New Zealand History, Map, Flag, Capital, Population, & Facts

The country’s isolation delayed the influence of European artistic trends allowing local artists to develop their own distinctive style of regionalism. Since European arrival paintings and photographs have been dominated by landscapes, originally not as works of art but as factual portrayals of New Zealand. As part of the resurgence of Māori culture, the traditional crafts of carving and weaving are now more widely practised, and Māori artists are increasing in number and influence. The largely rural life in early New Zealand led to the image of New Zealanders as rugged, industrious problem solvers. However, Māori still regard their allegiance to tribal groups as a vital part of their identity, and Māori kinship roles resemble those of other Polynesian peoples.
The New Zealand Parliament cannot pass legislation for these countries, but with their consent can act on behalf of them in foreign affairs and defence. The Cook Islands and Niue are self-governing states in free association with New Zealand. The Realm of New Zealand, one of 15 Commonwealth realms, is the entire area over which the king or queen of New Zealand is sovereign and comprises New Zealand, Tokelau, the Ross Dependency, the Cook Islands, and Niue.

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However, British inability to protect the country from Japanese aggression in World War II began a period of American influence. Since then, the country has been a sovereign constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth of Nations. Full independence was granted with the Statute of Westminster in 1931, which was adopted by the New Zealand parliament in 1947. The discovery of gold on South Island in 1861 sparked concerns that settlers there would form a separate colony, so in 1865 the capital was moved to the more central city of Wellington. His Constitution Act of 1853 set up a national system of representative government and a prime minister. New Zealand was initially administered as a part of the colony of New South Wales.

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The colony gained a representative government in 1852, and the first Parliament met in 1854. These conflicts, mainly in the North Island, saw thousands of imperial troops and the Royal Navy come to New Zealand and became known as the New Zealand Wars. New Zealand was administered as a dependency of the Colony of New South Wales until becoming a separate Crown colony, the Colony of New Zealand, on 3 May 1841. In 1835, following an announcement of impending French settlement by Charles de Thierry, the nebulous United Tribes of New Zealand sent a Declaration of Independence to King William IV of the United Kingdom asking for protection. The Māori population declined to around 40% of its pre-contact level during the 19th century; introduced diseases were the major factor. Following Cook, New Zealand was visited by numerous European and North American whaling, sealing, and trading ships.

New Zealand Facts and Culture

New Zealand is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement, known formally as the UKUSA Agreement. Today, New Zealand enjoys particularly close relations with the United States and is one of its major non-NATO allies, as well as with Australia, with a “Trans-Tasman” identity between citizens of the latter being common. The country is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and participates in the Five Power Defence Arrangements.

  • New Zealand art and craft has gradually achieved an international audience, with exhibitions in the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the “Paradise Now” exhibition in New York in 2004.
  • A large proportion of New Zealand’s aid goes to these countries, and many Pacific people migrate to New Zealand for employment.
  • Although still largely influenced by global trends (modernism) and events (the Great Depression), writers in the 1930s began to develop stories increasingly focused on their experiences in New Zealand.
  • However, Māori still regard their allegiance to tribal groups as a vital part of their identity, and Māori kinship roles resemble those of other Polynesian peoples.
  • New Zealand’s wine industry has followed a similar trend to dairy, the number of vineyards doubling over the same period, overtaking wool exports for the first time in 2007.
  • The closest point between any territory of both countries is between Macquarie Island (Australia) and Auckland Island (New Zealand), which are about 618 kilometers (384 miles) apart.

But unresolved disputes over land ownership and sovereignty led to a series of armed clashes, known as the Maori Wars, the NZ Wars, or the Land Wars, which continued until 1872. The Treaty of Waitangi was concluded between the British government and Maori chiefs in early 1840. The first Europeans to live in New Zealand were seamen who jumped ship, convicts who had escaped from British penal colonies in Australia, sealers, whalers, and traders. In the same year as Cook’s first visit, French explorer Jean de Surville conducted the first Christian service in New Zealand waters on Christmas Day. He recognized the relationship between the Maori and the Tahitian people his expedition had already visited. This was changed by Dutch cartographers to Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland.

Land

Because of its far-flung outlying islands and long coastline, the country has extensive marine resources. Since 1937, the islands are uninhabited except for about six people at Raoul Island station. In 1830, mapmakers began to use “North” and “South” on their maps to distinguish the two largest islands, and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. Māori had several traditional names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui (‘the fish of Māui’) for the North Island and Te Waipounamu (‘the waters of greenstone’) or Te Waka o Aoraki (‘the canoe of Aoraki’) for the South Island.

  • Conditions vary from wet and cold on South Island’s west coast to dry and continental a short distance away across the mountains and subtropical in the northern reaches of North Island.
  • The state-owned enterprise KiwiRail now operates the railways, with the exception of commuter services in Auckland and Wellington, which are operated by Auckland One Rail and Transdev Wellington respectively.
  • Geographically, the country consists of two large islands and a number of smaller islands.
  • Horse racing is one of the most popular spectator sports in New Zealand and was part of the “rugby, racing, and beer” subculture during the 1960s.
  • Since 1876, various councils have administered local areas under legislation determined by the central government.

