The first Europeans known to reach New Zealand were led by Abel Janszoon Tasman, who sailed up the west coast of the South and North islands in 1642. He named it Staten Landt, believing it to be part of the land Jacob Le Maire had discovered in 1616 off the coast of Chile. Staten Landt appeared on Tasman’s first maps of New Zealand, but this was changed by Dutch cartographers to Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, some time after Hendrik Brouwer proved the South American land to be an island in 1643. The Latin Nova Zeelandia became Nieuw Zeeland in Dutch.

Lieutenant James Cook subsequently called the archipelago New Zealand, although the names he chose for the North and South islands were rejected, and the main three islands became known as North, Middle and South, with the Middle Island being later called the South Island. Cook began extensive surveys of the islands in 1769, leading to European whaling expeditions and eventually significant European colonisation. From as early as the 1780s, Maori had encounters with European sealers and whalers. Acquisition of muskets by those iwi in close contact with European visitors destabilised the existing balance of power between Maori tribes and there was a temporary but intense period of bloody inter-tribal warfare, known as the Musket Wars, that only ceased when all iwi were so armed.

Concern about the exploitation of Maori by Europeans, Church Missionary Society lobbying and French interest in the region led the British to annex New Zealand by Royal Proclamation in January 1840. To legitimise the British annexation, Lieutenant Governor William Hobson had been dispatched in 1839; he hurriedly negotiated the Treaty of Waitangi with northern iwi on his arrival. The Treaty was signed in February, and in recent years it has come to be seen as the founding document of New Zealand. The Maori translation of the treaty promised the Maori tribes “tino rangatiratanga” would be preserved in return for cedeing kawanatanga, which the English versions translates as “chieftainship” for “sovereignty”; the real meanings are now disputed. Disputes over land sales and sovereignty caused the New Zealand land wars which took place between 1845 and 1872. In 1975 the Treaty of Waitangi Act established the Waitangi Tribunal, charged with hearing claims of Crown violations of the Treaty of Waitangi dating back to 1840. Some Maori tribes and the Moriori never signed the treaty.

Although New Zealand was initially administered as a part of the Australian colony of New South Wales, it became a colony in its own right in 1841. European settlement progressed more rapidly than anyone anticipated, and settlers soon outnumbered Maori. Self-government was granted to the settler population in 1852. The first capital of New Zealand was Kororareka (known today as Russell) but shortly afterwards moved to Auckland. There were political concerns following the discovery of gold in Central Otago in 1861 that the South Island would form a separate colony. So in 1865 the capital was offically moved to the more central city of Wellington. New Zealand was involved in a Constitutional Convention in March 1891 in Sydney, New South Wales, along with the then-colonies of Australia. This was to consider a potential constitution for the proposed federation between the then-British Colonies of Australasia. New Zealand lost interest in joining Australia in a federation following this convention.

New Zealand became an independent dominion on 26 September 1907 by royal proclamation. Full independence was granted by the United Kingdom Parliament with the Statute of Westminster in 1931; it was taken up upon the Statute’s adoption by the New Zealand Parliament in 1947. Since then New Zealand has been a sovereign constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth of Nations.

The history of New Zealand dates back at least 700 years to when it was discovered and settled by Polynesians. Europeans visited the country in 1642 but it wasn’t until the 1840s onward that it experienced large scale European migrations.

Pre-European contact

New Zealand was originally settled by waves of Polynesians some time between 1000 and 1300 CE, although some evidence suggests earlier settlement. The descendants of these settlers created a distinct culture and became known as the Maori. Separate settlement of the tiny Chatham Islands in the east of New Zealand produced the Moriori people, but it is uncertain whether the Morioris’ ancestors came directly from Polynesia or were mainland Maori who ventured eastward. Some of the Maori (particularly in the North Island), called their new homeland “Aotearoa” (”land of the long white cloud”).

The original settlers were moa hunters. Moa were large flightless birds similar to ostriches and rheas that were pushed to extinction in the 19th century or earlier. Before the coming of humans, the moa were the prey of the harpagornis or Haast’s eagle, the largest bird of prey ever recorded. Harpagornis became extinct along with its prey. The moa-hunters may have merged with later waves of Polynesians who, according to Maori tradition, arrived between 952 and 1150.

New Zealand has no native land mammals, apart from some rare bats. Later Maori largely subsisted by cultivating the kumara, a type of sweet potato, which they had brought with them from Polynesia, and the cabbage tree. Cannibalism, as elsewhere in the Pacific, played a very small part in the diet.

European explorers

The first Europeans known to reach New Zealand were the crew of Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who arrived with his ships Heemskerck and Zeehaen. Tasman anchored at the northern end of the South Island in December 1642 but sailed northward to Tonga following a clash with local Maori. Tasman sketched sections of the two main islands’ west coasts. Tasman called them Staten Landt and that name appeared on his first maps of the country. Dutch cartographers changed the name to Nova Zeelandia in Latin which became Nieuw Zeeland in Dutch. It was subsequently Anglicised as New Zealand by British naval captain James Cook of the HM Bark Endeavour who visited the islands more than 100 years after Tasman (1769-1770). Cook returned to New Zealand on both of his subsequent voyages.

Whalers and sealers

From the 1790s, the waters around New Zealand were visited by British, French, and American whaling ships, whose crews sometimes came into conflict with Maori inhabitants. The arrival of traders and missionaries in the 1800s and 1810s added to local disputes. The first full-blooded European infant in the territory, Thomas King, was born in 1815 in the Bay of Islands. The initiation of large-scale settlement and land purchases in 1839 by the New Zealand Company, coupled with increasing French interest in the islands, finally prompted the British government to take control of the situation.

