Colonisation and the Involution of the Maori Economy Hazel Petrie University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand
[email protected] A paper for Session 24 XIII World Congress of Economic History Buenos Aires July 2002 In 2001, international research by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, found Maori to be the most entrepreneurial people in the world, noting also that Maori ‘played an important role in the history and evolution of New Zealand entrepreneurship’.1 These findings beg a consideration of why the Maori economy, which was expanding vigorously in terms of value and in terms of international markets immediately prior to New Zealand’s annexation by Britain in 1840, involuted soon after colonisation. Before offering examples of Maori commercial practice in the period between initial European contact and colonisation, this paper will summarise some essential features of Maori society that underlay those practices. It will then consider how three broad aspects of the subsequent colonising process impacted on these practices during its first twenty five years. These aspects are: Christian beliefs and values, the ideologies of the newly emerging ‘science’ of Political Economy; and the racial attitudes and political demands of an increasingly powerful settler government. It is acknowledged that the nature of Maori commerce varied according to regional resources, the timing and degree of exposure to foreigners, local politics, individual personalities, and many other factors. There was no one Maori practice or experience, but the examples offered, which arose in a study of Maori flourmill and trading ship ownership, are intended to show how these facets of colonisation interwove to encourage a narrowing and contraction of Maori commercial endeavours.