A Web of Relations: On the 1886 Tarawera eruption and the agency of spiritual forces in history

Abstract

This thesis is a challenge to the current epistemologies of academic history, which are founded on philosophical materialism and which present spiritual forces as lacking agency. This thesis argues and shows that on the contrary, spiritual forces do possess agency, having the capacity to be active participants in historical events. To provide an alternative to the current methodologies and epistemologies of academic history, this thesis presents an analytical model in which humans, physical environments, and spiritual forces are part of a trilateral relationship wherein the activities of one party influences the other. This analytical model is theoretical, intended to provide the means with which a historian may investigate spiritual forces in history, but it has been constructed based on the traditional worldviews, concepts, and rationalisations of Europeans and Māori. Examples of where such a relationship is visible in Māori and European histories are presented. So that the reader may see how the analytical model might function, the Tarawera eruption of 1886 has been used as a case study. This thesis investigates the spiritual forces at play in the history of the Tarawera eruption, primarily focussing on its potential human causes and the spiritual signs that served as warnings for the disaster. This thesis shows that by drawing on the traditional literature and knowledge of their respective cultures, Pākehā and Māori both interpreted, understood, and reasoned that the Tarawera eruption had human causes, and that the phantom canoe seen before it was an omen connected to the eruption. This thesis is divided into three parts: the first concerns the methodology and justification; the second concerns the concepts, systems, and worldviews that contributed to the Pākehā and Māori understanding of the eruption, and how those worldviews were used to build the trilateral model; the third concerns the eruption itself, making use of the constructed analytical model to investigate the sources.