbreak of the Great War in 1914 found New Zealand standing without question by the side of Great Britain. It was her proud boast that she was the first Dominion to offer help, and that her troops were the first to occupy enemy territory: a feat all the more satisfying because the territory concerned was the long-coveted Western Samoa. Samoa was occupied at the end of August, and in the middle of October the 'main body' of New Zealand's expeditionary forces sailed for Egypt via Australia. Their departure was preceded by one of the last and most violent disputes between New Zealand and the British Government.
Stewart, Sir Francis Bell, pp. 110-16.
At that time there were German raiders in the Pacific, and the Admiralty refused to provide a convoy of any real strength. New Zealand ministers felt that they were being asked to send their manhood to sea almost unprotected, and that their objections were being answered like the complaints of schoolboys. The Cabinet threatened to resign rather than accept the Admiralty's estimate of the strategic situation in the Pacific, and in the end they won their point. The whole incident, however, has generally been kept decently veiled, and did nothing to disturb the general harmony of imperial co-operation in war-time.
This co-operation was, of course, based on technical plans laid in the last few years of peace. With the outbreak of war New Zealand's very rudimentary naval organisation was at once handed over to the Admiralty, nor did the army cause much greater difficulty. The compulsory training for home defence enacted in 1909 was organised by British officers, and in 1913 the Minister of Defence discussed with the War Office the kind of expeditionary force which New Zealand should provide in the event of war. Thus in 1914 everything had been prepared. Compulsory service had been in force long enough to provide a solid basis for an expeditionary force, and plans were laid to fit that force into a general imperial scheme. From the first, volunteers for foreign service were not lacking, but in 1916, with the increasing demand for man power, it was decided to introduce conscription. By the end of the war 117,175 men had volunteered or been called up for overseas service—that is, well over ten per cent of the total population; and this total included a considerable number of Maoris and natives from those islands in the Pacific administered by New Zealand.
The details of New Zealand's war effort do not concern this study, except to note that she shared with her fellow Dominions a new sense of nationhood, based on the consciousness of a great national effort, and fortified by the solid internal prosperity arising from war prices. The sudden maturity of national consciousness, together with frank recognition of the help given to Britain by her Dominions led to a revolution in Dominion status. During the first two years of the war an outstanding fact burnt itself into the minds of those concerned with imperial problems: that the Dominions were involved in a war to the death by a decision over which they had no influence whatever. In all parts of the Empire this situation was seen to be intolerable, and the conclusion was drawn that some device must be found whereby Dominions—now shouldering the burdens of nationhood—should be given some influence in the vital decisions of peace and war.
Particularly in England ingenious minds, in search of such a device, turned again towards imperial federation, this time more clearly conceived as a constitutional arrangement. In 1916 this line of argument was brilliantly expounded by Mr Lionel Curtis, founder of the Round Table movement, in a little book called The Problem of the Commonwealth, which had a deep influence over British statesmen, and over individuals throughout the Empire. But the case for imperial federation, however logically sound and persuasively argued, found no support among Dominion statesmen. In 1917 even the spokesman of New Zealand, Mr Massey, while remarking that 'in theory there is not a very great deal to be said against it', urged caution in the matter, and praised enthusiastically a rival device which appeared to have brought at least a temporary solution to the fundamental problem.
Keith, Speeches and Documents on British Colonial Policy, Vol. 2, p. 387.
This was the Imperial War Cabinet, an institution which showed the soundness of the favourite argument of early New Zealand federationists; that given a genuine will to imperial co-operation constitutional difficulties would vanish. It was composed of five members of the British War Cabinet together with the five Dominion Prime Ministers, and met over two long periods—March to May 1917 and June to August 1918. It was a constitutional monstrosity, for a 'Cabinet' without joint responsibility defied the most sacred principles of parliamentary government, but it was completely justified by its success. Like the equally anomalous Committee of Imperial Defence (a council of key ministers and officials with occasional Dominion representation) it enabled men who agreed on objectives to hammer out means without worrying about constitutional formulae.
Such then was the institution in which Mr Massey found the ideal form of imperial co-operation. The Imperial War Cabinet gave more than mere consultation, for it could prepare joint action and give joint advice to the Sovereign: thus it satisfied New Zealand's traditional wish for a certain organic solidity in imperial institutions. At the same time, it preserved that 'partnership of nations' in which Mr Massey believed 'thoroughly and strongly', and ensured that New Zealand should only be asked to adopt an imperial policy after her views had been heard and considered by the British Government. But Massey's hope that the Imperial War Cabinet would become the basis of a permanent imperial constitution was frustrated. In 1917 all agreed that that constitution could not be settled during the stress of war, and by the time peace gave the opportunity for the Empire's future to be calmly considered, the situation had been vitally changed by developments at the Peace Conference.
Dominion statesmen took part in that conference as part of the British delegation: that was a natural extension of the Imperial War Cabinet procedure. But in addition they sat at the conference in their own right on the same footing as small belligerent nations; and in the end they signed the treaty separately and became independent foundation members of the League of Nations. This was due to energetic pressure by fellow-Dominions, notably Canada, who was determined that 'her title-deeds of nationhood' should be endorsed in this way. New Zealand did not share in this campaign. Massey signed with the rest of the Dominion Premiers without deep thought on the significance of his action, for it was to him simply a continuation of war-time imperial partnership. It had a sentimental and not a legal significance, and the fact that each Dominion had individually signed the Treaty demonstrated that 'one of the greatest results of the war is that … it has cemented the British Empire into one complete whole—into a unity that can not be destroyed, and which I believe will stand the test of time.'
Thus did Massey misinterpret the events in which he had taken part. To him the free decision of the Dominions to act in unison demonstrated the permanent fact of imperial unity. To his Canadian and South African colleagues the implication was rather that their freedom of choice had been recognised in principle; this time they freely chose to act with Britain, but on a future occasion they might with equal right stand aloof. And they promptly pressed the advantage that had been gained. In the twelve years that followed the Peace the task of imperial statesmanship was not (as Massey had hoped) to consolidate the warm comradeship of the Great War and embody it in a constitution. Rather it was to define Dominion status in such generous terms as to convince South Africa, Canada, and Ireland that they would be even more free within the Empire than as independent states. Therefore the historic forms of Empire were quickly modified so as to remove (or obscure) constitutional differences between the 'Dominion' of the United Kingdom and any other Dominion. Signs of British dominance were carefully eliminated, and Dominion statesmen could claim that they had all the independence they desired. In fact, Britain demonstrated clearly that she was willing to concede to any Dominion as much practical independence as it was determined to claim and exercise. This extended even to the appointment of ministers to foreign countries, and the negotiation of treaties.
