CHAPTER 3

THE SECOND ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP,
1861 ONWARDS:
A PROSPECTIVE OVERVIEW

Why Absorption in the Western Economic System Corroded Maori Society

The first economic relationship which Hauraki Maori had formed with the Pakeha community, say up to the late 1850s, was based on trade. They had entered it deliberately looking on the association as serving their interests no less than those of their trading partners.

The second economic relationship, properly beginning about 1861 and extending through the rest of the century and beyond, was based on gold, and to a lesser extent on timber. Hauraki iwi were drawn into this later relationship with some reluctance; whether they should take part was an issue that divided them. In the event, their hesitation proved well-founded. Income that Maori had expected as landlords was never to reach promised levels; money paid out as miners' rights revenue, as leases, or as consideration for blocks of land sold, tended to be unevenly spread, often unfairly so, between and even within hapu.

It must be appreciated, however, that it was not only the Pakeha failure to fulfil the terms of agreements that made this new partnership so bad a bargain for Maori. As a British historian has recently reminded us, equally destructive and demoralizing for indigenous peoples as the breaches of deeds and treaties have been 'the corrosive effects ... on their societies and economies' of absorption within the western economic system.26 And this, precisely, was what happened when the Hauraki region was precipitately opened up for gold mining and large-scale forestry.

At this point, the broad influences that worked to the disadvantage of Hauraki people will be discussed as an introduction to an account of the opening of the various parts of the region that will then follow, in sequence and in detail.

Influences Which Worked to Disadvantage Hauraki Iwi Financial constraints on government

The needs of the Pakeha community drove the whole process of colonization along, rather than any sense of obligation under the Treaty of Waitangi felt towards Maori by agencies of the government—this reality was at the heart of the failure of the Crown to

26 Gareth Stedman Jones, Independent, London, 3 July 1995.

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