ABSTRACT

Britain's ‘civilising mission’ in nineteenth-century New Zealand reflected not only the values and interests of the British at that time but also an assessment of the Maori and their capacity for improvement. Missionaries, traders and colonists in their differing ways shared the official view that with the proper guidance the Maori could graduate to civilisation. 1 The principal agents of this process changed over time – by the 1870s the Native Land Court Judge had taken the place of the missionary – but the belief in racial amalgamation persisted and was to do so well into the twentieth century. Equally tenacious was the view that schooling could play a significant part in achieving this ideal. These were of course Pakeha (European) beliefs, policies of colonial reformers or settlers’ governments. It was simply assumed that the Maoris would welcome the opportunities offered. To say this, however, should not obscure the fact that the belief in the possibility of racial amalgamation was, for its time, a profoundly liberal view, and that the strength of this belief was to contribute to the emergence by the late nineteenth century of a pattern of race relations in New Zealand which differed markedly from that in other areas of British settlement such as Southern Africa.