Flour and Sugar

(New 2011) In class we talked about Grey's policies after the 1840 conflicts. Having secured peace in the North and subdued the South he set about acquiring land, lots of land. With the help of McLean he purchased 33,000,000 acres (about half the country) almost all of the South island and a tenth of the North. Much of this was accomplished under the 'Flour & Sugar' policy. McLean used Hui to negotiate the sales of land, often exploiting tribal issues to encourage the dispossession of Maori from their land. Korero was often aided by the gifts which flowed to the Chiefs.


From http://lossenelin.livejournal.com/99938.html

"Settlers were dependent on Maori for markets, primary production, and coastal and river transport while Maori were dependent on the settlers for trade. By the 1850s Maori consumed an estimated £500,000 worth of imported European goods per year, and this want for European goods was a likely motivator for land sales, which were the easiest source of cash for Maori, although they were involved in many other economic ventures, and often working for wages in the Pakeha economy. Others sold land for different reasons; to attract Pakeha to Maori areas for trade, to meet debts and to gain capital either for the development of remaining land or for arms and ammunition.

From a Pakeha perspective the trade that occurred between the two groups was largely done for the benefit of settlement, for instance Governor George Grey's 'flour and sugar' policy of aid and education to Maori was focused on areas where he hoped to get land. In this pre-taxation era state funds were partly derived from profits on land transactions. Grey justified land deals where the Crown resold land at a profit on the basis that the real payment would be long term Maori prosperity, but in practice it was a mechanism for dispossession. Land sales also had the effect of allowing Maori entrepreneurs to emerge, using profit from land sales for themselves rather than their kin groups".

Increasingly the loss of land began to concern Maori, especially those who were aware of the impact on other indigenous peoples caused by land loss.