Overview

Background

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, lumbering, seal hunting, and whaling attracted a few European settlers to New Zealand. In 1840, the United Kingdom established British sovereignty through the Treaty of Waitangi, signed that year with Maori chiefs. However, expanding European settlement led to the Maori land wars of the 1860s.

By the 1890s, parliamentary government along democratic lines was well established, and New Zealand's social institutions assumed their...