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.