This is a bibliography of selected works on the history of New Zealand.
The history of New Zealand (Aotearoa) dates back to between 1320 and 1350 CE, when the main settlement period started, after it was discovered by Kupe and settled by Polynesians, who developed a distinct Māori culture. Like other Pacific cultures, Māori society was centred on kinship links and connection with the land but, unlike them, it was adapted to a cool, temperate environment rather than a warm, tropical one.
The New Zealand Labour Party, or simply Labour, is a centre-left political party in New Zealand. The party's platform programme describes its founding principle as democratic socialism, while observers describe Labour as social-democratic and pragmatic in practice. The party participates in the international Progressive Alliance. It is one of two major political parties in New Zealand, alongside its traditional rival, the National Party.
Michael Joseph Savage was a New Zealand politician who served as the 23rd prime minister of New Zealand, heading the First Labour Government from 1935 until his death in 1940.
The New Zealand Wars took place from 1845 to 1872 between the New Zealand colonial government and allied Māori on one side and Māori and Māori-allied settlers on the other. They were previously commonly referred to as the Land Wars or the Māori Wars, while Māori language names for the conflicts included Ngā pakanga o Aotearoa and Te riri Pākehā. Historian James Belich popularised the name "New Zealand Wars" in the 1980s, although according to Vincent O'Malley, the term was first used by historian James Cowan in the 1920s.
The First Taranaki War was an armed conflict over land ownership and sovereignty that took place between Māori and the New Zealand government in the Taranaki district of New Zealand's North Island from March 1860 to March 1861.
The Invasion of the Waikato became the largest and most important campaign of the 19th-century New Zealand Wars. Hostilities took place in the North Island of New Zealand between the military forces of the colonial government and a federation of Māori tribes known as the Kingitanga Movement. The Waikato is a territorial region with a northern boundary somewhat south of the present-day city of Auckland. The campaign lasted for nine months, from July 1863 to April 1864. The invasion was aimed at crushing Kingite power and also at driving Waikato Māori from their territory in readiness for occupation and settlement by European colonists. The campaign was fought by a peak of about 14,000 Imperial and colonial troops and about 4,000 Māori warriors drawn from more than half the major North Island tribal groups.
Tainui is a tribal waka confederation of New Zealand Māori iwi. The Tainui confederation comprises four principal related Māori iwi of the central North Island of New Zealand: Hauraki, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Raukawa and Waikato. There are other Tainui iwi whose tribal areas lay outside the traditional Tainui boundaries – Ngāi Tai in the Auckland area, Ngāti Raukawa ki Te Tonga and Ngāti Toa in the Horowhenua, Kapiti region, and Ngāti Rārua and Ngāti Koata in the northern South Island.
The Moriori are the native Polynesian people of the Chatham Islands, New Zealand. Moriori originated from Māori settlers from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 CE. This was near the time of the shift from the archaic to classic Māori culture on the main islands of New Zealand. Oral tradition records multiple waves of migration to the Chatham Islands, starting in the 16th century. Over several centuries these settlers' culture diverged from mainland Māori, developing a distinctive language, mythology, artistic expression and way of life. Currently there are around 700 people who identify as Moriori, most of whom no longer live on the Chatham Islands. During the late 19th century some prominent anthropologists mistakenly proposed that Moriori were pre-Māori settlers of mainland New Zealand, and possibly Melanesian in origin.
The Musket Wars were a series of as many as 3,000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand among Māori between 1807 and 1837, after Māori first obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race in order to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats. The battles resulted in the deaths of between 20,000 and 40,000 people and the enslavement of tens of thousands of Māori and significantly altered the rohe, or tribal territorial boundaries, before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.
This article gives an overview of historic liberalism in New Zealand. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had representation in parliament.
The New Zealand Liberal Party was the first organised political party in New Zealand. It governed from 1891 until 1912. The Liberal strategy was to create a large class of small land-owning farmers who supported Liberal ideals, by buying large tracts of Māori land and selling it to small farmers on credit. The Liberal Government also established the basis of the later welfare state, with old age pensions, developed a system for settling industrial disputes, which was accepted by both employers and trade unions. In 1893 it extended voting rights to women, making New Zealand the first country in the world to enact universal adult suffrage.
The Reform Party, formally the New Zealand Political Reform League, was New Zealand's second major political party, having been founded as a conservative response to the original Liberal Party. It was in government between 1912 and 1928, and later formed a coalition with the United Party, and then merged with United to form the modern National Party.
The King Country is a region of the western North Island of New Zealand. It extends approximately from Kawhia Harbour and the town of Ōtorohanga in the north to the upper reaches of the Whanganui River in the south, and from the Hauhungaroa and Rangitoto Ranges in the east to near the Tasman Sea in the west. It comprises hill country, large parts of which are forested.
The 1943 New Zealand general election was a nationwide vote to determine the shape of the New Zealand Parliament's 27th term. With the onset of World War II, elections were initially postponed, but it was eventually decided to hold a general election in September 1943, around two years after it would normally have occurred. The election saw the governing Labour Party re-elected by a comfortable margin, although the party nevertheless lost considerable ground to the expanding National Party.
James Christopher Belich is a New Zealand historian, known for his work on the New Zealand Wars and on New Zealand history more generally. One of his major works on the 19th-century clash between Māori and Pākehā, the revisionist study The New Zealand Wars (1986), was also published in an American edition and adapted into a television series and DVD.
Sir Keith Sinclair was a New Zealand poet and historian.
Kūpapa were Māori who fought on the British side in the New Zealand Wars of the 19th century.
Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.
The 28th New Zealand Parliament was a term of the New Zealand Parliament. It was elected at the 1946 general election in November of that year.