Barrie Davis: The Enlightenment of Colonization

There has been a concerted effort since at least the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 to convince us that ‘the Crown’ and by extension We the people have something to atone for regarding the colonization of New Zealand. That is not the case. Quite obviously, the Maori quality of life was vastly improved by the British.

Nevertheless, the Government – Parliament and the judiciary – have allowed themselves to be wrongfully persuaded by part-Maori elites to avoid democratic process and transfer public sovereignty, assets and funds to tribal corporations which lie outside of the democratic purview.

In his 2025 book, The Origins of an Experimental Society: New Zealand, 1769-1860, academic historian Erik Olssen details the influence of the Enlightenment on the discovery and colonization of New Zealand. Olssen’s book may be read as history, but it is made particularly interesting by providing the foundation for a reconsideration of the present prevailing beliefs regarding colonization.

Olssen frames his book as two Enlightenment inspired trial projects pursued within the context of Britain’s drive to achieve global dominance: The first was to ensure the indigenous people were not made extinct by exposure to civilization; and the second was to create a more fair and just society for the colonists which would also assist the Maoris to complete their journey to civilization.

I have previously posted on the role which Christian missionaries played in achieving the Enlightenment goals regarding indigenous Maoris which Olssen identifies in his book (here). In this post I will give a summary of the developments in the Home Country which provided for that initiative.

In the centuries prior to the Treaty of Waitangi, Britain and Europe generally had undergone three major developments. The Scientific Revolution of about the seventeenth century (here), the Enlightenment of approximately the eighteenth century (here) and the Industrial Revolution of roughly the nineteenth century (here), with each spreading into adjacent centuries so that they overlapped and with each being dependent on what came before.

These developments are of evolutionary significance and had a profound effect on the West, including the colonization of New Zealand. That which primarily concerns us is the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason (here).

Francis Bacon’s empirical reasoning and René Descartes’ rational deduction of the Scientific Revolution gave the foundation for Enlightenment thinking. The Enlightenment was the unified work of a small group of men with liberal, empirical attitudes. The group was dominated by French thinkers including Montesquieu, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, and the Marquis de Condorcet. They also included Britons John Locke and David Hume, the Genevan Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the German Immanuel Kant, and the American Benjamin Franklin. Enlightenment science used empiricism and rational thought within the context of the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress.

The Enlightenment founded modern Western political and intellectual culture by introducing democratic values and liberal democracies. A variety of nineteenth century movements, including liberalism, socialism and neoclassicism were based on developments from the Enlightenment.

The central doctrines of the Enlightenment were individual liberty, representative government, the rule of law, and religious freedom, in contrast to a monarchy and the Church. The Enlightenment emphasis on reason, individual dignity, and moral progress was incorporated into humanitarian concerns for indigenous people and the poor. Humanitarianism is an ideology centered on the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons.

The Church of England included a faction of evangelical reformers and abolitionists from the 1780s to the 1840s called the Clapham Sect, who advocated for humanitarianism in Britain. They included William Wilberforce MP, Henry Thornton MP, Reverend John Venn, and Lord Teignmouth, Governor-general of India. Through their writings, societies and their influence in Parliament, they played a significant part in the development of Victorian morality: “The ethos of Clapham became the spirit of the age” (Stephen Tomkins).

Many of their initiatives were in accord with treatises of the Age of Enlightenment and the shift to representative government in Europe and America. They advocated social and moral reform through political action to abolish slavery, reform the penal system and provide education for the poor, and they founded the Church Missionary Society. The Clapham Sect, particularly William Wilberforce and Hannah More, saw humanitarian work as a spiritual duty. (here)

Due to a twenty-year parliamentary campaign by William Wilberforce (1759–1833) and the Clapham Sect, the British passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, making it illegal to engage in the slave trade throughout the British Empire, and the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, making it illegal to own slaves throughout the Empire.

Nevertheless, in New Zealand in 1835, two Maori tribes – Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama – travelled to the Chatham Islands to commence the genocide of the Morioris by slavery and cannibalism, continuation of which became illegal in 1840 with the Treaty of Waitangi. By that time most of the damage had been done, but it nevertheless continued until 1860.

Humanitarianism prevailed in England leading up to the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Senior people at the British Colonial Office were influenced by humanitarianism and believed colonization should be guided by moral principles. They included lawyer James Stephen (1789–1859), and Lord Normanby (Constantine Phipps, 1797–1863). They shaped a policy for colonization that aimed to protect indigenous people from exploitation and violence while expanding British influence.

