Nations commonly have suffered at some stage in their history a civil war, a time when tension between competing interests or conceptions of the nation descended into armed conflict. They are not experiences the nation finds easy to commemorate. They are not like a war of independence or a fight to repel an invading force. Civil wars seldom leave the nation united. The tensions that gave rise to them are seldom resolved to the satisfaction of all sides. Even centuries later, a commemoration is liable to reawaken the past for no useful purpose.
That is why a petition for a national day to commemorate the New Zealand Wars, as they are now called, is not a good idea. The petition was presented to Parliament on Tuesday by students of Otorohanga College in the King Country with the support of Tainui and the MP for the Maori electorate of Hauraki-Waikato, Nanaia Mahuta.
Ms Mahuta, in an article co-authored with AUT historian Paul Moon in the Herald yesterday, suggested a day should be set aside to commemorate not only the wars over land settlement in the 1860s but all the 19th century conflicts, including the "musket wars" between Maori that preceded the Treaty of Waitangi. Do we really want to commemorate those? Quite apart from the resentments those raids and invasions can still awaken, a national reminder of the scale of tribal conflict in the decades before colonisation might put an end to all the modern angst about why chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi. They needed the law and order enforced by the strongest world power of that time, though probably they did not foresee that government would be handed so quickly to the settlers.
The hunger for farmland for a rapidly increasing settler population soon reached the limits of tribes' willingness to sell. The means by which the law was used to divide tribes and obtain title to land might not bear scrutiny today, and the tactics adopted by "rebel" Maori are easy to understand. But it is also understandable that the establishment of a rival "King movement" would be seen as a challenge to constitutional authority and provide a ready excuse for Auckland's hungrier settlers to ferment the Waikato war.
Auckland was the colonial capital and opinion was divided on the need to respond to the King movement. The Herald, we should acknowledge, was for war. When historical conflict becomes the subject of a national commemoration day, both sides tend to look more favourably on their forebears. Howick, Otahuhu, Tuakau and other towns would rightfully mark their military origins. The students of Otorohanga College can be proud of the history around them. The battle sites should be better marked and their stories better known. They are part of our shared heritage.
