Introduction to
Old
New Zealand
Philip Steer
Victoria University
February 2004
Frederick Edward
Maning is best known as an author, but he was also at
times a trader and a judge of the Native Land Court. He was
born in Dublin, Ireland on 5 July 1811 or 1812 and
immigrated to Tasmania with his family in 1823. He lived in New Zealand from
1833 until
1882, when ill health forced him to seek medical
care in England. He died in London on 25 July 1883, but was buried in
New Zealand later that year. His Old New Zealand: A Tale of the Good Old
Times (1863) is one of the
few pre-twentieth century New Zealand literary texts that
have not descended into obscurity with passing
time. Historian Peter
Gibbons describes it as perhaps one of
the best known and most widely read of all works on early
New Zealand
[(45)](#bibl-gibb1998) and it has
often been reprinted.
A Background to
Old New Zealand
Maning
arrived in New Zealand from Tasmania in July 1833, disembarking at Pakanae on the
Hokianga
harbour. There he was welcomed by Moetara of the
local tribe, Ngati Korokoro, an event which
was later to provide the basis for the beginning of Old New Zealand. From
there he moved to Kohukohu, where he negotiated the
purchase of land and a house. While at Kohukohu, Maning engaged in
trade and lived as a Pākehā-Māori, apparently
fathering the child of a Māori woman. In 1837, however, he returned to Tasmania.
On his return to New Zealand in 1839, Maning purchased land and built a house
further up the Hokianga, at Onoke. He also
began to live with Moengaroa of Te Hikutu. Maning had four
children with her, and he also became close friends with her
brother, Hauraki. Maning’s experiences of this time
are also reflected in scenes of Old New Zealand. He opposed the Treaty
of Waitangi when it was brought to the area in February 1840, seemingly out of fear
that the Treaty would lead to curbs on his commercial
activities rather than from opposition to government per se;
he applied for, but failed to achieve, a government position
the following year. He also supported the government
campaign against Hone Heke and
Kawiti,
1845–6,
desirous of protection for settler interests. It was during
this campaign that Maning began to write his first book,
A History of the War in
the North Against the Chief Heke (1862).
Maning began
to turn away from Māori society after the deaths of
Hauraki (1845) and Moengaroa (1847). He became increasingly estranged
from his children, while his expanding business interests
transformed him from a trader with Māori to one of the
largest employers of Māori in the region during the
1850s. He also began to desire Pākehā company
and recognition. Maning therefore brought his business
activities to an end in the early 1860s and sought to become
more involved in government. Alex Calder argues that both A History of The War in the
North and Old
New Zealand were thus in part bids for
notice and patronage, and successful insofar as they
assisted his 1865 appointment as
Judge in the Native Land Court.
[(6)](#bibl-mani2001) Both were
published in an environment of conflict between Māori
and Pākehā — war had broken out in Taranaki in 1860 and Waikato in 1863 — that inevitably heightened
the interest with which Maning’s authoritative words were
received.
Some Comments on
Old New Zealand
Old New
Zealand is dominated from the start by the effusive
presence of its narrator. He is prone to digression, has a
lively sense of irony and appears to have few moral qualms.
The tale he relates is an attempt to place a few
sketches of old Maori life on record before the remembrance
of them has quite passed away
[(Preface)](#bibl-mani2001), and he does
this through relating his experience and knowledge of
Māori character, customs and behaviour. Thus the
narrative is also concerned with the consequences of contact
between Māori and Pākehā, evident in the
fact that it begins with his arrival on the shore of New
Zealand. The mode of this arrival — being carried from
ship to shore on the back of a Māori — is
however far from triumphal:
I felt at the time that the thing was a sort of failure
— a come down; the position was not graceful, or in
any way likely to suggest ideas of respect or awe, with my
legs projecting a yard or so from under each arm of my
bearer, holding on to his shoulders in the most painful,
cramped, and awkward manner.
[(Chapter 2)](#bibl-mani2001)
The situation soon becomes more farcical for his bearer
slips and leaves him wrong end uppermost,
drifting away with the tide, and ballasted with heavy
pistols, boots, tight clothes, and all the straps and
strings of civilisation.
[(Chapter 2)](#bibl-mani2001) Such a
self-aware sense of absurdity creates a feeling that the
narrator may be trusted as an accurate observer, and this is
powerfully reinforced by the authority of personal
experience: Pakehas who knew no better, called the
muru simply
‘robbery’…. But I speak…
[(Chapter 7)](#bibl-mani2001). Thus,
behind the text lies the reader’s knowledge of Maning’s life
as a Pākehā-Māori — “A Pakeha
Maori”, in fact, being the name under which it was
first published — knowledge that lends it
credibility.
Yet this self-deprecatory tone endorses a specific and
carefully constructed version of Māori culture. This
attributes to Māori negative qualities that it claims have
become irretrievably ingrained as a result of the
environment they live in:
As for the Maori people in general, they are neither
so good or so bad as their friends and enemies have
painted them, and I suspect they are pretty much like
what almost any other people would have become, if
subjected for ages to the same external
circumstances. For ages they have struggled against
necessity in all its shapes. This has given to them a
remarkable greediness for gain in every visible and
immediately tangible form. It has even left its mark on
their language.
