About The Picture: The very first encounter between Maori and Europeans took place in December 1642 at what is now called Golden Bay. Tasman named it Murderers Bay after a violent encounter with Maori. As Maori approached the Dutch ships in canoes, one canoe rammed a ship’s boat that was passing between Tasman’s two vessels, killing four Dutchmen. A number of Maori were killed in response to the attack. This picture recording the event was sketched by one Isaac Gilsemans, who sailed with Tasman.
Law makers always make laws that benefit themselves first and nowhere is this more apparent than in the areas of international law.
As I was writing "Some Context and Meanings Around The Treaty of Waitangi" series, I came across this small snippet of information. The idea that a European State had a 'right' to exercise sovereignty over an indigenous non-European people and ideas about how this could be exploited apparently began with the works of the Spanish school of natural law theorists of the sixteenth century. These works were aimed at devising a 'civilised code' by which the exploitation of the New World could proceed. According to these ideas, Natural Law, which recognised the equality of all mankind, avowed a goal to preserve the proprietary rights of native peoples' whenever they ceded their lands to a sovereign state. However, given that some people are 'more equal than others', it very soon came to be seen that 'primitive' peoples should rightly be protected by the 'civilised' States which 'discovered' them. This protection could be secured by these native primitive people granting the colonising civilised and 'superior' States an exclusive right of pre-emption over their lands. Sound familiar folks? An even more profoundly Eurocentric view was to follow which was grounded in the so-called morally neutral positivist movement. In this vision, only sovereign (nationalised) and therefore 'civilised' States were capable or entitled to make laws. Tribally arranged communities could not, they were seen to lack that ability. Of course this was taken to mean that they could claim no title to the lands they were occupying or ranging over; this shift meant that they were now seen as legally non-existent. So naturally any power sharing would not even be on the colonisers' radar.
 | Interesting indeed, I'll bbl with a more indepth comment ( got a visitor ) |
 | exactly Darryl, International Law has not improved. It is interesting to see where ideas come from or what is at the back of things. |
 | This reminds me of an Eddie Izzard comedy routine where he acts out an exchange between English who have just landed by sea and the native people of that land. From memory it went something like this.
English (plants flag in ground): I claim this land in the name of England!
Native (just arriving): Hey! This is our land! Get out of here!
English: So, you claim that this is your country?
Native: Yes.
English: Do you have a flag?
Native: Well..... no.
English: Sorry, no flag no county. Those are the rules.
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 | the picture is very good. i enjoyed reading your comments. |
 | Ovgreenman, I remember that Eddie Izzard routine very well - what a send-up that was!
Iri Ani, great blog. Now I'm curious - are you familiar with the term "white man's burden", or was that only an American concept? (It was central to US hegemony in the wake of the Spanish-American War.) |
| Owen (ovgreenman) that reminds me of an old Billy T James comedy skit from the eighties of the arrival of Captain Cook to NZ shores. I will see if I can hunt one out some time. Nice one, It says it all.
Thank you to Greenwytch.
Johnsmith, I think that is an American term, do you want to expand on it? |
| Won't be able to do so all that eloquently, as I've been away from the history books for a good while, But it goes something like this....
Prior to the Spanish-American War (c. 1898), the US was assiduously a non-colonial power (westward expansion through force or coercion notwithstanding) and took European powers to task for maintaining empires. With victory over Spain, suddenly a globe of spoils fell into American hands - Guam, Cuba, Philippines, and Puerto Rico probably being the most significant.
A legitimate debate arose on what to do with these possessions, and a rationalization emerged to justify a continuing American presence in these locales - the White Man's Burden, which was a philosophical extension of Manifest Destiny, which itself was the rationalization by which America pushed its boundaries ever westward to the Pacific Ocean.
The White Man's Burden coincided, too, with the warping of Darwinian biological theories into the "social Darwinism" that was the foundation for the economics of the Gilded Age. So, by virtue of this burden, America, as a "white" nation, was obligated to "look after" the non-white peoples of these lands acquired from the Spaniards - a pseudo-Darwinian outcome. There was an irony at work here, in that Teddy Roosevelt, who led the fabled charge up San Juan Hill to hasten the defeat of the Spaniards, was a notorious trust-buster who fought the social order of the Gilded Age, even while constructing a quasi-empire predicated on white racial superiority. |
 | ifiik wrote on Feb 10, edited on Feb 10 naaah, you got it wrong....Billy T james said it back early in his career, when talking about the discrepencies in the Waitangi treaty...lmao...
