Migration and colonisation

The European population of New Zealand in 1839 is estimated as having been about 2,000 – a mixture of traders, whalers, sealers, missionaries and escaped convicts (see, for example, Bentley 1999). On 6 February 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between representatives of the British government and a number of Maori chiefs which gave New Zealand a British colonial administration designed to govern both Maori and Pakeha (settlers of European origin). Thus 1840 is the date when (from the British point of view) Britain gained sovereignty over the whole of New Zealand, and from this date onwards the European population of New Zealand grew at a phenomenal rate, so that by 1858 it outnumbered the indigenous Maori – 56,000 Maori to 59,000 Europeans (Graham 1996: 52). By 1872 the European population had reached 256,000 and by 1881 it was half a million. The number of births in the colony in this period was 250,000 (ibid.; Bellich 1996: 278). By the 1880s the number of locally born New Zealanders exceeded that of immigrants: the 1886 census shows that 52 per cent of the population was born in New Zealand (Graham 1992: 112).

These figures give some idea of the enormous upheaval and change which occurred because of the mass migration of European people to New Zealand, a movement which was part of the greater diaspora from the British Isles and Europe whereby people moved to America, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.