Shana tova to Kvetchers!
Part 3: Colonisation & Settlement
Part 4: Men of Nerve
“Where she goes, we go, where she stands, we stand. We are only a small and a young nation, but we are one and all a band of brothers, and we march forward with a union of hearts and wills.”
— New Zealand Prime Minister Michael Savage announcing war in 1939
Governing Men
If the settlers of New Zealand were chosen for character, the men who governed them were chosen for nerve. For the first quarter or so of both New Zealand and Australia’s settled histories they were ruled by military juntas. The first twelve governors of New South Wales (1788–1855) were all military men. Similar in New Zealand. These men fought in the Napoleonic Wars and the Americas; they served in India and the Caribbean. They rode the sense of victory at the peak of British Empire during the Victorian age.
William Hobson was New Zealand’s first governor. He entered the navy at ten. He was once captured by pirates, escaped, and hunted his captors to death. He had a Christian zeal that he channelled to the creation of New Zealand. He was an iron-handed commander, claiming sovereignty over French settlers at Akaroa, American sealers on Stewart Island, and German missionaries in the Chatham Islands. He entered into the Treaty of Waitangi in a move towards peaceful co-existence with the native Māori.
After dying of a stroke, he was succeeded by Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, an intellectual aristocrat who made his career in the Royal Navy. He dealt justly with the Māori. He abolished customs duty, claiming to establish the first “true and beautiful” system of free trade in the world. After he was recalled to England he largely invented the science of “weather forecasting”, a term he coined. When a report into his efforts to predict Britain’s weather found his predictions about as accurate as a coin flip, he killed himself. A nobler technocrat there scarcely ever was.
It was not just New Zealand’s military men that impressed with their fine characters. Bishop George Augustus Selwyn “walked across much of the North Island and sailed his own boat through a large part of Melanesia. One crusty old salt said that ‘to see the Bishop handle a boat was almost enough to make a man a Christian.’”
From the start, British missionaries liked the Māori. In Selwyn’s appreciation of the natives he ordered all his clergy to learn Māori. His vision of Christianity embraced everyone — even Americans, “a severe test of Selwyn’s ecumenical spirit”. This is Samuel Marsden, a leading Anglican priest in Australia during the early period:
“The more I see of these people, the more I am pleased with and astonished at their moral ideas, and characters. They appear like a superior race.”
Sir George Grey, perhaps the strongest of New Zealand’s early leaders, was also a soldier and an adventurer. Early in his military duties in Ireland he was repulsed by the grubby and “un-Christian” work of extracting taxes from poor Irish peasants. Twice shipwrecked, he was appointed governor of South Australia at twenty-nine. Unlike New South Wales’ first Governor Arthur Phillip, who refused to retaliate when he was struck in the shoulder by a spear from an Aborigine, Grey shot the Aborigine who transfixed him with three quick spears. He was struck with grief by the encounter. As governor of New Zealand he learned Māori, and wrote a book in Māori of their legends and traditions (it goes without saying there is no such equivalent ruler in Australia). He wanted to govern them wisely and thought the hoopla over alleged native wisdom overdone:
“I believe that the ignorance which has prevailed regarding the mythological systems of barbarous or semi-barbarous races has too generally led to their being considered far grander and more reasonable than they really were.”
Grey avoided facing the formidable Māori directly in battle. Instead he cut off their supply of muskets, isolated the tribes, and acquired more land from them than anyone in New Zealand’s history.
Despite his own infidelities, when he suspected his wife of fancying another man he refused to speak to her for 36 years.
In 1849 Grey scaled the snowy slopes of Mount Ruapehu, accompanied only by a few Māori who carried his bags. There in isolation he drafted New Zealand’s Constitution. Ratified by the British parliament with few amendments, it remained in place for 134 years until 1986. Not quite Moses on Mt Sinai, but regardless a tribute to the man’s fortitude.
And so self-government and the rule of law came to New Zealand from above, granted, as in Australia, rather than wrested, as in the US. Forged by men with deeply Christian convictions, sincere altruism, and a sense of duty and fairness, even when in practice their actions were often deeply unfair, as with the British Empire itself.
Warrior Men
The selection of settlers and the character of their early leaders produced a country with an unusually pugnacious foreign policy for its size. We tend not to see this today, because the popular memory of New Zealand’s 20th-century military posture is filtered through one event: its decision in the 1980s to go nuclear-free.
In 1985 French intelligence agents were caught planting bombs on Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, sinking the ship and killing a photographer. In 1987 the country passed legislation barring nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships from its waters. President Reagan effectively suspended ANZUS treaty obligations in response. The episode burnished a reputation for principled neutrality that has stuck.
