New Zealand Official Yearbook 2006

New Zealand has a shorter human history than any other country. The precise date of settlement is a matter of debate, but current understanding is that the first arrivals came from East Polynesia in the 13th century. It was not until 1642 that Europeans became aware the country existed.

The original Polynesian settlers discovered the country on deliberate voyages of exploration, navigating by ocean currents, winds and stars. The navigator credited in some traditions with discovering New Zealand is Kupe. Some time later, the first small groups arrived from Polynesia. Now known as Māori, these tribes did not identify themselves by a collective name until the arrival of Europeans when, to mark their distinction, the name Māori, meaning ‘ordinary’, came into use.

The early settlers lived in small hunting bands. Seals and the large flightless moa bird were their main prey, until moa were hunted to extinction.

In the South Island, hunting and gathering remained the main mode of survival, but the kūmara (sweet potato) and yams the Polynesians brought with them grew well in the warmer North Island. Extensive kūmara gardens supported relatively large settlements. But even in the north, birds, fish and shellfish were important in the Māori diet. In some northern areas, larger populations put pressure on resources. The Polynesian dog and rat came with the early arrivals, but the domestic pigs and chickens of the islands did not, for reasons not fully understood.

In favourable conditions, Māori lived reasonably well. Their life expectancy was low by modern standards, but probably comparable with that of Europeans in the same era. The Māori population before European contact may have reached 100,000.

Māori passed on rich and detailed history and legends orally. Society was organised around groups that traced their descent from common ancestors. Reciting whakapapa (genealogies) was an important way to communicate knowledge.

The concepts of mana (status) and utu (reciprocity) were central to the culture, and led to widespread warfare. But the violence was usually episodic. For most of the time, Māori lived not in fortified pā, but in unprotected settlements or seasonal camps.

The greatest achievements of Māori material culture were carving wood for important buildings and canoes, and fashioning stone into tools and ornaments. Warfare did not inhibit regular trade in desirable stones and foods, and was itself a means by which resources were appropriated.

In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman made the first confirmed European discovery of New Zealand. He charted the country's west coast from about Hokitika up to Cape Maria van Diemen. Subsequently, a Dutch map maker gave the name Nieuw Zeeland to the land Tasman had discovered. A surprisingly long time – 127 years – passed before another European reached New Zealand.

James Cook first visited New Zealand in 1769, on the first of three voyages. He circumnavigated and mapped both main islands and returned to Britain with reports about the country's inhabitants and resources.

For 50 years after Sydney was founded in 1788, New Zealand was an economic and cultural outpost of New South Wales, and most of the earliest European settlers came from Sydney. In the late 18th century, sealers and whalers began visiting, and by the early 19th century some began to settle, some to farm. During these years, New Zealand was part of a Pacific-wide trade system and New Zealand goods were sold in China.

The first European ‘town’ grew at Kororāreka when whalers began calling into the Day of Islands for food and water. From the 1790s, Māori produced pork and potatoes for this trade. The other main area of early interaction between Māori and others was the Foveaux Strait sealing grounds.

The presence of traders drew Māori to particular locations. Having a European living among them gave some tribal groups an advantage in the race to acquire European goods, especially firearms.

A Sydney chaplain, Samuel Marsden, founded the first Christian mission station in the Bay of Islands in 1814. By 1840, more than 20 stations had been established. From missionaries, Māori learnt not just about Christianity, but also about European farming techniques and trades, and how to read and write. The missionaries also transcribed the Māori language into written form. In the 1830s, French missionaries brought Catholicism to Māori.

Christianity would become important for Māori, but they were slow to convert. Muskets, traded for flax and potatoes, had a greater impact in the 1820s and 1830s than religion, and escalated killings in tribal conflicts. The Ngā Puhi tribe, led by Hongi Hika, devastated southerly tribes, and Ngāti Toa, under Te Rauparaha, attacked Ngai Tahu in the South Island. But diseases introduced by Europeans caused more fatalities than firearms.

