Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books. 

“TO FREE THE WORLD – Harry Holland ”  by James Robb (Steele Roberts, $50)  

[The full title of To Free the World is To Free the World – Harry Holland and the rise of the labour movement in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific]

 

There is no doubt that Henry Edmund (“Harry”) Holland was a formidable figure in both Australian and New Zealand politics, finally becoming the leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. A fervent socialist, he championed many things that are now taken for granted. Holland died two years before the Labour Party first came into power in 1935, and while some reviled him (even in his own party), many have speculated that he could have been an astute Prime Minister. James Robb writes from a very socialist viewpoint, meaning there is a certain bias. But this is not a major flaw, given that all biographies are written from a certain point of view. Only very, very rarely does one find a biographer who is entirely impartial. So a socialist biography it is. To Free the World is a very detailed biography taking Holland (born 1868 – died 1933) from cradle to grave, and illustrated with many photographs and other images. After 425 pages of text there are over fifty pages of notes, sources and index. This is a very thorough work and I admit that it took me the best part of a week to read.

Holland was born in the hinterland of New South Wales. His parents were religious and as a young man Holland was a member of the Salvation Army. Although in young manhood he parted with organised religion, he always regarded himself as a non-denomination Christian. Some credited him which having learnt how to be an orator from his street-corner speeches when he was in the Sallies [or Salvos as the Aussies say]. When he was twenty he married his life-long spouse Annie and they were to have three boys and five girls. James Robb mentions Holland’s family only very occasionally, being more focussed on causes and politics which absorbed Holland. Holland’s left-tendency was first influenced by such Utopian works as Edward Bellamy’s bestseller Looking Back. He trained as a type-setter which was to be important in that he himself was later to set up and run various socialist newspapers and broadsheets.

In the 1890s Australia was suffering a severe economic depression which lead to the rise of radical socialism. There were riots over workers’ wages and the conditions in which they had to work, not to mention an economy in which prices made it difficult for workers to feed their families. Such unions as there were engaged in strikes, but there were many different types of socialism. The big rift in Australian socialism, which was to last for decades, was the rift between socialists who called for direct unionist action including strikes; and socialists who said that they should seek to win power by becoming a political party and entering parliament. The SFA (Socialist Federation of Australasia) was torn apart. Says James Robb - in very socialist terms - “The political separation between the class-struggle socialists and the class-collaborationist Labor Party was complete.” (p.55) Billy Hughes and William Holman became the best-known members of the parliamentary Labor Party, regarded by Holland and others as traitors to the socialist cause. There were many matters that concerned Australian socialists. Most opposed the separate states becoming, in 1901, the federation of Australia. At the same time the Socialist League and most unions endorsed the “White Australia” policy [which was abolished only in the 1960s] when unions feared that Asian workers would undercut them by accepting shorter wages.

Harry Holland was by now well-known for his lectures, his street oratory, and the radical socialist newspapers he published such as “The Socialist” and later “The International Socialist”. Like many of his comrades, he hailed the [abortive] 1905 Russian Revolution, believing it could create a genuinely democratic worker’s state once the autocratic Tsar was gone.

The biggest test for Australian socialists came in 1909, with first a strike on a large scale, then a lock-out, at the Broken Hill mine and in the coal-fields in northern New South Wales. There was a major stand-off, pitting unionists against armed police and “scabs”. The English socialist Tom Mann spoke about the exploitation of workers and was prosecuted for sedition. So was Holland, who was jailed for five months. Billy Hughes, now head of the Parliamentary Labor Party, managed to break up the striking unionists. In the federal elections of 1910, it was Billy Hughes’s party which made great gains in parliament, while the Socialist Federation of Australasia got nowhere. Holland wrote in 1910 “The great majority of the workers here are not prepared to accept the revolutionary working-class objective and tactics which mark the fighting of the workers’ movements in other counties. By more than 20 to 1 in West Sydney the Socialist candidate was turned down in favour of middle-class interests as represented by the Labor party… the only explanation is that the workers of Australia are as yet economically uneducated – as yet so unconscious of their class position and interests as to be easily tossed along in the whirlwind of political happenings.” ( quoted p.101) The fact is that increasingly many unionists were suggesting it would be wise to vote for the parliamentary Labor party even if they did not endorse all their policies. [Probably to Holland’s chagrin, the “ traitor” Billy Hughes went on to be Australia’s prime minister from 1915 to 1923.]

