Talk:Colony of New Zealand

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on September 26, 2018.

Regarding the frequent reverts, I offer two suggestions. Firstly, it might pay to come to the talk page and discuss the issues with a view of reaching agreement, as that might be more constructive than undoing each other's work. Secondly, the article is completely devoid of inline referencing. Maybe adding some inline referencing would go some way towards coming to agreement. Schwede66 18:33, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I've added in a citation. I think the edit war is the result off a misunderstanding of the constitutional nature of colonial status. --LJ Holden 21:37, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"1846 Constitution Act was never implemented, 1852 Act came into force 1853" - would be great if this edit summary could find its way into the body of the article. Schwede66 04:58, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Underway :-) --LJ Holden 05:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Colony of New Zealand's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "DNZB":

• From Henry Sewell: 1S8, Sewell, Henry - Biography. February 2012 "Colony of New Zealand". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• From James FitzGerald: McIntyre, W. David. "FitzGerald, James Edward 1818–1896". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 15 September 2012.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 05:59, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, will fix. --LJ Holden 06:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The word "supposedly" is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as meaning According to what is generally assumed or believed (often used to indicate that the speaker doubts the truth of the statement).

I propose that we remove the word "supposedly" from the article on the basis that it is not supposedly but in fact well established in practice that the treaty of Waitangi granted the British sovereignty over New Zealand and was the country's founding document. It's pretty easy to back that up with high quality references.

I agree that the treaty has proven controversial over the years and there are many wrongs which must be righted but lets remove the weasel word "supposedly" from that paragraph.

What do you think, Schwede66? 101.98.248.252 (talk) 09:49, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's pretty clear that it did grant sovereignty in the English version of the treaty. But it didn't in the Maori version. Hence, "supposedly" isn't an inappropriate choice of words. Schwede66 10:31, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You are entitled to your opinion about the interpretation of the Maori version of the treaty but you need to understand that the Treaty of Waitangi is widely accepted as New Zealand's founding document and there are plenty of reliable sources to confirm that it established New Zealand as a British Colony. There is no "supposedly" about it and this weasel word should be removed from the article. 101.98.248.252 (talk) 11:47, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you read Michael King's The Penguin History of New Zealand; that book is pretty accessible. And if you really want to get to the bottom of it, I suggest you read Claudia Orange's The Treaty of Waitangi, but that is much more academic and thus a 'heavy read'. Schwede66 11:54, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am well versed in New Zealand History but thank you very much for the recommendation. My final position is that we should

Avoid Weasel Words and "supposedly" is such a word. 101.98.248.252 (talk) 12:08, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

I know little about NZ history, but it seems to me that there is a simple solution: rephrase the sentence as Schwede describes without using "supposedly", e.g., "The basis for the claim over the North Island was the grant of sovereignty to the British in the English version of the Treaty of Waitangi, which was agreed by the Māori tribal leaders, but whose Māori language version did not grant such sovereignty." Or, something to that effect. Perhaps one of you with better access to NZ history sources could find appropriate wording that can be referenced. Ground Zero | t 17:02, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That text sounds good. Any suggestions for a copy-edit? I suggest the following reference.^[1]

My first attempt was a bit clunky. Here is another version:

"The basis for the claim over the North Island was the grant of sovereignty to the British in the English language version of the Treaty of Waitangi. Māori tribal leaders had signed this treaty, but the Māori language version of it did not grant sovereignty to the British."

I welcome other suggestions. Ground Zero | t 19:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are controversies over the meaning of the treaty but the suggestion that there was no grant of sovereignty conferred by the Maori version Treaty is a very biased point of view and you can't put that statement here because the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders would disagree with it. 101.98.248.252 (talk) 20:15, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So the source that I quoted, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, got it wrong? Schwede66 20:26, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am quite neutral in this, as a Canadian. I looked up the source and did a bit of digging. Te Ara - The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand is "prepared by a team at Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington, New Zealand". That sounds like it would meet the requirements for a

reliable source in Wikipedia. If there is an opposing view, that can be sourced from reliable sources, it should also be reflected here. I don't see where User:101.98... has provided a source for an opposing view. "The overwhelming majority of New Zealanders would disagree with it" is hearsay, and cannot be considered here. Would many New Zealanders be in a position to interpret the Māori language version of the Treaty of Waitangi? Ground Zero | t 22:02, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

Schwede66, the source you quoted says The Treaty of Waitangi was a written agreement made in 1840 between the British Crown (the monarch) and more than 500 Māori chiefs. After that, New Zealand became a colony of Britain and Māori became British subjects.. It goes on to say that Māori and Europeans had different understandings and expectations of the treaty which is true. A lot has changed in the 175 years since that treaty was signed, especially in the last 40 years but we need to be careful of giving too much weight to recentism here. Perhaps we would reword it to say that the treaty spoke of "sovereignty" in English and

