- History of New Zealand

Maori first landed in New Zealand on waka or canoes from their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki probably over 1,000 years ago. They settled throughout the country.Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, but it was after Captain James Cook began his circumnavigation of the country in 1769 that European migration began. The first European migrants were whalers and missionaries.

The Polynesian settlers are said to have arrived some time between 800 and 600 years ago to establish the indigenous Māori culture. Settlement of the Chatham Islands to the south-east of New Zealand produced the Moriori people but it is disputed by some as to whether they moved there from New Zealand or from elsewhere in Polynesia. Most of New Zealand was divided into tribal territories . Māori adapted to eating the marine resources, flora and fauna for food, hunting the giant flightless moa (which became extinct as a result), and ate the Polynesian Rat and kumara also known as the sweet potato

The first Europeans known to reach New Zealand shores were led by Abel Tasman,A Dutch sailor, who sailed up the west coast of the South and North islands in 1642. Staten Landt,as he called it, 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.

Captain James Cook subsequently called the archipelago New Zealand, 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, Māori had encounters with European sealers and whalers. Acquisition of muskets by those tribes in close contact with European visitors destabilised the existing balance of power between Māori tribes and there was a temporary but intense period of bloody inter-tribal warfare, known as the Musket Wars.

Governor William Hobson had been sent to New Zealand in 1839; he negotiated the Treaty of Waitangi with northern Maori on his arrival. The Treaty was signed on February 7th, and is now seen as the founding document of New Zealand. The Māori translation of the treaty promised the Māori tribes "tino rangatiratanga" would be preserved in return for ceding 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.

Although New Zealand was initially administered as a part of the colony of New South Wales, it became a separate colony in 1841. The first capital of New Zealand was Old Russell in the Bay of Islands but shortly afterwards moved to Auckland. European settlement progressed more rapidly than anyone anticipated, and settlers soon outnumbered Māori. Self-government was granted to the settler population in 1852. 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 officially 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 Australian colonies. This was to consider a potential constitution for the proposed federation between all the Australasian colonies.

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. Compare Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand.

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