The incident saw some sailors refer to New Zealand as the ‘Cannibal Isles’ and people were warned to steer clear. The attack on the sailing ship Boyd in December 1809 was one such example. The overwhelming majority of encounters between European and Māori passed without incident, but when things did turn violent much was made of the killing of Europeans. As Cook rounded the top of the North Island in December 1769, the French explorer Jean François Marie de Surville was only 40 km to the south-west.

His voyage to the south Pacific was primarily a scientific expedition, but the British were not averse to expanding trade and empire. The British explorer James Cook arrived in Poverty Bay in October 1769. It would be 127 years before the next recorded encounter between European and Māori. The Māori response to this visit is less well-known, except for fragments of stories recorded in the 19th century. After he left in early January 1643, Tasman’s New Zealand became a ragged line on the world map. Tasman named the place we now call Golden Bay ‘Moordenaers’ (Murderers’) Bay. His only encounter with Māori ended badly, with four of his crew killed and Māori fired upon in retaliation. Abel Tasman was the first of the European explorers known to have reached New Zealand, in December 1642. First contactsīy the time the first Europeans arrived, Māori had settled the land, every corner of which came within the interest and influence of a tribal (iwi) or sub-tribal (hapū) grouping. This broad survey of New Zealand’s ‘long 19th century’ begins with the arrival of James Cook in 1769 and concludes in 1914, when New Zealand answered the call to arms for ‘King and Country’.

In the period between the first European landings and the First World War, New Zealand was transformed from an exclusively Māori world into one in which Pākehā dominated numerically, politically, socially and economically.

Luring warrior social empires