George Grey
Sir George Grey, KCB was a British soldier, explorer, colonial administrator and writer. He served in a succession of governing positions: Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, Governor of Cape Colony, and the 11th premier of New Zealand. He played a key role in the colonisation of New Zealand, and both the purchase and annexation of Māori land.
Grey was born in Lisbon, Portugal, just a few days after his father, Lieutenant-Colonel George Grey, was killed at the Battle of Badajoz in Spain. He was educated in England. After military service and two explorations in Western Australia, Grey became Governor of South Australia in 1841. He oversaw the colony during a difficult formative period. Despite being less hands-on than his predecessor George Gawler, his fiscally responsible measures ensured the colony was in good shape by the time he departed for New Zealand in 1845.
Grey was the most influential figure during the European settlement of New Zealand. Governor of New Zealand initially from 1845 to 1853, he was governor during the initial stages of the New Zealand Wars. Learning Māori to fluency, he became a scholar of Māori culture, compiling Māori mythology and oral history and publishing it in translation in London. He developed a cordial relationship with the powerful rangatira Pōtatau Te Wherowhero of Tainui, in order to deter Ngāpuhi from invading Auckland. He was knighted in 1848. In 1854, Grey was appointed Governor of Cape Colony in South Africa, where his resolution of hostilities between indigenous South Africans and European settlers was praised by both sides. After separating from his wife and developing a severe opium addiction, Grey was again appointed Governor of New Zealand in 1861, three years after Te Wherowhero, who had established himself the first Māori King in Grey's absence, had died. The Kiingitanga posed a significant challenge to the British push for sovereignty, and with Ngāpuhi absent from the movement, Grey found himself challenged on two sides. He struggled to reuse his skills in negotiation to maintain peace with Māori, and his relationship with Te Wherowhero's successor Tāwhiao deeply soured. Turning on his former allies, Grey began an aggressive crackdown on Tainui and launched the Invasion of the Waikato in 1863, with 14,000 Imperial and colonial troops attacking 4,000 Māori and their families. Appointed in 1877, he served as Premier of New Zealand until 1879, where he remained a symbol of colonialism.
By political philosophy a Gladstonian liberal and Georgist, Grey eschewed the class system to be part of Auckland's new governance he helped to establish. Cyril Hamshere argues that Grey was a "great British proconsul", although he was also temperamental, demanding of associates, and lacking in some managerial abilities. For the wars of territorial expansion against Māori which he started, he remains a controversial and divisive figure in New Zealand.
Early life
Grey was born in Lisbon, Portugal, the only son of Lieutenant-Colonel George Grey, of the 30th Regiment of Foot, who was killed at the Battle of Badajoz in Spain just a few days before. His mother, Elizabeth Anne, on the balcony of her hotel in Lisbon, overheard two officers speak of her husband's death and this brought on the premature birth of the child. She was the daughter of a retired soldier turned Irish clergyman, Major later Reverend John Vignoles. Grey's grandfather was Owen Wynne Gray. Grey's uncle was John Gray, who was Owen Wynne Gray's son from his second marriage.Grey was sent to board at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford in Surrey, but ran away and after some tutoring by the liberal idealist, Rev. Richard Whately, entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1826. Early in 1830, he was gazetted ensign in the 83rd Regiment of Foot. In 1830, his regiment having been sent to Ireland, he developed much sympathy with the Irish peasantry whose misery made a great impression on him. He was promoted lieutenant in 1833 and obtained a first-class certificate at the examinations of the Royal Military College, in 1836.
Exploration
In 1837, at the age of 25, Grey led an ill-prepared expedition that explored North-West Australia. British settlers in Australia at the time knew little of the region and only one member of Grey's party had been there before. It was believed possible at that time that one of the world's largest rivers might drain into the Indian Ocean in North-West Australia; if that were found to be the case, the region it flowed through might be suitable for colonisation. Grey, with Lieutenant Franklin Lushington, of the 9th Regiment of Foot, offered to explore the region. On 5 July 1837, they sailed from Plymouth in command of a party of five, the others being Lushington; Dr William Walker, a surgeon and naturalist; and Corporals John Coles and Richard Auger of the Royal Sappers and Miners. Joining the party at Cape Town were Sapper Private Robert Mustard, J.C. Cox, Thomas Ruston, Evan Edwards, Henry Williams, and Robert Inglesby. In December they landed at Hanover Bay. Travelling south, the party traced the course of the Glenelg River. After experiencing boat wrecks, near-drowning, becoming completely lost, and Grey himself being speared in the hip during a skirmish with Aboriginal people, the party gave up. After being picked up by HMS Beagle and the schooner Lynher, they were taken to Mauritius to recover. Lieutenant Lushington was then mobilised to rejoin his regiment in the First Anglo-Afghan War. In September 1838 Grey sailed to Perth hoping to resume his adventures.In February 1839 Grey embarked on a second exploration expedition to the north, where he was again wrecked with his party, again including Surgeon Walker, at Kalbarri. They were the first Europeans to see the Murchison River, but then had to walk to Perth, surviving the journey through the efforts of Kaiber, a Whadjuk Noongar man, who organised food and what water could be found. At about this time, Grey learnt the Noongar language.
