he first European contact with the Maoris on their far-flung South Pacific islands was by a Dutchman, Abel Janszoon Tasman, an explorer for the Dutch East India Company. His encounter with the Ngati Tumata-kokiri people, late in 1642, is described by Claudia Orange as "[b]rief and confused" (21), and he left without even having landed. Nevertheless, this was when the country was christened New Zealand. Only years later, in 1769, did James Cook rediscover the land, and it was only in the 1830s, with the great expansion of trade with New Zealand, that European (basically, British) engagement with it increased. As trade doubled during the decade, it brought many settlers, their numbers growing from not much more than two hundred to around 2000 by 1840. "Apart from the missionaries, there were retired ships’ captains, traders, artisans, ships’ deserters, escaped convicts, drifters and Pakeha-Maori (Europeans who had married into a tribe, adopting the tribal life-style)" (Orange 36).
The process of settlement was not without its dark side. Conflicts arose when the settlers began to look for and buy land, and the "Wairu Affray" of 1843 marked the first real clash, followed in 1845 by the Northern War. Fortunately, eventual defeat in what are now known collectively as the New Zealand Wars of 1845-72 did not mark the loss of a rich and distinct Maori culture, the survival of which has been "a springboard for subsequent social and political resurgence" (Belich 310). — JB
Political and Social History
- The Treaty of Waitangi 1840: The English Version
- Te Tiriti o Waitangi or The Treaty of Waitangi 1840: Interpretations of the Tiriti/Treaty
- Henry Sewell (1807-1879), first premier of New Zealand
Architecture of New Zealand
Sculpture in New Zealand
Painting
New Zealand and the Visual Arts in Britain
- Memorial to Sir George Grey, Governor (1854-59) and later Premier (1877-79) of New Zealand, by E. Onslow Ford, in St Paul's Cathedral
- Recumbent effigy of George Augustus Selwyn, Bishop then Primate of New Zealand (1841-69), by Thomas Nicholls, in Lichfield Cathedral
Bibliography
Belich, James. The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict: The Maori, the British, and the New Zealand Wars. 1986. North American ed.: Montreal and Kingston: McGill - Queen's University Press, 1989.
Buick, T. Lindsay. The Treaty of Waitangi, or How New Zealand Became a British Colony. Wellington, NZ. S. & W. Mackay, 1914. Project Gutenberg. Web. 12 June 2025.
Map of New Zealand. HathiTrust. Web. 11 June 2025.
Orange, Claudia. "The Maori People and the British Crown (1769-1840)." The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand. Ed. Keith Sinclair. 2nd ed. Auckland, N.Z.: Oxford University Press, 1997. 21-48.
Created 11 June 2025