Impact of European Settlement in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific
Overview
Impact of European Settlement in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific
James Cook’s expeditions to Oceania brought Europeans into contact with the Māori and Aborigine peoples of New Zealand and Australia. His voyages also brought knowledge of the far side of the world back to England and Western Europe. From the late eighteenth century forward, Western Europeans sought ways to settle, develop, and exploit the resources, countries, and islands in Oceania.
Learning Objectives
- Investigate the legacies of James Cook’s voyages into the South Pacific/Australia/New Zealand.
- Evaluate European interactions with Māori and Aborigine groups.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Pacific-Exchange: exchange of goods, resources, and disease between Europe and the South Pacific
Treaty of Waitangi: 1840 treaty that signed much of Māori lands in New Zealand over to the English
New Zealand Wars: series of conflicts between English soldiers and the Māori peoples over land ownership in the nineteenth century
Penal colony: a colony established by a parent country for the purpose of exiling prisoners
Australian Gold Rush: a series of gold rushes in Australia in the 1850s
James Cook’s Early Expeditions in Oceania
James Cook’s explorations brought together European and Oceanic worlds. While British citizens remained fascinated by Cook’s Polynesian navigator, Omai, and Cook himself was regarded as having unusual respect for indigenous peoples he encountered, European attitudes quickly turned critical of Oceanic peoples and cultures. During the nineteenth century, a peculiar exchange system arose between the South Pacific territories and western Europe. Although less well-defined than its Atlantic counterpart, this exchange system can loosely be called the Pacific Exchange because food, technology, cultural features, and diseases were transported between Europeans and the Māori and Aborigine peoples of Australia and New Zealand.
The British Presence in New Zealand
Of the groups encountered by Cook, it is the Māori of New Zealand whose relationship with the growing British presence was the most mixed. For unlike Australia, and other less remote regions of the British Empire, New Zealand was largely left alone until the mid-1800s. The British came and went sporadically, not officially colonizing New Zealand until 1840. Until the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s, Britain largely ignored the New Zealand islands, which they had loosely claimed as an extension of “British Australia.” Only when the need for oil rose sharply did the British remember the islands far south in the Pacific. British sailors and whalers arrived in scores on New Zealand’s shores. Initially, some of the Māori worked with the British. Not only joining their whaling crews but also serving as seal-hunters. And oil was sent in vast quantities back to Britain.
As the British connection to New Zealand grew, so too did the British need to civilize the Māori according to western traditions. Unsurprisingly, missionaries arrived to preach the Gospel and convert the Māori. Under British minister Samuel Marsden, missionaries in New Zealand also taught Māori their skills in carpentry, farming, and European technology. The Māori later used these skills, and their knowledge of the oceanic weather and current patterns, to develop a commercial exporting business.
Meeting of white settlers and Māori peoples in 1863.
Trouble between the British and the Māori
Initial troubles between Māori and Europeans arose over land claims. Anxious to formally establish themselves as the colonizers of New Zealand, the British created the Treaty of Waitangi. Although never formally ratified, it was signed by Captain William Hobson and, reportedly, dozens of Māori clan leaders. Chiefly, the treaty signed over much of New Zealand’s land to the British, recognizing them as colonizers. For a culture that was communal and possessed no concept of private property, the Treaty of Waitangi confused Māori people, who in turn, hoped the British would respect their rights.
Within five years, the first skirmishes between Māori and British immigrants erupted as the British failed to respect Māori customs and land. In 1865, just as the American Civil War ended, a series of prolonged, often stalemated wars erupted between Māori and British New Zealanders. Collectively called the New Zealand Wars, these conflicts were fought over land ownership. Exhausted by lack of food and resources, the Māori capitulated in 1872.
