In his book Fairness and Freedom, historian David Fischer provides some interesting insights into the world-view in Great Britain which shaped the colonisation of New Zealand in the nineteenth century. He notes that the New Zealand experience was different from what occurred in the British imperialist and colonial experience up until that time.
The Colonial Office was run by Sir James Stephen for much of the first half of the nineteenth century. He took a particular interest in New Zealand.
Stephen summarized his purposes [for New Zealand] in a single sentence: "The two Cardinal points to be kept in view in establishing a regular colony in New Zealand are, first, the protection of the aborigines, and secondly the introduction among the colonists of the principle of self-government, to the utmost extent in which that principle can be reconciled with allegiance to the crown."
Here was an attitude profoundly different from that of the leaders of the first British Empire. When Sir James Stephen came into his office, three decades had passed since American independence, and a great tide of change had transformed the Western world. The American and French revolutions had set in motion new ideas of liberty, equality, and democracy. Stephen himself had been strongly supportive of the American cause. . . .
Another major event of profound importance was the evangelical movement, which transformed the religious life of Protestant nations in America and northern Europe. It had a major impact on Britain's ruling elites, and on Sir James Stephen in particular. In combination with the values of the Enlightenment, the evangelical movement changed British attitudes toward other people throughout the world.
In Britain that new attitude appeared in the formation of the Aborigines Protection Society and the Church Missionary Society which fiercely defended the rights of Maori in New Zealand. . . . Yet another factor was the radical transformation in British attitudes toward slavery. A nation that had taken a leading part in the African slave trade during the eighteenth century had now become the world leader in abolition. In 1833, Parliament abolished slavery in the British West Indies and put slaves on a path to freedom through much of the British Empire. . . .
Under [Sir James Stephen's] direction, New Zealand was founded in the spirit of these new trends. It was one of the very few colonies in any empire that had no system of race slavery, no penal settlements, no plantation serfdom, no encomienda, no indentured servitude in the eighteenth century sense, and no contract bondage, which was spreading widely through the world in the nineteenth century. This new tendency was not a function of New Zealand's climate, terrain, or any material condition. It was a deliberate act of moral choice by British statesmen. Systems of forced labor never developed in New Zealand, because by the time it was colonised, slavery was strongly opposed by British governments in general, and by Sir James Stephen in particular. [David Fischer, Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies, New Zealand and the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 79f.]
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