KEY POINTS:
The best man who ever served the crown? A life of Donald McLean
by Ray Fargher (VUP)
Published by Victoria University Press
Immigrants poured into the North Island during the 1850s and 1860s, all looking for land to settle on. Demand was there, but what about supply?
The Treaty of Waitangi, at first unstintingly supported by the British Government, demanded that only the colonial government could buy land from Maori, and only if Maori agreed to sell. Supply was further complicated by tenure. Maori ownership of any area depended on historical occupation, and it was never owned individually but jointly by hapu, even though rangatira may have had the last word. Further compounding the issue was the need to buy at a sufficiently low price to sell on at a profit in order to buy more land and to contribute towards Colonial administration.
Within such a scenario, the likelihood of any transactions may have seemed impossible without serious strife, but one man - a dour, devoutly Christian, autocratic Scot, Donald McLean - learned to separate Maori from their land at the right price (for Pakeha) with such finesse that he postponed the day when they would realise their land, and with it their mana, was being stripped away. It was not until Governor Gore Browne took direct control over the purchase of the Waitara block, near New Plymouth, that war broke out between the sellers and buyers.
McLean influenced the course of New Zealand history in the second half of the 19th century as much as any man, except Governor George Grey, and yet only now has a detailed biography explained who he really was, how, among other things, he managed to buy hundreds of thousands of hectares from Maori, and what motivated him to do it.
He was born on the Isle of Tiree in 1820 and arrived in the Bay of Islands a few days before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, penniless and unsure where his future lay. He was tall and powerfully built. He quickly and thoroughly learned Maori language and customs. They trusted him - a lot more than they should have. After a stint as a Sub-Protector of Aborigines, he was appointed Inspector of Police, both posts based in Taranaki, and then Grey came to rely on him to purchase land for the rush of settlers.
McLean's pre-eminent virtues as land-buyer were patience and meticulousness. He would approach rangatira with a persuasive request to buy a certain area, and then wait until the Maori concerned had sorted out their own tenure problems. Only when he was convinced those concerned were all prepared to sell would he clinch the deal.
The tension became extreme between settlers as they increased in numbers and gained a measure of self-government on the one hand, and missionaries and the Governor on the other. Parliament was impatient to relieve Maori of what settlers scornfully considered "wasteland", while McLean accepted the need but urged restraint, determined not to ignite Maori fears of dispossession.
Fargher is also patient and meticulous. He is keenly aware of McLean's shortcomings: his early, profound dislike of politicians, mostly reciprocated; his stubbornness and vanity; and a paternalism, then so widespread, that Maori were ultimately savages to be civilised.
He sincerely believed assimilation presented the best chance for the Maori future, and thus it was good to buy their land, leaving reserves on which they could live side by side with their cultural superiors and learn from them.
Although mostly cautious in his assessments, Fargher is occasionally unequivocal: "If he had been left to negotiate [the Waitara sale] there would not have been a war ... McLean, having established the rightful claimants, would have paid the first instalment to Te Teira, representing the sellers, and then waited for years if necessary to negotiate his way around the opposition.
"Gore Browne [by then the Governor] acted from principle. McLean, always pragmatic, would not have allowed the principle to impede a compromise."
But when they realised they would soon be outnumbered, the King Movement and other groups began to baulk at the loss of land; so even if McLean did stall conflict over Waitara, war would eventually have exploded in the Waikato, where Maori were exploiting their fertile flats and thus inciting the envy of immigrants.
This is the life story of an extraordinarily tough, shrewd man, admirable, perhaps, but hardly likeable. He later became a runholder, Superintendent of Hawkes Bay Province, then the MP for Napier (hence McLean Park) and Minister of the Crown.
This excellent book provides a detailed exposition of the issues, almost all around land, that rent New Zealand's 19th-century pioneer society.
