Thread by @popcornhistory, tbh i don't think a lot of pakeha understand what is meant [...]

tbh i don't think a lot of pakeha understand what is meant by 'stolen land', and it's not surprising given it's not really taught in school

i had to make dinner, but this needs a thread. idk how long.

i think when most pakeha think about stolen land, they think about it as an abstract concept where land wasn't technically stolen, but bartered for in some way, or sold. this happened some times.

that didn't happen during the waikato war. what happened during the waikato war was very clearly a conspiracy to confiscate land for the express purpose of profit.

in 1858, the kīngitanga was formed to prevent land being sold to pākehā. māori worried that land sales were eroding their sovereignty, so a few iwi got together and formed this land league that protected māori land.

this was a problem for pākehā bc they wanted land to farm. it was especially a problem for thomas russell and a bunch of his mates because they were rich and liked to buy land cheap to sell off to other people. they'd already done it in auckland.

russell was a banker. he started the bnz, supposedly because an australian bank wouldn't give him a loan. so he mustered up some mates, started the bnz, and loans were available.

russell's mates: frederick whitaker, john logan campbell, josiah firth, w. c. wilson.

- russell was a cabinet minister
- whitaker was russell's law firm partner, and became premier of nz in 1863.
- campbell was a big rich guy.
- firth owned half of matamata and founded a company that became firth concrete
- wilson founded, owned, and edited the nzherald (nzh)

the waikato war was stoked by fears of māori rebelling. they weren't credible fears, but the papers pushed the view anyway. this led to the start of war, the famous proclamation to māori that they had to leave or join the crown, and the initial push south.

so far it's just occupying land, and taking control. but this is when shit gets really crazy.

alfred domett, our premier at the time, wasn't doing enough for russell and his mates. so russell and whitaker (attorney general i believe) resign from the govt in november 1863

this destabilises everything, domett's government falls and a new one comes in led by... whitaker and russell as premier and minister of defence respectively. two of the top three roles in govt in a time of war.

at the same time as this is going on, w. c. wilson withdraws from his ownership of the new zealander, a major newspaper in auckland, and starts the herald. he resigns because the nzer isn't anti-māori enough for him. the herald is pro-war.

remember when i said russell mustered up his mates to start a bank? wilson's tied up in that quite heavily. and russell is suspected by contemporaries of bankrolling the herald.

so while russell is min of defence, mate 1 is premier, mate 2 is the herald editor

next, whitaker and russell pass the war acts (my name for them, but make it a thing please):

1. suppression of rebellion act
2. nz settlements act
3. nz loan act

these all legalised the waikato war, and dictated how land theft would work.

1. suppression of rebellion act.

this effectively made the military immune to prosecution for their actions during martial law. it also gave the military the right to decide who was a rebel, and prosecute them in military courts.

2. nz settlements act

this one authorised the confiscation of all land belonging to rebels. it also gave the govt power to dispose of land as it saw fit and to sell any land acquired. the proceeds were to pay off the govt's war expenditure

3. the nz loan act

this is the humdinger. it authorised the nz govt to take out a massive loan to finance the war against māori. but who would give a govt a loan that big i hear you say??

well remember when i said the minister of defence owned a bank...

the bnz (owned by russell, whitaker, wilson) loaned the govt (run by russell, whitaker) lots of money, to start a war endorsed by a key player in the auckland press (wilson, russell's funding), in order to confiscate land to pay off the loan and its interest

i assume you see where this is going now. russell who was considered one of the cleverest cookies in the auckland cookie jar at the time, orchestrated a leadership spill, took control and started a war of confiscation with his bank's $$, which then generated interest for the bank

then he, whitaker, wilson, and a bunch of their mates who were the only ones allowed to own shares in the bank profited off the dividends.

the settlements act stipulated that the land could be used for whatever purpose the govt wanted. well the govt told men in the victoria goldfields and around nz that if they fought against the king movement, they'd get a plot of land.

soldiers came, did their time, collected their land. they could also do extra time and get extra land, take a promotion and get extra land, and presumably there was a reward for being a really good coloniser where you got even more land

this was the first anzac conflict btw.

but this is the catch: the land they got was wild, and needed to be cleared for farming. but no roads = no machinery = do it by hand. it's hard.

there were also few women and towns, which made it an unattractive place to settle down bc you need the women for families

so the soldiers started to leave. bit like the 2008 mortgage crisis, they just wandered off the land and left it. and the govt repo'd it. and then they did what the settlements act authorised: they disposed of it

this was a few years down the track, and russell wasn't in govt now, but there was a saying in the 1870s that "mr russell wasn't an agent of the govt, the govt was an agent of mr russell" which is a pretty badass way of describing influence

anyway, there were govt guidelines for disposing of the land. a certain price had to be paid per acre.

so of course the govt failed to follow those guidelines and sold an enormous stretch of land to russell for 50% of the price. he literally got a staff discount on it.

i think he ended up losing a tonne of money on that, but the damage was done. he made his money on the war itself.

but that wasn't his only speculation. him and whitaker never resigned from their companies while in power, bc it was the 1800s and no one cared about conflict of interest. other politicians pointed out they were using their position to start wars to speculate on the land

and that's what a lot of this looks like too - speculations, made around a loose plan that would result in some small profits.

except that the settlements act, and the scheme to pay soldiers with land - which would put it out of reach of capitalist's hands - was doomed

ages ago i found a parliamentary debate that suggested they knew it was doomed from the start. i can't find it now, so i'm not stating it's fact, but come on, they knew it was doomed.

anyway, in the end, one partner of russell's owned 15,000 acres in waikato. which is 60,000 quarter acre paradises.

russell went to live in england as a member of the rich class, and still ran the bnz from there (he took over its london board of directors somehow)

the bnz had a financial collapse in the 1880s because it was loaning him money whenever he wanted, to the extent that it looked to me like he was actually writing cheques to himself for 20,000 pounds

the bank survived, to today, as did the herald. josiah firth's company, which was built on the land he managed to snag and profit off, also survived to today. it's now called firth concrete, and is owned by fletcher construction.

sorry this wasn't clearer but twitter stopped letting me thread continuously and i kind of lost track there

tl;dr in 1863 a few rich bougie lads decided to topple the govt, and orchestrate a war because they ran out of auckland land to speculate on. they stole a bunch more from tainui, waikato, and a bunch of other iwi, using the press as an aide to spread racist fear of māori

they successfully stole lots of land, then used it to pay soldiers, then bought it back when the soldiers couldn't run it (as they expected) and profited some more. today their companies continue, and one of them is owned by the company that is trying to profit at ihumātao

~fin~

ps. i think "i used my position as a member of parliament to screw a lot of indigenous people out of their land in order to personally profit off of it" counts as theft, both from māori and the voters (but more from māori, bc those voters were on māori land)

pps. i simplified the hell out of the war acts, so apologies to anyone who is familiar with it and thinking wait up.

and despite the horrible ramifications, it's all very house of cards, and nz history is so sick so why don't we teach more of it??

& i'll write this up long form for a site if you want, so please dont publish without me, i need the practice and the work!

i never added onto this thread but i did get to write it up thanks to the team at @NewsroomNZ

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/09/03/764183/stolen-mori-land-no-abstract-concept

Stolen Māori land no abstract concept

Matt Nickless looks back on the Waikato land confiscations to debunk the idea that Māori land was never stolen, but sold willingly.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/09/03/764183/stolen-mori-land-no-abstract-concept

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