interface between settler and indigenous New Zealand. As the weight of settler
numbers and expectations increased, those mediations failed. The central
North Island descended into frontier warfare from 1861 to 1864. While indi-
vidual battles were evenly contested, the wars could only have one outcome:
Maˉori lands confiscated and opened for resettlement. King Country became
a quasi‑autonomous Maˉori region of the central North Island (King 2003,
p. 216),^10 which would eventually open up with the completion of the
Auckland–Wellington railway in 1908. The settlement of the North Island
interior from the 1870s^11 constituted a double frontier (south from Auckland
and north from Wellington) to which Frederick Jackson Turner’s explanation
of American identity by its frontier could be applied, though not necessarily
affirmed. These North Island re‑settlers would underpin New Zealand’s dis-
tinctive physiocracy—rule by small farmers who‘lay above the threshold of
peasantry’(Bertram 2009, p. 554)—in thefirst two-thirds of the twentieth
century.
Impractical access to Auckland in the 1860s sailing ship era (Brooking 1996,
p. 41) meant that, once the North Island conflicts were‘resolved’, the seat of
colonial government would be shifted in 1865 to the still-small Wellington
settlement (Moon 2010, p. 80). Wellington policy was to connect the prov-
inces, by standardizing time, creating a national telegraph system (Palenski
2012), and borrowing on London to build steamship facilities and interpro-
vincial railways. The political mastermind here was the Colonial Treasurer,
Julius Vogel (Dalziel 1986).^12 Vogel was a persuasive business progressive who
became renowned for large-scale borrowing on the London market tofinance
national infrastructure and immigration. The enhanced revenue-collecting
capacity of central over provincial government was intrinsic to thefinancial
deals Vogel was negotiating. Debt service would also be facilitated by exten-
sive growth as a consequence of Vogel’s scheme of subsidized immigration.
The bold‘think big’programme of the 1870s formed the economic basis of
New Zealand’s nationhood.
With national connectedness progressing fast, economies of scale came to
favour unified central government. The abolition of provincial government
formed the political basis for New Zealand nationhood within the British
(^10) Named in reference to the Kingitanga (Ballantyne 2009, p. 113) movement, made up mainly
ofiwi(tribes) who did not sign the Treaty of Waitangi. While the Maˉori King (or Queen) retains a
significant ceremonial role in New Zealand’s increasingly formally bicultural constitution, bigiwi
such as Ngaˉpuhi and Ngaˉti Porou contribute little to Kingitanga. Theseiwiclashed with the
Kingitanga over, for example, First World War conscription. Maˉori within government rejected
Maˉori exemption from conscription (http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/maori-in-first-world-
war/resistence-to-conscription (accessed 20 November 2015)). 11
In general, the term‘land selection’is much less common in New Zealand than Australian
historiography, though it was used (e.g. Brooking 1996, p. 70). 12
His vision was presented in the 1870 Budget. Vogel later became premier (1873–75, 1876).
Keith Rankin