Financing New Zealand 1860-1880: Maori land and the wealth tax effect

Abstract

This paper is the second in a series documenting the financing of colonial New Zealand. It focuses more specifically on an analysis of data for the two decades beginning 1860 (20 years after the signing of The Treaty of Waitangi) through to the end of the 1870s. Drawing on archival sources, the paper reflects on the wealth tax effect of Maori land confiscations introduced under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, followed by requisition of land through the Public Works Land Act 1865. We show how these methods of land requisition were executed through the 1860s and 1870s, and became a major source of Crown revenue. Our central argument in this paper is that these Acts were, in substance, if not in form, a means of taxing away from Maori the only assets in their possession. In that such legislation was targeted at one group in particular, these revenue appropriations have much in common with more recent land appropriations in Zimbabwe and Palestine.