The British politician and lawyer Sir John Eldon Gorst (1835 1916) arrived in New Zealand in 1860, shortly after the outbreak of the Taranaki Wars (from 1860 onwards), with idealistic intentions of working with Bishop Selwyn and the Maori. He took on various governmental roles that required contact with the Maori, including those of school inspector, magistrate and, later, Civil Commissioner for the Waikato region, whose powerful chiefs had not signed the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. In 1864 he published this book analysing the social and economic situation in New Zealand, the rapid deterioration...