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  • British colonization of New Zealand
    • Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
    British map of New Zealand in 1842

    British colonization of New Zealand began in an unofficial capacity in the mid-1810s as religious missionaries began arriving to the islands. The British government committed to a form of official, state-led colonization at the end of the 1830s after it became clear that the French were attempting to establish whaling bases and colonies on the South Island. The Treaty of Waitangi was consequently negotiated with the Maori natives in 1840 and the Colony of New Zealand was established the following year. The initially harmonious relations with the natives did not last and the New Zealand Wars were fought between 1845 and 1872. By 1860 there were little more than 60,000 white settlers, but the scale of colonization rocketed upwards thereafter. There were 300,000 non-natives in New Zealand by 1875 and the colonial community reached three-quarters of a million by 1900. New Zealand was granted semi-independent status in 1907. A huge proportion of New Zealanders today will be able to trace their ancestry to colonists who arrived in the colonial era between the mid-1810s and 1907.[1]

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    Chronology of British colonization of New Zealand

    The Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman

    The first European contact with New Zealand came in 1642 when the Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman, sailed by the islands during his great voyage of discovery around the South Pacific. It was owing to the discovery of the archipelago by the Dutch that the islands subsequently became known as New Zealand, after Zeeland in the Netherlands.[2] James Cook first charted the islands for Britain in 1769 after a long hiatus after Tasman's initial voyage caused by European appreciation that both Australia and New Zealand were simply too remote to be worth colonizing. That changed when the British began developing a series of penal colonies in Australia and Tasmania from the late 1780s onwards. Before long, as the colonies in New South Wales and other parts of Australia grew, British missionaries began travelling out to New Zealand and making the first tentative efforts to convert the natives. There were consequently European outposts in New Zealand from the mid-1810s onwards.[3]

    The Treaty of Waitangi

    Concerted British colonization of New Zealand was brought about by fears that the French were planning to develop a colony on the South Island, which they might use for whaling, whale oil being an immensely important commodity in the first half of the nineteenth century. On the 6th of February 1840 the British consul for New Zealand, Captain William Hobson, signed the Treaty of Waitangi with several Maori chiefs. Under the terms of it the Maori agreed to become subjects of the British crown and a year later the Colony of New Zealand was formally established.[4]

    The Maori chiefs, who had not fully understood that Hobson was trying to suggest they were now ruled over by the British when they signed the treaty in 1840, soon revolted and the New Zealand Wars were fought for 27 years between 1845 and 1872. In the early stages, the two sides were relatively evenly matched, but as more and more British settlers arrived with modern guns an imbalance developed in the 1860s.[5] While the wars resulted in the Maori losing their political freedom they were not intensely bloody. There were a few thousand casualties on each side. Instead the Maori were primarily decimated by the introduction of European diseases like smallpox, measles and tuberculosis. By the end of the nineteenth century their numbers were only half what they had been in 1800.[6]

    The Colony of New Zealand boomed from around 1860 onwards, aided by technological advances which made it much more possible for British settlers to travel out to New Zealand on steamships that had food supplies preserved for long journeys. A New Zealand parliament was in existence from 1854. The economy was largely based on pastoral farming and in particular the raising of sheep. Whaling and viticulture were also thriving early industries and rumors of large gold discoveries drew settlers as well, though these proved to be overly optimistic.[7]

    Extent of British colonization of New Zealand

    Christchurch Cathedral, c. 1885

    The scale of British colonization was slow until the 1860s. The first decades of unofficial settlement up to 1840 saw little more than a few thousand British and other European settlers arrive to the islands. Once the Treaty of Waitangi was negotiated in 1840, and the crown colony was founded the following year, there was an increase in colonization, though not an enormous one. Extensive lands were still available to settlers in Australia and places like New South Wales were deemed much more attractive for prospective colonists from Europe. Thus, the scale of migration to New Zealand was limited in the 1840s and 1850s and the colonial population was still just 60,000 by the end of that period.[8]

    Things took off from the mid-1860s and by 1874 there were 300,000 white settlers across the archipelago. A further boom in colonization followed the end of the New Zealand Wars in 1872 and the colonial community reached half a million around 1882. By the mid-1890s it was nearing 700,000 and the country’s main cities, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, were emerging as major urban centers. By the time independence was established in 1907, the population of New Zealand was nearly one million, of which more than 90% were first, second or third-generation colonists.[9]

    Demographic impact of British colonization of New Zealand

    The demography of New Zealand was completely changed as a result of British colonization. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the islands were inhabited by a native population of approximately 100,000 Māori and other indigenous groups such as the Moriori. A century later the natives were reduced to a fraction of the population and the colonial community was now the dominant entity on the islands. This pattern has shaped New Zealand down to the present day, with some alterations in light of twentieth-century, post-independence settlement patterns. In the 2018 New Zealand census over 70% of the population identified as European and a great proportion of these will be people with ancestors who migrated to New Zealand during the era of British colonial rule.[10] MyHeritage has extensive birth, marriage and death records extending all the way from the birth of the colony in 1841 through to early twenty-first century, as well as further New Zealand historical records such as newspapers and military records.

    See also

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    References

    1. ↑ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/history-of-new-zealand-1769-1914
    2. ↑ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/abel-tasman
    3. ↑ https://teara.govt.nz/en/missions-and-missionaries/page-2
    4. ↑ Margaret Ann Franklin, ‘Maori Politics and the Treaty of Waitangi’, in The Australian Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Winter, 1989), pp. 292–299.
    5. ↑ John Stenhouse, ‘Churches, State and the New Zealand Wars, 1860–1872’, in Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1998–1999), pp. 483–507.  
    6. ↑ https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-hauora-maori-i-mua-history-of-maori-health/page-2
    7. ↑ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/an-economic-history-of-new-zealand-in-the-nineteenth-and-twentieth-centuries/
    8. ↑ https://teara.govt.nz/en/graph/36364/maori-and-european-population-numbers-1840-1881
    9. ↑ https://teara.govt.nz/en/graph/36364/maori-and-european-population-numbers-1840-1881
    10. ↑ https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/2018-census-population-and-dwelling-counts


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