New Zealand Wars map

The first major conflict occurred at Wairau in 1843, when 22 settlers and about four Māori were killed. There were subsequent clashes in the Bay of Islands (the Northern War) and near Wellington and Whanganui between 1845 and 1847.

Fighting resumed on a larger scale in the early 1860s. Following an inconclusive campaign in Taranaki in 1860–61, British imperial troops invaded the Waikato in 1863–64 in an effort to assert colonial authority over the King movement and open up land for European settlement.

As vast tracts of land were confiscated from the ‘rebel’ Māori, the millenarian Pai Mārire movement gathered momentum. Pākehā associated Pai Mārire (‘Hauhau’) with violent resistance to the Crown, and between 1865 and 1867 there was a series of clashes in eastern Bay of Plenty and on the East Coast.

Late in the decade new leaders emerged – Tītokowaru in southern Taranaki and Te Kooti in the east of the North Island. Bitter and protracted guerrilla campaigns continued into the early 1870s.