This is not the place to discuss the disputed points in this evolution, or to estimate the exact degree of Dominion independence that was achieved between the two wars. The general trend is clear; and it drew a sharp reaction from New Zealand. Far from wishing to increase her independence she became more and more anxious to preserve her link with Britain, and in her effort to do so willingly jettisoned the last remnants of Vogelian independence. Her only fear was lest the enthusiasm and rashness of her fellow Dominions might impose on her a status for which she had no desire, and as early as 1919 her spokesmen expressed their suspicion that imperial cohesion had already been sadly weakened. When the peace settlement was debated in the New Zealand Parliament
Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 185, pp. 503 ff.
the implications of the Dominion's action were sharply pointed out to Massey by Downie Stewart. In signing the Treaty, he said, New Zealand had apparently performed the act of a sovereign state; yet she claimed to remain part of the Empire. As opposed to Massey he stated the old nineteenth-century dilemma that a colony must either be inside the Empire or outside; and he complained that, for the present, New Zealand seemed to be neither in nor out. Further, unless some constitutional reform could be carried through to transform the Empire into a partnership recognisable by the eye of the law, the sovereign act of making peace must be interpreted by the lawyer as a move towards independence for the Dominions.
Massey, who was a farmer and not a lawyer, could only reply that in signing the Treaty he had no such ideas in mind, and that the constitutional revolution desired by Mr Stewart had already been carried out with the formation of the Imperial War Cabinet. This act had, to his mind, created a partnership which was none the less genuine because not expressed in legal documents. He hoped that legal definition would soon follow, but meantime, he claimed, the position was clear. The Dominion delegates did not sign the Treaty 'as independent nations in the ordinary sense of the term. We signed it as representatives of self-governing nations within the Empire—partners, with everything that the name implies.'
Massey's argument depended on his belief that the partnership of the Imperial War Cabinet was to be continued indefinitely, but when the long-awaited Imperial Conference met in 1921 he realised (as perhaps Stewart had suspected in 1919) that this was not to be. There was a ring of distress in his complaint at that conference
Keith, Speeches and Documents on the British Dominions, pp. 59-62.
that the Empire had gone backwards in the last two years. The Dominions had gained in status, he admitted, but they had lost the solid organic structure of the Imperial War Cabinet and relapsed into 'consultation and consultation only'. Thus early did New Zealand state her dissatisfaction with the general trend of imperial development and, as Dominion status was more elaborately defined, dissatisfaction (or apprehension) led New Zealand to express minority views with all the energy permitted by an increasingly modest sense of her own unimportance.
Though apprehensive of the threat to imperial unity inherent in the attitude of her fellow Dominions, in the nineteen-twenties New Zealand found herself, for the first time in her history, fully satisfied with the state of her own particular relations with the mother country; or at least with the state of those relations as defined by herself. Her view of them was that sketched by Massey in layman's language in 1919, and reduced to legal precision by Sir John Salmond in his report on the Washington Conference of 1921-22. The Dominions, said Salmond, had no independence in international law, except possibly for the special purposes of the League of Nations. As seen by the foreigner, and by the lawyer, the Empire was still a unity, and spoke with one voice only. All that had happened was a domestic arrangement by which the Dominions had gained a share in deciding the policy to be followed by all, whether or not it followed their own wishes. Thus, in the view of New Zealand's statesmen in the nineteen-twenties the existing arrangement gave them that for which Vogel and Atkinson had hoped: a chance to be heard before decisions were made. 'The method that has been adopted is just this,' said Mr Coates as Prime Minister, in 1925.
Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 208, p. 772.
'The British Government carry on the negotiations. We … express our opinions quite definitely. If the Government … think that arrangements under consideration are likely … not to be in the interests of New Zealand, we say so. But if after that it is decided to go ahead, we say to the British Government, after knowing all the facts of the case: "Very well, if that is the arrangement to be made, we are prepared to stand by it."' Such was the New Zealand conception of imperial partnership. It was a partnership genuine and close, in which the juniors, though expressing their views frankly in confidential discussion, should loyally accept and support Britain's ultimate decision.
This attitude was made all the easier because in the nineteen-twenties New Zealand had few ideas of her own about foreign policy. Public opinion was on the whole badly informed and the Government correctly represented its constituents in its willingness to leave these matters to Britain. When consulted about foreign affairs, it was said in 1923, New Zealand answered 'in stereotyped form: "New Zealand is content to be bound by the determination of His Majesty's Government in London."' Two years later New Zealand alone of the Dominions, expressing 'its highest sense of the excellence of British policy' proposed to share the obligations of Locarno: a proposal which, however, it did not insist on carrying out. On one important occasion only were there signs of serious discontent with British policy. This was in 1924, when the British Labour Government favoured the policy of the Geneva Protocol. New Zealand felt that this 'mischievous' proposal sacrificed the solid reality (the British navy) to the 'visionary doctrines' of the League of Nations—from which no real protection would be forthcoming in emergency. But it was only when Macdonald had fallen that New Zealand poured her criticisms into the sympathetic ears of the British Conservative Government. Nor was this acquiescence in British policy a matter of form only. When in 1922 the Dominions were dramatically asked for support in the Chanak incident, a hastily-summoned Cabinet endorsed British action without hesitation, and accepted the invitation 'to be represented by a contingent.' Parliament was not consulted, for that 'would have entailed a delay of at least three days', instead of the three minutes actually devoted to the matter by Cabinet. It might also have lent some support to the pernicious Canadian doctrine that Dominions had the right to decide questions of war and peace for themselves. Nor was this attitude rejected by public opinion. Men flocked to the colours, and in the House of Representatives those who thought that Parliament should have been consulted could only muster seven votes against fifty-seven.
Satisfaction with the 'silken bonds' of Empire and the will to 'trust Britain' in foreign affairs just as in pre-war days she had trusted the Admiralty, led New Zealand to resist to the best of her ability those moves which she regarded as undermining the Empire's unity and strength. Massey in 1921 denounced the view that Dominions could negotiate treaties directly with foreigners, except on matters of commerce. The Balfour declaration of 1926 which described Dominion status in terms that were generous but cautiously vague was met, said an observer, 'with rabid and almost uncontrolled objections by New Zealand.' In the same year she made the characteristic gesture of promising to contribute £1,000,000 towards the Singapore Base, and declined to alter the status of her Governor-General, who remained in small but significant ways the formal representative of the Imperial Government. When her fellow Dominions were concerned with the attempts to define Dominion status which led to the Statute of Westminster (1931), her Prime Minister said with truth 'New Zealand has not been concerned with the recent developments in the constitutional relations between the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. We have felt at all times within recent years that we have had ample scope for our national aspirations and ample freedom to carry out in their entirety such measures as have seemed to us desirable.'