and if you believe that.........not my fault...lol |
| Hey Johnsmith you explained that well thank you, I would not have guessed that one at all. Some burden huh.
|
 | Eurocentricity - ha! So that's why all the peoples of Europe struggle with all the laws that come out of Brussels .......... Nothing changes Iri, the statement 'First,kill the lawyers' has much to recommend it! |
| PS "White Man's Burden" - poem by Rudyard Kipling 1899 - relating to British colonialism and the white man's responsibility to civilise uncivilised non-white people ............ |
| It's a very interesting poem - very high minded, but drawing the sad conclusion that when the jolly old white man has been in and sorted them out, the ungrateful ethnic population will just lapse into their old ways and also complain endlessly about their saviours ......... how I miss the Empire ........ |
| PS again - when I was last studying international law, the party line was that much international law is unenforceable, so really it's every man woman and child for themselves. There is probably some truth in this - we see lots of cases relating to 'tug of love' divorces and child custody issues, and also trans European inheritance issues in UK - and usuall, possession is 9/10ths of the law ! |
| After Vivien's comment I had to google the thing...
Site One said this: “The White Man’s Burden”: Kipling’s Hymn to U.S. Imperialism
In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase.
Site Two said: Born in British India in 1865, Rudyard Kipling was educated in England before returning to India in 1882, where his father was a museum director and authority on Indian arts and crafts. Thus Kipling was thoroughly immersed in Indian culture: by 1890 he had published in English about 80 stories and ballads previously unknown outside India. As a result of financial misfortune, from 1892-96 he and his wife, the daughter of an American publisher, lived in Vermont, where he wrote the two Jungle Books. After returning to England, he published "The White Man's Burden" in 1899, an appeal to the United States to assume the task of developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War. As a writer, Kipling perhaps lived too long: by the time of his death in 1936, he had come to be reviled as the poet of British imperialism, though being regarded as a beloved children's book author. Today he might yet gain appreciation as a transmitter of Indian culture to the West.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
|
| Whilst much of history is unpalatable to contemplate from the politically correct 21st century, it's ridiculous to 'blame' people who lived in the past for views which don't accord with what we think today. They were a product of their past, just as much as we are of ours. (There's a Welsh hymn which we used to sing at primary school (in Welsh) which owes much to the poem above, and was probably written at about the same time). |
| I don't know why people have to keep harping on blame which is completely unproductive. To know history is to know what happened and hopefully why. Only with awareness can we redress the balance. Which is what needs to happen. Until we do that we do not go forward we just run around in foolish circles. |
| I totally agree with that, but I think we may be in the minority! |
 | Reconciliation and understanding not blame surely is the way forward in all conflicts past or present.
An ad from the time of Kiplings poem. There is still a brand of soap called Imperial Leather. Behind all the international politics morals and laws right or wrong, have always been the profit makers manipulating history and events for their own ends. Nothing has changed.
Just a personal view.
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 | For me, I guess it is just painful to have been born into a more enlightened time, seeing the wrongs committed in the past. It is just that much more painful to watch history repeating itself unceasingly, despite a paradigm shift. The US imperialism toward the "middle east" in order to exploit the oil reserves is a case in point. The global corpocracy continues to exploit the land and the people, occupying and obliterating the sovereignty of those who have what they want. |
| David that soap ad! Good Grief. That completely domestic sort of advertisement really brings it home that people felt so ok with views that are so completely unacceptable now.
(They sell Imperial Leather soap here too). |
|  Site One said this: “The White Man’s Burden”: Kipling’s Hymn to U.S. Imperialism
In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore Roosevelt,  Ah, then I wasn't off the mark after all! |
| Some excellent reading here and a couple of points I was going to say have been made so I’ll just add,
Historically notions of race and racism played central roles in ethnic conflicts. When an adversary was identified as "other" based on notions of race or ethnicity (particularly when "other" is construed to mean "inferior"), the means employed by the self-presumed "superior" party to appropriate territory, human chattel, or material wealth often have been more ruthless, more brutal, and less constrained by moral or ethical considerations.
