Resistance in Australia and New Zealand

The Aboriginal people have been in Australia for an estimated 50,000 years and have the oldest continuous culture on Earth. At the time of European settlement, there may have been as many as 1 million people in 500 clans, speaking 700 languages.

Australia In 1788, the British began sending convicts and soldiers to establish colonies in New South Wales. The government instructed the settlers to treat the indigenous inhabitants kindly. However, the colonial government did not recognize indigenous land ownership. Further, because the indigenous inhabitants were not considered British subjects, they were not protected by law. Thousands of Aboriginal people were killed as they tried to defend their territory and resources from European settlers.

New Zealand Compared to the Aboriginals in Australia, New Zealand’s Maori were newcomers, having arrived from Polynesia in the 14th century. Under the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, Britain had promised to protect the property rights of the Maori. Within a short time, the Maori became alarmed by British settlement patterns, and the first of a series of Maori Wars broke out. The British were eventually able to overcome the Maori in 1846. Relations deteriorated again in the 1850s as the Maori became reluctant to sell more land to settlers, fearing for their future. Ignoring the promise of the Treaty of Waitangi, the government attempted to pressure the Maori to sell land, sending troops in 1861 to dislodge the Maori from the property in question. Another decade of fighting ensued. The war ended in an uneasy peace in 1872, but by 1900 the Maori had lost most of their land.