Holland now made it his business to write and lecture about accidents and lethal conditions that crippled many workers in factories. At about the same time, he himself suffered with knee problems. Although he had surgery, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

His next fervent crusade was to oppose Australia’s Compulsory Military Act, which conscripted young men to take part in military drill and prepare for war. Holland wasn’t a thorough pacifist, but in the years before the First World War, he saw wars as the work of capitalists and imperialists who wanted to grab land and resources. War, in his view, was designed to crush the proletariat. When one of his sons was called up, Holland banned him from joining military drill. He was prosecuted and fined. 

 

                                                           Harry Holand in 1920

And it is at this point that To Free the World moves its narrative to New Zealand. There was a growing Socialist Party in New Zealand, and Harry Holland was invited to come over and deliver socialist lectures. Holland was 43 when he first landed in New Zealand in 1912 and walked straight into the issue of the day - the major strike at the gold-mining town Waihi. Under the New Zealand Liberal party, an Arbitration and Conciliation system had been set up to deal with worker’s grievances and determine what were fair wages. This system appeared to work well. There were no strikes for twelve years. But gradually the awards given by Arbitration failed to keep up with the rising cost of living. Holland, still favouring direct workers’ action, wrote that the arbitration system was Labour’s “Leg-iron”, and said workers should “strive for our revolutionary objective: the overthrow of capitalism, the uprearing of the Socialist Republic. So organised – and with our organisation built on a solid foundation of working-class knowledge – with no divisions of race or creed, colour or sex, we might well laugh our exploiters to scorn, smash through the awards and penalties of their Arbitration Courts, tear down the superstructure if their legal power to oppress, and swiftly plant the Red Flag… on the world’s citadel of industrialism.” [quoted p. 154]

At this time Bill Massey’s Reform party was building in strength, mostly focussed on the farming sector and more conservative than the ailing Liberal party. There was the strike at the Blackball coal mine. Socialists set up the Federation of Labour (later nicknamed the “Red Feds”), some of their leaders having, like Harry Holland, come from Australia – Bob Semple, Paddy Webb etc. And then there was the major strike at Waihi. The striking workers were driven out of town, the police used force (one striker was killed) and what the strikers called “scabs” took their place. Holland wrote a book about the tragedy of Waihi which was reprinted a number of times and had a wide readership. After the breaking of the Waihi strike, Holland remained steadfastly militant, suggesting that workers should “along the lines of the [American] IWW [“Wobblies”] … fight uncompromisingly, with never a section of workers scabbing on any other section, together with unity in the political field, in one big revolutionary socialist political party.” [p.170] James Robb says that after the formation of the Red Feds “the achievement of the One Big Union, and of the one big revolutionary Socialist Party, was to be Holland’s chief preoccupation for the remainder of his life, and in the next few years in New Zealand its achievement would appear to him to come tantalisingly close.” [p. 154] But in 1913 there was the coordinated strike on the waterfronts of New Zealand’s major cities, with exports and imports being held up. This was too much for the farmers [whom the socialists had tended to overlook] and the strikes were broken up, in part by farmers on horseback nicknamed “Massey’s Cossacks” by the strikers and their allies. Socialists who had supported the strike in speeches and pamphlets were prosecuted for sedition. Peter Fraser and Bob Semple were jailed. Holland offer a detailed defence, but Robert Stout gave him 12 months.

