From their first encounters with Europeans in 1642 to the Musket Wars in the first half of the 19th century, the Māori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand, actively resisted British rule, both peacefully and violently. Led by their chiefs, Māori tribes from both the North and South Islands navigated the upheaval triggered by colonialism by signing treaties like the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) and forming inter-tribal alliances, such as the Kīngitanga Movement established in 1858 to oppose the power of the British Crown. Read on to learn more about the history of New Zealand in the Colonial Period.
Meeting the Europeans
In 1642, Abel Tasman (1603-1659) sailed with his crew toward Tasmania. From Tasmania (which he named Van Diemen’s Land), he sailed to what is now Aotearoa/New Zealand. In December he anchored his ships Heemskerck and Zeehaen in Golden Bay, at the northern end of the South Island. His first encounter with the Māori people, with the men and women of the Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri Tribe (iwi) was marked by violence.
After naming the bay “Murderers’ Bay,” Tasman sailed northward to Tonga. In her A Concise History of New Zealand, historian Philippa Mein Smith writes that “it was this repulsion by the ‘Southlanders’ that entered European stories and rendered the Maori frightening to Europe.” For more than a century, Europeans steered clear of the North and South Islands.
After Tasman, the second European to interact with the Māori was Lieutenant James Cook (1728-1779). The year was 1769. Over his four stays, Cook spent almost a year just exploring the islands’ coastline and charting its outline. Unlike Tasman, he was able to communicate with the Māori thanks to the help of Tupaia (1725-1770), a Tahitian Polynesian man from Ra’iatea (known among non-Indigenous people as the Society Islands).
Tupaia was not only an arioi, a priest-like figure, but also a skilled translator and navigator whose experience was instrumental in the success of Cook’s first journey in the Pacific. Cook’s reports (and Tupaia’s drawings) effectively put Aotearoa/New Zealand (and the Māori) on the world map.
If Tasman was the first European to “discover” Aotearoa/New Zealand and Cook was the second, the third was Frenchman Jean-François de Surville (1717-1770). To put it with Smith, “By coincidence, Cook was sailing up the opposite coast at the same time. The St Jean-Baptiste sailed past the Endeavour in a gale without the knowledge of either, the British ship blown north while the French ship veered south.”
With Europeans came the whaling trade and the Christian Church of England (from mainland Australia). Samuel Marsden (1765-1838), an English-born Anglican chaplain, magistrate, and agriculturalist, based at Parramatta, New South Wales, was the first missionary to preach the first Christian sermon to a group of Māori men, women, and children at Hohi (Oihi) Bay in the Bay of Islands on December 25, 1814. A missionary settlement was soon established at Kerikeri. Today, it is Aotearoa/New Zealand’s oldest heritage building.
Inter-Tribal Warfare and Declarations of Independence
Inter-tribal warfare was a staple of Māori life. It was, however, a low-intensity kind of warfare. The new wave of people coming to Aotearoa/New Zealand in the early 1800s triggered a scarcity of resources, which in turn fuelled inter-tribal warfare. The introduction of European technology made it deadlier. Ironically, it was a Māori rangatira (chief), Hongi Hika, of the Ngāpuhi tribe, who introduced muskets to his people in 1821.
For four decades, from the early 1800s to the early 1840s, inter-tribal violence ravaged the South and North Islands, affecting civilians and warriors alike, and ultimately killing some 20,000 people, including women and children. This period is now known as the “Musket Wars.” The bloodiest tribal battles took place between 1818 and 1840, but intertribal conflicts involving muskets continued, to a lesser degree, after the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.
The Moriori, a peaceful splinter group who had inhabited the Chatham Islands since the 1500s, were nearly exterminated. Historian P. M. Smith reports that “the Moriori population numbered 1660 in 1835, and 101 by 1862.” Survivors, both men and women, were taken as slaves.
The Musket Wars revolutionized Māori society and warfare. They caused a redefinition of tribal borders, leaving large regions, even entire districts across the North and South Islands, depopulated or sparsely settled. Power dynamics among Māori tribes were permanently altered. While some tribes lost power (mana), others, such as the Ngāpuhi in the North and the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from Taranaki, gained prestige.
