Treaty of Waitangi

The Treaty of Waitangi (Māori: Te Tiriti o Waitangi) was signed on {{event|1840|2|6|region=NZ|category=treatie}} at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. It was signed by representatives of the British Crown, and chiefs from the Northern North Island including the handful of chiefs the British Resident, James Busby had earlier induced to claim independence as the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand.

Effect of the Treaty

The treaty was never ratified by Britain and carried no legal force in New Zealand until limited recognition was given to it in 1975. A hundred years earlier an attempt had been made to enforce the treaty through the law courts - the case was dimissed by a judge who described the treaty as, "a praiseworthy device for the amusement of ignorant savages". New Zealand had become a colony of Britain when annexed by proclomation in January 1840 - before the treaty was even signed. Hobson only claimed to have taken possession of the North Island by Treaty. The South Island he claimed for Britain by right of discovery, (Maori, he observed in a disingenous piece of rationalisation, were so sparse in the South island it could be considered uninhabited).

Related Topics:
North Island - South Island

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In the short term the immediate effect of the Treaty was to prevent the sale of Māori land to anyone other than the Crown. This measure was intended to protect Māori from the kinds of shady land purchases which had alienated indigenous people from their land with minimal compensation in other parts of the world. Indeed, in anticipation of the Treaty being signed, the New Zealand Company made several hasty land deals and shipped settlers from England to settlements in New Zealand, on the assumption that, possession being nine tenths of the law, the settlers would not be evicted from land if they were occupying it. Essentially the Treaty was an attempt to establish a system of property rights for land with the Crown controlling and overseeing the process of land sale to prevent abuse.

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Initially this process worked well. Māori were quite willing and eager to sell land. Settlers were very interested in buying. The Crown mediated the process to ensure that the true owners were properly identified (not easy for tribally owned land) and were fairly compensated at least by the standards of the time. However after a while Māori became disillusioned and were less and less willing to sell, while the Crown came under increasing pressure from Settlers wishing to buy. Consequently government land agents were involved in a number of very dubious land purchases. Agreements were negotiated with only one owner of tribally owned land and in some cases land was purchased from the wrong people altogether. Unrest and rebellion caused by these actions were met with further punitive land confiscations. Eventually this lead to the New Zealand Wars which culminated in the confiscation of a large part of the Waikato and Taranaki.

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In later years this oversight role was in the native land court, later renamed the Māori Land Court. There is much criticism today of the way in which these courts functioned and it was through these courts that much Māori land subsequently became alienated. Over the longer term the land purchase aspect of the treaty has declined in significance while the clauses of the treaty which deal with the question of sovereignty and those rights retained by Māori have taken on greater importance.

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However irrelevant in law, after the centenary of 1940 returned the treaty to the public eye, it's lack of legal significance in 1840 and subsquent breaches tended to be over looked as the treaty was touted in text books and government publicity as the moral foundation of colonisation and to set race relations in New Zealand above those of colonies in North America, Africa and Australia. Within a generation, people began to expect the government to honour the treaty with actions as well as words.

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