Notes

This account of the first meeting between Ngati Tumatakokiri and Abel Tasman's crew sets the scene for how two peoples navigated difficult beginnings to find a 'meeting place' in pre-Treaty Aotearoa. The author tells the story of the interactions and events in the decades leading up to and following 1840. He shows how, in a world still shaped by Māori authority, early misunderstandings and violence gradually gave way to new ways of living alongside one another. In this middle ground, communities traded, intermarried, forged alliances and shaped each other's ways of life -- without either yet asserting cultural, political or economic dominance. The examination focuses predominantly on the period between 1814 and 1840 when, the author argues, both peoples lived/inhabited a 'middle ground' in which neither could dictate the political, economic or cultural rules.