Due to his interest in Aboriginal culture in July 1839, Grey was promoted to captain and appointed temporary Resident Magistrate at King George Sound, Western Australia, following the death of Sir Richard Spencer, the previous Resident Magistrate.
Marriage and children
On 2 November 1839 at King George Sound, Grey married Eliza Lucy Spencer, daughter of the late Government Resident, Sir Richard Spencer. Their only child, born in 1841 in South Australia, died aged five months and was buried at the West Terrace Cemetery. It was not a happy marriage. Grey, obstinate in his domestic affairs as in his first expedition, accused his wife unjustly of flirting with Rear-Admiral Sir Henry Keppel on the voyage to Cape Town taken in 1860, and sent her away. Per her obituary, she was an avid walker, reader of literature, devout churchwoman, exceptional hostess and valued friend in her life away from him. It was noted that she had keen insight into character. After their separation, Grey began the habitual abuse of opium, and struggled to regain his tenacity in maintaining peace between indigenous people and British colonisers.Grey adopted Annie Maria Matthews in 1861, following the death of her father, his half-brother, Sir Godfrey Thomas. She married Seymour Thorne George on 3 December 1872 on Kawau Island.
Governor of South Australia
Grey was the third Governor of South Australia, from May 1841 to October 1845. Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord John Russell, was impressed by Grey's report on governing indigenous people. This led to Grey's appointment as governor.Grey replaced George Gawler, under whose stewardship the colony had become bankrupt through massive spending on public infrastructure. Gawler was also held responsible for the illegal retribution exacted by Major Thomas Shuldham O'Halloran on an Aboriginal tribe, some of whose members had murdered all 25 survivors of the Maria shipwreck. Grey was governor during another mass murder: the Rufus River Massacre, of at least 30 Aboriginals, by Europeans, on 27 August 1841.
Governor Grey sharply cut spending. The colony soon had full employment, and exports of primary products were increasing. Systematic emigration was resumed at the end of 1844. Gawler, to whom Grey ascribed every problem in the colony, undertook projects to alleviate unemployment that were of lasting value. The real salvation of the colony's finances was the discovery of copper at Burra Burra in 1845.
Aboriginal Witnesses Act
In 1844, Grey enacted a series ordinances and amendments first entitled the Aborigines' Evidence Act and later known as the Aboriginal Witnesses Act. The act, which was created to "facilitate the admission of the unsworn testimony of Aboriginal inhabitants of South Australia and parts adjacent", stipulated that unsworn testimony given by Australian Aboriginals would be inadmissible in court. A major consequence of the act in the following decades in Australian history was the frequent dismissal of evidence given by Indigenous Australians in massacres perpetrated against them by European settlers.First term as governor of New Zealand
Grey served as Governor of New Zealand twice: from 1845 to 1853, and from 1861 to 1868.During this time, European settlement accelerated, and in 1859 the number of Pākehā came to equal the number of Māori, at around 60,000 each. Settlers were keen to obtain land and some Māori were willing to sell, but there were also strong pressures to retain land – in particular from the Māori King Movement. Grey had to manage the demand for land for the settlers to farm and the commitments in the Treaty of Waitangi that the Māori chiefs retained full "exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties." The treaty also specifies that Māori will sell land only to the Crown. The potential for conflict between the Māori and settlers was exacerbated as the British authorities progressively eased restrictions on land sales after an agreement at the end of 1840 between the company and Colonial Secretary Lord John Russell, which provided for land purchases by the New Zealand Company from the Crown at a discount price, and a charter to buy and sell land under government supervision. Money raised by the government from sales to the company would be spent on assisting migration to New Zealand. The agreement was hailed by the company as "all that we could desire... our Company is really to be the agent of the state for colonizing NZ." The Government waived its right of pre-emption in the Wellington region, Wanganui and New Plymouth in September 1841.
Following his term as Governor of South Australia, Grey was appointed the third Governor of New Zealand in 1845. During the tenure of his predecessor, Robert FitzRoy, violence over land ownership had broken out in the Wairau Valley in the South Island in June 1843, in what became known as the Wairau Affray. It was only in 1846 that the war leader Te Rauparaha was arrested and imprisoned by Governor Grey without charge, which remained controversial amongst the Ngāti Toa people.