New Zealand's marked 'mother complex' developed strongly between 1919 and 1935. There were, of course, protests against it. Leaders of the Labour party, for example, feared lest the Dominion should be bound too closely to the 'Imperial chariot', and deplored the current assumption that New Zealand was still 'in a state of tutelage' so far as foreign affairs were concerned. A thoughtful minority claimed that New Zealand should stand more firmly on her own feet, acclaimed the more virile attitude of other Dominions, and grieved 'that in this country we should take a pride in our insufficiency.' Such views, however, could not rouse the country, for sentiment ran strongly in the other direction. The forces which led to Dominion nationalism elsewhere were lacking in New Zealand. Unlike Ireland and the Irish element in Australia, she had no deep-seated resentment against Britain's past conduct. There was no powerful non-British element which like the Afrikanders in South Africa could press for national independence, or like the French Canadians at least be eternally suspicious of British dominance; nor did she share with Canada the sense of America's powerful and friendly presence. Finally she had least of all the Dominions the feeling of unchallenged security which had made possible the development of colonial autonomy.
As a whole the Dominions after the war faced the future with full nineteenth-century confidence in the permanence of that security and prosperity to which they had become accustomed. Yet among them there was a vital difference. To some—such as Canada and Ireland—security was not bound up with the British connection. Whatever might be the political position, the United States of America could never allow Canada to be over-run, nor could Britain see Ireland conquered by an enemy. As against their only conceivable enemies, therefore, these Dominions enjoyed protection without having to make a political bargain. To New Zealand, however, security meant the British navy; and there was little reason why the navy should fight in the Pacific except in order to honour an imperial obligation. New Zealand was conscious of her smallness and isolation; and, though the war naturally stimulated her sense of nationhood, her ultimate reaction was not so much a consciousness of her efforts as an independent individual as that she had a worthy share in the greater glory of an imperial achievement. She had realised Vogel's vision: she felt herself to be in fact and in sentiment part of a great world power, and not living isolated in dignified but risky obscurity. In the imperial connection, then, New Zealand found security and glory in a way which was unique among the Dominions.
She also found a measure of economic security. New Zealand depended on exports as much as any civilised community, and, as an undeveloped country, she needed a steady supply of capital. Britain took three-quarters or more of New Zealand exports, and on the average lent to her Government £5,000,000 each year. Moreover, a considerable part of New Zealand's economic system was organised solely to produce goods which Britain alone would buy, but which (it was perhaps hazily suspected) she could do without; and New Zealand loans were raised under privileged conditions which could easily be withdrawn in the unlikely event of New Zealand doing anything unworthy of a loyal British dependency. These were facts which gave a solid material basis for imperial sentiment, particularly since at that time there were no obvious disadvantages in the British connection. True, it sometimes transmitted European depressions to New Zealand, but these seemed unavoidable; and in matters of policy British dominance seemed to bring no practical inconvenience. Indeed, the evolution of Dominion status, in which New Zealand acquiesced under protest, strengthened her hand in those few matters where she was really anxious to follow an independent line.
For example, in company with Australia, she has continued to follow an immigration policy which to say the least was regarded without enthusiasm by the British Government. All the Australasian colonies shared the nineteenth-century suspicion of the Chinese, who worked too hard on goldfields, and in market-gardens and laundries, and who insisted on following, even in New Zealand, a Chinese way of life. The result was a series of anti-Chinese laws, beginning in 1881, and for a while, it was said, New Zealand led the Australasian world in high-handed action against the Chinese. In 1899, however, she adopted the less discourteous Natal 'education test', suggested by Britain, to avoid or diminish the appearance of race discrimination, and in 1920 her machinery of immigration restriction became even more simple. Thereafter British-Indians and all foreigners had to get individual permits to enter the country, and these could be refused by the Minister of Customs, with no reasons given.
By this time, of course, other factors had influenced New Zealand's attitude, such as the idea of restricting any kind of immigration in order to protect standards of life, and the fear of Japan's military and naval strength. The bogey of the 'Yellow Peril', though much less active than in Australia, had some influence before the Great War in making New Zealand cling to Britain; and in the nineteen-twenties there was uneasiness again, largely because Japan was the only power which could conceivably attack New Zealand. But little rational ground could be produced for suspecting her of wishing to descend upon the Dominion, and by this time public opinion remembered with gratitude Japan's help during the Great War; thus in 1921 New Zealand (in opposition to Canada) wished the Anglo-Japanese alliance to be continued. In general, however, New Zealand opinion about Japan has been a little uncertain, largely, no doubt, because of ignorance. Trade between the two countries was small, and there was little travel. New Zealand looked at Japan through the eyes of London and, provided she was granted her essential demand—independent control of immigration—she was strongly disposed to accept London's point of view, here as elsewhere. Except for her uneasy sense of isolation, New Zealand was in fact forgetting that she was a Pacific country at all.
To some extent the grant of the Samoan mandate was a reminder of her position as a Pacific power, and a further illustration of the fact that, under British dominance, she could realise her national aspirations. However, the privilege of ruling Samoa, once so passionately demanded, has made little mark on New Zealand life. Massey hoped, before the Peace Conference met, that the islands would be simply annexed to New Zealand in the ordinary way, but she loyally accepted the terms of the mandate, and has not, indeed, claimed her full privileges thereunder.
The work of ruling Samoa has been undertaken with the utmost conscientiousness, and New Zealand has honestly striven to justify the claim made in 1919 by a leading Maori
Sir Apirana Ngata: Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 185, pp. 521 ff.
that she was of all countries the best fitted to administer Samoa because of the 'proud record that this country has had with the most active of the Native races inhabiting Polynesia.' 'Our experience,' he said, 'ought to make us extremely proud that this portion of the Polynesian race has been added, together with the Rarotongans, the Niue Islanders and the Aitutakian Maoris to their brothers and cousins in New Zealand'; and he threw out the suggestion that the profit motive should be kept in the background. 'We might try an experiment in one of the last seats of romance in the Pacific,' he added, 'the experiment of merely bringing up a happy and comfortable people without introducing unduly the element of competition and trade.'
On the whole New Zealand has adopted the objective suggested by the Maori, and not by his European critic ('Would you leave the natural resources of the country undeveloped? Who is to labour? Some one must labour.'), but this is not the place to analyse the complicated balance sheet of New Zealand's good intentions in Samoa. For this study it is sufficient to realise that New Zealand's experiences there have not paved the way for further ambitions in the Pacific. The administration takes its duties seriously, and so, to some extent, does public opinion. But there the matter ends. The unruly imperial ambition of Vogel has yielded to complacent acceptance of New Zealand's position as an outlying dependency of Britain.
