In addition to using the methodologies mentioned above, this research seeks to use the framework of Richard White’s Middle Ground. By proposing that, in the early settlement period of 1840-1860, New Zealand shows a development similar to that of the Great Lakes Regions 1650-1815 of North America, this project will be placed in an international, multicultural context.
Richard White describes, in his book The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the
Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, an example of the patterns of ‘new encounter’ for the
American Indians and the French.243 White shows that the two different peoples created an arrangement of coexistence, a new ‘living together’. Out of this new contact situation, a new cultural process took place which White describes as a demonstrating accommodation of common interest and mutual needs. This newly established cultural space was defined within a specific geographical space, and embraced curiosity, trust, trade, cultural understanding and acceptance. As a result, these two different peoples with common interests and mutual needs, created a new cultural common space which offered safety, help and protection in several ways, and emphasised trust rather than suspicion. White calls this state the Middle
Ground. White argues that this newly created space is “the place in between: in between
cultures, peoples, and in between empires and the no state world of villages”244 Daniel J. Herman agrees and emphasises that this space at the frontier “became a place of mutual concession, adaptation and cultural borrowing.”245
White argues further that in the moment of a shift of power to one side, the Middle Ground will be conclusively destroyed. This destruction should also be seen as part of the Middle
Ground framework. An unequal situation destroys trust and cultural acceptance and leads to a
243
White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815.
244
Ibid. p.X
245
65 major imbalance and tensions. Interestingly White concludes that the stronger group [mostly the white settlers] suppresses the weaker group [the Indigenous People] and denies that the
Middle Ground ever existed. These changes in the relationship are characterised by feelings of
superiority, suppression, tension and distrust. As already indicated by O’Malley, who also uses the Middle Ground for New Zealand in pre-Treaty times, this research will also suggest the Taranaki Wars could have been the act that finally destroyed the Middle Ground in New Zealand.246
The Middle Ground as such, in particular for North America, has also been explored by other scholars including Calloway, Elliott West, John Mack Faragher and Stephen Aron.247 However, White, as Daniel J. Herman points out, “was the first to articulate clearly the middle ground as an analytical paradigm.”248 White’s Middle Ground had a long-lasting effect on scholarship, especially in America. He raised questions of identity, colonisation, and proposed new concepts outside of race, gender, class stereotypes. The main point of critique is that the
Middle Ground suddenly worked as an all-purpose tool to describe all white-Indian
interactions. Philip J. Deloria even admitted that he at first followed this ‘unconscious simplification’ and that it was disappointing to see that every social or political interaction turned into a Middle Ground. 249
Historians like Catherine Desbarats critique White on a more contextual level but still admire his work.250 On the one hand, White himself argues that the Middle Ground has been misused and too many scholars have labelled things as a Middle Ground. On the other hand, he agrees with Darcee McLaren’s observation and reflects on his own theory that, although the concept has been used too generally, there are maybe other places and times that could show
246
O'Malley, The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters, 1642–1840. p.230
247
Colin Gordon Calloway, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York: Holt, 1992).
John Mack Faragher ed., The Encyclopaedia of Colonial and Revolutionary America (New York: Facts on File, 1990). John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their
American Homeland (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005).
Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay, Johns Hopkins paperbacks ed., 1996 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 Rev. ed.).
Elisabeth Perkins, "Distinctions and Partitions Amongst Us: Identity and Interaction in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley," in
Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830, ed. Andrew R. L. Cayton and
Fredrika J. Teute (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
248
Herman, "Romance on the Middle Ground." p.280
249
Philip J. Deloria, "What Is the Middle Ground Anyway?," The William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 1 (2006). p.15
250
66 circumstances best described by the concept of the Middle Ground.251 Darcee McLaren states that:
Although White’s analysis is restricted to seventeenth-century native-white contact in the Great Lakes region, it seems likely that the process of the Middle Ground could operate anywhere and anytime where the members of one culture are motivated to communicate with members of another culture.252
Most of the critiques argue that White misinterprets sources and they give a different picture of the history of the Great Lake region; nevertheless the Middle Ground concept in itself seems plausible.253
White’s theoretical framework for the interaction of American Indians and French is intriguing because interactions between Māori and settlers in some parts of New Zealand show situations analogous to White’s Middle Ground. Recently Vincent O’Malley has used the concept of a Middle Ground, for situations in the Northland region of New Zealand during the pre-Treaty-times (i.e. pre-1840).254 Brad Patterson, in his paper about Scots and Māori in Turakina, alludes to the existence of the Middle Ground. Although not using the specific concepts, his descriptions, suggestions and findings propose that his case study settlement, Turakina, extends the evidence of the space of positive interaction in regards to time and geography proposed by O’Malley and in this thesis.255
In examining more closely the specifics of the concept, it becomes apparent how it might fit into a New Zealand context. White proposed specific parameters that must be present for the definition of a Middle Ground to apply: “a rough balance of power, mutual need or a desire for what the other possesses, and an inability by either side to commandeer enough force to compel the other to change”.256 These parameters appear to be met at different times and spaces in New Zealand history. A new ‘living space’ and an ‘integration’ of indigenous population with Western adventurers and European settlers was the challenge at the time of colonisation in New Zealand, North America, Canada, India, Africa and other colonised countries. As White states: “whites could neither dictate to Indians nor ignore them”,257 a
251
Richard White, "Creative Misunderstandings and New Understandings," The William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 1 (2006). p.10
252
Darcee McLaren, "Living the Middle Ground: Two Dakota Missionaries, 1887-1912," Ethnohistory 43, no. 2 (1996). p.279
253
Susan Sleeper-Smith, "Introduction," The William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 1 (2006).
254
O'Malley, The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters, 1642–1840.
O'Malley and Hutton, "The Nature and Extent of Contact and Adaptation in Northland, C.1769-1840."
255
Patterson, "'It Is Curious How Keenly Allied in Character Are the Scotch Highlander and the Maori': Encounters in a New Zealand Colonial Settlement."
256
White, "Creative Misunderstandings and New Understandings." p.10
257
67 statement which could easily be transferred to the contact zone of the British with Māori and which finds already reflection of Vincent O’Malley, Salmond and Judith Binney’s research.258 Early settlers could not dictate to Māori, especially at the beginning of the settlement process. Initially Māori had the power over land, resources, and knowledge while settlers only had a vague idea of what their new home would be like and, as this research will show, even months after landing, help from Māori sustained the settlement significantly. As time moved on this relationship changed and was constantly transforming. As I will suggest for Wellington, Nelson and New Plymouth, there was a short moment of the Middle Ground where positive interaction was possible – where mutual interest defined the contact zone before the delicate balance of power became unstable and shifted to the colonial entity.
This project will show that the circumstances of Wellington, Nelson and New Plymouth from 1840-1860 were an instance of the Middle Ground in regard to Māori-Settler interaction; evidence will be sought from private settler records in the times before the Taranaki Wars, in order to establish the very personal field of interaction between the two peoples by following the guiding principles of Microhistory, History from Below and acknowledging the memories contained in the personal sources as partially evident of the ideas of Oral History.
258
O'Malley, The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters, 1642–1840.
Vincent O'Malley, Bruce Stirling, and Wally Penetito eds., The Treaty of Waitangi Companion: Māori and Pākehā from
Tasman to Today (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2010).
Salmond, Between Worlds: Early Exchange between Maori and Europeans 1773-1815. ———, Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans, 1642-1772. Binney, Te Kerikeri 1770-1850: The Meeting Pool.
———, "'In-between' Lives: Studies from within Colonial Society," in Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Past, ed. Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006).
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