History and Disillusion

I gather from a rather superficial reading of a child-psychology text that most children build up an imaginary world for themselves, and that it is dangerous for adults to shatter the illusions of the child. My small sister had an imaginary playmate called Linda. As this involved her having two biscuits instead of one—"one for Linda and one for me"—I was always tempted to tell her to cut the infernal nonsense and be honest about eating both biscuits, but my parents restrained me. To jolt the cherished illusion, they said, would be to do no end of harm. So Linda stayed, along with Father Christmas, Easter Bunny, fairies and all that rubbish.

But the whole of life is a series of jolts to the illusions one has cherished. Take the Guy Fawkes yarn, for instance. One reading of Hugh Ross Williamson's "Historical Whodunnits" demolishes the story you nurtured through many years of bonfires and jumping jacks. Certainly, by the time one is reading Hugh Ross Williamson child psychology has ceased to apply; but the jolt to the system is little less severe. And this is what it means to study New Zealand history at University level in 1961. One has to be prepared for a systematic debunking of School Certificate history heroes; for the elevation of some rogues like Governor Fitzroy; and for the shattering of many familiar episodes and stories.

The Morioris, it appears, are now a myth. There was probably no Great Fleet. The thrilling story of Wakefield's ride to Plymouth (or the London docks) is probably not true. If it is true, then it doesn't really matter very much, because the Colonial Office had made up its mind to annex New Zealand anyway, and Wakefield was not going to force the hand of the British Government by speeding the "Tory" on its way. The whole career of Wakefield is now under a cloud. We have cherished the image of a man of vision who was "mainly responsible for the colonisation of New Zealand by the British people", and whose worst blunder was the abduction of an heiress. From John Miller's "Early Victorian New Zealand" Wakefield emerges as something of a failure, and no longer deserving the hero status we have accorded him for many years. The Treaty of Waitangi, far from being the sound, inviolable guarantee for Maori rights, has become an almost worthless agreement with no standing in International Law.

Governor Fitzroy, a disingenuous rogue in School Certificate History, has now been credited with much that kindly, competent Governor Grey was supposed to have achieved. The Wairau "Massacre" is no longer a disgraceful slaughter of a lot of "goodie" whites by "baddie" Maoris; rather it is an affray in which both sides were at fault. Further, there was no Maori Land League. It was all a myth. Such concrete realities as the Continuous Ministry. with a capital C and a capital M, have now dissolved, and with them the only attempt to impose some scheme on the confusion of the 1880's. King Dick Seddon has mercifully survived the "investigations". By this time though, we are not surprised to find that he has a fault (He had none before). It seems that Seddon was not too scrupulous . . .

The student of New Zealand History, then, must he prepared to have every illusions he had shattered, every hero debunked and all thrilling stories exploded in the cold light of research. To those of us who cherish illusions to a very considerable degree, it comes as a profound shock.

R. W. Heath.