Sir James Stephen was Permanent Undersecretary of State for the Colonies from 1836 to 1847 and, according to his colleague Sir Henry Taylor, he “literally ruled the colonial empire.” He married Jane Catherine Venn, the daughter of Reverend John Venn, a member of the Clapham Sect and one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society. Following his father, also a member of the Clapham Sect, Stephen was an abolitionist who participated in drafting the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and contributed to ensuring that freed slaves in the colonies received civil rights and protections.

Stephen also opposed Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s colonization schemes, particularly the theory of ‘systematic colonization’, and advocated for fair treatment of Maori. Olssen writes (p. 188), “Stephen passionately believed that this Second British empire – the success of the American Revolution having ended the first – had a duty to protect the weak and promote the welfare of the many. As the eminent American historian David Hackett Fisher pointed out, ‘Here was a Christian idea of fairness and justice, drawn directly from the Gospels’.”

The government’s policy for the sovereignty of New Zealand was given to Captain William Hobson in Royal Instructions dated 14 August 1839 which had been drafted largely by Stephen and signed out by Lord Normanby, as Secretary of State for the Colonies. (Buick, pp. 70-79)

Those instructions confirmed that the British Government had already recognized New Zealand as “a sovereign and independent state” to the extent that was possible with a non-centralized group such as Maori who were “incompetent to act or even deliberate in concert.” Furthermore, there was no intention to seize the country unless Hobson gained “the free and intelligent consent of the Natives according to their customary usages” for “the recognition of Her Majesty's sovereign authority over the whole or any part of those islands which they may be willing to place under Her Majesty's dominion”.

The Treaty was seen by these humanitarians as a way to legitimize British sovereignty while retaining Maori property interests. The Treaty’s provision for equal rights for Maoris is based on humanitarian principles. The concept of ‘humane colonization’ was central: it aimed to assimilate Maori into British society through education and legal equality, while preserving their cultural identity and language.

Olssen writes (p. 89), “The possibility of mankind’s moral and mental improvement, the major conclusion of both the English and Scottish Enlightenments, provided the foundation for evangelical humanitarianism and its first major campaigns – the missionary movement and the anti-slavery movement. Thanks to these two organisations, British evangelicals came to New Zealand as a place chosen for God’s work.”

We have seen how Christian missionaries – particularly the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) mentioned above, and also the Wesleyans and the Catholic Marists – participated in New Zealand to implement the Enlightenment goals of the Clapham Sect (here).

According to Dr Philippa Wyatt (here),

“What they sought was to empower the poor and marginalized to better help themselves by assisting with their development to a position of ‘social equality’ and independence through educational and social reforms. With regard to Māori, what that meant was implementing a programme of targeted assimilation that could equip them with the education and skills they needed to compete more equally with Pākehā, while maintaining that which was important to their culture and identity, particularly their language.”

Not only did the British colonists create New Zealand according to their Christian culture, they also taught the Maoris how to participate its benefits to effect “the deliberate lifting of a people of lower culture to full equality in political, social, and moral communion with one of the most advanced races in the world.” (Sir Apirana Ngata, 1928)

That scenario is contrary to the present grievances by part-Maoris and their patronizing European supporters; see here for an illustrative summary. The present situation cannot stand. These conflicting scenarios must be corrected as necessary and reconciled – a Hegelian synthesis perhaps (here) – if New Zealand is to have meaningful policies regarding those New Zealanders who qualify as Maori.

Barrie Davis is a retired telecommunications engineer, holds a PhD in the psychology of Christian beliefs, and can often be found gnashing his teeth reading The Post outside Floyd’s cafe at Island Bay.

References

Erik Olssen, The Origins of an Experimental Society: New Zealand, 1769-1860, Auckland University Press, 2025

The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, Edited by Adrian Hastings, 2000, s.v., ‘Seventeenth Century’, ‘Eighteenth Century’ and ‘Nineteenth Century’.

T. Lindsay Buick, The Treaty of Waitangi, Third edition, 1936.

Sir Apirana Ngata (1928) quoted in Ian Wards, Thirteen Facets, 1978, p. 196:

Philippa Wyatt, “British humanitarians and the founding of New Zealand: a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand.” Embargoed to 14 November 2026. Abstract retrieved 16 July 2025

https://mro.massey.ac.nz/items/3d5b9814-71ba-45e7-aa33-68d2e2b0f292