After the Constitution Act came into force in 1853, New Zealand was divided into six provinces—Auckland, New Plymouth (Taranaki), Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago—each with a superintendent and a provincial council. The central government consisted of a governor and a two-chamber legislature (General Assembly): a Legislative Council nominated by the crown, and a House of Representatives elected upon a low property franchise for a five-year term. This General Assembly did not meet until 1854; it then embarked on a quarrel with the acting governor, Col. Robert Henry Wynyard, that was not ended until the achievement of full responsible government—i.e., a system under which the governor could act in domestic matters only upon the advice of ministers enjoying the confidence of the elected chamber. Henry Sewell and James FitzGerald, of Canterbury, led the representatives in this struggle; heading the opposition against them was Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who, having first moved the resolution for responsible government, then secretly opposed it while serving as extra-official adviser to the acting governor. The Colonial Office (which oversaw the government of Britain’s overseas territories) conceded responsible government in 1856. The next governor, Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Gore Browne, reserved Māori affairs to the control of the governor alone.

For most purposes, during the 1850s New Zealand was administered not by central but by provincial institutions. These authorities (10 in number by the time of their abolition in 1876) directly affected settlers through their administration of land and control of immigration and public works. The native department, directly under the governor, bought land from the Māori; the provincial governments settled it, regulated immigration, and built roads and bridges. Until the wars of the 1860s, the central legislature was less important, though its ultimate authority remained.

Each province made use of revenue arising from land sales and depended on that revenue for its strength. Canterbury and Otago, with small Māori populations, cultivated prosperity by spending that revenue on communications, immigration, and education. Other provinces were either less fortunate or less wise and enjoyed less success. In the North Island the numerous and anxious Māori held on to desirable land. Here most of the land available for settlement had been taken up by the end of the 1850s, a good deal of it by speculators, and some of it was given away to attract immigrants. The island remained largely without roads until the 1870s, so impecunious were its governments. But by that time the major obstacle to settlement—the continuing power of the tribes—had been removed. This was the result of a decade of war.

Ethnic conflict

In the 1850s relations between settlers and Māori deteriorated. The settler population and the demand for land, especially pastoral land, increased. Many Māori, fearing for their future, became reluctant to sell more land. In the Taranaki province, where the land shortage was acute, both settlers and those Māori willing to sell were opposed by Wiremu Kīngi (Te Rangitāake), chief of Te Ātiawa. In the Waikato, where good land was coveted by settlers and speculators, an elderly chief, Te Wherowhero, became “king” in 1858, largely through the support of the Waikato and Maniopoto tribes, and reigned as King Pōtatau I. The Māori King Movement and the unrest in the Taranaki headed by Wiremu Kīngi (the two movements remained distinct though related) were opposed to further land sales.

The likelihood of conflict was not reduced by any particular wisdom in government policy. Gore Browne was guided in native policy by the head of the Native Land Purchase Department, Donald (later Sir Donald) McLean, who, responsive to settler demands, increased pressure on potential sellers. Grey’s caution and his recognition that a chief could veto sales proposed by any section of his tribe were forgotten. McLean sowed a rich harvest of distrust. Christopher Richmond, the member of the cabinet in charge of native affairs, was also a member of the House of Representatives from Taranaki and was fully responsive to the needs of his settler neighbours. The central ministry, theoretically unconcerned with native policy, could not, despite the promise of protection made to the Māori in the Treaty of Waitangi, neglect a matter so vital to the colony’s future. In 1859 the representative of the crown unwittingly supplied the occasion for the outbreak of civil strife.

Gore Browne accepted an offer to sell from a Taranaki subchief, Te Teira, and ignored the veto imposed by the paramount chief, Wiremu Kīingi. Early in 1860 troops were used to dislodge Kīngi from the land in question, the Waitara block. A decade of fighting began. In 1861 Grey was sent back for a second term as governor in the hope that he would again prove to be a peacemaker. In fact he accelerated the extension of conflict. Fearing that Auckland was menaced by the followers of the Māori king, he took defensive measures that could easily be interpreted as acts of aggression, and the fighting subsequently spread from Taranaki to the Waikato. Imperial troops, colonial militia, and Māori allies (for not all the tribes supported the Māori nationalist movement) had no easy task, but their victory could not be postponed for long. By the mid-1860s Māori resistance in the Taranaki and Waikato had ended. But the “king” tribes were by no means crushed, and the fear that they would embark on war again haunted the colony for many years.

In the later 1860s the fighting was of a different character, in which religion acted as a last, desperate stiffener of Māori resistance. Pai Mārire (Hauhauism), an amalgam of Jewish, Christian, and native beliefs, was the first (1862) of many movements in which the Māori, rejecting the religion of settler and missionary, put their own imprint on Christianity. Toward the end of the decade, Te Kooti organized resistance on the east coast of the North Island. He was the founder of another religious movement as well as a guerrilla of some note; his adaptation of Christianity, Ringatū, still has numerous followers. Te Kooti was never finally defeated, but by the early 1870s he had been forced to retreat into the “King Country” (the centre of the island), and he devoted the rest of his life to religious leadership.

An uneasy peace settled on the colony in 1870. Casualties had not been high, but the loss of life was serious for the tribes concerned. Especially in those areas in which the Māori king retained some authority, defeat led to a period of withdrawal from settler society. Resentment was deepened by a punitive policy of land confiscation adopted by the victors, a policy improper in its nature and made worse in some places by undiscriminating application to “guilty” and “innocent” tribes alike. The Māori future looked bleak. By the Native Land Act of 1862, private land transactions between settler and Māori had been legalized, and during the next 40 years the Māori lost most of their best land. In 1867 four seats in the General Assembly were created for Māori members and Māori men gained the vote, but many years were to elapse before Māori numbers, morale, and confidence would revive throughout the country.