George Clarke and the Protectorate

Abstract

[…] The settlement of New Zealand and the struggle of the invading Europeans to attain self-government form the main interest in the historical development of this country over the past 120 years. Consequently, there is a strong temptation to make the ambitions and animosities of these colonials the touchstone of historical judgment, and to overlook other obvious considerations. The bitter feelings and cordial hatreds aroused by clashing interests in the years 1840-46 foster the tendency to absorb the language and outlook of the settlers or alternatively to view matters through the eyes of the Maoris and their champions. The material exists for a strong contrast. The colonists and the Company may be marshalled on one side and all the other groups – Maoris, missionaries and missionary-dominated government – lumped together as their opponents. But can all the facts be accommodated within such a limited framework? Is it legitimate to associate certain groups in a general way but it is as mistake to assume that they were identical in outlook or action. The ambitions of the Company did not coincide with the interests of the settlers, as the latter soon discovered. Nor is there any reason for supposing that the missions concurred in very act of retaliation or aggression to which the Maoris resorted. Again, mistakes arise when we accept at face value the views of the different factions about each other; the government, for instance, stood for different things to different people. The colonists complained that it was maintained to prevent the Maoris “from experiencing injustice at the hands of the emigrants”. The Maoris demonstrated at Kororareka that this was not their view. To obtain a balanced view of what the government was trying to do we must examine not merely the external criticisms of it, but also the internal evidence, the records and the letters of its officers. After FitzRoy, none has been more maligned than George Clarke, the Protector of Aborigines. The Protector’s department constantly ran foul of the desires of the settlers; naturally the colonists regarded the Protector with a baleful eye. His affiliations with the Church Missionary Society gave support to the notion that he was their agent and, as McLintock put it, “as hostile as ever to colonisation.” It is interesting to note that while McLintock writes, “Too often Clarke allowed his anti-Company and philo-Maori feelings to run away with his judgement”. Swainson considered that the Protectorate was of no distinct advantage to the Maori, and virtually the Protector of the colonists to themselves. Grey, for his own purposes, declared the Clarkes were unfitted “by either energy or character, or by their industry” to hold office, and stigmatized the Protectorate as utterly useless. It is apparent that the Protectorate has been the subject of controversy and confusion. Was Clarke trying to thwart the settlement of the country in order to preserve most of the island as more or less independent theocracy for his colleagues to work in or did he have some other end in view? What, in fact, was the Protector attempting to do and to what extent was he successful? [Extract from Introduction]