hone heke

The Northern War

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  The Northern War, fought in the Bay of Islands in 1845-46, was the first serious challenge to the Crown in the years after the Treaty of Waitangi. Its opening shots marked the beginning of the wider North Island conflicts that are often referred to as the New Zealand Wars.

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• Page 2 – Origins of the Northern War

  Actions by the colonial government cost Māori in the Bay of Islands in terms of lost trade and opportunities. Heke feared that chiefly authority was now subservient to that of

• Page 3 – The sacking of Kororāreka

  The sacking of Kororāreka shook the settler population. Over £50,000 worth of property was lost. In Auckland panic set in. Some settlers sold their land for whatever price they

• Page 4 – Puketutu and Te Ahuahu

  Māori learnt an important lesson at Puketutu: the British were a formidable foe in open battle. This would influence Māori tactics in future clashes

• Page 5 – Ōhaeawai

  The vastly experienced Henry Despard had now arrived as the new commander of all British troops in New Zealand. Keen to cash in on Heke’s setback at Te Ahuahu, he

• Page 6 – The quest for peace

  Grey assumed control on 18 November 1845. He believed that FitzRoy's negotiations were inconsistent with the interests of the British government. When talks broke down in early

• Page 7 – Ruapekapeka

  Ruapekapeka may have been a tactical victory for the British, but many consider the outcome to have been a draw. Heke and Kawiti had escaped with their forces largely intact,

• Page 8 – Peace breaks out

  Historian James Belich contends that Grey won the propaganda war and Kawiti and Heke won the real war on the battlefield. Others argue that Belich's revisionism goes too far

New Zealand's 19th-century wars

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  War changed the face of New Zealand in the 19th century. Tens of thousands of Māori died in the intertribal Musket Wars from the 1810s to the 1830s. There were fewer deaths during the New Zealand Wars (1840s-1870s) between Māori and the Crown, but the consequences were still dire for many tribes.

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• Page 2 - Pre-1860 conflictsThe Musket Wars of the 1810s-1830s caused thousands of Māori to flee their traditional lands, freeing large areas for Pākehā (European) settlement. In 1840, Europeans bought

A frontier of chaos?

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  In the years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, relations between Māori and Europeans were marred by a number of high-profile incidents.

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• Page 7 - KororārekaThe missionaries divided the Europeans who came to New Zealand in the early 19th century into two groups: the agents of virtue (themselves) and the agents of vice (almost everyone