There was another problem that worried him. A major war seemed to be coming, and like Australia, New Zealand now had a Defence Act. Holland saw this as sheer militarism because it included compulsory military service. Holland had believed idealistically that the workers of the world would not go to war against their fellow proletarians. For years he had touted the German Social Democratic Party as the model for any socialist party… so he had a rude awakening when, at the beginning of the First World War, the GSDP joined all other German parties and voted for war. Painfully he came to understand that even in New Zealand, for most of the proletariat, patriotism trumped socialism. There was a plan for all parties to join together for the duration of the war. The Liberal and Reform parties united and formed a combined cabinet headed by Massey (Reform) and Joseph Ward (Liberal); but the socialists stood aloof. In 1916, the New Zealand Labour Party was formed, welcoming nearly all socialist factions. In 1918 Holland, Bob Semple and Peter Fraser entered parliament and Holland became the leader of the party, a role he kept up to his death. Later, there were six Labour MP’s and by 1920 there were nine. Perhaps ruefully, James Robb tells us “The waning of the class struggle movement after 1919 was as rapid as its rise.” (p.281) Later he says “By the time of the 1922 general election, the course of Holland, Fraser, Semple, Parry, Hickey, Webb, Savage and all the other former Red Fed class-struggle leaders accepting the framework of capitalist electoral politics had become irreversible.” (pp. 304-305) Holland clung to many of his radical ideas, believing that Russia’s Bolshevik revolution would herald a new era of proletarian freedom… or if not them, then the botched uprisings in Germany after the First World War. But the fact was he was now a respectable parliamentarian leading a respectable party, even if radical words were sometimes spoken. Naturally the tiny New Zealand Communist Party accused the Labour Party of not being truly socialist.

 

The nine Labour members of Parliament in 1922. Harry Holland seated 2nd from left. Peter Fraser next to him and Michael Joseph Savage at the end of the top row.

            In the 1920s, as well as steering a parliamentary socialist party, Holland can be credited with championing two major causes.

Near the end of the First World War there was formed in New Zealand a Protestant Political Association which preached that all the ills in the nation could be blamed on Catholics. The major non-Catholic denominations (Anglicans, Presbyterians) thought this was nonsense, but the PPA gained traction from the smaller and more marginal churches, had influence with some MPs, and managed to stir up much bigotry. Holland frequently spoke against this and made it clear that the Labour Party welcomed people of any religion or no religion, men or women, Maori or Pakeha. The PPA faded away by the early 1930s.

More momentously, Holland (and his party) condemned the way New Zealand officials were treating the Samoan people. The League of Nations had “Mandated” Western Samoa to New Zealand but Samoa was being treated like a colony. The Mau, a Samoan party seeking independence, was formed and made peaceful demonstrations. They pledged to use no violence. But the occupying forces did use violence, finally shooting into a crowd and killing protestors. It wasn’t only these events that Holland saw as an outrage, but also the dishonest way official dispatches and newspapers reported the situation. He spoke frequently about this in public and in parliament. Regrettably, his campaign fell on deaf ears. Samoa continued to be controlled by New Zealand until 1961.

As he reaches the later years of Holland’s life, James Robb reminds us that Holland did have interests outside current politics. He read poetry and wrote verses of his own. He wrote a book about Scotland’s most esteemed poet Robert Burns… but of course he admired Burns in part because he was  a revolutionary and a radical.

By the 1930s, some members of the Labour Party began to see Holland as past his prime, and thought that a new leader was needed for the parliamentary party. The discussion didn’t last for long, however. Holland died of a heart attack in October 1933 while attending the funeral of an old friend , the Maori King, Kingi Te Rata Mahuta. The Labour Party became the government in 1935 and remained there until 1949, first under Michael Joseph Savage then under Peter Fraser. James Robb speculates that, had he survived to be prime-minister, “There can be little doubt that as a leader of a Labour government, Holland would have pursued a course much like that of Savage and Fraser in leading the working class into World War II – albeit perhaps with deep personal regret.” (p. 381) I myself speculate here that the “regret” Robb refers to is the fact that socialists who had opposed going to war in 1914 and been jailed for it (Bob Semple etc.) were only too eager to fight a war in 1939. Remember Michael Joseph Savage was the first prime-minister, in what was then still the British Empire, to pledge allegiance to Britain once war broke out. Fighting a war with Hitler was different from fighting the Kaiser.