In the 1830s, the British Government came under increasing pressure to curb lawlessness in New Zealand to protect British traders, and to forestall the French, who also had imperial ambitions. The missionaries, for their part, wanted to protect Māori from the effects of European settlement.

In 1833, James Busby was sent to the Bay of Islands as British Resident. At Busby's instigation, northern chiefs adopted a flag in 1834 and signed a declaration of independence in 1835. Seven years after Busby's arrival, at Waitangi on 6 February 1840, William Hobson, New Zealand's first governor, invited assembled Māori chiefs to sign a treaty with the British Crown. The treaty was taken all round the country, as far south as Foveaux Strait, for signing by local chiefs, and eventually more than 500 signed.

Under the treaty, Māori ceded powers of government to Britain in return for the rights of British subjects and guaranteed possession of their lands and other ‘treasures’. In later years, differences of interpretation between the English and Māori texts complicated efforts to redress breaches of the treaty.

British sovereignty was proclaimed over New Zealand on the basis of Māori consent, though the South Island was initially claimed on the basis of discovery.

In the 19th century, the British and the French were rivals in the Pacific. The French had only minor interests in New Zealand, but the myth persists that the South Island escaped being French only because in the scramble to colonise Akaroa the British got there first. But by the time the French settlers and their naval escort reached New Zealand, the whole country was securely British. Governor Hobson, learning the French were heading for Akaroa, did send Captain Stanley of the Britomart to demonstrate British sovereignty there. However, there was never any chance Cook Strait would become, like the English Channel, a passage between English and French-speaking regions.

Even before the Treaty of Waitangi had been signed, the New Zealand Company, inspired by the colonial promoter Edward Gibbon Wakefield, had despatched British settlers to Wellington. In the next two years, the company also founded Wanganui, Nelson and New Plymouth. Otago was founded in 1848 and Canterbury in 1850, both by New Zealand Company affiliates. Auckland, capital of the new Crown colony, grew independently.

By the 1850s, most of the interior of the North Island had been explored by Europeans. Māori guides usually showed European explorers the way and New Zealand's first Anglican bishop, George Selwyn, travelled widely. Much of the mountainous interior of the South Island was not explored until gold miners arrived in the 1860s.

When British settlers sought self-government, the British parliament passed the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852, setting up a central government with an elected House of Representatives and six provincial governments. The settlers soon won the right to responsible government (with an executive supported by a majority in the elected assembly). But the governor, and through him the Colonial Office in London, retained control of ‘native’ policy.

In the 1840s, there were clashes between Māori and Pākehā. In Marlborough's Wairau Valley in 1843, a dispute over land erupted, leading to bloodshed. The war in the north (1845–46) began when Hōne Heke cut down the flagpole flying the British flag at Russell. There were also troubles in the 1840s over land in Wellington and Wanganui. In the 1850s, disputes between Māori over the sale of land to Europeans kept Taranaki in ferment.

Until the late 1850s, the government managed to purchase enough land to meet settler demands. But many Māori became increasingly reluctant to sell their land, which tribes owned collectively. The Māori King movement, under the leadership of Wiremu Tāmihana, grew in part out of Māori resistance to land sales. Pōtatau Te Wherowhero was elected the first Māori King in 1858.

The flashpoint was Taranaki. The refusal of Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke to sell land at Waitara led to war in 1860. The efforts of Māori to retain their land were depicted by the settlers as a challenge to British sovereignty.

Māori resistance was effectively crushed after Governor George Grey took war to the Waikato in 1863–64.

Two chiefs, Te Kooti and Titokowaru, prolonged war through the 1860s, but by 1872 the wars over land had ended. Large areas of land were confiscated from ‘rebellious’ tribes. A Native Land Court gave land titles to individual Māori, to facilitate sales to Pākehā.

After the wars, many Māori drew back from contact with European settlers. Most lived in isolated rural communities. Māori land continued to pass into Pākehā hands, usually by sale through the Native Land Court. In the 1870s, the village of Parihaka became the centre of a peaceful protest, led by the prophet Te Whitio-Rongomai, against occupation of confiscated land in Taranaki. In 1881, government forces invaded Parihaka in an attempt to crush this resistance.

