Aotearoa New Zealand history, year by year
Two centuries of it, on the map where it happened.
- 137 events
- 1800–2000 two centuries
- 17 regions
- every entry sourced
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Drag the timeline, or press play. Click any marker to read about it, then follow the link for the full account. Open the full-screen map →
How to read this map
Colour carries the meaning. Each region takes on a blend of whatever is happening inside it, so a year of war and a year of reform look different at a glance. Each colour is also a way in — follow one to see every event under that theme.
- Treaty & Crown–Māori relations18
- War & conflict28
- Government & law27
- Social change & rights17
- Economy & industry23
- Settlement & migration9
- Disaster9
- Culture, science & sport6
A brighter, outlined region means an event names that place directly. A faint wash means something national is under way that touches everywhere.
A pulsing marker is one of the 51 nationally defining moments. Fading markers are events that ended in the last few years.
Defining moments
Eight of the turning points, spread across the two centuries.
The Musket Wars
Musket-armed war parties reshaped the map of Māori New Zealand. Perhaps 20,000 died and whole districts changed hands before the fighting burned out around 1840.
Settlers outnumber Māori
Around 1858 settlers came to outnumber Māori for the first time. The census counted about 59,000 Europeans; rougher counts put Māori at 56,000 to 60,000, about three-fifths of their number when Cook arrived.
The Native Land Court is established
The court converted customary communal title into individual titles that could be sold, and became the main means by which most remaining Māori land passed out of Māori ownership.
Old-age pensions introduced
One of the first state pensions anywhere — means-tested, character-tested, and closed to Chinese and other Asian residents.
The influenza pandemic
About 9,000 people died in two months — roughly half as many as died in four years of war. Māori died at more than eight times the Pākehā rate.
The great Māori urban migration
Māori went from 26 percent urban in 1945 to nearly 80 percent by 1986 — a migration Te Ara says has been described as the most rapid movement of any population.
Treaty of Waitangi Act — the Waitangi Tribunal
A permanent commission of inquiry was created to hear Treaty claims — but only for breaches after 1975. Claims were rare until 1985.
WellingtonWaitangi Tribunal jurisdiction backdated to 1840
The Tribunal could now investigate Crown breaches all the way back to 1840, and the number of claims rose hugely.
New Zealand was the last large habitable landmass on earth that people reached. Polynesian voyagers arrived around 1300, which makes the entire human history of these islands about seven centuries — shorter than several European cathedrals have been standing. The two hundred years on this map are more than a quarter of it.
That compression is why the timeline feels crowded. Someone born the year before Te Tiriti was signed could have lived to see the 1893 election, when New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world where women could vote. One lifetime spans a country with no Crown presence at all and one shipping frozen lamb to London.
And a single argument runs the whole length of it. The wars of the 1860s, the Native Land Court, Parihaka, the land march of 1975, the settlements of the 1990s — nearly all of it traces back to two texts signed at Waitangi in 1840 that did not say the same thing. Drag the slider and much of what you are watching is the consequence of that.
Browse by era
Nine periods, each with its own character and its own arguments. The bar shows how much of the two centuries each one covers.
- 1800–1839Contact & the musket era18 events
- 1840–1859Crown colony20 events
- 1860–1872The New Zealand Wars21 events
- 1873–1889Colonial consolidation7 events
- 1890–1911The Liberal experiment10 events
- 1912–1938War, slump & reform15 events
- 1939–1959Total war & the welfare state16 events
- 1960–1983Protest & renaissance19 events
- 1984–2000Reform & settlement17 events
How this was made
Every event carries at least one citation, and nothing goes in without one. Summaries are written for this project rather than copied, and boundaries are the modern regions — which makes colouring Waikato in 1863 deliberately anachronistic.
Read the method and sources