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Who colonized New Zealand?

Oceania — the powers that ruled New Zealand, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized New Zealand?

Britain, from the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 — signed in two versions that said different things — followed by land wars, confiscation and colonial government.

New Zealand's colonisation turned on a translation. The Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi ceded governance while reserving chieftainship; the English text ceded sovereignty outright.

Reference

Who ruled New Zealand, and when

from around 1300
Māori iwi
1840–1907
British colony
since 1907
Dominion then realm of New Zealand

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Britain
Independence
Dominion 1907; full legal autonomy 1947
Two treaties
The Māori text ceded governance (kāwanatanga), the English text ceded sovereignty
Land
Māori held nearly all land in 1840 and under 10% by 1900
Redress
Treaty settlements continue through the Waitangi Tribunal

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1840

    Treaty of Waitangi signed; English and Māori texts differ on sovereignty.

  2. 1845–72

    New Zealand Wars.

  3. 1863

    New Zealand Settlements Act enables mass land confiscation.

  4. 1975

    Waitangi Tribunal established to hear treaty claims.

Context

What the record shows

Confiscation statutes after the wars of the 1860s transferred vast areas of land, and the Waitangi Tribunal process since 1975 has been an attempt to account for it.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised New Zealand?
Britain, from 1840.
What is the Treaty of Waitangi?
The 1840 agreement between the British Crown and Māori chiefs, signed in Māori and English texts whose terms differ substantially on the question of sovereignty.
How much land did Māori lose?
Māori held effectively all land in 1840 and less than a tenth by 1900, through purchase, confiscation and court-driven alienation.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial New Zealand

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.