While progress in the North Island was held back by war, the South Island forged ahead on the proceeds of wool and gold. Sheep were turned loose on South Island grasslands and after gold had been discovered in Otago in 1861, and then on the West Coast, settlers flooded in. Six years later, the discovery of gold at Thames boosted the town of Auckland. Wool ensured that Canterbury became the wealthiest province, and gold made Dunedin the largest town.

Towards the end of the 1860s, gold production fell and wool prices slipped. A new boost to growth came in 1870 when Colonial Treasurer Julius Vogel proposed a loans-funded programme of public works, including the building of railways, and assisted immigration.

The population increased dramatically. The census (non-Māori) of 1871 recorded a total of about 250,000; 10 years later this had grown to half a million. Vogel's policies, like those of Wakefield before him, were based on a belief that New Zealand would grow only if people and capital could be attracted. This stimulated a sense of a single nation rather than separate settlements, and led to the abolition of the provinces in 1876.

The aftermath of Vogel's borrowing was an economic depression that lasted into the 1890s. Despite a brief boom in wheat, prices for farm products sagged and the market for land became depressed. Hard times led to urban unemployment and sweated labour in industry. The country lost people through emigration, mostly to Australia.

Scarcely had depression gripped the country than future prosperity was anticipated with the first successful shipment of frozen meat to England in 1882. Exporting meat (frozen) and butter and cheese (chilled) became possible. After dealing with initial setbacks in refrigerated shipping, New Zealand became a British farm. With an economy based on agriculture, the landscape was transformed from forest to farmland.

The watershed election of 1890 put the Liberals, New Zealand's first ‘modern’ political party, into power. From 1893 to 1906, the government was headed by ‘King Dick’ Seddon. The Liberals cemented in place New Zealand's ‘family farm’ economy by subdividing large estates, buying Māori land in the North Island, and offering advances to settlers. Buoyant markets for New Zealand's farm products ensured the success of these policies. The Minister of Lands, John McKenzie, championed the family farm. Farming progressed, especially in the north, and by 1901, more than half the European population was living north of Cook Strait for the first time since the 1850s.

The Liberal government reinforced an established pattern of state involvement in the economy and regulation of society. Its old-age pensions and workers’ dwellings anticipated the welfare state. In 1893, after campaigns led by women like Kate Sheppard, New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote.

New Zealand's close economic ties with Britain reinforced the loyalty of New Zealanders to an empire that secured their place in the world. The loyalty found expression in the despatch of troops to fight for Britain in South Africa in 1899. A self-confident nationalism was also evident, and New Zealand declined to join the Australian Federation of 1901.

Liberal rule ended in 1912, when William Massey led the Reform Party to power, promising state leaseholders they could freehold their land.

When World War I broke out, New Zealand rallied to England's aid. Thousands of New Zealanders served, and died, overseas. The 1915 landing at Gallipoli in Turkey was a coming of age for the country and established the potent tradition of ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) – a pride in New Zealand's military achievement and its special relationship with Australia. New Zealand troops also fought and died on the Western Front.

After some prosperous years in the later 1920s, the worldwide Great Depression hit New Zealand hard. Export prices collapsed. Farmers faced difficulties over their mortgages and urban unemployment soared. Discontent erupted in riots. A coalition government, dominated by Gordon Coates, failed to lift the country out of depression.

Organised labour flexed its muscle in the 1890 maritime strike and in the Waihī and watersider strikes of 1912–13. Setbacks on the industrial front turned the labour movement towards political action. The Labour Party, founded in 1916, made uneven gains through the 1920s, then was swept into power under Michael Joseph Savage in 1935 by an electorate disillusioned with how the conservative coalition government had handled the depression. When Savage died in 1940, Peter Fraser became prime minister.

