ABSTRACT
As in the United States, the colonial period in New Zealand was one of rapid influx from distant lands and an overwhelming of the population present at the time of European discovery. The Maori population of New Zealand at the time of Captain Cook’s first voyage in 1769 has been estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000 (Bedford, 1986). In 1840, when, by the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand became a British colony, that figure still exceeded 100,000 compared to some 1,500 European settlers. Even acknowledging an undercount of the Maori in the first national census of 1858, 48.5 percent out of a total population of 115,462, there is no denying that a pattern of a predominant non-Polynesian population had been established (Pool, 1977) (Table 14.1).