7 The Approach of War
The Great Depression and the political tensions that followed it sapped that basic sense of security which was the very foundation of Dominion status. The profound shock of the economic crisis, beside which the 'depressions' of the nineteen-twenties looked like prosperity, threw the economic policies of the British Commonwealth into a melancholy confusion. Britain herself abandoned free trade, and with her Dominions sought relief in currency depreciation; and in all parts of the Commonwealth men turned again to find salvation in imperial co-operation. The result was the Ottawa Conference of 1932 to which (said the chief New Zealand delegate) the peoples of the entire world looked expectantly for a striking lead towards prosperity. The Ottawa agreements undoubtedly affected the trade of the Empire and of the world as a whole, but interminable debates among experts as to whether the effect was ultimately beneficial, and as to which Empire countries (if any) have been true to the 'spirit of Ottawa' do not suggest that the high hopes of the Conference have been fully realised. Certainly Ottawa did not entirely remove the main threat to New Zealand's future which had been emphasised by the depression: namely, the possibility that the British market for her products might not remain permanently free and unlimited. The possibility of restrictions or taxes on her exports to Britain has remained a nightmare for New Zealand ministers, and a reminder that the old secure (if fluctuating) prosperity within the Empire might be overthrown at a moment's notice.
The economic threat remained in the background, but the fact that the world of the nineteen-thirties was not to be free from war was plain to all. September 1931, the month in which economic stress brought coalition governments in Britain and New Zealand, saw Japan's decisive attack on Manchuria, and the League's failure to bring peace with honour made a deep impression throughout the Commonwealth. War had been used successfully by a great power as an instrument of national policy; and the lesson was later and successively emphasised by the rise and conduct of Herr Hitler, by Italy's Abyssinian adventure, and by the civil war in Spain. War, though outlawed, had shown its face in the Far East, and reappeared close to the Empire's heart in London; and realisation that there might be worse to follow tightened the bonds between Empire countries. Outlying Dominions in particular began to take a new interest in defence, and to realise again the importance of that help which it was assumed would be forthcoming from Britain. The tendency was, therefore, for Dominion freedom of action to be curtailed by a growing sense of political and economic insecurity. In this matter, however, New Zealand reversed the normal sequence. In the spacious days of the nineteen-twenties she was silent, or subservient to Britain, but in 1936, with her first Labour Government in office, she was determined to express her own independent views on foreign affairs.
The revolution in New Zealand's policy can be seen most clearly in her view of the League of Nations. To Massey at the Peace Conference the whole idea of the League was a distasteful piece of idealism foisted on the Empire—like mandates—by the United States of America. He thought that New Zealand's contribution to the League was at best waste of money, only to be endured because otherwise it would not be decent to accept the Samoan mandate; and membership of the League was an awkward reminder that some people thought of Dominions as autonomous communities instead of as loyal dependencies. In 1920 New Zealand's High Commissioner in London (and former Minister of Defence) fruitlessly suggested that the Dominions should not exercise their right to act independently within the League, but should 'transmit representations through Britain after consultation'; and Sir Francis Bell, one of her delegates in 1926, vehemently criticised the idea that a Dominion might be elected to one of the non-permanent seats on the Council. Such an arrangement, he thought, might lead to the undesirable spectacle of a public debate at Geneva between the mother country and a minority Dominion: it would either duplicate or cancel Britain's vote. His own rule, correctly interpreting his Government's views, was to avoid any suggestion 'that New Zealand was entitled to a voice in foreign affairs other than as a very, very small fraction of that great Empire.' Thus, up to 1935, New Zealand at Geneva upheld her characteristic thesis, and confined any criticisms she had to make to confidential imperial discussions. New Zealand delegates occasionally took a useful and independent part in small matters—in 1926 there were some points on which Bell himself differed from British experts—but on major issues they faithfully reflected the views of Britain.
Stewart, Sir Francis Bell, Chapter xxii.
Such was the policy against which the new Labour Government dramatically rebelled in 1935 and 1936. It was no longer willing to act merely as dutiful echo to the United Kingdom. It had opinions of its own and defended them in public during the critical years 1936-39. In its view, one of the essential weaknesses of the League in the past had been 'its tendency to avoid or postpone decisions of difficulty', and so frustrate the principles of its own Covenant. The remedy was clearly to act more and talk less, and if possible, to strengthen international machinery. The moral of the Abyssinian failure was, to New Zealand, to put more teeth into the Covenant rather than to follow the more popular plan of extracting those which had decayed unused. Such was the theme of a comprehensive scheme put forward in September 1936, which renewed the old suggestion of an international police force, and even suggested the revival of that Geneva Protocol of 1924, against which New Zealand had once led an all-Dominion chorus of protest. Nor was New Zealand's crusade confined to generalities. In her view 'the tragedy of retreat from collective security', and the 'return to the laws of the jungle' under League auspices was being enacted before her eyes in the treatment given to Abyssinia, Spain, and China. Her spokesmen repeatedly, and often in plain undiplomatic language, urged that the League should be true to its principles in organising assistance to victims and in refusing to recognise ill-gotten gains. Often New Zealand went on record to this effect during public sessions: and it is credibly reported that plain speech in committee work sometimes strengthened the cautious phraseology of League resolutions. As late as May 1939 New Zealand formed one-half of a minority of two which favoured the principle of active collective aid to China.
New Zealand's interest in world affairs was shown simultaneously in other directions. In 1936 and 1937, for example, she attempted to find new markets for her exports by a series of direct negotiations with foreign powers, and a number of commercial agreements were actually arranged, notably with Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany in 1937. Here the ground had been prepared in 1928, when New Zealand made an agreement direct with Japan, thus breaking through the previous practice of conducting all such dealings through the Foreign Office. In this case her motives were, as usual, strictly practical: discussions via London would have moved so slowly that her season's butter would have missed the market. However, she justified her action with a phrase which showed that the most conservative Dominion could on occasion use the language of autonomy: the authority under which the agreement was made was 'simply the general sovereign power of New Zealand'. This aspect of the transaction was not much stressed. New Zealand statesmen were more interested in strengthening 'the goodwill which already exists between the people of New Zealand and the people of Japan', and in the confident hope that the latter would acquire a strong liking for butter. However, the principle was now established that New Zealand had the right, which she had fruitlessly demanded sixty years before, to negotiate directly with foreigners. An agreement with Belgium followed in 1933, and the negotiations of 1936 and 1937 showed a renewed appreciation that New Zealand was a part of a world economy in which she might fruitfully play an independent part; provided, of course, that nothing was done to injure her vitally important trade with Britain.
