The substance of the shadow: Māori and Pākehā political economic relationships, 1860-1940: a far northern case study

Abstract

Between 1860 and 1940 Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy and economic base was transformed in a number of significant ways, following similar patterns in earlier-established British colonies. The influx of European immigrants drastically altered the demography and contested land – the economic base. Money became increasingly important as medium of exchange and unit of account. Whereas the economy was unregulated or lightly-regulated before 1860, regulation increasingly formalised economic relations and institutions, and work organisation became more impersonal. In urban areas these transformations were substantially complete by 1940. However, in rural areas, where most Mäori and fewer Päkehä lived, economic transformation was more of a hybrid than a complete change from one form to another. The informal economy (unmeasured and unregulated), and particularly the rural informal economy, contributed (and still contributes) quantitatively to the national economy. Whether within Mäori communities, within Päkehä communities or between the two, the more informal rural economy depended on social relations to a large extent. Mäori had choices about how they related to the introduced economic system, ranging from full engagement to rejection and non-involvement, with numerous negotiated positions in between. With the conviction that they could satisfactorily negotiate terms of participation, Mäori had invited Europeans to the far north. The extent of Mäori involvement in all the dominant (formal) economic activities of the far north, 1860-1940, clearly indicates their efforts were integral rather than peripheral to the Päkehä economy. But Mäori economic activity has been relegated to the shadows of economic history. The relationship between the two systems is better understood by recognising the interplay between formal and informal (shadow) economies. The social organisation of work, the kaupapa of the informal economy, the diversity of strategies and tactics, and relationship building (both bonding and bridging), were the strengths from which far northern Mäori relentlessly engaged with the Päkehä economy, while maintaining a degree of autonomy until World War One. In effect they played an invisible hand of cards, invisible, that is, to studies of the formal economy.