K.O. Arvidson ed: John Eldon Gorst: The Maori King

By MICHAEL KING*

John Eldon Gorst, a graduate of Cambridge University, arrived in New Zealand in 1860. His considerable ability and his friendship with Bishop George Augustus Selwyn led to his being appointed to a series of official posts in the Waikato, where he came into intimate contact with Tainui Maori and was eventually responsible for administering government policy among them, as a resident magistrate and then as civil commissioner.

He failed in his task and was expelled from the district by Rewi Maniapoto. But far from feeling antagonistic towards Maori about this outcome, Gorst, on his way back to England in 1863, began to write a book backgrounding and explaining the Tainui position. It was published in London in 1864 as The Maori King and it made clear the fact that Maori had set up their own kingship because of their exclusion from any role in the government of New Zealand in the country's Constitution Act of 1856.

Let one random quotation serve to convey the flavour of this book which, in its confident sweep and style, owes something to Edward Gibbon: "[The] ignorant mass of townspeople judge of the natives from their not very prepossessing exteriors, and never having had the experience of the good qualities which, as all who have lived amongst them acknowledge, lie concealed beneath, give free vent to their arrogance and contempt ... [The] petty rudeness of Europeans is so disagreeable to many chiefs in Waikato, that they dislike going to Auckland ... Their own behaviour to strangers affords a striking contrast, not very creditable to ourselves."

The Maori King, now published in a third edition with an excellent introduction and helpful, scholarly footnotes, achieves two things with great authority and unmistakeable clarity. It reveals on the one hand how racist were the great majority of Pakeha colonists in New Zealand in their attitudes towards and relations with Maori in the mid-19th century; but it also shows that individual Europeans - Bishop Selwyn, the Chief Justice Sir William Martin and Gorst himself - recognised that fact, regretted it, and did all in their power to make the intelligence, integrity and human dignity of Maori apparent to their fellow colonists.

The tragedy for New Zealand is that it was the base attitudes that conditioned Pakeha treatment of Maori, particularly through the actions of successive governments, in the second half of the 19th century.

Had the humanity and liberalism of men such as Gorst prevailed, New Zealand could have set an example to the world of bicultural equity and harmony. And there would have been no need for a Waitangi Tribunal to untie the knots of injustice 150 years later.

Reed Publishers and editor Ken Arvidson have performed a signal service by making this fine book available to a new generation of New Zealand readers.

Reed

$39.95

* Michael King is the author of many books on New Zealand history.