An example of that was that Africans were considered "subhuman" therefore they found a socially acceptable loophole in the then accepted law that "men are created equal" that allowed for the sustenance of the slave trade.
|
| Well, ok, the soap ad features "PEARS" soap...maybe I'm sitting with my eyes closed here, because I cant see a connection to IMPERIAL LEATHER soap, of which, I use exclusively..only because there are no skin irritants in it for me.......... |
| The Pears soap ad kind of reminds me of something... My neighbour and I both had young children at the time and we were both book mad. One day she came running down to my place with a childrens' book she had bought the previous day, "should I pass this on or just burn it in the fire, I won't be reading this to my children." It was an Enid Blyton Book of Bedtime Stories. The story that upset her went something like this:
A little girl owned lots of toys and dolls which she played with all the time except for one doll she did not like. It was a little black doll. "Oh, you are so nasty and dirty and horrid" she said to the little black doll and always threw back into the deep toy cupboard in her nursery. This naturally made the little black doll very sad. One summers day however she decided to take all her dolls outside to play picnics and even took the little black doll, but unfortunately, when it was time to go back inside to clean up for tea the girl forgot and left the little black doll outside and didn't even miss her. The little black doll just lay in the grass for months and months; when it rained she got wet, when it stopped raining she dried. Sometimes she got so wet it made the dye in her little plastic body run out into the ground below. Then one day, the next summer, the girl was playing outside and found the doll. At first she didn't recognise her then she realised and said, " the rain has washed you and now you are all lovely and clean and white! I like you now"; and she took the little (now) white doll inside and looked after her for years and when she grew up and had children of her own she gave them her little doll. And the little doll was happy now that she was white and loved.
We burnt the book. |
| and what happened to golly-wogs?? |
| now THATS racist....removing the black community....its another holocaust...... |
| lmao, haven't we all got very politically correct, I loved Enid Blytons stories as a child I never connected her stories as being racist. |
| you know the sads part of it all???
As kids growing up, we didnt care about racism.....in my world, it didnt exist...I only came across it when at 14, my cousin went out with a Pacific Islander, and my South African Aunt(by marriage) went OFF HER NUT about it....which made the cousin more determined to go out with the person.....lmao....the wars those two had, over the colour of a man's skin........ |
| High school was my first taste of racism, similar situation to yours ifiik |
| At the moment there appears to be a rise in racism and racist attitudes in the UK. It's always been there of course but now we have many people coming to work here from Poland and Eastern Europe, and this seems to have given the racists another exuse to raise their ugly heads. We have even had on occasion BNP and their sister party the National Front (both basically nazi type parties, who advocate 'repatriating' or excluding or eradicating non-white or non 'english' people from the UK ) winning seats in local council elections. Sad and frightening. |
 | I am reading this on 18th April, all the way through I have itched to put my oar in, first over one side of the historical boat and then the other. I am glad I didn't because drafair's comment of Feb 11 is even more important to note than it was on Feb 11th, the situation is much more sad and frightening. I HAVE to listen to The BBC, because for a couple of years I have refused to take a Newspaper (my reasons not needed here)and I have to hear The News I must know what is happening and hope for commentaries that are fair and unbiased. Daily, I am hearing about the "fears" about the immigration situation, particularly about the "Polish danger" and, the most worrying of all, because local elections will soon be held, I am seeing actual News items and forthcoming programmes ( not just political party electioneering hopefuls) almost speaking of the Polish immigrants and the "rivers of blood" speech of FORTY years ago. together with large pictures of that speaker, Enoch Powell all in one breath. All the time there "guests" on the air gently "musing" about whether it might not be best to encourage these Poles and other to "go back home" The most popular "send em all back" theory seems to that they are the cause of first-time buyers not being able to get on the housing ladder - great applause there from sections of the audiences, I've even been told that one fenland town is now a no-go-area, because there are so many Poles there. They don't buy houses, they don't get any housing ladders, they do work on the land, wet and cold and muddy work half the time, that is extremely low-paid and controlled by gang-masters who are sometimes non-too scrupulous. these arrange "housing, a roof over the head, that the local people would not live in, in dormitory-like conditions, working for payment that would not be acceptable to locals. They come to do work that would not be done otherwise, in times of full employment. The no-go area story is fostered by people, who seem to have instinctive dislike and fear of those who speak a different language and/or a different faith, that they tend to live in communities ( the very work they do ensures that they live closely, too closely for those who scream "send them back", but would not live in such conditions themselves. These racists, for it IS racism, are muttering that they do not feel it is their country anymore, it is full of foreigners, they say! Many of them regard a Spanish cheap airflight fortnight as a fact of life,never see themselves as foreigners in another country, many cannot really read their own language yet are served by people speaking better English than themselves These will make more weeks than the local electioneering ones "sad and frightening" The more articulate"nazi-type parties" may make them shameful and terrifying. |
| Chrissie, what I think is this, that there seems to be a strong movement in media, particularly in countries where the bulk of media control is in private and corporate hands, to play up "fears" and foster anxiety in the audience because doing so increases the ratings which therefore attracts more advertising revenue and more profits for the shareholders. Even publicly owned media seems to be buying into these anxiety generating broadcasts in order to hold onto their audience and keep their market share. Then we wind up in a situation where the public watching all this crap believe it because after all "they" said it on TV. At best it is irresponsible journalism, but to be honest it is all about scaremongering.
