Cook was an explorer, not a coloniser

Mark Stocker writes:

This article will not engage in the vexed question of Cook’s impact on New Zealand history, other than to say that his voyages – and tragic death – preceded any significant European settlement by decades. Therefore, holding him to any personal, adverse responsibility here is both silly and misplaced. The same goes for a North Island tribal chief executive’s characterisation of Cook as ‘a barbarian’ when the whole ethos behind Cook’s voyages was specifically not imperial conquest but that noble Enlightenment goal (trashed by postcolonial academics in recent years), ‘dare to know’. All this and more has been said in the columns of History Reclaimed, when Robert Tombs explained why ‘Scapegoating Cook is a facile response to problems that we are far from having solved. We can’t hide 21st century failings by blaming Cook’.

Cook was an explorer. He never left crew members behind.

It is the vandals, not Captain Cook, who are blind. Their defacement of his statue is an emotionally immature and ill-educated act of copycat vandalism, probably influenced by the recent uprooting of his Melbourne statue. Smashing Cook’s face helps no one’s understanding of history and does nothing to allay the suffering of indigenous peoples as a consequence of the arrival of Europeans. His complex and controversial legacy in Aotearoa [New Zealand] is best addressed by having an explanatory caption beside the statue, complemented by smartphone accessible QR codes, providing a range of interpretations. Indigenous responses would be central to this.

That is an excellent idea.