Rob Steven: Settler Colonialism2

Rob Steven: Settler Colonialism2

1. daily experiences shape New Zealand ideologies and the real forces which make those experiences.

   • The social mechanisms are masked by the day-to-day experiences that take place in our life
   • Predominant forces which made settler society in the mid-nineteenth century still exert influences on us
   • Steven recognises that due to his narrow focus he is unable to stress the lesser forces that determine ideologies and daily experiences.

2. A combination of crises in Britain made a surplus population

   • The surplus population was poor and unemployed, potentially having political agitation/potentially revolutionary. Britain's strategy was to attack this surplus population.
     • another strategy was the Poor Law Act 1834 to decrease poor relief and create workhouses for the poor.
     • Britain wanted to export surplus population to settler colonies. This was only possible from acquisition of land - land sold at a sufficient price with which to subsidise further emigration.
       • no cost to British tax-apying classes. and capitalist ruling class remains powerful

3. The treaty of Waitangi was created to diminish Maori opposition to colonisation. Troops were too expensive. Benevolence was not a major driving force.

   • Aotearoa wasn't an extractive colony. The only benefit of the colonial settlement was getting rid of surplus population
     • If it was an extractive colony… "the place would become poorer… and it would thus hardly remain somewhere to which unwanted Britons would be drawn."
       • Hence, wealth was left in the hands of settlers, and not sent back to Britain
   • the myth regarding the protection of Maori from unscrupulous settlers was an ideological form that was assumed by self-righteous imperialism
     • If benevolence was an ingredient in the establishment of the colony, tihs was because deception was crucial to achieving success at the minimum of cost.
   • Destroying Maori literally would expose the conspiracy/deception by which the Treaty was created.

4. "an underdeveloped capitalism, as Aotearoa was to become" provided "living and working conditions which were superior to those in more advanced capitalist Britain and which could therefore attract people from it."

   • Advanced technology led to workers being more productive and hence increased profitability (advanced capitalism).
     • The workers found it hard to fight for better conditions in less advanced businesses
       • in a new capitalist society, working and living conditions would be worse due to relatively less advanced technologies. So workers would not be attracted to New Zealand.
         • Aotearoa overcome this predicament with high quality land which permitted year-round pasture growth
           • Wool, meat and dairy products could be produced with unusually few resources. This gave rise to great wealth and profitability for settlers.
             • Landowners could live in extraordinary comfort while still conceding to their employees living standards which were unknown even in advanced capitalist Britain
           • The discovery of successful profitable pastoralism was the driving force for the eviction of Maori from their land.
             • South Island: Te Wai Pounamu
               • Numbers and resistance of Maori reduced.
                 • The conflicts among tribes became more destructive and costly when the musket was introduced and many of the survivors were claimed by diseases introduced by settlers
               • Land was monopolised by a small gentry class. Wealth was sourced from the pastoral industry and goldfields for the backward capitalist society
                 • Net transfer of wealth to Britain to colony due to export of meat and dairy products to Britain and it cost very little for NZrs to make these products
                   • Buying these products from other sources was more expensive. NZ was cheap cos it had good land
             • North Island: Te Ika a Maaui
               • Sizeable stretches of land remained under Maori control. Settlers saw this as their avenue to higher living standards than in the South
   • Britains need to let settlers be attracted to NZ made them keen to let settlers have things their own way shown through the ease in granting them self-govt.
     • It didnt require revolutionary struggle because they all they needed was to allow settlers to do what they like to maintain attraction to NZ

5. Destroying Maori

   • The pressures to exterminate Maori were not entirely contained. The Settler Wars in 1860s unleashed the 'White Man's Anger' to destroy the Maori most savagely.
     • British troops left the prosecution to the settlers in disgust of the brutalities inflicted by the settlers.
   • Alternative solution to destroy maori society produced a proletariat class which was used by white men to do menial jobs at distasteful wages. It was the reserve army of labour in a capitalist system
     • Racism today is mainly based on these injust events
   • Main factor - The worst atrocity/onslaught was the forced conversion of communally-possessed land into individual private property
     • "Nothing save perhaps epidemic disease, was so disruptive of Maori life as this"
   • Many factors that broke Maori communities contributed to certain Maori leaders at the end of the 19th century to believe that to survive they had to become Pakeha. Factors - war, confiscation, disease, suppression of their language

6. Land

   • The key to New Zealand identity is land. Hence shaping ideologies
   • Maori identity was centred on land
     • today focuses on the struggle for the return of that land
   • land provided a source of capitallist wealth in the form of differential rent.
     • Capitalists had sources of wealth from differential rent and from surplus value from workers. This wealth meant they remained profitable and still pay wages, reducing the impact of class
       • this led to the formation of an assumption of a classless society (within pakeha)
         • the 'Mateship' masked the real division of wealth between maori and pakeha

7. Now

   • small agricultural holdings cant survive due to loss of protection and state control from ruling class
     • Reduction in wages was the only way to find new profitability. Now wages and conditions are comparable with other backward capitalist societies
       • The lie of classlessness has been revealed due to widening class differences
   • Racism is now more visible mainly by Maori mass movement to regain sovereignty and land. Deception of the ToW in the past make Maori now strive for self-determination.
   • Men earned twice as much as women until the mid-1960s. Men's earnings were sufficient for men to insist on their wives to stay at home
   • The recession has slashed high wages which once characterised Pakeha males and has undermined the ideology of happy family living in NZ, and has the potential to provide a more common experience amongst females and males, Maori and Pakeha and hence a common identity.
   • There is no single NZ identity. What capitalism did with land has shaped peoples lives in different ways depending on gender and ethnicity