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Buying the Land, Selling the Land: Governments and Maori Land on the North Island 1865-1921

Boast, Richard

This book is a study of the Crown's Maori land policy and practise between 1869 and 1929. Its span runs from the establishment of the Native Land Court to Gordon Coates' cessation of large-scale Crown purchasing. The main function of the Native Department was to purchase Maori land, and to the extent that the New Zealand state had a Maori policy, the focus was on acquisition of Maori land in the interests of closer settlement. Locked into complex legal structures which prevented them from turning their assets into capital and thus increasing their value, many Maori took the only realistic option available and sold. Boast examines government policy of the time in an attempt to balance understanding of not only the social and economic effects on Maori, but also the Crown's land policy motives. Advocates of expanded and state-controlled land purchasing included Sir Donald McLean, John Ballance and John McKenzie, who the author argues were part of a government driven by genuine, if blinkered, idealism.

Winner of the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, History category.

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