The last large land settled first gave women the vote
New Zealand—Aotearoa in Māori—comprises North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui), South Island (Te Waipounamu), and over 700 lesser islands in the southwestern Pacific. The sixth-largest island country, it was the last large habitable land humans reached, when Polynesians arrived in waves between about 1280 and 1350 and forged Māori culture.
The country lies across the Tasman Sea from Australia and south of New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga, and tectonic uplift and volcanoes built the Southern Alps. Wellington is the capital, Auckland the biggest city. Charles III is king, represented by Governor-General Cindy Kiro, and Christopher Luxon leads the government. The wider Realm takes in Tokelau, the self-governing Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency in Antarctica, while the Kermadecs, annexed in 1886, push the northern border to 29 degrees south.
Tradition says the navigator Kupe found the islands while chasing a giant octopus. Nothing human can be securely dated before Mount Tarawera’s Kaharoa blast of about 1314. Some Māori moved on to the Chathams and became the Moriori, nearly wiped out by an 1835 invasion. Aotearoa, often glossed land of the long white cloud, first named only the North Island; the South Island was also Te Waipounamu, the waters of greenstone.
Abel Tasman sighted the land in 1642, calling it Staten Land, and four of his crew died in a clash with Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri; Dutch mapmakers later chose Nova Zeelandia after Zeeland. James Cook charted nearly the whole coast in 1769. Potatoes and muskets fuelled the Musket Wars, over 600 battles between 1801 and 1840 that killed 30,000 to 40,000 Māori, and disease cut Māori numbers to about 40 percent of pre-contact levels.
British envoys and Māori chiefs put their names to the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840, first in the Bay of Islands, and a separate colony followed on 3 May 1841. Fighting that began with the Wairau Affray in 1843 led to large land confiscations. Parliament first met in 1854 and moved to Wellington in 1865. Dominion status came in 1907 and full statutory independence in 1947, and the country was first to set a minimum wage and let women vote.
Source: New Zealand