Colony
New Zealand became a British colony in 1840 following the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between Britain and Maori chiefs. Britain was represented by William Hobson, who was Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand. At that time New Zealand was a dependent colony of New South Wales.

Britain was motivated by the desire to forestall other European powers (France established a very small settlement on Banks Peninsula in the South Island at Akaroa also in 1840) and to end the lawlessness of European (predominantly British) whalers and traders. Maori chiefs were motivated by the promises of protection of their existing possessions (which was only partially carried out) and by the promise of protection against other Maori using muskets obtained from European whalers and traders (the Musket Wars of 1820-1835). An early settler, Frederick Edward Maning, wrote two colourful contemporaneous accounts of life at that time which have become classics of New Zealand literature: Old New Zealand and History of the War in the North of New Zealand against the Chief Heke.

Considerable European settlement followed, principally from England, but also from Scotland (especially in the south of the South Island) and from Ireland. The early European settlers established provinces. From south to north:
In the South Island:
Otago (settled from 1848), capital Dunedin
Canterbury (settled from 1850), capital Christchurch
Westland
Nelson, capital Nelson
Marlborough, capital Blenheim
In the North Island:
Wellington (settled from 1840), capital Wellington
Taranaki, capital New Plymouth
Auckland (settled from 1840), capital Auckland

The province of Southland (capital Invercargill) separated from but later re-joined Otago.

Already a majority of the population by 1859, the settlers, (called pakeha by Maori who were in turn called New Zealanders by the settlers), multiplied to reach a million by 1911.

Political separation of the two islands was an issue in the 1860s. The more populous North Island was riven by war and political turmoil while the South Island was prospering, especially after gold was discovered (1861) at Gabriel’s Gully in Central Otago. The South Island grew very tired of financially supporting the North Island while receiving very little in return. The feeling was particularly bitter between Auckland and Otago where Dunedin journalist, Julius Vogel began a strong campaign to make the South Island completely independent. The matter was put to a vote in Parliament on September 19, 1865. Seventeen members voted for separation and 31 for unity, so New Zealand remained united. Vogel later became Prime Minister of a united New Zealand.

The South Island contained most of the white population until around 1900 when the North Island again took the lead and has supported an ever greater majority of the country’s total population through the 20th century and into the 21st.

Maori population figures plummetted after 1820 due to tribal wars (the musket wars) and to unfamiliar diseases - measles, whooping cough, influenza and later typhoid - reducing an initial Maori population of perhaps 120,000 to 100,000 (lower than many contemporary figures, which probably overestimated densities in the South Island) to only 62,000 by 1857 and 44,000 in 1891. Recovery began slowly (though three decades earlier than among Australia’s still worse-affected Aborigines), with numbers reviving steadily after the setback of the 1918 influenza pandemic. By 1900 also, Maori had lost most of their land, usually as a result of sales or of confiscations after armed conflict with the settler government.

Administered at first as a part of the Australian colony of New South Wales, New Zealand became a colony in its own right in 1841.

Self-government was granted to the settler population in 1852, under the UK Parliament’s New Zealand Constitution Act 1852, with a General Assembly consisting of an appointed Legislative Council and an elected House of Representatives. In 1867, Maori won the right to a certain number of reserved seats in parliament. During this period, the livestock industry began to expand, and the foundations of New Zealand’s modern economy took shape. By the end of the 19th century, improved transportation facilities made possible a great overseas trade in wool, meat, and dairy products.

By the 1890s, parliamentary government along democratic lines was well-established, and New Zealand’s social institutions assumed their present form. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women voting rights in national elections. The turn of the century brought sweeping social reforms that built the foundation for New Zealand’s version of the welfare state.

Maori gradually recovered from population decline and, through interaction and intermarriage with settlers and missionaries, adopted much of European culture. In recent decades, Maori have become increasingly urbanised and have become more politically active and culturally assertive.

Dominion and Realm
New Zealand decided against joining the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, and instead changed from being a colony to a separate “dominion” in 1907, equal in status to Australia and Canada. New Zealand retained an avowed loyalty to the British Empire of which it formed a part, and contributed proportionally large numbers of troops to aid Britain in the Boer War (1899 - 1902), World War I and World War II (see New Zealand in World War II). The independence of New Zealand and the other dominions, was recommended by the 1926 Balfour Declaration and implemented in the 1931 Statute of Westminster which was ratified on November 25, 1947. The last barrier to complete legislative freedom was also removed in 1947 with the passage through the British Parliament of the New Zealand Constitution (Amendment) Act, giving Parliament the power to modify its own Constitution.

The monarch of the United Kingdom remains the monarch of New Zealand, which has been an independent constitutional monarchy. In 1951, the Legislative Council was abolished as ineffectual, an act that required an amendment to the New Zealand Constitution Act, and thereby creating a unicameral legislature.

In 1983 the term dominion was replaced with realm by letters patent and the Queen was given a formal relationship with the Executive Council that mirrors her relationship with the Privy Council in the United Kingdom. The Constitution Act 1986 did away with the Statute of Westminster and came into effect on 1 January 1987. Until that date the Parliament of the United Kingdom could legally pass laws for New Zealand if it was “expressly declared in that Act that [New Zealand had] requested, and consented to, the enactment thereof”.

Confronted like Australia with the strategic implications of Britain’s 20th-century eclipse as a world power of the first rank, New Zealand joined with Australia and the United States in the ANZUS pact in 1951, but the US suspended its defence commitments to the country in 1986 after the then Labour government banned nuclear-powered or armed ships from New Zealand ports.