Declaration of Independence signed by northern chiefs

Thirty-four northern chiefs signed a Declaration of Independence at a hui called by the British Resident, James Busby, at his home at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands. This was one of several events that led eventually to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

On 20 March 1834, many of these chiefs had gathered at the same place, also at Busby’s invitation, to choose a national flag to fly on ships owned in New Zealand. But Busby’s hope that this conference would encourage the formation of a pan-tribal government had not yet been realised.

In the spring of 1835 Busby was presented with a new opportunity to advance this agenda. News arrived that a self-styled French baron, Charles de Thierry, had announced in Tahiti his intention to set up a ‘sovereign and independent state’ on land at Hokianga he claimed to have bought in the 1820s. The plan seemed far-fetched, but the possibility that de Thierry’s ambitions would provoke intertribal conflict could not be ruled out.

Busby speedily advised British subjects of the impending danger and called a meeting of 34 prominent chiefs. He persuaded them to sign a Declaration of Independence that asked King William IV ‘to be the parent of their infant state [and] its protector from all attempts upon its independence’. Calling themselves the United Tribes of New Zealand, the signatories also pledged to meet at Waitangi each year to ‘frame laws for the promotion of peace, justice and trade’.

The Colonial Office in London acknowledged the Declaration by promising that the King would protect Māori in ways ‘consistent with a due regard to the just rights of others and to the interests of His Majesty’s subjects’. Busby dubbed the Declaration the ‘Magna Charta of New Zealand’, and his superiors in New South Wales congratulated him on his initiative.

De Thierry did not arrive in New Zealand until two years after the signing of the Declaration. By then he was no longer seen as a threat. Busby continued to collect signatures, ending up with 52 (all but two of them from northern chiefs), but the group did not meet again as he had planned.

While the Confederation did not live up to Busby’s ambitions for it, it gave the United Kingdom a claim to influence in New Zealand that it was to exploit to the full at a third meeting of northern chiefs on the same lawn on 6 February 1840.

Image: Detail from 1835 Declaration of Independence