It is a misleading image. For most of New Zealand’s settled history it was anything but neutral. It was, in fact, one of the more bellicose Anglo nations on a per-capita basis.
Like Britain, which saw itself as a natural leader across remote parts of the world, both Australia and New Zealand inherited this sense of chosenness, acting as regional powers in their own right. In the late 19th century this even took the form of a joint ‘Monroe Doctrine for the South Pacific’.
In 1887 New Zealand annexed the Kermadec Islands; the Cook Islands and Niue Island in 1901; and the Tokelau Islands in 1925. Hawaii, Fiji, and Tonga were also initially going to be part of a federation of Pacific islands including New Zealand. On the outbreak of WWI, when New Zealand occupied Germany’s West Samoa, it was the first Allied occupation of the war. (New Zealand knew nothing of German forces on Samoa, and when the New Zealand government asked London for details it was referred to Whitaker’s Almanack, which contained nothing of the kind.) In 1980, New Zealand worked with Australia and the US to bring down the Marxist government of the New Hebrides.
A greater proportion of New Zealanders fought in South Africa’s Boer War than in Britain herself. The official British history of the Boer War states that New Zealand had “the best mounted troops in South Africa.” (Māori were asked not to join the Kiwi detachments, as it was considered improper for them to battle whites.) In 1902 parliament passed a law requiring military instruction in every New Zealand school. In 1909, it enacted compulsory military service. By contrast, Australia held two referenda for conscription during WWI and lost both times. More than 40% of New Zealand’s military-aged men served in WWI. They were regarded as unruly but top-tier combatants. For their ferocity, they suffered amongst the highest casualty rate as a proportion of population of any combatant nation in WWI. Despite this momentous national injury, in 1922 when Britain came close to war again with Turkey, over 14,000 New Zealanders overran recruitment stations eager not to miss the show.
German General Rommel took note of his skirmishes with the Kiwis in North Africa:
“They were such a thorn in Rommel’s side that the German commander ordered a special effort to destroy them… Rommel wrote, “The fighting between my forces and the New Zealanders grew to an extraordinary pitch of violence, and my headquarters was soon ringed by burning vehicles.” The New Zealanders lost 1,600 men to Rommel, and many more to the Royal Air Force, which kept bombing them by mistake. That night, Freyberg found a weak point in the German lines and ordered a wild bayonet charge in the moonlight. In the fierce fighting that followed, Freyberg himself was severely wounded, but the New Zealanders broke out and escaped to fight again. Three of Rommel’s best divisions were “so worn down that they also were forced to retreat to the west.” It was a brilliant feat of combat leadership and infantry fighting.”
“After the war… Rommel and Mellenthin wrote of Freyberg with respect and even affection as an “indomitable commander,” and regarded his New Zealand Division as “among the elite of the British army.” Rommel added, “I should have been very much happier if it had been safely tucked away in our prison camps instead of still facing us.”
“Why are you New Zealanders fighting?” Rommel asked. “This is a European war, not yours. Are you here for the sport?” Clifton was astonished by the question… ‘The British Commonwealth fights together. If you attack England, you attack Australia and New Zealand too.’” Rommel was as baffled by that answer as Clifton had been by the question. He made no comment, except to wish his prisoner the best of luck.”
“Immediately after the interview, Brigadier Clifton politely excused himself, climbed out through a lavatory window (to Rommel’s amused resignation), made his way back to his unit, and went on to other adventures in the war.”
A classic Kiwi move – fiercely patriotic left hook followed by a cheeky right. Kiwi soldiers, like their Australian counterparts, riled the British in their indifference to military protocol. When one senior British officer complained to General Freyberg that New Zealand troops failed to salute him, Freyberg replied, “Ah yes, but if you wave to them, they’ll wave back.”
The Wing-Commander of a Royal Air Force detachment sent to the Soviet Union in 1941 to support the Soviets in their defence against the German invasion was a New Zealander. Wing-Commander Henry Ramsbottom-Isherwood and three of his men were the only non-Soviet servicemen during World War II to receive the Order of Lenin. On their first sortie, on 12 September 1941, they shot down three German planes for the loss of one. Wing 151 conducted 365 sorties before its mission ended in November 1941.
New Zealand’s greatest hero in World War II was Captain Charles Upham. He was the only combatant to win the Victoria Cross twice. He fought with terrible bloodlust that at times appalled his men. But after battle he would be seen moving among the Germans administering care. He represented a New Zealand ideal of manhood: a hard but gentle man.
“Are you here for the Sport?” That line cracked me, great series!
"Wing-Commander Henry Ramsbottom-Isherwood", definitely on the shortlist of names if I ever have another son.