ABSTRACT

Apart from Antarctica, New Zealand was the last major land mass in the world to be settled by humans. Polynesians probably arrived in the thirteenth century CE, with Europeans following 400 years later. 1 In 1642 the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman captained the first European explorers to find New Zealand, and the country is named after his home province in the Netherlands. However, it was the repeated visits of James Cook’s expeditions in the late eighteenth century that were more influential and led to the country being colonised by the British. Subsequently, Maori and British cultures signed a political pact of mutual accommodation, the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840. The country is now officially bicultural, and intermarriage between the races is widespread.