Colonial and Anticolonial Credit: The Native Lands Acts and Te Peeke o Aotearoa

In the 1860s and 1870s Native Lands Acts facilitated colonial appropriation of huge amounts Māori land. The acts, as is commonly known, were explicitly implemented to destroy ‘communism’ identified foundational society, sought achieve this by ‘individualising’ land title. However, in addition movement individualisation, acts fundamentally enacted relied upon financialisation lands, their transformation into securities against debts. This paper examines weaponisation credit a means division seizure contrasts with anticolonial deployment form Te Peeke o Aotearoa. Founded 1885, situated within broader politics unification defence land, Aotearoa was an exclusively alternative prevailing financial institutions that not only reasserted economic autonomy but threatened weaken fabric project.