@jamescook5971
🇳🇿 The History of New Zealand begins in the Middle Ages, when humans first arrived in the form of the Polynesian explorer Kupe. New Zealand was the last significant land mass on Earth to be settled by humans. The following five centuries saw the development of what became the Maori culture. The first European to sight the islands was Abel Tasman in 1642, but it was Cook in 1769 that thoroughly mapped the islands, leading the way for the first European settlers in the following decades.
🇳🇿 Initial contacts between Europeans and Maoris was peaceful, although the trading of land for muskets resulted in the Musket Wars of the early 1800s. The British sought to control the disorganised state of land purchases with the Maori through the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840, which established British Sovereignty of New Zealand and the first colony. Many Maori tribes felt they had been deceived by the treaty, and rebelled in the decades-long New Zealand Wars of the mid 1800s, in which many lands were confiscated by the British from the Maori.
🇳🇿 British settlement of New Zealand accelerated during this time. The British settlers were given a parliament in 1852, and the capital moved from Auckland to Wellington in 1865. Gradually the forests were transformed to pastureland and millions of sheep generated wool to be sent back to the mills of Britain. Later came meat, butter and fruits, an export trade that dominated the New Zealand economy for a century or more.
🇳🇿 The Liberal Party reforms at the end of the 19th Century included New Zealand bringing the first equal votes of women anywhere in the world.
🇳🇿 New Zealanders joined Britain with the ANZACs in World War I, and again supported the mother country in World War II. New Zealand would finally gain full independence from Britain in 1947, after earlier gaining Dominion status in 1907. Post war international relations continued with Britain but also the USA in the form of the ANZUS pact that saw New Zealand troops supporting the US in Vietnam.
🇳🇿 Domestically New Zealand suffered as agricultural exports slumped in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Out of this came a welfare state that increasingly dominated the economy up to the 1980s. But the 1970s saw New Zealand lose its greatest trading partner when Britain joined the EEC in 1973. New Zealand was forced to change its economic base and this accelerated with the economic liberalisation of the 1980s and "Rogernomics".
🇳🇿 New Zealand finally separated from any influence of the USA when it declared a Nuclear Free Zone in 1984. The subsequent failure of the USA to condemn France's sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour the following year confirmed this fracture.
- - - -
POLICY ON CRITICISM
Comments are welcome, but if you have a correction, you must specify what you believe to be the exact error, as well as providing what you believe to be the correct information. Failure to do this will result in your comment being deleted. Additionally, all negatively opinionated comments that do not offer constructive solutions will also be deleted. ** All comments are moderated. **