Another aspect of this wider perspective was shown in her relations with the International Labour Office. For some years after the Peace Treaty she played no effective part in the work of the I.L.O. Her whole impulse was towards collaboration with Britain within the Empire, and against independent action at Geneva or elsewhere. Moreover, in the official view 'New Zealand led the world in the matter of labour legislation, and … had nothing to learn from other countries in that direction'. From this it followed that the expense of sending delegates to the I.L.O.'s conference would not be justified by any prospective benefit to New Zealand. Nor did her governments feel any impulse to use the Office as an instrument to encourage the rest of the world to benefit by her example in social legislation. Her technical collaboration was kept at a minimum, and until 1938 she had the distinction of having ratified no conventions at all. However, delegations were sent to the I.L.O. conferences in 1930 and 1935, and with the advent of a Labour Government towards the end of the latter year there was a distinct change in attitude. After 1936 New Zealand took a more active part in the general work of the Office. Her delegations were strengthened, and her Minister of Labour found at Geneva how valuable was the contact provided by the I.L.O. between different countries who shared the same economic problems. However, it was not till 1938 that Parliament ratified a batch of twenty-two conventions which did not require any amendment in the existing law. This step was grudgingly accepted by the Opposition on the ground that, though the direct benefit to New Zealand would be negligible, it might be 'an example to other nations', particularly 'in helping lazy nations to effect reforms'. However, it has not been followed by any serious attempt to deal with those conventions which would require some modification of New Zealand law, and in general it may be said that the New Zealand attitude towards the I.L.O. has been marked by correctness and caution rather than by determination to give a lead towards international co-operation. However, in the work of the I.L.O., as in that of the League itself, she showed a genuine independence of attitude, even where this brought her into open disagreement with official British policy.
It was common knowledge that New Zealand's campaign for collective security was disliked by the British Government. The crowning discomfort of public dissension between two British countries at Geneva was indeed avoided, but there was an obvious contradiction between the avowed policies of Britain and of New Zealand, and plentiful rumours of plain private speech between Englishmen and New Zea landers in the galleries of the Palais des Nations. The main criticism of New Zealand's stand came, however, from within New Zealand itself. Conservative critics were shocked at the mere fact that the Dominion had publicly criticised the mother country. In their view New Zealand should have said her say at the Imperial Conference (as she did) and then remained silent as befitted one so unimportant; for, to them, foreign affairs were a matter of power politics, in which a nation was entitled to a voice in proportion to its might, not to the rightness of its cause. And if this was true even in the heyday of the League, the world's evolution since 1931 seemed to Labour's critics to confirm their view day by day. Collective security had failed, and was therefore wrongly conceived; New Zealand must cling as of old to a powerful and indulgent mother, and cease to advocate a policy to the enforcement of which she would be neither willing nor able to make a substantial contribution.
This clash of opinion, significant as it was in New Zealand's relations with Britain, caused little more than a ripple in public opinion within the Dominion. Though more interested in the world than ever before, she was still absorbed primarily in domestic affairs, and any possibility that an election might be fought partly on the question of New Zealand's conduct at Geneva was destroyed by the acute crisis of 1938. As the actual danger of war visibly approached the Government progressively abandoned its independent point of view, and in May 1938 a Government spokesman went very close to accepting in advance British decision as to peace and war. 'If the Old Country is attacked,' he said, 'we are too. We hate all this war propaganda but, if an attack is made on Great Britain, then we will assist her to the fullest extent possible.'
Contemporary New Zealand, p. 184.
This statement, which accurately reflected public opinion, marks a turning point in New Zealand's brief public excursion into high politics. Thereafter, whatever New Zealand ministers may have thought of Britain's previous policy, and whatever they may have continued to say to her Government in private, the Dominion's attitude towards foreign affairs was increasingly dominated by the admitted necessity of accepting London's ultimate decision in times of crisis.
The test came with the Czech crisis of September 1938 and revealed that New Zealand opinion and policy remained fundamentally unchanged. There was an immediate danger of war, arising out of a European situation which raised in an acute form the problem of collective security as it affected the British Commonwealth, but the Government made no public statement on the matter. Its view was, apparently, that New Zealand's opinion on the general principles involved had been made abundantly clear both in private and public discussion, but that it would be wrong, at that juncture, for the smallest and most distant Dominion to clamour for an active policy in which she could take comparatively little share. Therefore, no lead was given to public opinion beyond the clear assurance that, if Britain went to war, New Zealand would do her part. And public opinion was content. It so happened that when the European crisis developed New Zealand was involved in a bitterly fought election campaign; politicians, press, and public were only too willing to carry on with that campaign, minding their own business, and leaving decisions of life and death to Britain. There was, indeed, keen appreciation that the situation was critical. The facts of each successive news bulletin were eagerly discussed. But New Zealand was in her traditional way receptive. She waited to be told what had happened, making virtually no effort to influence the decision, or even to form an intelligent public opinion on the issues involved.
Since 1938 the main trend has again been strongly towards imperial co-operation; and, once again, political and sentimental arguments were formidably reinforced by economic necessity. In the nineteen-thirties the economic bond with Britain was closer than ever, and was clearly seen to have serious disadvantages as well as benefits. Schemes for 'orderly marketing' and price stabilisation for example, which culminated in Labour's guaranteed price, were efforts to protect New Zealand from the disastrous effect of fluctuating prices for her exports. However, the main problem arose from the fact that, with rising tariff barriers in the United States of America and elsewhere, New Zealand increasingly depended on the British market at a time when that market threatened to contract; and here all parties were agreed as to New Zealand's policy. If she could find small supplementary markets, well and good; but the essential thing was to keep the British market as wide open as possible. Propaganda might persuade Englishmen to eat more butter, and a rising standard of life enable them to afford it, but the essential thing was to retain British good will, and to treat British interests fairly in the hope of a generous return—in a word, to earn for New Zealand an enduring place within the British economic system by frank and trustful co-operation. In spite of difficulties—for example, exchange depreciation and, later, exchange control—this policy has been honestly followed for many years by successive New Zealand governments of different political complexions. New Zealand has remained a low tariff country for British exporters, and, for her population, a great consumer.
However, if trade bonds were strong during the nineteen-thirties, financial bonds were stronger still. Up to the depression New Zealand was a regular borrower on the London market, and loans helped not only to develop the country, but to finance her brisk imports of British manufactures. During and after the depression overseas borrowing ceased by mutual consent, and New Zealand began gradually to repay some capital. By this time, however, her overseas indebtedness was vast: in 1932 it was almost £160,000,000— more than £100 per head of the population—and it was tacitly assumed that loans as they fell due would be renewed for long periods at fairly low rates of interest. This depended on the further assumption on the part of British investors that New Zealand was a country in which their money would be safe indefinitely. So long as these conditions continued, the size of the overseas debt did not seriously hamper the Dominion's freedom of policy, except that the burden of interest payments became oppressive when the prices of her main exports were low. But if the British investor should lose confidence, his demand that the overseas debt should be promptly repaid would obviously be extremely embarrassing.
This happened in 1938 and 1939. For reasons which need not be discussed in detail here, Labour's domestic policy led to a flight of capital, and so to a financial crisis and exchange control. Control was used, incidentally, to give still further preference to British trade, but confidence was shaken. It happened that a large loan matured early in 1940, and the British financial institutions and private investors who held the stock were not willing to re-lend on the old terms. They virtually demanded their money back. In the end New Zealand was allowed five years in which to pay off the debt: unless, indeed, changes in domestic policy meantime should convince investors that their fears were groundless. Compulsory repayment at such a rate would dislocate New Zealand's trade, and almost certainly defeat some major objects of domestic policy; and the Dominion was faced with the alternative of suffering this penalty—to be intensified each time a loan fell due—or of convincing a suspicious audience in London that it had mended its ways. Thus it was demonstrated that the existence of a huge overseas debt gave London profound influence over New Zealand, an influence which was none the less real because it may have been unconsciously exercised. By simply refusing to re-invest money originally lent decades ago, Englishmen deeply influenced the details of a distant Dominion's domestic situation, and gave a convincing demonstration of the importance of economic as opposed to constitutional power.