Decimated tribes were forced to intermarry to survive and some sought the assistance and protection of Europeans. In 1835, the British, concerned that France might try to claim New Zealand, asked James Busby, the British Resident, to draft a “declaration of independence” for Māori chiefs to sign.
In October 1835, 34 Māori chiefs signed He Whakaputanga (o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni), which translates in English as the “Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand.” Four years later, 18 other chiefs signed it. In the declaration’s first article, we read that New Zealand is an independent state (whenua rangatira). The second maintains that Māori chiefs hold “kingitanga,” that is, sovereign power, over their lands, and that they “will not allow any other group to frame laws (wakarite ture), nor any Governorship (Kawanatanga) to be established in the lands of the Confederation, unless (by persons) appointed by us to carry out the laws we have enacted in our assembly (huihuinga).” He Whakaputanga was followed by the Treaty of Waitangi five years later.
The Treaty of Waitangi (1840): The Turning Point
On February 6, 1840, various Māori rangatira (chiefs) met with Governor William Hobson (1792-1842) and signed the so-called Treaty of Waitangi. Today, it’s regarded as Aotearoa/New Zealand’s founding document. The first three Māori to sign were the above-mentioned Hōne Heke, Patuone, and Tāmati Waka Nene, Patuone’s brother, of the Ngāpuhi iwi. Many more followed, alternatively signing the seven existing copies in Māori and the one English reprint.
Overall, 500 chiefs signed the treaty and at least eleven of them were women. The chiefs who did not sign were the ones less exposed to European influence and to Christianity, including Te Wherowhero, who later played a significant role in the history of Māori-settler relations.
The treaty was divided into three articles, with the first determining that Māori chiefs “shall cede to the Queen of England for ever the government of all their lands.” In the second article, the Queen acknowledges to Māori chiefs “the entire supremacy of their lands, of their settlements, and of all their personal property,” while the third promises that “in return for their acknowledging the Government of the Queen, the Queen of England will protect all the natives of New Zealand, and will allow them the same rights as the people of England.” This is, however, the English version of the Treaty. Its Māori translation (known as Te Tiriti o Waitangi), is slightly but significantly different, and the two texts have been interpreted in different ways by the two different groups ever since.
According to its English version, the treaty validated European settlement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, thus laying the foundation for a country built on the full and free consent of its Indigenous peoples. There is a term in the Māori language, taonga, which, according to the Te Aka Māori Dictionary, translates as “treasure” and is also “applied to anything considered to be of value including socially or culturally valuable objects, resources, phenomenon, ideas, and techniques.” The Māori version of the Treaty of Waitangi recognizes the chiefs’ authority (tino rangatiratanga) over their land, language, and customs, over anything they hold dear. Essentially, Te Tiriti o Waitangi recognizes Māori self-determination, while simultaneously recognizing the Queen’s delegated authority or governance (kāwanatanga) over them.
The Māori term “kāwana” (from which kāwanatanga is derived) doesn’t have an exact equivalent in English, but historians speculate that the Māori chiefs who signed the treaty understood it as “governor” and that they envisioned their relationship with the new governor in terms of equality in power and rank. English translators understood (and translated) the term “kāwanatanga” as “complete sovereignty.”
As a consequence, in the English version of the treaty, the Māori chiefs are surrendering “complete sovereignty,” over their lands to the British Crown. Māori and Pākehā (non-Māori) scholars are still debating whether this was done intentionally, to undermine Māori authority or whether it originated from a cultural misunderstanding.
The New Zealand Company
Without the New Zealand Company, a British joint-stock company founded and directed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862), the history of New Zealand would have been quite different. Wakefield was an influential businessman in London who believed that the civil unrest in the United Kingdom was the result of too much labor and capital, which in turn led to high rates of unemployment and low wages. His solution was simple: the problem could be solved by selling lands at a price low enough to attract worthy colonists, but high enough to prevent laborers from becoming landowners too quickly and too soon.
