Review of Keith Sinclair, Kinds of Peace: Maori People After the Wars, 1870–85

KEITH SINCLAIR shows that there has been a gap in our race relations historiography: the period after the New Zealand wars has been neglected. Sinclair sets out to remedy this neglect with his latest book. He examines the establishment of diplomatic relations in the King Country between the Maori King, Tawhiao, and the colonial governments. He reassesses the role the Parihaka prophets, Te Whiti and Tohu, played in the failure of diplomatic relations and the resulting 'chaos' in Taranaki in the 1870s. He also examines Maori who followed neither King nor prophet but who became involved in Parliamentary politics, Maori Komiti (Committee) or East Coast land Repudiation movements. That is, he focuses on post-war Maori political accommodation to, and resistance and protest against Europeans. Above all, he questions the idea that Maori became alienated after the wars. This idea was promoted .by M.P.K. Sorrenson in his 1956 thesis which focused on the purchase of Maori land. Sinclair argues that rather than 'giving in', Maori continued a vigorous response to their situation, at least until a denouement in the early 1880s. I will return to this point but I want, first, to put Sinclair's book into a wider historiographical context for, oddly, he distances himself from the debate. He claims to have 'no thesis'. He states simply that there has been a growth in historical research on race relations since the late 1950s and that the focus ofhis book and his analysis is 'rather different from' that of recent historians (pp. 8-9). Do not be put off by this disclaimer! Sinclair's latest book contributes to a debate which he helped to set in motion 30 years ago. The task, in retrospect, has been to challenge the interpretation of nineteenth-century race relations as a 'dark age' for Maori.