Racial discourses which, in contemporary Australia and New Zealand, seem so normal as to be taken for granted, were created and refined in the period of early imperial relationships between the British and Māori and Aboriginal people. In this book I have examined these racial discourses as they were developed over the period from the Cook voyages to the Treaty of Waitangi. These early relationships laid the groundwork for a variety of ideas about race and cultural difference which have been examined throughout this work, but in particular created two tropes that have been particularly powerful and persistent: that Māori were warriors and that Aboriginal people were wanderers. Both of these tropes coded representations of the indigenous peoples’ relationships to the land, with Māori being seen as sovereign owners while the British disregarded Aboriginal peoples’ sovereignty. Through an examination not only of the foundational texts which helped create and circulate these ideas, but also the reception and analysis of these concepts in contemporary historical scholarship, this book has traced the continuing power of racial discourse to shape the way that indigenous peoples were, and are, depicted in the region. Racial discourses created in the contexts of early imperial relationships were not only powerful in the immediate service of empire, but continue to exert a profound influence on historical scholarship in the region, and the way that the nations of Australia and New Zealand relate to their indigenous populations.