A Praiseworthy Device for Amusing and Pacifying Savages? What the Framers Meant by the English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi

Abstract

The thesis addresses the meaning of the English text of the Treaty of Waitangi to those who had a hand in framing it. By “English text” is meant the English draft from which the Treaty in Maori was translated. Despite all the scholarship concerned with the Treaty, the English text has been comparatively neglected. Its meaning has variously been treated as self-evident or irredeemably ambiguous, and therefore unrewarding as an object of study in itself. Most recent writing has taken the view that the Maori and English texts differ significantly. That has led to some focus on whether the differences were the result of deliberate mistranslation to make the Treaty acceptable to Maori. This thesis is concerned with the anterior question of the meaning of the English text to its framers. It therefore begins by identifying the framers and reconstructing the English text, which has been treated by some historians as lost and unknowable. The meaning of the English text requires consideration of the text itself (itself a neglected topic) but also of the context in which it was drawn up. That context includes the backgrounds and motivations of the framers and the wider experience of Empire and the currents of thought of the time. The thesis concludes that the English and Maori texts of the Treaty appear to reconcile. It takes the position that the principal framers, William Hobson, James Busby, and James Stephen, understood the Treaty in much the same way and that such understanding was one generally shared by contemporaries. That shared understanding was in part because the Treaty followed British imperial practice elsewhere, and in part because the Instructions given to Hobson in the name of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, but almost entirely the work of Stephen, were clear and were faithfully carried out in the English text. The principal conclusions of the thesis are that British intervention in New Zealand in 1840 was to establish government over British settlers, for the protection of Maori. British settlement was to be promoted only to the extent that Maori protection was not compromised. Maori tribal government and custom were to be maintained. British sovereignty was not seen as inconsistent with plurality in government and law. Maori were recognised as full owners of their lands, whether or not occupied by them, according to custom.