Treaties in British Colonial Policy: Precedents for Waitangi

Sorrenson, M.P.K. “Treaties in British Colonial Policy: Precedents for Waitangi.” Ko Te Whenua Te Utu/Land is the Price, edited by M.P.K Sorrenson, Auckland University Press, 2014, pp. 40 -54

• “In his 1990 essay for the New Zealand Herald Professor Sir Keith Sinclair took the Chief Judge of the Maori Land Court, Eddie Durie, to task for saying that, without the Treaty of Waitangi, there would be no lawful authority for the Pakeha presence in New Zealand. ‘Pakehas,’ Sinclair continued, ‘did not need any “lawful authority” to be here; they just needed a chief or tribe willing to accept them.” 40

• Chapter argues that the same language (style and words) have been used throughout the world in different treaties.

• “We have here, I think, what one might call a treaty language that was in fairly widespread use, ready to be applied wherever a crisis on one of the frontiers of empire needed to be resolved by the last resort of a treaty of cession.” 42

• “The most likely parallel with New Zealand, since it was a settlement colony, is South Africa, but there appears to be no precedent for Waitangi there. Perhaps that is not surprising since the original Dutch East India Company and the Trekboers of the frontier were not in the habit of signing treaties of cession with the Khoi, the San or the Bantu-speaking tribes of the eastern Cape. Nor was there any substantial change when the British took over the Cape from the Dutch, and additional territory on the frontier was added to the colony.” 42-43