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plentiful quantities of fish of the highest quality, the rich timber and the primeval forests, in
which the staples of European foodstuff and animals also flourished unhindered. Moreover, with
the many safe and convenient harbours situated all around the coasts and the potential for
lucrative businesses in the trading of local products, such as timbers and flax, combined with the
already visible whaling industry, the favourable proximity to New South Wales and its ideal
location for refitting and provisions, New Zealand could therefore become “the natural centre of a
vast maritime trade”, whilst at the same time “a nursery of moral good or evil to be transplanted
amongst the neighbouring nations”, 7 particularly the penal institutions of Australia, over which it
already had agricultural superiority.
Also on the agenda was the important objective of “reclaiming and cultivating a moral
wilderness, - […] of civilizing a barbarous people by means of a deliberate plan and systematic
efforts”. 8 The Maori are thus described as “a thoroughly savage people” who, for the most part,
“scarcely cultivate the earth, […] are often exposed to famine” and make wars “sometimes in
order to obtain provisions by plunder, sometimes from motives of revenge only”, the result of
which is either “the extermination of the conquered tribe” through acts of cannibalism or slavery,
in which the Maori slave “appears to be the most miserable being on the face of the earth”, while
the women, as is the universal case for savage nations, “are treated with barbarous inhumanity”. 9
In spite of this, they have in general “a remarkable capacity for becoming civilized – a peculiar
aptitude for being improved by intercourse with civilization”, as they “seem not inferior to any
race” in both physical and mental capacity, although there is no question that they are inferior to
enlightened Europeans. 10 However, not only do they need to be saved from themselves it seems,
but also from the unwanted and lawless element of European society, namely escaped convicts
from New South Wales, drunken traders, sailors and whalers, and men of questionable and
immoral character, all of whom congregate around Kororareka (Russell) in the Bay of Islands,
frequent its grog shops and brothels, which they set up in the first place, and commit evil crimes
against the Maori, in doing so corrupting the good work done by the missionaries and morally
refined settlers, and only resulting in the demise of the indigenous population – all in all, the same
official line for British intervention by the Government. 11 As a rule no hostilities are directed at
7 Ibid., 50.
8 Ibid., 27f.
9 Ibid., 28.
10 Ibid., 29.
11 See Ormond Wilson, Kororareka & Other Essays. Dunedin: McIndoe, 1990; Peter Adams, Fatal Necessity: British
Intervention in New Zealand 1830-1847. Auckland: University of Auckland Press, 1977.
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