Remoter Australasia 1861–1890

If the governor’s decision to wage war in Taranaki over Waitara in 1860 was heavy-handed and aggressive, the invasion of the Waikato launched by Sir George Grey in July 1863 amounted to a blatant lunge for power. Indeed – as a narrow victory of numbers – it presaged the takeover by settler New Zealand that deluged Māori. From the 1860s the scales of power tipped to the settler society. Within a generation, Māori shrank from being most of the population to a small minority. The amount of land in Māori ownership, already much diminished, halved between 1860 and 1891. But pockets of resistance nurtured a proud legacy that would recalibrate relations a century and more later.