Asa Kowals-Rose | Blog for RFILP

In my research, I’ve been reading about the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. This agreement between William Hobson, the first Governor of New Zealand and numerous Maori chiefs established British sovereignty over the islands. This treaty was different than most of the ones negotiated in the United States and Canada around the same time. Whereas American Indian treaties intended to strip tribes of land, the Treaty of Waitangi ostensibly protected Maori sovereignty, including control of tribal land. This, unsurprisingly, was frequently ignored by the government of New Zealand, but it nonetheless made indigenous-settler relations on the islands different from those in other British settler states.