In these circumstances it would have been hard for New Zealand to press strongly in 1939 for Dominion autonomy, but there is no suggestion that her loyalty to British leadership needed artificial stimulus. On the contrary, as the crisis deepened her judgment seemed to coincide increasingly with that of the British Government. However, even when British policy was almost certainly distasteful to her leaders she made no public protest, but, in face of the urgent danger of war, acquiesced in what might reasonably be called a British view of imperial relations.
This was a matter both of the methods and aims of foreign policy. For example, it had long been suspected that there was a clear-cut difference between the views held in Britain and in some Dominions as to the 'consultation' which it was agreed must precede the decision of imperial foreign policy. To Dominion critics 'consultation' implied not only the mutual supply of information, but also an opportunity (if not an encouragement) for Dominion views to be expressed before decisions were finalised. On this point the New Zealand radical took the same ground as the traditionalist. To the British Government, however, it appeared that the essence of the matter was information: that in its view so long as Dominion governments knew what was happening and did not protest, imperial honour was satisfied. And in the crisis year of 1939 this was illustrated in a way peculiarly significant for New Zealand. As a South Pacific Dominion she, together with Australia, was deeply concerned with British policy in the Far East. However, negotiations with Japan in June and July 1939 were apparently accompanied, at best, by 'consultation' of the British type. The New Zealand Government was made 'aware' of the negotiations, but the terms of the final 'Tokyo agreement' were communicated to it on the day after public announcement. When the Prime Minister was questioned on the matter in Parliament it became clear that British Commonwealth policy in the Pacific had been decided in the end by Britain alone.
There was no reason to suppose that the New Zealand Government approved of the terms of the 'Tokyo agreement' or of the means by which it was negotiated. There was a ring of distress in the Prime Minister's statement, and it was followed by a somewhat embarrassed debate. Private members of the Government party complained in vehement terms that British policy had jeopardised imperial harmony and international peace, and, in particular, had undermined the security of Australia and New Zealand; and they were in turn denounced by an Opposition which believed at heart that criticism of Britain was clear proof of disloyalty. Cabinet ministers were discreet. They defended their followers against the Opposition's charge of disloyalty, but avoided discussing the merits of British policy in the past. They concentrated instead on the non-controversial statement that New Zealand and Britain were completely at harmony in their defence policy. That, indeed, was the root of the matter. In company with Canada and South Africa, who had led the fight for Dominion autonomy, but with prompter decision and greater unanimity, New Zealand realised that apart from any legal obligation she stood for the continuance of the British system as against the challenge which it seemed likely to meet. Although she might disagree strongly with certain aspects of British policy, such disagreements were as nothing compared with her basic identity of purpose with Britain. Therefore in July 1939 she could accept without open protest a policy decision which in calmer days might have led to plain-spoken criticism, and put her whole strength into co-operation in imperial defence.
By 1939 New Zealand's defence efforts were considerable for so small a country, and steps had been taken to fit them into an Empire scheme. Early in 1939 New Zealand had come into line with other Dominions with the reception of a British High Commissioner to improve the machinery of political co-operation; a step which, it is said, she had previously opposed because it implied a certain independence in herself. In April the Pacific Defence Conference met in Wellington at New Zealand's invitation: it was a body of technical experts from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand charged with the co-ordination of imperial defence in the Pacific. Thus in 1939 to the eye of the expert, if not of the man in the street, New Zealand was appearing once more a Pacific country. Her keen interest in air communications was a further sign of wider perspective; and so was her renewed sympathy with the United States of America. New Zealanders, like other Commonwealth peoples, look to America as a potential champion of democracy, and for them American policy has special importance. Her bonds of sentiment and commerce with the United States are stronger than with any other foreign state; indeed America is scarcely thought of as foreign at all. When New Zealand detaches her eyes from Britain to gaze upon the Pacific, America's friendly bulk looms comfortably large. Indeed, her interest in possible American reactions if trouble should overtake the British Dominions sometimes prompts visiting Americans to think of New Zealand as a would-be hanger-on of the American continent. The inference, born of persistent questioning, is false. New Zealand is only to a small extent Pacific-conscious. Strongly as she is drawn towards America, this impulse is negligible compared with the overwhelming desire (and compulsion) to stand with Britain.
When war came in September 1939 it showed conclusively how closely New Zealand was bound to Europe, and swept away the constitutional speculations and precautions of twenty-five years. During and after the Great War the Dominions had stipulated clearly that they would never again become entangled in war by a policy over which they had no control; next time they would judge the cause and make their own decision. But in 1939 there was no discussion as to whether the critical guarantee to Poland had been given with Dominion consent, or whether the Dominions were legally bound to honour it. The overwhelming fact was that Britain was at war, and in face of that fait accompli they had little choice. New Zealand, for her part, repeated the alacrity of 1914. Once again she was the first to proclaim her 'solidarity and partnership' with Britain. Parliament was in session at the time, but in spite of previously declared policy, the responsibility of decision was not thrown upon it. The message from London was understood to mean that the United Kingdom was at war, and New Zealand associated herself with the mother country by a deliberate act of her own Cabinet. As in the Chanak crisis of 1922, a few minutes' formal deliberation sufficed, and it is perhaps significant that New Zealand was deemed to have been at war from the same moment as the United Kingdom. A few days later Parliament unanimously approved Cabinet's action, and New Zealand launched vigorously into war on the express basis that her man power and economic resources were entirely at Britain's command. Plans prepared beforehand were promptly executed, and in addition it was made a point of pride that every suggestion received from the British Government had been accepted and carried out. 'Both with gratitude for the past and with confidence in the future,' said the Prime Minister, 'we range ourselves without fear beside Britain.'
Such was New Zealand's clear-cut position on the eve of her centennial year. Yet the undercurrent of independence which was part of her national tradition, and which gave her a foreign policy of her own in 1936, was by no means dead. No doubt the Government correctly represented the will of the great majority to accept British leadership in all essentials, but there was much discussion as to details, and (as in Britain herself) vocal and determined minorities fought for unpopular policies. The depressions and political crises of the nineteen-thirties had stung New Zealanders, like other peoples, to study and discuss world affairs as never before. They went into the war of 1939 no less promptly than into that of 1914, but with a better understanding of the nature of war and of the problems of peace. Thus when the time comes for New Zealand, with other Dominions, to reassert her nationhood in the council-chamber as well as on the battlefield, the ground will have been prepared in the minds of her citizens for a modest independence in international affairs.