As for Indigenous people, he believed they could be “civilized” and welcomed the prospect of intermarriage with colonists. His goal was to create one people who could thrive on the bountiful land of the North and South Islands.
New Zealand, a place he had never visited at the time he was writing A Letter From Sydney in 1829, was, in his mind, a romanticized version of England. The perfect country, waiting to be properly exploited by the “perfect” people — the British. To put it with P.M. Smith, “the New Zealand Company was a vast propaganda machine that set out to create towns and farms that would transplant civilisation to the New World and claim the wilderness as a garden.”
The cornerstone of civilization was family life and motherhood (more important than fatherhood, in his mind). Young married couples—and not convicts—were the cornerstone of Wakefield’s plan for New Zealand. In 1839, long before the first colonists set foot in New Zealand, Wakefield’s company began to sell and rename the ancestral lands of the Māori.
In the 1840s, around 10,000 settlers landed in New Zealand under the New Zealand Company schemes. Among them, there were 3,846 children under the age of 13. Almost half of the settlers were women. Wellington was established in 1839, on lands of the Taranaki people. It was declared a city one year later, and in 1865 it was chosen as the capital of New Zealand. The Māori name for Wellington is Te Whanganui-a-Tara, while the Wellington area is known as Te Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-Māui, the “Head of the Fish of Māui.” On May 21, 1840, William Hobson annexed New Zealand to the British Crown. One year later, Auckland became the capital. Tensions over land issues soon arose.
Māori Kings and European Settlers
Tensions turned into clashes and clashes quickly escalated. In 1841, William Hobson moved the capital from Russell to Auckland. The Ngāpuhi resented this change, as fewer ships were now heading towards Russell (Kororāreka), which resulted in a serious revenue loss for them. In the mid-1840s, Hōne Heke (1807-1850), rangatira of the Ngāpuhi tribe (iwi), became the face of the so-called Flagstaff War (also known, meaningfully, as the Hōne Heke’s Rebellion).
Fought between March 1845 and January 1846 around the Bay of Islands, where Heke was born, the conflict began on July 8, 1844, when chief Te Haratua, supported by Heke and another prominent chief, Te Ruki Kawiti, cut down the British flagpole on Maiki Hill, at the north end of the town of Russell (Kororāreka). Flying high over Māori lands, the British flag was a symbol — both for the British and the Māori. Battles, attacks on villages, and shootings ensued.
P.M. Smith writes that “by 1845 Heke had largely repudiated the Treaty of Waitangi” because he maintained that he “had agreed to be ‘all as one’ with the Governor, not subordinate, his chiefly authority curtailed.” On January 19, 1845, Heke cut down the flagpole for the second time. To make matters worse, in 1846, Governor Grey arrested Te Rauparaha and imprisoned him without charge for ten months on a naval vessel, thus crushing his prestige among the Māori.
As more and more land passed into the hands of European settlers and the Māori were increasingly marginalized on a political level, the pan-tribal Kīngitanga movement emerged. Known in English as the Māori King Movement it was established in 1858 in the central North Island. Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the most powerful and respected chief in New Zealand, was crowned king (kīngi) and Waikato was chosen as the seat of the Kīngitanga.
In the 1840s and early 1850s, several chiefs had traveled to England, where they had met Queen Victoria. They believed that Kīngitanga could provide a separate governing body for the Māori, a body that could match the queen’s authority. From their perspective, the chosen Māori king would be equal to the British monarch.
Tūheitia Paki, the current and seventh Māori monarch (who has no legal or judicial power within the New Zealand government) was elected in 2006. By 1861, two-thirds of New Zealand (particularly the South Island) had passed into the hands of the government. Three-quarters of the North Island, on the contrary, still belonged to the Māori.
Power Tips Toward the Settler Society
The so-called New Zealand Wars officially began in 1860 and lasted until 1872, although some scholars maintain that the Flagstaff War of 1845-46 should be considered a chapter in the New Zealand Wars. Whatever the case, the conflict raged for more than a decade on the central North Island, where Māori tribes still owned significant lots of land.