Irresponsible political parties (such as the New Zealand First party led by Winston Peters in NZ for example) then latch onto all this cauldron of fear and racism stuff and make speeches about it which in turn get shown on the "news" adding to the furore.
I always remember a very stupid (pakeha) woman being interviewed during an NZ election some years back. She had just come out of one of Winston Peter's meetings and the interviewer asked her what she thought of the message. She said, (and this is a quote), "I haven't got anything against those Indians or Maoris, I just don't think they should be allowed into New Zealand, they don't understand our way of life." Clearly the fact that the Maori people are the first nations people of our country or even that Winston Peters himself is of Maori (and Scots) descent was completely over her foolish head.
Anxiety inducing and racist or bigoted statements which are latched onto by silly or foolish or just plain unthinking and unreflective people serve the interests of the power elite and corporations. This is because they distract from the real issues about how the locla or country's economy is run and how the poorer people in our societies, no matter what race they are, are always the losers in corporate run economies. If they can focus attention on "the Asians" or "the Poles" or "the Mexicans" or even "the Maoris" (just insert whichever race is applicable) then they can continue to divide and conquer.
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| You are so right - that is why i won't buy a Newspaper and even the BBC is guilty, possibly to compete for ratings against the other advertisement funded, Sun-Newspaper-type eye-catching so-called NEWS
programmes. years ago, grew to know, like and respect all the features Editors of the Daily Mirror, a tabloid, sneered at by most intellectuals, but, partly i always thought because it pre-digested rather difficult News items and thus Servicemen and hardworking "ordinary" people were able to read it in limited leisure time, and breaks. And it didn't cost the earth. It was probably its popularity with the men returning from World War Two which won Labour the Election. And it didn't have anything offensive, to my recollection. Along came the"Sun" and changed all that.....But, of course, now we know more about the owners, the manipulators behind the press... I must stop, MY F.E's were, I've just realised, like you my cyber friendsm because i was writing articles for them in way-off Lincolnshire, only the first one under my own name, my maiden name, though i was married, with a young child. I was thrilled and then dejected when they asked me if i minded using another name and I by-return told them "Kathleen Redmond". I had made it! I was going to be famous, two family names together to proclaim my Celtic heritage, Yippeeeeeee. But that wasn't what they meant! What i wrote would have its own little box, on a very popular page, i won't for security reasons mention, it isn't there now! Its title, very much as is done on Tv these days, indicated that it was from one of the readers of The Mirror. And my lovely little articles would be attributed to Mrs so and so from littlehampton etc etc, even Mr so and so sometimes, depending on the content. But the lovely little articles did bring in lovely little cheques, and were very welcome........ Oh there's more, Iri, and those cyber friends became real ones, one was Journalist of The year - i told him he was MY Journalist of the Century!.... There are a few good, great journalists still around today, but i am really looking at another age when i look back in this way.
I did know what pakeha meant, Iri, another time i will tell you of being in NZ with a French "friend" who galvanised me into inconveniently ending the friendship I heard her refer to a young Maori woman, politely serving in her as "That Paki girl" and the frenchwoman, widow of aBritish B>A charge-hand
didn't even know of the Maori word Pakeha, she was using the derogatory term used in the UK about Pakistanis - "Paki" It was written on walls, Iri, in great ugly letters Paki go home. She took that ugliness with her to your beautiful country and i never forgave her, we travelled all the way back in the plane in silence.. |
| If there is one thing that really sets me off it is people using racist labels in a derogatory manner, and I always consider it the last resort of the stupid and inarticulate who are incapable of understanding or framing a 'discussion' in any other way.
The word Pakeha, of course, (for those who don't know refers to a person of non-Maori origin). |
| I learned that from my Michener books and i have had to part with them all, because they were paperbacks ( my Nazi Lindsay!!!) all except his "Texas!" A Hardbacked Present and , naturally, like Texas, VERY BIG!!!!!! "Hawaii was one of my favourites - and I am realising that missing books is worse than missing people!!!!!!!! |
| lol I think the "additions" were better than the original blog! |
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