In his last chapter, before he comes to appendices, notes and index, Robb criticises other writers who have written more negative biographies of Harry Holland than To Free the World . As I have not read these other biographies I cannot pass judgment on them. Robb writes clearly, his socialist views are honest ones, the book is thorough and the images are a great help. I can, however, dissent on one thing – although Robb doesn’t say it, it is clear to me that in the end Holland backed away from his original fire-brand variety of socialism, and came to understand that the parliamentary way was both more efficient and more genuinely democratic. And after all, in a generally stable society, who wants a revolution?

Footnote: In case you were wondering, I was not misspelling the Australian Labor Party as opposed to the New Zealand Labour Party. That is how the Aussies spell it.

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.

     “OLD NEW ZEALAND – A Tale of the Good Old Times” by “A Pakeha Maori” [F. E. Maning] (first published in 1863)

 

            In the 1960s, the publishers Wilson and Horton (then proprietors if the New Zealand Herald) printed a series of facsimiles of New Zealand books that had first been published in the 19^th century. I have seven of these facsimiles sitting on my shelves. They are very interesting at least because they show what attitudes European (British) writers had when it came to Maori. Some of these books would not be criticised now, but some display very dated or even bigoted ideas about race. One book in particular is well known, F. E. Maning’s Old New Zealand – A Tale of the Good Old Times.

Fredrick Edward Maning (1812-1883) was a Protestant Irishman who was a robust man very happy to fight and brawl when it suited him. He was apparently 6 feet 3 inches tall. In 1833, Maning came over to New Zealand from Tasmania and set himself up as a trader in Hokianga, the north of New Zealand. He lived with the Ngapui iwi, married a Maori woman (the sister of a chief) and had four children by her. He also, apparently, sometimes joined Ngapui war parties fighting other iwi. Years later he became a judge of the Native Land Court, but in his early years he was known to have clashed with British laws. He opposed the Treaty of Waitangi and formal colonisation of New Zealand. In his brief Preface to Old New Zealand, Maning says he “thought it might be worthwhile to place a few sketches of old Maori life before the remembrance of them had passed away.” He adds “I first saw them as they were still unlike a civilised people of British subjects”. Remember, Maning wrote his book in the 1860s. When he referred to “ the good old times” he was referring to the 1830s, before the Treaty of Waitangi existed. The 1830s were not all that far away from the 1860s. Old New Zealand was a very popular book and was reprinted many times in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. But by the late 20^th century, it was being criticised by historians. In 1975, the historian Professor M. P. K. Sorrenson wrote an essay (ironically called “How to Civilise Savages”) in which he said that Old New Zealand had “undeservedly become a local classic”. More recently Maori writers have criticised the book.

I finally got around to reading Old New Zealand this year, and here is how I see it. [Page numbers given according to the original facsimile.] Maning does not write about events in sequence. His narrative – such as it is – jumps hither and thither. He has the maddening habit of not giving dates and not giving names of the people he meets and works with. Although he is a “trader” he never specifies what he trades in.  He often attempts to be jocular (and sometimes succeeds) but his attempts at oratory are flat. Take the gushy words with which he opens his book: “Ah! those good old times, when first I came to New Zealand, we shall never see their like again. Since then the world seems to have gone wrong somehow. A dull sort of world this, now. The very sun does not seem to me to shine as bright as it used. Pigs and potatoes have degenerated; and every thing seems ‘flat, stale, and unprofitable’. But those were the times! – ‘the good old times’ – before Governors were invented, and law, and justice, and all that. When every one did as he liked – except when his neighbours would not let him, (the more shame for them) – when there were no taxes, or duties, or public works, who public to require them…” and so on (Chapter I, pp,1-2)

In all of his narrative, such as it is, we have to remember that in the 1830s, Maori tended to welcome Pakeha, this being long before Pakeha became the majority population. Maori rangatira looked forward to getting iron ploughs, knives, axes, European clothing and, of course, firearms – muskets and tupara (double-barrelled shotguns). For this reason, many Pakeha traders were held in high esteem and were protected by rangatira.

