At the time of the treaty, Great Britain had lost her major colonies in America, had defeated Napoleon and was entering an age of enlightenment. Britian was the first country in the world to abolish slavery. Britain had chosen Australia as the new place to send her convicts to, and missionaries were traveling to New Zealand to spread Christianity to the natives (they were not called maori then).

New Zealand had also attracted whalers and sealers from Australia and the USA, many of them had relations with maori women, or had set up trading stations buying and selling products such as flax for the rope making industry in Australia, and timber for ship building. The maori chiefs encouraged this, as they were able to obtain such valuable things as blankets, muskets, pots, metal tools, horses and cows etc. It is written that there was a sense of lawlessness in New Zealand by the approximately 2,000 Europeans in a country of approximately 100,000 maori. So the local missionaries wrote to Great Britain (details HW) and asked for some help to control things.

The Colonial office did not want another colony, as they were expensive, so they sent out a “British Resident” James Busby with a small salary and expense allowance to liaise between the maori chiefs and the Europeans.

The French, smarting after their defeat in the Napoleonic wars were starting to send explorers to the pacific and they sent some Catholic missionaries to New Zealand. In 1839 the New Zealand Company was set up in London to make money by buying land from the chiefs and selling it (at a profit of course) to people from England who wanted to escape the poor living conditions in England caused by over-crowding in the cites after the Industrial Revolution.

The British Colonial Secretary, Lord Normanby, heard of all this and felt forced to consider turning New Zealand into a British Colony. He appointed a naval captain – William Hobson to be the first Lieutenant Governor of New Zealand, and to conclude a treaty with the maori chiefs – ONLY if they agreed to it.

The maori chiefs for their part had seen their people torn apart by inter-tribal warfare: utu and cannibalism was alive and well, and this got worse once Hone Heke was able to acquire muskets from Australia and take revenge on other tribes. When the maori chiefs were called to Kororareka (later Russell) to sign a treaty with the British, they felt that this would be a good chance to stop the decline of their tribes and to stave off possible colonisation by the French.

The rest as they say is History

Lord Normanby's Instructions

(t13)