New Zealand

The last large habitable landmass on earth to be settled by people, and the only British settler colony founded on a signed treaty. Polynesian voyagers arrived around 1300, among the final navigations of the Pacific, and became Maori, developing in isolation a society of iwi and hapu, fortified pa, and an economy without the tropical crops their ancestors had carried. European contact from Cook's voyage in 1769 brought muskets, which turned inter-iwi conflict into the devastating wars of the 1810s to 1830s, and disease, which did the rest. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840, is the country's founding document and its central problem: the English text ceded sovereignty, the Maori text ceded kawanatanga, governorship, while guaranteeing rangatiratanga, chieftainship, over land and treasures, and most signatories signed the Maori version. Settlement and land purchase pressure produced the New Zealand Wars of the 1840s to 1870s and the confiscation of much of the Waikato and Taranaki. Refrigerated shipping from 1882 made the country a farm for Britain, exporting lamb, butter and wool nine thousand miles. It gave women the vote in 1893, the first self-governing country to do so, and built an early welfare state in the 1930s. Britain's entry into the European Community in 1973 forced a wholesale economic reinvention. The Waitangi Tribunal, created in 1975, has been settling historical claims since. Te reo Maori became an official language in 1987. Wellington is the capital and Auckland much the largest city. The country has no snakes and, before people, no land mammals except bats. Its flightless birds evolved in that absence and many did not survive contact. The haka performed before rugby matches is a Ngati Toa composition.

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