 

Maning begins (Chapters 1, 2, and 3) with a not-particularly-hilarious account of how he first stepped foot on Hokianga. He notes Maori took goods without paying for them and were particularly interested in the tupara. The chief welcomes Maning as “his” Pakeha. Maning speaks of how one senior of the iwi is a fine fellow who revels in the fact that, when he was younger, he ate many people. Yes, cannibalism was still practiced in some parts of Aotearoa and Maning  appears to find this fact amusing. After wrestling with a Maori champion, he says: “My vis-à-vis in the operation [of bringing goods to shore] was a respectable old warrior of great experience and approved valour, whose name being turned into English meant ‘the eater of his own relations’… This was quite a different diet from ‘melons’, and he did not bear his name for nothing… I will only say that my comrade was a most bloodthirsty, ferocious, athletic savage, and his character was depicted in every line of his tattooed face.” (Chapter 3, pp,41-42) He makes it clear that there was a big trade on the selling of [Maori] heads, who have been killed and cured by Maori and sold to traders. “The skippers of many of the colonial trading schooners were always ready to deal with a man who had ‘a real good head’, and used to commission such men as my companion of the morning to ‘pick up heads’ for them. It is a positive fact that some time after this the head of a live man was sold and paid for beforehand, and afterwards honestly delivered ‘as per arrangement’ ”  (Chapter 3, p.63)

There are still “small” wars between iwi and some against British settlers. He says (Chapter 4) a renegade, and members of the team that help him ashore, made a raid against one settlement and were driven away by cannon fire. He builds a modest house for himself (Chapter 5), but of course has to pay, in axes, muskets etc., to competing people who claim his plot of land is theirs. At which point, delving into the future, he curses official Land Commissioners who, years later, make him prove that he acquired his plot legitimately. He freely admits (Chapter 6) that he has Maori “retainers” and servants whom he pays. And naturally he loves to spin sensational tales even if they are true, as in the following: “He killed several men in fair fight, and had also – as was well known – committed two most diabolical murders, one of which was on his own wife, a fine young woman, whose brains he blew out at half a second’s notice for no further provocation than this: - he was sitting on the verandah of his house, and told her to bring a light for his pipe. She, being occupied in domestic affairs, said ‘Can’t you fetch it yourself, I am going for water’. She had the calibash in her hand and their infant child on her back. He snatched up his gun and instantly shot her dead on the spot; and I have heard hm afterwards describing quite coolly the comical way in which her brains had been knocked out by the shot with which the gun was loaded. He also had, for some trifling provocation, lopped off the arms of his own brother or cousin. I forget which, and was altogether, from his tremendous bodily strength and utter insensibility to danger, about as ‘ugly a customer’ as one would care to meet.” (Chapter 6, pp. 89-90). This is very much as in the tone of his boastful tale of wrestling with a formidable Maori warrior and catching a tomahawk thrown at him by the said warrior (Chapter 6, pp. 92-93)

Often he emphasises that Maori crave for European tools because they had previously had to work with more primitive tools which made for very laborious toil thus: “As for the Maori people in general, they are neither so good or so bad as their friends and enemies have painted them, and I suspect are pretty much what almost every other people would have become, if subjected for ages to the same external circumstances. For ages they have struggles against necessity in all its shapes. This has given them a remarkable greediness for gain in every visible and immediate tangible form. It has even left its mark on their language. Without the aid of iron the most trifling tool or utensil could only be purchased by an enormously disproportionate outlay of labour in its construction, and, in consequence, became precious to a degree scarcely conceivable by people of civilised and wealthy countries. This great value attached to personal property of all kinds, increased proportionately the temptation to plunder; and where no law existed, or could exist, of  sufficient force to repress the inclination, every man, as a natural consequence, became a soldier, if it were only for the defence of his own property and that of those who were banded with him – his tribe, or family….”                             (Chapter 6, pp. 99-100)