Such would be the logical conclusion to a century of varied history. After the energetic but sometimes unbalanced self-assertion of Vogelism, New Zealand's independence of spirit paradoxically declined, though her own strength and importance in the Empire steadily developed. Her citizens were increasingly preoccupied with making their living in a farming community, and the atmosphere of provincialism became more overpowering with isolation: especially isolation from that part of the world which was not Anglo-Saxon. Consequently the decline of independence was natural even among those colonists who were not driven to imperial loyalty by consciousness of tensions of the post-1870 period: tensions which gradually destroyed that calm world of the early nineteenth century wherein Englishmen felt themselves to enjoy an axiomatic superiority. Thus the trend was towards psychological dependence on Britain, both among those who were conscious of world problems and those who were not. However, this trend reached a climax in the post-war 'mother complex', which helped in turn to provoke outspoken rebellion against British dominance in 1936. Then followed a period of renewed independence which was cut short by the war of 1939, and which may in time produce a better balance: a compromise between Vogelism and the imperial enthusiasm of Massey. As Massey saw, indeed, the permanent basis of New Zealand's relations with the outside world can scarcely be other than close co-operation with the mother country, for history has shaped New Zealanders into a people British in sentiment, tradition, and economic interest. But that people has had honourable contacts in peace and war with other countries and other cultures. Her history has equipped her to live a life of her own as a small but not subservient member of the British Commonwealth.
Note on Sources
Information on this subject must be dug out from the general sources of New Zealand history: that is, in the first instance from contemporary newspapers, from the Parliamentary Debates, and from the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives. The newspapers are not indexed at all, while the Debates and the Appendices are indexed in such general terms that considerable ingenuity and experience are required to trace important references. For example, some of the critical debates on Imperial relations in 1870 are indexed under the letter C ('Conduct of Imperial Government') with no further subject reference. References to some of these elusive documents have been included in footnotes, but not where (as in 1869 and 1870) both debates and despatches are so continuously occupied with imperial relations that full citation would clearly be out of place in a work such as this. Useful references to sources are given throughout the Cambridge History of the British Empire, Vol. vii, Part ii (Cambridge, 1933). This volume has also a good bibliography.
The Historical Records of New Zealand, New South Wales, and Australia should be consulted on the earliest phase of New Zealand history, but the principal official documents must be sought in British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand. These are usefully supplemented by the works of A. J. Harrop, notably England and New Zealand (London, 1926), which gives full information on the French colonising projects, and by J. S. Marais's book The Colonisation of New Zealand (Oxford, 1927). Dr Harrop's England and the Maori Wars (London, 1937) prints valuable documents on New Zealand's external relations during the eighteen-sixties. From the English angle, the working of the Colonial Office has been thoroughly expounded by H. L. Hall in his Australia and England (London, 1934), and The Colonial Office (London, 1937), while valuable light is thrown on the ideas behind British statesmanship by such books as Bell and Morrell, Select Documents on British Colonial Policy (Oxford, 1928), W. P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (Oxford, 1930), and J. E. Tyler, The Struggle for Imperial Unity (London, 1938). Earl Grey's own account of his policy is still valuable—The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration (London, 1853); and so is the criticism of it by Adderley in his Review of the Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration (London, 1869). R. C. Mills, in The Colonisation of Australia (London, 1915), gives one of the best discussions of the ideas of Wakefield and his colleagues, and prints a full bibliography of Wakefield's own writings. The views of a 'Colonial Reformer' in charge of an actual colony are vividly set out in The Writings and Speeches of J. R. Godley (Christchurch, 1863), and are supplemented in a most interesting way in Charlotte Godley's Letters from Early New Zealand (privately printed, 1936); see also a previous volume in this series, The Women of New Zealand by Helen M. Simpson, and books cited therein. Among visiting Englishmen who wrote about early New Zealand Trollope and Dilke are outstanding—Trollope in Australia and New Zealand (London, 1873); Dilke in Greater Britain (London, 1868) and Problems of Greater Britain (London, 1890).
There is as yet no adequate study of the career and ideas of Vogel, but the economic aspect of his career is critically discussed by Condliffe, New Zealand in the Making (London, 1930), which is one of the best introductions to New Zealand history as a whole; the facts about his Pacific imperialism are well set out by Scholefield, The Pacific, its Past and Future (London, 1920), and Masterman, The Origins of International Rivalry in Samoa (London, 1934). The career of Seddon also lacks full and critical treatment, though Drummond's Life and Work of R. J. Seddon (Christchurch, 1906) contains valuable material.
The evolution of Dominion status can be followed in the minutes and other official papers issued in connection with Colonial and Imperial Conferences: some of the key documents have been reprinted in A. B. Keith's useful little volumes Selected Speeches and Documents on British Colonial Policy (Oxford, 1918), and Speeches and Documents on the British Dominions (Oxford, 1932). Valuable commentaries are provided in the numerous works of Keith, and in H. D. Hall's British Commonwealth of Nations (London, 1920); see also Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy (9th edn., London, 1932), and British Colonial Policy in the Twentieth Century (London, 1922). On post-war developments see W. K. Hancock's British Commonwealth Affairs, Vol. i, Problems of Nationality (Oxford, 1937; Vol. ii forthcoming) and Wheare, The Statute of Westminster and Dominion Status (Oxford, 1938). The British Commonwealth and the Future, edited by H. V. Hodson, (Oxford, 1939) summarises the efforts of a representative conference to define the nature and prospects of the Empire on the eve of war.
These books deal with the Commonwealth as a whole. The best introduction to New Zealand's individual attitude is still Siegfried's brilliant Democracy in New Zealand (English translation, London, 1914). There are good sections on external relations in Condliffe's New Zealand in the Making, already cited, and in Morrell's New Zealand (London, 1935); and W. Downie Stewart in his biography, Sir Francis Bell (Wellington, 1937), gives a striking account of New Zealand's attitude towards international affairs in the post-war period, as well as incidental information about earlier phases of New Zealand's external relations. Developments under the Labour Government elected in 1935 are described in Contemporary New Zealand (Institute of International Affairs, 1938) with an addendum by the present writer, New Zealand in Crisis (1939), which carries the story up to the outbreak of war; and I. F. G. Milner, New Zealand's Interests and Policies in the Far East (Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1939). A full and authoritative chronicle of current events has been provided since 1910 by the Round Table (London) supplemented in recent years by the Economic Record (Melbourne).
The relations between New Zealand and non-British countries have been very inadequately studied. New Zealand Affairs (Christchurch, 1929) has interesting chapters by T. D. H. Hall on Asiatic immigration and by G. H. Scholefield on the Japanese trade agreement of 1928, but the study by Milner, mentioned above, is the only systematic attempt to analyse our relations with Asiatic countries. The lack of intimate relations with France, and the reasons for this, are concisely explained in the report of a mission which visited this country after the last war—Economic Relations between France and New Zealand (Paris, 1919). It is noteworthy that relations with the United States, Canada, and Australia have not been thoroughly studied. New Zealand's historical literature displays everywhere her preoccupation with the British connection.
