Dr. Vincent O'Malley Photo: Arthur Rasmussen
Historically, Māori did not have a sole leader over all the people, says historian Vincent O'Malley.
O'Malley, who has just released a new book The Invasion of Waikato, Te Riri ki Tainui, spoke to Saturday Morning about the history of the Kiingitanga after its seventh monarch, Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero, died early on Friday.
After a number of Māori went to England and met Queen Victoria, they advocated for a Māori monarch, he said.
"In Māori culture, there wasn't really this notion of a single leader. You saw that in some other Pacific cultures - you know, Tonga, Hawaii and so on - but it was something entirely new here."
The Māori monarch was not set up to take away power from Queen Victoria, but rather to complement her, said O'Malley.
But the wider context was that in the 1850s, settler numbers in Aotearoa were surging.
In 1854, the first Parliament convened in Auckland with no Māori members, and very few Māori men were eligible to vote at the time.
Members of Parliament had to own property from the Crown, and while Māori owned land, very few had a piece of paper from the Crown declaring they were the land owners, he explained.
"Tainui at this time [were] developing a very prosperous economy based on feeding the settlers in Auckland, even exporting wheat to Australia, California and elsewhere," said O'Malley.
But that way of life was under threat because of the exclusion of Māori from Parliament.
"So that's really the context in which the kiingitanga is established in 1858. Pootatau Te Wherowhero is raised up as the first Māori King and Tuheitia is, of course, a direct descendant and the seventh Māori monarch," he said.
In the beginning, the kiingitanga was seen as a "positive development" by some Pākehā.
In fact, Tainui were seen as the most loyal iwi in the country and it was "inconceivable" that Tainui would be seen as rebels.
"They were regarded as extremely loyal, in terms of their relationship with the Crown and with settlers," said O'Malley.
But by 1858, Māori were being outnumbered by the settlers for the first time, setting the scene for the invasion of Waikato in 1863.
"You had a huge number of British imperial troops arrive in the country and the context here is that in the 1860s, Britain is the world's sole superpower so Māori are fighting this great power that has the latest weapons and technology," he said.
"Māori have none of that ... the British have armoured-plated steamers and Māori have wooden canoes - and really, this should have been no contest.
"So this is what Māori [were] up against during the New Zealand Wars in the 1860s."
