ABSTRACT
By the end of the 19th century, cannonading had been abandoned, but the machine-gun, then aerial bombing, replaced the practice as powerful disincentives to mutiny. Similar attitudes were evident among the British dealing with the Aborigines and the Maoris. ‘How would I civilise the Maoris?’ asked Captain John Guard, a former convict whose ship was wrecked off the North Island in 1834. ‘Shoot them to be sure! A musket ball for every New Zealander is the only way of civilising their country.’ However, no one would learn from the Oxford History that the slaughter of the aborigines was often intentional. The coercion and movement of labour is also underplayed. When indigenous peoples refused to be enslaved, or had been exterminated, alternative sources of labour had to be found. Traditional Imperial history prefers to dwell on Britain’s admirable role in abolition of its slave trade in 1807, but disavows the role played by slavery itself in establishing seed-corn of Imperial fortunes.