From Chapters 7 on, he discusses what he sees as traditional Maori codes and laws that were almost universally respected. Muru (Chapter 7) is regarded by Pakeha as sheer robbery or plunder, but Maning suggests muru was really a means of dividing up goods equitably, often under the pretext of punishing somebody who owned too much. But in Maning’s time it is rarely used. Tapu (Chapter 8) however is quite different, still widely used as a means of keeping order. A tohunga really could, by his mana, stop people in their tracks by declaring a person or thing was tapu. Maning tells a tale of how he himself was chastised by a tohunga when he accidentally slept in a hill where the bones of an earlier tohunga were buried. He says he was put through a long ceremony by the tohunga in which he was divested of all his clothes and kitchen utensils. He also notes (Chapter 9) that a tohunga was in effect a soothsayer, claiming to be able the predict the future. Maning says this was very much the same technique the ancient Greeks used – giving a prediction that was ambiguous enough to mean almost anything. One tohunga (Chapter 10) was credited with raising up the dead. In what is, oddly, one of Maning’s best anecdotes, he tells the story of a botched such “resurrection” which ended in tragedy. There is still some fear of the taniwha (Chapter 11) and other cases of the use of tapu.

In Chapters 12 and 13, he speculates what Maori warfare was like, prior to the entry of firearms. He regards most of them had been real but on a small scale. He speculates on why so many earth fortifications had been abandoned by iwi and concludes that the nature of war has changed since muskets came along. Muskets massively depleted Maori numbers [he doesn’t use the term, but he is here referring to what some historians now call the Musket Wars]. Later he also suggests that another factor was the introduction of European diseases. In his own time he has seen iwi becoming fewer and fewer… He circles us back to his first chapters, reminding us that “A chief possessing a pakeha was much envied by his neighbours, who, in consequence, took every opportunity of scandalising him and blaming him for any rough plucking process he might submit the said pakeha to;… pakehas being, in those glorious times, considered to be geese who laid golden eggs, and it would beheld to be the very extreme of foolishness and bad policy to kill them, or, by too rough handling, to cause them to fly away.” (Chapter 13 p. 184) And in Chapter 14 he moves into different territory by telling us abput an old warrior, a Rangatira who lamented the days of the spear and axe and mere that had been taken over by the muskets. When the old warrior dies, two old women of his age hang themselves.

And then (Chapter 15) Maning proceeds to tell us the meaning of a number of Maori words. He intends to write a Maori lexicon. He asserts how difficult it is to explain many Maori words, and declares “It will be a tough word [a Maori word with many nuances which he has been analysing] disposed of to my hand, when I come to write my Maori dictionary, in a hundred volumes, which, if I begin soon, I hope to have finished before the Maori is a dead language.”  (Chapter 15 p. 224)

As I said at the beginning of this review, Old New Zealand jumps all over the place “hither and thither”. Maning is by no means a stylist and his book often has odd absents. Though he was a “Pakeha Maori”, he never mentions the many British he would have met in the 1830s. He overlooks such things as Maori crafts, Maori forms of marriage, and major Maori people who took important roles in iwi. Also there is that element of boastfulness (his skill as a wrestler etc.). Sometimes, too, there are statements that we could now regard as patronising. Consider this, written with regard to Maori: “for our own safety and their preservation, we must give new laws and institutions, new habits of life, new ideas, sentiments and information, - whom we must either civilise or by our mere contact exterminate.”(Chapter 6, pp. 99-102) The last word might seem shocking – though it is not suggesting genocide, but rather that contact with Pakeha is dangerous. Like it or not, distasteful though some people will now find it, much [perhaps most] of what Maning writes about Maori customs are true and provable. Not a great book, but still one worth reading as a primer.

Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.  

