CHAPTER 4

THE COROMANDEL EPISODE, 1852-53:
AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

How the Coromandel Rush Foreshadowed Later Problems

This first discovery of gold of any consequence in the colony which, in the event, yielded so little (less than £1,500 seems the generally accepted estimate) and in consequence was 'regarded in Auckland as a fiasco',34 should not on that account be underestimated. Robyn Anderson has given two good reasons why:

1.    November 1852 Agreement—a 'first benchmark'

The November 1852 agreement, reached on Patapata Beach after prolonged debate between Maori and Crown representatives, which opened the field, set what Anderson calls, correctly I think, the 'first benchmark in Crown thinking'.35 The similarity of later agreements in the 1860s suggests that this earlier settlement established guidelines if not actual precedents.

2.    Crown readiness to act unilaterally

Once Maori had agreed to the field's being opened, the Crown issued regulations which (citing Anderson once again) 'unilaterally changed' the terms of the original agreements, a government practice which demonstrated a 'pre-eminence of concern for mining interests over promises to Maori.'36

There were other premonitors of racial conflict arising out of this goldfield arrangement, but of these, one already in view in 1852 was to repeat itself so often on subsequent occasions it could almost be considered the leitmotiv of the second phase of the economic relationship between Hauraki iwi and the European community.37 This is a further reason why these 1852-53 Crown dealings over Coromandel were so particularly significant. It can be briefly stated as a further portent of a disharmonious future:

34 J.H.M. Salmon, A History of Gold Mining in New Zealand, Wellington, 1963, p. 30.

35 Anderson, 'The Crown, the Treaty, and the Hauraki Tribes'

36 Ibid.

37 See p. 15 of this report.

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