In power, the Labour Party, aided by an economic recovery already underway when it was elected, revived the economy further by pragmatic rather than doctrinaire socialist policies. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand was taken over by the state in 1936, spending on public works increased and a state housing programme began. The Social Security Act 1938 dramatically extended the welfare state.

With the outbreak of World War II, New Zealand troops again fought overseas in support of the United Kingdom. The fall of Singapore shook New Zealanders’ confidence that Britain could guarantee the country's security. During the war in the Pacific, the United States protected New Zealand against Japan.

Labour remained in power through World War II and in 1945, Peter Fraser played a significant role in the conference that set up the United Nations. But the party had lost the reforming zeal of the previous decade and its electoral support ebbed after the war.

In the early 1950s, New Zealand troops fought in Korea. Later, in the 1960s, concern to keep on side with this new protector prompted the National government of Keith Holyoake to send troops to Vietnam, despite popular protests.

After Labour lost power in 1949, the conservative National Party ruled the country until 1984, interrupted by two single-term Labour governments, in 1957–60 and 1972–75. National Party Prime Minister Sidney Holland used the bitter 1951 waterfront strike to consolidate his power by calling a snap election.

New immigrants, still mainly British, flooded in while New Zealand remained prosperous by exporting farm products to Britain. The country's culture remained based on Britain's. In 1953 New Zealanders took pride that a countryman, Edmund Hillary, gave Queen Elizabeth II a coronation gift by reaching the summit of Mt Everest.

Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973. New Zealand had already diversified its export trade, but the loss of an assured market for farm products was a blow.

The first oil shock of 1973 contributed to the fall of the Labour government in 1975, led until his death by Norman Kirk. After the second oil shock of 1978, the National government of Robert Muldoon tried to keep New Zealand prosperous by so-called ‘think big’ industrial and energy projects, and farm subsidies. The economy faltered as the fall of oil prices in the early 1980s made these schemes unsound. Inflation and unemployment mounted.

The fourth Labour government was elected in 1984. The Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas, was an ardent advocate of economic liberalisation. He removed most controls over the economy, privatised many state enterprises and called aspects of the welfare state into question. Many saw these measures as an assault on New Zealand's egalitarian traditions.

In foreign affairs, Labour's anti-nuclear policy ruptured relations with the United States.

The National government of 1990–99 pursued similar policies to Labour's, passing the controversial Employment Contracts Act which opened up the labour market and diminished the power of trade unions. The government also mounted a more sustained attack on the welfare state, most obviously by cutting benefits.

After the 1996 introduction of a new voting system (mixed member proportional representation), minority or coalition governments became the norm, but National and Labour remained the major parties.

Most Māori continued to live in remote rural communities until World War II. But Māori society was dynamic. The Kotahitanga movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was evidence of Māori resilience. So were the land development work of āpirana Ngata and the revitalisation of the Māori King movement by Te Puea Hērangi. In the early 1920s, Wiremu Rātana founded the Rātana Church.

Post-World War II Māori migration into the cities, together with Māori anger at their economic deprivation and concern about their mana and continuing loss of land, pushed race relations and the place of the Treaty of Waitangi into the forefront of national life.

For many, sporting contacts with apartheid South Africa became a touchstone of race relations. During the 1981 Springbok rugby tour, New Zealand experienced divisive unrest. After the tour, attention turned to domestic race relations and to the need for New Zealanders to have a better understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Māori became more assertive. Some, alleging breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, wished to reclaim Māori sovereignty. The Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975 to consider their claims and to address grievances. In 1985, the tribunal was empowered to look at breaches of the treaty since 1840, rather than since 1975.

A Māori cultural renaissance, including efforts to foster the Māori language in the early 1980s, increased awareness that New Zealand society was bicultural. At the same time, more immigrants were arriving.

Almost before it had been properly acknowledged that New Zealand was bicultural, it became multicultural – first in the composition of its population, more slowly in how it ran its national life. The country's new Pacific Island and Asian citizens were testament to the fact that it was no longer, culturally or economically, the offshore island of Europe it had seemed to earlier generations.

John Wilson, Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand