ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contextualise the Treaty of Waitangi. It considers the long historical tradition of treaty-making between European and non-European polities to negotiate European expansion. The chapter examines the ways in which the Treaty of Waitangi was or was not coherent with conventional practices of expansion in the nineteenth-century British Empire. It also considers the possible impact of the Treaty, particularly in the neighbouring Australian colonies. Historians have generally given little attention to colonial treaties for the reason that many treaties were fraudulent or signed under coercion. Historians have pointed to the inequality of colonial treaties and suggested that European powers considered their non-European partners as inferior or minor sovereigns. The formal equality contained in the law of nations did not result in a de facto equality, and powerful sovereigns looked condescendingly at their European counterparts, some of whom could be their dependents.