[(Chapter 6)](#bibl-mani2001)
Those “external circumstances” have resulted
in a society governed by violence, superstition and greed.
Maning’s
propagation of this view during a time of war between
Māori and Pākehā leads Gibbons to suggest
that the popularity of Old New Zealand in large
measure rested on his carefully crafted production of the
stereotypical Māori that the settler society wanted to
believe in — cunning, shrewd, lacking in compassion,
careless of life, unregenerate.
[(Gibbons, 46)](#bibl-gibb1998) K.O. Arvidson is also
critical of Maning’s portrayal of Māori
for similar reasons:
No comparably literate book could have done more to
impress upon the minds of literate settlers a picture of
Maori savagery, inhumanity, and duplicity, so magnified
as to become in sum a portrait of Evil. Maning’s
descriptions of the Maori priests, the tohunga, who appear to have obsessed him,
continually reinforce this notion of Evil
[(273)](#bibl-arvi1981)
Yet it can be argued that the text is more divided in its
loyalties than Gibbons and Arvidson allow. For instance, while the
narrator felt a curious sensation at the time,
like what I fancied a man must feel who had just sold
himself, body and bones, to the devil
[(Chapter 8)](#bibl-mani2001) while the
tohunga lifted the tapu upon him, soon after it is
The perfect coolness of my old friend …
as well as his reasoning, [that] began to make me feel a
little disconcerted.
[(Chapter 8)](#bibl-mani2001) Simon During argues,
upon the basis of Maning’s discussion of tapu and
mana, For him there is not even any way of
finally judging whether the Pakeha or the Maori ought to win.
[(774)](#bibl-duri1989) Such ambivalence is
most clear at the end of Old New Zealand, when the narrator
confesses:
I get so confused, I feel just as if I was two
different persons at the same time. Sometimes I find
myself thinking on the Maori side, and then just
afterwards wondering if ‘we’ can lick the
Maori, and set the law upon its legs, which is the only
way to do it. I therefore hope the reader will make
allowance for any little apparent inconsistency in my
ideas, as I really cannot help it.
[(Chapter 15)](#bibl-mani2001)
It is the expression and acknowledgement of this
“apparent inconsistency” that helps Old New Zealand stand
out from its contemporary texts and ensures it is of
continuing interest.
Bibliography
Arvidson, K.O. “Cultural
Interaction in the Literature of New
Zealand” in Only Connect: Literary Perspectives East and
West, eds. Guy Amirthanayagam and
S.C. Harrex. Adelaide and
Honolulu:
Centre for Research in the New
Literatures in English and
East-West
Centre, 1981,
pp. 265–289.
Colquhoun,
David. “Maning, Frederick
Edward” in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Volume
I, 1769–1869,
ed. W.H. Oliver. Wellington:
Allen & Unwin
and Department of Internal
Affairs, 1990, pp. 265–266.
During, Simon. “What was the West?” in Meanjin 48(4), Summer 1989, pp. 759–776.
Gibbons,
Peter. “Non-Fiction” in The Oxford
History of New Zealand Literature in
English, ed. Terry
Sturm. Auckland:
Oxford University
Press, 2 ed., 1998, pp. 31–118.
Maning, F.E.Old New
Zealand and Other Writings. Ed. Alex
Calder. London and
New
York: Leicester University
Press, 2001.
A more detailed introduction to Maning’s career and works and a
bibliography of relevant criticism can be found in Calder’s
edition of Old New Zealand and Other Writings.
Selected Links
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.
Extensive biographical essay on Maning by New Zealand historian David Colquhoun.
[http://www.dnzb.govt.nz](http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/)
LEARN: New Zealand Literature File.
Online bibliography of Maning’s works, and of reviews,
theses, articles and books relating to his work. Hosted
by the University of Auckland Library. Last updated in
October 2002.
[http://www2.auckland.ac.nz/lbr/nzp/nzlit2/maning.htm](http://www2.auckland.ac.nz/lbr/nzp/nzlit2/maning.htm)
Timeframes.
Searchable database of pictures from the Alexander Turnbull
Library, Wellington containing two
portraits of Maning. Hosted by the National Library of
New Zealand.
[http://timeframes1.natlib.govt.nz/;internal&action=dialog.search.action](http://timeframes1.natlib.govt.nz/;internal&action=dialog.search.action)
Haven.
A website of an exhibition exploring cross-cultural
contact in Tasmania. Features an artistic
response to Maning by New Zealand jeweller, David McLeod. Site
hosted by Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart,
Tasmania.
[http://www.kitezh.com/haven/maning.htm](http://www.kitezh.com/haven/maning.htm)
and [http://www.kitezh.com/haven/artists/david.htm](http://www.kitezh.com/haven/artists/david.htm)
The New Zealand Wars/Nga Pakanga Whenua o Mua.
A website dedicated to the history of the New Zealand
Wars, within the context of which Maning lived and wrote. Site
maintained by Dr Danny Keenan, School of History,
Philosophy and Politics, Massey University, New
Zealand.
[http://www.newzealandwars.co.nz/](http://www.newzealandwars.co.nz/)
The Treaty of Waitangi.
Information on The Treaty of Waitangi from Te Ara: The
Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
[http://www.teara.govt.nz/newzealandinbrief/governmentandnation/1/en](http://www.teara.govt.nz/newzealandinbrief/governmentandnation/1/en)