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New Zealand was another one of those places where the British showed up and said to the people who had been living there for centuries, “This is ours now.” Relations with the indigenous Māori were immediately hostile, then peaceful, then hostile again when the colonists started confiscating Māori land. The Māori went to war, and kicked a lot of British ass.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 7, 1868--
Abel Tasman, a Dutchman, was probably the first European to encounter New Zealand, and it did not go well for him. He sent boats toward shore and many Māori in canoes (called a waka) came out to greet them. With clubs. And death. After four of his men were killed, Tasman said fuck this place and noped out. Then Brit James Cook—asshole—arrived in New Zealand in 1769 and landed and started shooting Māori, but then things were mostly peaceful except when they fucking weren’t. There were plenty of lethal encounters over the years.
Close to a century later the British colonists had set up a government and made allies with some of the Māori. But plenty of Māori in the Northern Island said yeah fuck that we want our own government. So of course that meant war, beginning in 1860 and lasting a year. The British were getting throttled and had to bring in extra troops from Australia. It eventually ended in a ceasefire.
But then the British launched punitive campaigns after the war, destroying villages and confiscating land on the North Island. And in 1868 tribal leader and skilled warrior Riwha Tītokowaru said fuck these pasty peckerheads, time for some killing. And so Tītokowaru’s War began.
Tītokowaru and his men were terribly outnumbered, but also ferocious in battle and the British often fled the field with fudge-filled pants in the face of such attacks. On September 7, 1868, Tītokowaru staged an ambush of British forces at the Battle of Te Ngutu o Te Manu, and they wrecked some limey shit. It was a fucking bloodbath, with many senior officers killed, and the British fled in disarray. It’s been described as “the most serious and complete defeat ever experienced by colonial forces.” It also created a security crisis for the British because after the battle hundreds deserted or refused to reenlist because they’d become scared shitless of fighting the Māori.
Tītokowaru’s forces never lost a battle, but by the spring of 1869 they had been relentlessly pursued to their headquarters, which they were forced to abandon, ending the war. Tītokowaru escaped and became a messenger of peace and diplomacy in an effort to unite Māori and settlers. In 1886 he took part in a peaceful land occupation, was arrested, and sentenced to jail. He died a couple of years later at the age of approximately 65.
Tītokowaru’s contributions to the development of modern New Zealand were largely scrubbed from the historical record, only to be resurrected by historian James Belich in 1990 with the publication of his book Tītokowaru’s War.
Thanks, Eliot, for the suggestion of today’s topic.
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And then these kids came out of nowhere as part of an effort to preserve and celebrate New Zealand's indigenous culture and history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kwIkF6LFDc
It wasn't until I got to University that I did a short course on The Treaty of Waitangi (which effectively secured NZ for the British and not the French who were a few days late in getting there and raising a flag.
The Treaty was pretty good - it gave land ownership and a bunch of other rights to the many Maori tribes around the country. On paper it was a reasonable deal and way better than many other indigenous people ever got.
Of course what they don't teach you until you do a special course at University - is that after that the British colonial government went ahead and passed a series of legislation that removed all those rights - Maori can't own land, can't vote, can't own businesses, can't speak their own language, etc etc.
It wasn't until the 1980's that financial reparations (billions of dollars) started being made by the NZ govt to Maori (and the process is still going on).