Pakeha Slaves, Maori Masters

While people are aware of the atrocities of the black slave trade, few are aware of the enslavement and trafficking of Europeans in 19th-century New Zealand. Hierarchical and assertive Maori tribal societies considered all Pakeha (non-Maori, mainly Europeans) living within their power and under their protection as chattel slaves (personal property) or demi-slaves (tributary vassals). For Maori, the sailors, convicts, missionaries, traders, whalers, and sawyers who were captured or welcomed were viewed as the property of their rangatira (chiefs) and existed primarily to serve their masters.

While this book discusses tributary vassals, its main focus is the Europeans seized in violence who lived and sometimes died as taurekareka Pakeha (white war slaves) between the 1790s and 1880s. It examines when, where, why, and how Maori obtained these slaves and the types of Europeans seized. The book reveals how British authority had little effect beyond the European settlements until the 1860s and how its citizens remained vulnerable to enslavement in Maori-dominated regions to the 1880s.