Maori wars justifications of continentalism to militant advocacy of intervention beyond the borders of North America to the Caribbean and Central America Under the guise of Manifest Destiny, American filibusters supported or engaged in revolutionary movements in Nicaragua and Cuba “Young America,” a political and literary group affiliated with the Democratic Party, advocated armed intervention in the Caribbean and urged American support of revolutionary uprisings in Giuseppe Mazzini’s Italy and in the Hungary of Louis Kossuth Beginning in 1885 a new Manifest Destiny arose, popularized by John Fiske, the historian-philosopher and Darwinian evolutionist Fiske extolled the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon race and looked forward to the time when its institutions would be diffused around the world Congregational clergyman Josiah Strong embraced Manifest Destiny in the same year when he linked “a pure Christianity,” “civil liberty,” Anglo-Saxonism, and Darwinism, and declared that the Anglo-Saxon was “divinely commissioned to be his brother’s keeper.” He predicted a “competition of races” in which Anglo-Saxons would prevail In the 1890s, the Republican Party endorsed Manifest Destiny and identified itself with intervention and insular imperialism in the Caribbean and the Pacific President William McKinley endorsed the idealism expressed by Manifest Destiny when he justified his decision to retain the Philippine Islands at the end of the Spanish-American War Other Republicans spoke of America’s mission to regenerate and extend the blessings of civilization to less fortunate peoples around the world Although the phrase Manifest Destiny fell into disuse in the 20th century, the sentiments expressed by the slogan have continued Its idealism can be found in modern American foreign policy statements that link U.S operations overseas with an American mission to spread liberty, freedom, and democracy See also Darwin, Charles; Lewis and Clark Expedition; political parties in the United States Further reading: Horsman, Reginald Race and Manifest Destiny: the Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; McDougall, Walter A Promised Land, Crusader State: the American Encounter with the World Since 1776 New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997; Sampson, Robert D John L O’ Sullivan and His Times Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2003 Louis B Gimelli 257 Maori wars The Maori wars, also known as the New Zealand Land Wars, stretched from 1843 to 1872 These continued periods of conflict occurred because of the British colonization of New Zealand, a process that began in the late 18th century In 1840 the British officially annexed New Zealand as a colony with the signing of the Waitangi Treaty, which formally allowed the British to colonize certain parts of the archipelago and provided for the Maori to retain many of their territorial homelands But the Waitangi Treaty held the British government to contradictory positions of protecting the Maori people while at the same time allowing European immigrants to colonize parts of the islands Since there was only so much land available within the archipelago, land and cultural clashes inevitably occurred between British settlers and the native Maori After the Waitangi Treaty, there was a continued influx of British settlers, driven by the New Zealand Company, which promoted emigration from the British Isles to New Zealand As the British settlers increasingly sought land, they began to try to purchase land from the Maori This was a problem for the Maori, however, because there was not a concept of individual property ownership within their society Property was held not by the individual, as in the British tradition, but by the group as a whole Also, the Maori who signed the Waitangi Treaty provided for the use, not necessarily the sale, of land Because the Maori did not individually own property there were a number of battles fought between different Maori groups when a small leader sold land to settlers The Wairau Affray, otherwise known to the settlers as the Wairau Massacre, was the first bloody conflict in New Zealand A neighboring Maori group killed 22 settlers from Nelson, a city created by the New Zealand Company, when the colonizers tried to use a dubious treaty to expand into the neighboring Wairau Valley This was soon followed by the Flagstaff War or Heke’s Rebellion, a war in Northern New Zealand where Hene Heke and other Maori leaders battled against the British, who were aligned with Tamati Waka Nene’s Maori group Eventually the British and the “loyalist” Maori broke the pa, an earthen fort, defense of the Maori in late 1846, but only after a long siege campaign employed by the new governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey Grey gave clemency to Heke and the losing Maori groups, thus ending the Flagstaff War After a peaceful decade in the 1850s, the tension between the Maori and the settlers began to climax