It is worth remembering that the New Zealand Wars were started by the government, not the Māori. After a decade of relative peace, the conflict began at Waitara, where Governor Thomas Gore Browne (1807-1887) sent a group of surveyors in January 1860 to acquire land. Today, Waitara is a town in the northern part of the North Island, on the route connecting the Taranaki region and Waikato. In 1860, it was under tribal control and long coveted by settlers.
When a group of Māori prevented the surveyors from entering their lands, the British burned the Waitara village. Wiremu Kīngi (1795-1882), chief of the Te Āti Awa, turned to the Kīngitanga. In the meantime, the British government replaced the governor with Sir George Grey (1812-1898), a decision that proved catastrophic.
Tāwhiao, who succeeded his father as king of the Kīngitanga in 1860, quickly gathered the support of various tribes and established Mangatāwhiri Stream as aukati, that is, one of the borders of his Kīngitanga where Europeans could not enter. In 1863, Grey crossed Mangatāwhiri Stream with his troops: the invasion of Waikato had just begun. At the same time, the colonial parliament passed the New Zealand Settlements Act, which effectively allowed the Crown to confiscate the lands of those Māori tribes deemed in rebellion against the British.
War soon spread to Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty. Tāwhiao and his allies were forced to retreat. In 1865, their lands, which amounted to some 1.2 million acres, were confiscated. The New Zealand Wars had the ultimate effect of further splitting society into several groups. It was the Māori against British troops, but this was just one side of the story because several colonial forces included men from mainland Australia. Furthermore, some Māori tribes remained “loyal” to the Crown, while others chose neutrality.
At the end of the conflict, the British rewarded “loyal” Māori with confiscated lands, which in some cases belonged to former Māori enemies. The New Zealand Wars also saw the emergence of new Māori leaders and unique figures at the crossroads between pacifist chiefs and prophets. One of them was Te Whiti-o-Rongomai III (1840-1907) of the Te Āti Awa of Taranaki, who urged his people to protest European encroachment through pacifist methods of resistance.
A New, Remote Settler Society
As war raged across the North Island, gold fever raged across the South Island. In May 1861, Tasmanian farmer Gabriel Read struck gold in a gully in Otago (which now bears his name). This discovery triggered a gold rush that saw thousands of Irish migrants arrive by way of Australia. Another wave of Europeans came from Cornwall and Devon, and yet another from China. Gold-seekers actively transformed the landscape in their quest for riches, as Māori struggled to adapt to this new settler society.
While in 1840, the Māori numbered around 100,000 and non-Māori people were at 2,000, by 1860, the Pākehā population outnumbered Māori. Forty years later, in 1901, the Māori population had fallen to an estimated 43,143, while European migrants and families numbered around 772,719. In the 1870s, migrants from Germany and Scandinavia began to settle and develop the North Island, as more roads, railways, and telegraph lines finally linked isolated communities.
In 1867, all Māori males aged 21 and over were granted the vote, although “rebels” in the New Zealand wars were denied political citizenship. The years between 1885 and 1895 saw financial institutions fail, a substantial rise in unemployment and strikes, the property market crash, and a general sense of disillusion arise among settler New Zealanders. Historians call this ten-year economic crisis the “Long Depression.”
From the 1880s, however, non-Māori men, women, and children born on New Zealand soil had begun to outnumber migrants. At this time, a distinct sense of national identity started to come to the surface, a sense of national identity interlinked with the land and civil rights. Women’s suffrage, for instance, was granted in 1893 and included Māori women too.
In 1907, as New Zealand’s major cities, Auckland and Wellington, were on the rise, growing steadily and rapidly by the day, New Zealand finally gained the status of a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth.
New Zealand had come a long way, and so had Māori society. From their first encounters with Europeans in the 17th century to the Musket Wars of the 19th century and finally the New Zealand Wars, Māori men and women managed to stand their ground as their country transformed into a settler society with European customs and ancestry. Today they are an integral part of the society, culture, and politics of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
