Week 5

Belich, James. "Chapter 8: Making empire?" Making Peoples: A history of the New Zealanders, from Polynesian settlement to the end of the nineteenth century.

This chapter is describing the conflict between taking the land from the Maori. As the Europeans had devised a plan to do so "The plan envisaged a 'wonderful, peaceful conquest' of the Maori." (Belich 179) Of course there were others that had a conscience in this 'conquering' and instead of going through with it they threw themselves into the ocean "One emigrant changed her mind and drowned herself rather than proceed to New Zealand." (Belich, 179)

The question arises in the text with the conscientiousness that there were bold attempts to write a slightly deceitful script, "What was the 'spirit' or 'intent' of the treaty?" (Belich, 195) However this was answered in the text too, "The British wished to convert Maori into brown Britishness and subordinary, whereas the one thing we can be sure of about Maori motives for signing is that they did not want this." (Belich, 195)