ABSTRACT
Though not formally independent until 1947, New Zealand has just over a hundred years’ experience of self-government and of self-concern with external relations. Representative control of domestic affairs was achieved in 1856 and extended in practice very rapidly to external affairs. New Zealand is a small state in the conventional senses of population size, gnp and limited political influence, but these factors of size are themselves much affected by the overwhelming importance to New Zealand of her extreme isolation in the Pacific.