A few years after the conclusion of the New Zealand Wars, the country emerged as one of the most progressive in the world. Public education was required for Māori and British children. Two years later, white and Māori men were given the right to vote. The rising sheep industry also saw Māori working with their British counterparts. And in 1907, the country’s British population grew so large that they were given the title “Dominion of New Zealand” and considered a part of Britain’s ever-important, ever-growing empire. Unfortunately, New Zealand’s glorious rise was threatened as war clouds threatened, and the country approached the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
The British in Australia
Australia’s journey from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries stands in stark contrast to New Zealand’s relatively progressive rise. Several reasons exist for the difference. Climatologically, New Zealand offered British immigrants a much pleasanter environment than Australia. With green rolling hills, sharp mountain ranges, and cold sparkling ports, New Zealand was reminiscent of northern England and Scotland. Contrastingly, Australia was a massive continent riddled with highly venomous snakes, massive crocodiles, spiders, savage coastlines, and the unrelenting heat of the sunburned “outback.” Nothing about this baked continent felt familiar to British immigrants. Moreover, Australia was home to hundreds of thousands of Aborigines. These nomadic people initially intrigued, and later repulsed, white Australians. Unlike New Zealand’s Māori people, the Aborigines were not fierce warriors and were not interested in the white Europeans. They were, however, very territorial and not prone to sharing land with the newcomers.
Australia as a Penal Colony
The most significant difference stems, however, in Australia’s history as a British colony from its original purpose. After losing their North American colonies during the American Revolutionary War, Britain sought new colonies for their non-violent criminals, many of whom were in debtor’s prisons. Australia became the ideal location. Halfway around the world from Britain, Australia had a hostile environment. And in British eyes, no one else had claimed the country. It provided them with the perfect, new penal colony to send criminals and debtors during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The British answer to their criminal and debtor population proved disastrous from its onset. Many of the immigrants suffered from diseases obtained by living in tight, dirty quarters in the ships for months on end. Not infrequently, women arrived malnourished and pregnant for they shared quarters with men aboard ships, and frequently once they landed. Criminals who arrived often were city-folk with no understanding of farming in a temperate climate, much less one so foreign. Malnourishment and starvation prevailed. Those who survived bore witness to violence, theft, and general chaos. Conditions improved, especially for women, only after twenty-five years of struggle. In the early 1800s, special facilities were built for women who worked as indentured servants, carrying out the duties of sewing, caregiving, spinning, and small-agricultural work.
Strife between white Australians and Aborigines
As the sheep industry started to gain hold in Australia, conditions improved in many ways for white Australians. Ranchers learned to manage their flocks for the most part. What they did not learn to manage were their Aboriginal neighbors. Initial curiosity soon gave way to hostility as sheep left the enclosures and ranges of white Australians and migrated onto Aboriginal lands. Frustrated by the encroachment, Aborigines frequently caught (and ate) the sheep, or stole them. Anger arose and the general attitude between cultures remained frustrated and hostile. Often, the white Australians retaliated ten-fold when an Aborigine committed a crime against them. Benefitting from European muskets and later, rifles, they frequently murdered an entire Aborigine family for the crime of an individual.
A much more sinister foe than military technology arrived with the white Australians. Like the diseases which had accompanied Cortez and Pizarro in their conquests of the Americas, white Australians brought new diseases to Australia. Smallpox, venereal diseases, tuberculosis, cholera, and flu decimated the Aborigine populations. Tension between Aborigine and white Australian populations remains even in the twenty-first century.
Prosperity comes to Australia
Prosperity did come to some fortunate white Australians during the 1850s during the Australian Gold Rush. For most Australians though, life was a cycle of isolation, small-time sheep farming, and severe weather. Then in 1901, the Australian Commonwealth was formed as part of the British Empire. It seemed that Australia had arrived, even if they continued to resent and persecute their Aboriginal neighbors. Their export industry thrived even as their cities grew in splendor and sophistication, especially Melbourne. White Australians had arrived on the continent under arduous situations, many as convicts. By the turn of the twentieth century though, their tenacity had transformed Australia’s coastal regions. For the most part, they enjoyed their isolation and Britain largely ignored its former penal colony. Until the stirrings of the First World War arose. In that moment, Australia was not only remembered, but earned their mettle as an important player in world affairs.
Sydney, nineteenth century.
Attributions
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Matsuda, Matt K. Pacific Worlds. Cambridge University Press, 2012. 165-66.
Welsh, Frank. Australia: a New History of the Great Southern Land. Overlook Press, 2006. 44.
Insight Guides: New Zealand. Langenscheidt Publishers, Inc. Long Island City, NY. 2009. 34-42.