[New Zealand's first Governor, Captain William] Hobson was experienced neither as a politician nor a diplomat when he arrived in New Zealand in January 1840 to take up his appointment as Lieutenant Governor. A successful but unremarkable naval career had done little to prepare him for this posting and in retrospect, the Colonial Office's selection of Hobson as New Zealand's first Governor was ill-advised, and perhaps even careless.
Had New Zealand been a colony with a negligible European settlement, Hobson may well have been equal to the task, but by 1840 the country had already witnessed two decades of increasing European intervention, with the accompanying emergence of factionalism between the various interest groups that had by then established themselves. Hobson's arrival stirred the ambitions of the missionaries, obstructed the designs of the land speculators, and unsettled the expectations of many of the British immigrants. Moreover, the whole colony was couched in intrigue, which Hobson initially approached as a naive outsider.
To complicate matters even further, Hobson had to contend with the instructions from his political masters in London. The policy he was expected to follow was sometimes vague and frequently impractical in its implementation. The delay of several months for communications between New Zealand and London often left the Governor marooned in an island of opposition and hostility.
- Paul Moon, Hobson: Governor of New Zealand 1840-1842, Auckland, 1998, p.306
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