           THERE NEVER WAS A PARADISE

            No race, ethnicity, nation, people, tribe or human group is free of gross flaws, bad behaviour, violence and what could reasonably be called sin. Poor Rousseau and others of his naïve ilk thought that somewhere in the world there were “noble savages” with better moral codes that Europeans had. There weren’t… and let us remember that Rousseau had never visited the lands he thought were blessed.

In saying this I am not damning all individual people in the world. Yes, there have been decent, thoughtful and even pacifistic people in the world, but all such have existed in environments where there was the potential for violence and where violence often broke out. Every large group of people in the world has at some time been aggressive and violent. I say this because there is a tendency nowadays – especially in the USA and among “woke” people everywhere - to believe that only European colonisers ever caused havoc, up-ended societies or attempted committing genocide.

This is both ridiculous and untrue.

Search the history of any country in the world and you will find wars, coups, attempts to expunge foreign peoples etc. Shaka Zulu attempted to wipe out all other tribes in Southern Africa; African tribes further north were frequently at war with their neighbours; some tribes were perfectly happy to round up their enemies and sell them to European slave-traders. Indigenous American tribes  (so-called “Indians”) fought wars with other tribes before Europeans arrived and started fighting them and taking their land. Taking slaves after defeating enemies was common in Aztec, Inca and (to a lesser degree) Mayan culture. Mohammed’s forces fought those who did not accept their religion and, under the name of jihad, rampaged through northern Africa enforcing their order at pain of death.  Over the many centuries, China expanded by war, fighting with Mongols, expropriating foreign land [e.g. Tibet] and destroying many cultures. India, made of many different states [and languages], expanded through war. Japan had a refined code of warfare; and they used it. Over the centuries, people in all parts of the world overtook and destroyed other cultures. And please note I include European peoples in this endless tale.

            But what I am often now aware of is the tendency of some apologists to pretend that, before large scale European colonisation began, the world was idyllic… and if this can’t be proved, then there will be apologists to say there were reasons for violence by the indigenes.

            I have recently finished reading F. E. Maning’s Old New Zealand, his account of relating with Maori in the 1830s, a book that is now much contested. The day after I finished reading it, while taking my morning walk, I happened to listen though my earplugs to a New Zealand podcast in the “Black Sheep” series. It was about Hongi Hika. This ferocious and skilful warrior triggered off what are now called the Musket Wars. 20,000 Maori were killed by his forces and his enemies. This was the most lethal war that Aotearoa / New Zealand ever suffered. The number killed was greater than New Zealand deaths in the First and the Second World Wars (and far, far more deaths than in the “New Zealand Wars” in the 1860s). There is no doubt that those Pakeha who traded in firearms were partly to blame. But, after all, it was Hongi Hika and the Ngapuhi who mustered troops and ravaged the northern part of the North Island, killing and despoiling those who lived in what it now Auckland.

            What I found interesting (and a little questionable) was the way two people in the pod cast – the historian Paul Moon and a distant descendant of Hongi Hika – both acknowledged the carnage made by Hongi Hika, but both also found excuses for Hongi Hika’s deadly rampage. It was the fault of the traders with muskets [partly true]. There was a tradition of much smaller “wars”, often involving very few Maori warriors, before Europeans brought in the means of expanding war. Hongi Hika was a great diplomat when he visited England, looked carefully at the nature of  the British army and how it was used, and helped Professor Lee to create a Maori lexicon etc. etc.  But meritorious though this may sound, it was still Hongi Hika himself who unleashed warfare in a grand and deadly way. The carnage was his… and the warrior tradition was already is place long before Pakeha came along.

            If you tell me that Maori land was stolen on a grand scale by the British; if you say there were cruel attempts to wipe out the Maori language; if you note that poverty in New Zealand is still worse for Maori and Pasifika than for most Pakeha, then I would whole-heartedly agree with you. If you point out that Europeans waged deadly wars on a large scale and stole many lands, I would also agree. But if you believe the rest of the world was perfect, peaceful, just and harmonious before Europeans came, then I would say you’re deluding yourself.  

Don’t pretend there was once a peaceful paradise. There never was.