Two Worlds: First Meetings Between Maori and Europeans, 1642-1772

by Anne Salmond

This book is a provocative synthesis of two previously separate views of the dramatic, action-packed first meetings of Maori and Europeans in New Zealand. What were those first meetings? From one contemporary perspective - that of the tribal Maori of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - the first encounters with European explorers such as Tasman and Cook were, in Salmond's words, 'simply puzzling extraordinary interludes in the life of the various tribal communities'. From the vantage point of the Europeans, however, the view was quite different. These contacts were simply more inevitable episodes in the continuing story of their 'discovery' of the world. Histories of these first meetings have until now drawn almost exclusively from the latter perspective. As a result, accounts of this contact depict the Europeans as being actively in charge of the drama, the explorers as heroes - while the Maori either sit as passive spectators or hide behind cloaks and tattooed masks. Two Worlds is a penetrating rethinking of that view. Drawing on local tribal knowledge as well as European accounts, Anne Salmond shows those first meetings in a new light. Both Maori and European protagonists were active, all fully human, following their own practical, political and mythological agendas, 'quite unlike those of their modern-day descendants in many ways'. The result is a work of trail-blazing significance in which many popular misconceptions and bigotries to do with common perceptions of traditional Maori society are revealed. It also opens up new possibilities in the international study of European exploration and 'discovery'.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Dame Mary Anne Salmond DBE (née Thorpe, born 16 November 1945) is a New Zealand anthropologist, environmentalist and writer.

Reviews

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two Worlds is the first in the three-book journey that culminated in the very popular Trial of the Cannibal Dog (see my review). It is probably a good thing that I am reading them out of order, because Two Worlds is even better than Cannibal Dog, and my assessment of that book could have been affected if I had read Two Worlds first.

Telling the stories of the first three contacts between Maori and European, it begins with Tasman, moves onto the first Cook expedition, and ends with that tragedy of misunderstandings, de Surville's sojourn in the Bay of Islands. This last section is an absolute page-turner. It reads like a novel, and is almost impossible to put down.

In each section, Salmond carefully delineates the social situation in the discoverer's home country at the time, and then describes the background of the area in New Zealand the ship visited, so that comparisons are invited, drawing the reader into the book. I wondered if I loved this study because of my interest in the Endeavour voyage, so asked my book group to read and discuss it. They all loved it. Their only complaint was that it was heavy to carry around. They had borrowed their copies, but just about everyone said she was going to buy it for her own collection.

A truly marvellous study, thoroughly recommended.

[Peter G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Salmond’s Two Worlds takes as its subject the sparse early encounters between Māori and Europeans that span from the time of Able Tasman’s ‘discovery’ of New Zealand in 1642 through to the doomed voyage of Marion Du Fresne in 1772. In that inimitable Anne Salmond way it is written as a combination of history and anthropology and told in a gripping accessible way. Each section begins with a broad reconstruction of the background of the voyagers to New Zealand and the social and economic situation of their life at home, then pairs that with information about the areas they ended up visiting. Each section ends with an itemisation of the ethnographic information they gathered as they arrived in the country.

More than anything else, this book is a treasure trove of early primary documents of the people curated by Salmond to get a sense of how odd and unsettling it must be to try and understand a group of people whose worldviews are so different. Māori voice is present throughout and draws upon pūrākau and facts passed down through generations. For all that though, the focus is really on the European travellers and their assumptions they made about the people they were meeting. Salmond has a writerly sense of the ironic in her curation of the documents, and, as readers, we can’t help but build up a picture through Cook and his colleagues' voyage of how alien their scientific approach to contact actually seems. The most engaging part for me, however, detailed the voyages of Du Fresne whose interaction with the Māori in the Bay of Islands unfolds with the tense plotting of a suspense novel.

I think this book is a fascinating and accessible look at a historical period we are more likely to skim past than dig deep into. Fully recommended.

[Simon Mee · Rating 5 out of 5]

While about 30 years old, this retelling of the first four European explorations of New Zealand (Dutch, British and two French) still circulates widely in bookstores and libraries. While the date of first full colonization of New Zealand by Maori has since been pushed back by about 500 years from the 800 AD date stated in this book, the rest of the information within still feels fresh and insightful, particularly that pre-discovery Maori were not a static society.

While only James Cook's visit could be described as comprehensive, all four show how the mental framework of the Europeans and Maori clashed. Both sides were willing to resort to violence and kidnappings (see Cape Kidnappers for an example) where misunderstandings arose, although the dynamics between the parties changed over time due to trade and communication. However, more time together was not always better, as Marion Du Fresne fatally found out.

While New Zealand specific, the book has wider appeal, both in the time taken to describe the different elements of Maori life (i.e. what kind of things were important to the first explorers?), and that even how even observers could be have their frames of reference changed. The British, having spent three months amongst the Tahitians and, as speculated by Salmond, altered in their view of beauty, found Maori women attractive. The French, lacking such exposure to Polynesians before visiting New Zealand, strongly thought otherwise.

Hard to go past as a real life first contact set of stories.

[Cameron Coombe · Rating 5 out of 5]

In-depth account of the earliest meetings between Maaori and Europeans, covering Tasman, Cook, and two French voyages. Because of the extent of his voyage, the material dealing with Cook takes up most of the book. Salmond works with journals and later tribal accounts, with some comment on the archaeological record, in order to provide detailed pictures. She focusses not simply on European perception (though because of the breadth of the written evidence this tends to dominate anyway), but how Maaori perceived their visitors. There are some important acts of cruelty and impunity on the part of Europeans that New Zealanders would do well to familiarise themselves with. There is also opportunism and violence on part of the Maaori, but the reader should remember that it was their land and territory that was being entered into. There is also mutual misunderstanding at points, sometimes producing tragic results. Highly recommended, I have next volume that I will begin reading soon.

[Geoff Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely required reading if you want to understand New Zealand and the history of dealing with Māori by white settlers
Should be compulsory reading in New Zealand schools

[AskHistorians]

This work looks at the earliest meetings of Māori and European, and analyses the effects of these encounters.