It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Smaller islands include Stewart Island, which lies south of South Island; Waiheke and Great Barrier islands, near the north end of North Island; and the Chatham Islands, more than 800 km east of South Island. Despite New Zealand’s isolation, the country has been fully engaged in international affairs since the early 20th century, being an active member of a number of intergovernmental institutions, including the United Nations.
Christianity is the predominant religion in New Zealand, although nearly 40 percent of the population has no religious affiliation. Successive government policies on the relationship between Maori and non-Maori people have worsened race relations. English and Maori are the two official languages, although most visitors would find New Zealand exclusively an English-speaking country. A result of Pacific Island immigration is that South Auckland has become the world’s largest Polynesian city. About 70 percent of New Zealand’s population is of European descent, mostly English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and Dutch. New Zealand once had about 20 times more sheep than people; by 2001 there were only 12 times as many.
In September 2020 Statistics New Zealand reported that the population had climbed above 5 million people in September 2019, according to population estimates based on the 2018 census.n 9 The road and rail networks in the two main islands are linked by roll-on/roll-off ferries between Wellington and Picton, operated by Interislander (part of KiwiRail) and Bluebridge. In the year to June 2018, dairy products accounted for 17.7% ($14.1 billion) of total exports, and the country’s largest company, Fonterra, controls almost one-third of the international dairy trade. The increase of this since the 1960s led to the formation of the Pasifika New Zealander pan-ethnic group, the fourth-largest ethnic grouping in the country.
The New Zealand Post Office had a monopoly over telecommunications in New Zealand until 1987 when Telecom New Zealand was formed, initially as a state-owned enterprise and then privatised in 1990. Railways run the length of the country, although most lines now carry freight rather than passengers. The state-owned enterprise KiwiRail now operates the railways, with the exception of commuter services in Auckland and Wellington, which are operated by Auckland One Rail and Transdev Wellington respectively. State-owned Transpower operates the high-voltage transmission grids in the North and South Islands, as well as the Inter-Island HVDC link connecting the two together.
The population, in slight excess of four million, is similar in size to Costa Rica’s. New Zealand’s total land area, nearly 270,000 km², is about the same as that of Colorado and somewhat smaller than the Philippines. The closest neighbors to the north are New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. It is separated from Australia to the northwest by the Tasman Sea, which is some 2,000 km across.

Culture

The Māori were the first people to reach New Zealand, followed by the early European settlers. While the demonym for a New Zealand citizen is New Zealander, the informal “Kiwi” is commonly used both internationally and by locals. For legacy systems which can only accept one ethnicity, people are usually allocated to a single ethnicity based on a pre-determined priority order, with Māori given highest priority and New Zealand European given lowest priority. Statistics New Zealand allows people to choose multiple ethnicities and reports ethnic data based on total responses, therefore ethnicities add up to more than 100%. The median age of the New Zealand population at the 2018 census was 37.4 years, with life expectancy in 2017–2019 being 80.0 years for males and 83.5 years for females.

Regions and external territories

Health New Zealand is charged with working alongside the Public Health Agency to manage the provision of healthcare services in New Zealand. Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora is the primary publicly funded healthcare system of New Zealand. As of 2023update, New Zealand allocated about 9.6 percent of its GDP to healthcare, slightly above the OECD average of 8.8 percent. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment ranks New Zealand as the 28th best in the OECD for maths, 13th best for science, and 11th best for reading. In 2021, in the population aged 25–64, 13% had no formal qualification, 21% had a school qualification, 28% had a tertiary certificate or diploma, and 35% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. There are 13 school years and attending state (public) schools is free to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents from a person’s 5th birthday to the end of the calendar year following their 19th birthday.
Europeans did not revisit New Zealand until 1769, when British explorer James Cook mapped almost the entire coastline. The existence of a single great fleet that settled New Zealand has since been superseded by the belief that the majority of settlement was a planned and deliberate event that occurred over several decades. The New Zealand Geographic Board betista casino login discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised, and names and alternative names were formalised in 2013. In 1834, a document written in Māori, “He Wakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni”, was translated into English and became the Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand. The Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau (a dependent territory); the Cook Islands and Niue (self-governing states in free association with New Zealand); and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealand’s territorial claim in Antarctica.
New Zealand has been described as a middle power in the Asia-Pacific region, and an emerging power. A seasonal workers scheme for temporary migration was introduced in 2007, and in 2009 about 8,000 Pacific Islanders were employed under it. New Zealand has a strong presence among the Pacific Island countries, and enjoys strong diplomatic relations with Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga, and among smaller nations. Despite the United States’s suspension of ANZUS obligations, the treaty remained in effect between New Zealand and Australia, whose foreign policy has followed a similar historical trend. In 1951, the United Kingdom became increasingly focused on its European interests, while New Zealand joined Australia and the United States in the ANZUS security treaty. On 3 September 1939, New Zealand allied itself with Britain and declared war on Germany with Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage proclaiming, “Where she goes, we go; where she stands, we stand”.
While officially the Chatham Islands Council is not a unitary authority, it undertakes many functions of a regional council. The territorial authorities consist of 13 city councils, 53 district councils, and the Chatham Islands Council. In 1989, the government reorganised local government into the current two-tier structure of regional councils and territorial authorities. Since 1876, various councils have administered local areas under legislation determined by the central government.
In 2005, agriculture made up about 5 percent of gross domestic product; industry, 28 percent; and services, 67 percent. A period of poor economic growth lasted until the mid-1990s, when the government began a program of immigration to boost GDP. An economic bubble developed in the New Zealand stock market starting in 1984. The businesses the government retained, known as “state-owned enterprises,” are required to operate profitably as stand-alone businesses.
It also forms the southwestern extremity of the geographic and ethnographic region called Polynesia. New Zealand is part of Zealandia, a microcontinent nearly half the size of Australia that gradually submerged after breaking away from the Gondwanan supercontinent. The country owes its varied topography, and perhaps even its emergence above the waves, to the dynamic boundary it straddles between the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates. The highly active Taupō Volcanic Zone has formed a large volcanic plateau, punctuated by the North Island’s highest mountain, Mount Ruapehu (2,797 metres (9,177 ft)). The closest point between any territory of both countries is between Macquarie Island (Australia) and Auckland Island (New Zealand), which are about 618 kilometers (384 miles) apart.