Kawanatanga in the Maori version which is translated as "governance"... 101.98.248.252 (talk) 20:29, 13 August 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

I've had another shot at rewording it, hopefully with a reasonably NPOV while avoiding weasel words. 101.98.248.252 (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be a reasonable rewording, but you forgot to add a citation to your sources. Dimadick (talk) 12:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Captain Cook claimed New Zealand for Britain at Mercury Bay 15th November 1769. There was no sovereign power in NZ at that time.This was SOP for the British when they wished to claim some new territory and in the 1700s did not did not depend on any natives signing anything. Maori had a divided, neolithic community structure. There was no central authority. There was no agreed political system -even the language used was so different that Maori from central North Island found it hard to understand Maori from Northland. Many powerful chiefs considered that they were the ultimate power,indeed Europeans sometimes described individual chiefs as "kings " in the early 1800s.

In 1840 it should be noted that NZ was proclaimed a sovereign nation by Hobson 6 days before the treaty was discussed with Maori at Waitangi . The sovereignty of NZ had already been proclaimed by the governor of NSW in Sydney prior to this. On the face of it seems the Waitangi discussions and signing throughout New Zealand were a formality as NZ was already a sovereign nation."Recentism " is a real plague in this topic. It must be remembered that probably no Maori in New Zealand could read either the English or Maori version in 1840 -they depended on what was said. Most of the talking and explaining was done by missionaries who for a variety of reasons wanted NZ to be a British colony. The LMS were especially partial as they had communicated with Whig MPs regarding colonisation in the year leading up to the event. The LMS could pull strings in London and they did.

The literacy evidence is in the Waitangi and other signatures. Only 12% of the 600 odd chiefs signed their own name and most of those in a very shaky unconvincing hand-the rest signed with an X or part of their moko. If only a few were capable of doing a simple thing like signing their own name it is nonsense to suggest that they would have been able to read the subtle differences between the English and Maori copies.

Debate about the differences between the versions is largely irrelevant in terms of how Maori behaved in 1840.115.188.178.77 (talk) 02:37, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You need to avoid adding a space at the beginning of paragraphs in order for your comments to appear properly. In any case your point is unclear. Are you suggesting a change to the article? This page is not the place to raise random discussions about this topic, which is what you seem to be doing. BlackCab (TALK) 08:19, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes ,the article needs to be bought up to date to reflect what actually happened at the time. "Recentism" has meant that the original facts have been lost. There needs to be a preamble to explain what actually was going on prior to the colonization.ie the situation in Britain ,the situation in the British empire and the Maori situation, other wise it doesn't make much historical sense.115.188.178.77 (talk) 05:25, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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I suggest that this phrase to be modified to say "kāwanatanga which is generally translated as either governance or government". The whole affected sentence would then appear as "The Māori translation of the treaty refers to kāwanatanga which is generally translated as either governance or government rather than sovereignty and this point remains a subject of much controversy and political debate." This then maintains consistency with the quoted source in the article's footnotes which uses kawanatanga to mean either governance or government. The quoted source says: "Māori leaders gave the Queen 'te kawanatanga katoa' or the complete government over their land." In that sentence kawanatanga means government while katoa means complete. A translation of the Maori text of the Treaty of Waitangi will typically use "government" for where "kawanatanga" is used originally. This can be seen in the modern translation of the Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi by Hugh Kāwharu, which is used by the Waitangi Tribunal. This suggestion will be open to discussion before I potentially modify this sentence in June 2024. KentLStevens (talk) 20:14, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean you will change 'government' to 'government or governance', noting that the C. Orange source uses only 'government'? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:33, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The specific sentence that I am suggesting we change currently uses "governance". The C. Orange source in the article refers to kawanatanga as "governance or government" when it is translating ‘te Kawanatanga katoa’. The C. Orange source also says: "authority would be shared between the government and rangatira." In the NZ History source associated with the specific sentence, it states a definition of kawanatanga that also appears on the Waitangi Tribunal's website. The definition phrase in the NZ History source is "The translators of the English text used the Māori word 'kawanatanga', a transliteration of the word 'governance', which was in current use." As the C. Orange source, the NZ History source and the Waitangi Tribunal's website all use kawanatanga to mean both governance and government, I suggest we also use both in this sentence. KentLStevens (talk) 20:36, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point. An alternative understanding of the sentence "kawanatanga is translated as governance or government", is what it actually says - it is one or the other, not both. If it were both it would use 'and' not 'or'. As there is no direct translation of any of those three words into or out of Maori, meaning they each mean something slightly different, I assume the ambiguous translation of kawanatanga to mean either government or government, not both, which is what the C. Orange source says, is better. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:06, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]