ABSTRACT
National identity is both creative and dangerous, coming into existence in and through race and gender, producing social differences, and constitutive of individual identity. The settler colonisation based on private initiative and the 'settlement' of 'new' British territory was an integral aspect of free trade imperialism, at its height in New Zealand in the late nineteenth century. The commodification of land, to make it available for purchase, was integral to free trade imperialism. New Zealand's 'systematic colonisation' required purchasing land cheap from Maori and selling at an increased price to settler colonists, using the profit to fund the infrastructure for the new colony. The case legitimated the Crown and the New Zealand government in ignoring the Treaty and the common law of native title and in confiscating Maori land. The Court of Appeal's attempt at repair work for the injustices of colonisation was quickly displaced.
