F. E. Maning, 1811–1883

Abstract

Of all the beachcombers, traders, missionaries and explorers who wrote accounts of life in early New Zealand, and whose writings document the unfolding encounter between the indigenous Māori and European in the years preceding and immediately following the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), one writer has centre stage: Frederick Edward Maning. His significance is partly a matter of reputation and influence: his two semi-autobiographical studies of early New Zealand, the History of the War in the North Against the Chief Heke (1862) and Old New Zealand (1863), are lively and engaging books that have remained in print and been widely read; he is the anonymous authority behind Freud, Frazer, Margaret Mead and others on Māori customs like tapu and muru; aspects of his account of the first Anglo-Māori war are still cited as gospel in recent history books, television documentaries, and ethnohistorical reconstructions.