Why the process of pacification was prolonged

Pacification, as I have conceived of it here, was broader in scope and longer in time (extending through the 1860s and beyond) than some have imagined it to be. It proceeded as it did because the military and political situation in 1865 entered into an unusual stage of flux arising out of:

1.    uncertainty among administrators related to the withdrawal of imperial troops; a change of capital; financial constraints; and division of powers between the central and provincial governments; and

2.    divided counsels within the Hauraki tribes, not least because experience of the problems thrown up by the incursion of Pakeha into the north to extract timber and gold, acted as a warning to the more obdurate tribes in the south and increased suspicions there.

Importance of role of Mackay

Here we have a situation of diplomatic delicacy peculiarly suited to the talents and personality of a civil servant like James Mackay whose unusual background enabled him to exploit divisions between those who opposed him, particularly Maori, and to take advantage of the uncertainty of his political masters. Like Donald McLean (in his bureaucratic, not later ministerial role) Mackay was more than a civil servant. It was the nature of mid-Victorian systems of government moving into new uncharted areas of administration, that they enabled knowledgeable government officials 'serving' inexpert ministerial heads, to act off their own bat, to arrogate extensive powers to themselves so that they did much more than implement policy laid down from above; sometimes they themselves initiated it. More than bureaucrats, they have been described as closet statesmen, 'statesmen in disguise'. On the humble colonial stage, the politique Mackay was one such player.

120 AJHR, 1868, A4, p. 3.

47