IndexAbyssinian crisis, 114, 117Akaroa, 27–8America, 1, 2, 7, 38; see also United States of AmericaAsiatic immigration, 81, 109–10Asquith, H. H., 86, 90Atkinson, Sir Harry, 75–7, 93, 103Auckland islands, 92Australia, 1; and problems of defence, 64, 67, 74–6, 78–81, 127–9; cooperation with, in Pacific imperialism, 66–71, 76; other political and economic relations, 8–22, 60, 68, 80–2, 89; attitude towards imperial relations, 40, 83, 84, 85, 106; and Asiatic immigration, 109Balfour declaration, 105Banks, Sir Joseph, 8Bay of Islands, 14, 17, 22, 28Belgium, 118Bell, Sir Francis, 116Bismarck, Prince von, 72, 81Bowen, Sir George, 49 n., 55Busby, James, 16, 18–22Canada, attitude towards imperial relations, 83, 84, 85, 98–9, 105, 106–7, 128; trade agreement with, 89; and Anglo-Japanese alliance, 110Chamberlain, Joseph, 69, 89–90Chanak crisis, 104, 131China, 12, 109, 117Coates, J. G., 103Colonial Office, policy of,11,17, 23, 29, 41, 46, 58; criticism of, by colonists, 39–42, 50, 51, 52; and Pacific imperialism, 63, 66, 93Commercial agreements, 53, 62, 105, 118–9Committee of Imperial Defence, 97Conferences: Colonial and Imperial, 74, 83–4, 86–8, 102, 121; Inter-colonial, 68, 70, 75; Ottawa, 113–4; Washington, 102Cook, Captain, 6–8, 30, 36Cook islands, 4, 91, 92, 111Curtis, Lionel, 96Czech crisis, 122Defence, Imperial, 58, 67, 73, 104, 115, 128–9; contributions towards cost of, 69, 74–81, 84; in war 1914–1918, 94–6Dominion status, 47, 83, 86–7, 96–108, 113, 118, 126, 130–1Economic dependence, 60–1, 77, 82, 108, 114, 115, 123–6; see also Loans Exchange control, 124, 125Federation, Australian, 78, 80–2; Imperial, 62–3, 74, 76, 82–8, 96–7Fiji, 21, 65, 69–70, 91–2Foreign policy, acquiescence in British control over, 44, 93, 100–6, 115–6, 121–3, 127–8, 131–3; desire for a share in controlling, 62–3, 66–74, 83–8, 96, 106, 115–7, 120–2, 128–33; see also Commercial agreements, Dominion status, VogelFox, Sir William, 53France, 12, 19–21, 25–8, 57, 64, 65Friendly islands, see TongaGeneva Protocol, 104, 117Germany, 56, 57, 89, 114, 118; and Pacific, 71–3, 91, 94Godley, J. R., 36Gold, 52, 59, 60, 67Governor, powers of, 28, 38, 39, 41–8, 105 Grey, Earl, 31, 41Grey, Sir George, and Maori people, 32–3; Colonial criticism of, 39, 51; and Pacific imperialism, 63–5, 71–2, 92, 93Hawaii, 27, 92High Commissioner, British, in New Zealand, 129Hobson, Captain, 27–30Imperial War Cabinet, 87, 97–8, 101–2International Labour Office, 119–20I reland, 99, 106–7Japan, 109–10, 114, 118, 127–8Kermadec islands, 4, 92King, Captain P. G., 14–15Labour party, New Zealand, 80, 106, 115–23, 125, 128, 130–3Langlois, Jean, 25–6Lavaud, Captain, 26–8League of Nations, 98, 102, 104, 114, 115–7, 120–2Loans, British, 54, 58–62, 62, 63, 73, 108, 124–6Locarno Pact, 104Macquarie, Governor Lachlan, 9, 15Maori people, chapters 1–2, passim; control of native policy under responsible government, 46–50; Maori Wars, 1860–70, 49–55, 59, 65, 67, 68; use of Maori forces, 45, 63–4, 74, 95; and Samoan mandate, 111Marsden, Samuel, 13Massey, W. F., 97–102, 105, 110, 115, 133Melanesian Mission, 65 Missionaries, chapters 1–2, passimNew Caledonia, 65, 92New Guinea, 5, 66, 71, 72New Hebrides, 3, 65, 72, 92New South Wales, 8–2, 30, 45, 69, 75; see also AustraliaNgata, Sir Apirana, 111Niue island, 91, 111Norfolk island, 14Pacific Defence Conference, 129Pacific islands, N.Z. policy towards, 2, 9–11, 21, 61, 63–6, 68–74, 76, 81, 91–4, 111–2Peace Conference and Treaty (Versailles), 98–101, 115, 119Philippine islands, 92Poland, 130Portugal, 12Queensland, 69, 75Rarotonga, see Cook islandsRefrigeration, 60–1Resident, British, see Busby Responsible Government, 42–3Round Table, The,86, 96Russia, 45, 52, 73–4Salmond, Sir John, 102Samoa, 21, 65, 71–4, 91–2, 94, 110–12, 115Sandwich islands, see HawaiiSeddon, R. J., 83–4, 87–93Selwyn, Bishop, 65Siegfried, Andre, 68, 93Singapore Base, 105Society islands, see TahitiSouth Africa, 8, 88, 89, 99, 106, 128Spain, 5, 114, 117Stephen, Sir James, 23–4, 41Stewart, W. D., 100–2Stout, Sir Robert, 81, 86, 93Tahiti, 3, 4, 5, 6, 27, 91Tariff preferences, 69, 77, 88–90, 113, 124Tasman, Abel, 5–6Thierry, Baron de, 21Tonga, 65, 91–2United States of America, 56, 57, 115, 124; and whaling trade, 12, 16, 52; and Pacific islands, 66, 92; N.Z. desire for friendship with, 52–3, 55, 82, 129–30Victoria, Queen, 45–6, 64, 82Vogel, Sir Julius, and borrowing for development, 59–60, 63, 73; Pacific imperialism, 63, 65–6, 70–4, 91, 92, 102; and imperial federation, 74–7, 83, 86, 103, 107; and naval contribution, 76–7; and colonial self-assertion, 76–7, 84, 93, 100, 132–3Waitangi, Treaty of, 22, 29–30Wakefield, E. G., 24–6, 28, 36, 40, 42, 59War, Boer, 87;
of 1914–18, 78, 80, 83, 92, 94–9, 109–10;of 1939–, 130, 133Ward, Sir Joseph, 79, 84–7, 90Westminster, Statute of, 105Wynyard, Acting Governor, 42–3
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