AHC: A majority indigenous New Zealand
- Thread starter Malone
- Start date
Well for one will not be considered a western nation, literally there are western nations that have more números native population or outrigth mayorities that, because of that fact, aren't considered western nations.
Like México. Is not a western Nation? I mean is literally USA neighbor, with a big native and mestizo population, important industrial capacity, bigger than anything New Zealand have, member of the OCD, fight with the allies during the WWII since 1942, and somehow is not considered a western Nation.
Probably the same will the fate of New Zealand if they were a majority native population.
That being said New Zealand is not the higesth western nation on percentage of native population. Most of the non anglo América have a similar or greater percentage than New Zealand, notable exception being Argentina Uruguay and Brazil
And we even can discuss if New Zealand is a western nation
Using “Western” to mean “of the Anglo-Saxon settler-colonial states” is a bit of a jump...
It came from the saying that "the sun never sets on the British Empire." All of the Anglo-Saxon states of the British Empire (and former members) were called "Westerners" because they were busy looking to the west in case the sun set on them unexpectedly.
I think I get what you're saying. There is a certain connotation of Western that means "people who live in highly developed white British settler colonies and who align themselves with the mainline cultures within those colonies." Basically: Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and occasionally a wild card like Ireland or South Africa, though Ireland is more European leaning these days and South Africa "failed" to whiten enough before racists could no longer really openly support an actively segregationist hellstate. A lot of "WI X colonized Z" threads are made with this assumption: A mother country settling and replacing the local people with suitably "white" immigrants from the metropole who eventually take over cultural control and, while developing their own unique quirks, are still far more tied to their home country than to native cultures.
Back on topic, what you could do is have the British let the Maori run the North Island while the British own the South Island. Have the British support a few of the most powerful Iwe in conquering the rest, and then those said Iwe export a certain percentage or tonnage of goods back to the UK. The introduction of new plants and animals into the North Island, along with a policy of not direct aggression towards the Maori, means that the population booms, cities explode, and you could probably get a 65-35 split when England eventually decided to weld the two colonies together
Otherwise, the only good ways to have a more populated Maori state puts Maori into a more Japan-like position than in the position of a nation to be settler-colonized.
Back on topic, what you could do is have the British let the Maori run the North Island while the British own the South Island. Have the British support a few of the most powerful Iwe in conquering the rest, and then those said Iwe export a certain percentage or tonnage of goods back to the UK. The introduction of new plants and animals into the North Island, along with a policy of not direct aggression towards the Maori, means that the population booms, cities explode, and you could probably get a 65-35 split when England eventually decided to weld the two colonies together
Otherwise, the only good ways to have a more populated Maori state puts Maori into a more Japan-like position than in the position of a nation to be settler-colonized.
Perhaps keep the United Tribes of New Zealand as viable long enough for the British to establish a proper protectorate with only limited settlement locations - although this will only work in the North Island as the South had such a tiny Maori population.
The other thing to consider is the very small size of the Maori population. In 1840, Maori numbered just 80,000 people, while non-Maori numbered just over 2,000. By 1858, the number of non-Maori matched the Maori population, at about 60,000 each. What you need to prevent is the dramatic decrease in the Maori population, which is very hard to do with disease and land wars. You also need to slow the numbers of non-Maori coming into the country. Alternatively, you can do both these things but also find a way to encourage more intermarriage between Maori and non-Maori, creating a "Maori-Pakeha mestizo population" because unfortunately that is the only way the Maori population will be able to increase in that time period.
The other thing to consider is the very small size of the Maori population. In 1840, Maori numbered just 80,000 people, while non-Maori numbered just over 2,000. By 1858, the number of non-Maori matched the Maori population, at about 60,000 each. What you need to prevent is the dramatic decrease in the Maori population, which is very hard to do with disease and land wars. You also need to slow the numbers of non-Maori coming into the country. Alternatively, you can do both these things but also find a way to encourage more intermarriage between Maori and non-Maori, creating a "Maori-Pakeha mestizo population" because unfortunately that is the only way the Maori population will be able to increase in that time period.
The challenge isn't asking how to make a Maori majority New Zealand remain a "Western" country, though. The OP is just asking how to make New Zealand majority indigenous, while also pointing out that New Zealand in OTL is a Western country with a proportionally high indigenous population. I interpret that to mean it doesn't matter if the alternate New Zealand is Western or not.
A lot of people in this thread seem to be interpretting "Western" to mean the UK and its former settler colonies. I've never heard this definition. "Western" typically means the countries of Western European and countries founded and settled by people of Western European cultural origins. This means not only the UK and English-speaking of North America and Oceania, but also countries like France, Sweden, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc.
The common features are a shared history of inheriting Greco-Roman knowledge and philosophy, adopting Christianity, undergoing the Enlightenment, and benefiting from colonialism, among other minor features.
It's not an easy thing to define. Huntington left Eastern Europe out of it on account of the Great Schism and communism, for example. That makes the UK and France clear examples of Western countries and Russia a clearly non-Western country, but it gets murky in the middle. Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia - Slavic-speaking like Russia but use the Latin alphabet rather than Cyrillic, adopted Western Christiandom as opposed to Orthodox, and went through a period of time under the Iron Curtain before opening up to join the EU and NATO. Greece - Most people claim Greece is the origin of Western Civilization but is modern Greece a "Western" countey? Historically, it evolved in a very different way from Western Europe, with its own alphabet, an Orthodox religion, and a very different culture.
When you get outside of Europe, it gets murkier. If the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are Western countries, what about Latin America? The system of government and the culture of the elite are obviously Western, but what about the culture of the common people of Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, or Bolivia, which are just as much influenced by their ancestral indigenous cultures as they are influenced by the West. Many Latin American and Caribbean countries have a strong African influence as well. Does that make Argentina and Uruguay Western? What about Chile? Is Bolivia a country transitioning from Western back to non-Western as the indigenous majority becomes powerful again? What about India and African countries which have thoroughly Western systems of government and Western languages as the lingua franca but whose majorities maintain cultures much older than European colonialism, or Pacific Island nations which have been heavily Christianized?
Ultimately the definition of "Western" is too hard to narrow down in concrete terms. It also works when contrasted with countries that are clearly non-Western like China or Iran or Vietnam or Saudi Arabia.
As for the OP, I suppose the key is to prevent European settlement until the Maori have a chance to recover from the imported disease epidemics. If the Maori are more hostile, it will be more difficult for the Europeans to settle down and maybe they'll give up.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
And in earlier times, there might have been even bigger drops.
In the Americas, smallpox caused the most deaths, followed by a somewhat distant second of measles.
Basically, New Zealand needs to get lucky enough to get the more minor form of smallpox first.
Whatever happens, it needs to happen before 1850, ish as by which point it was clear to all, that there would be vastly more settlement and also a need for a local colonial government. Once that latter institution was in place, then distance inevitably would mean that settler priorities - land and destruction of powerful Maori entities would become paramount over imperial concerns in London.
Hell, probably needs something before 1830, when it first became a desired target for settlement by various British groups.
Hell, probably needs something before 1830, when it first became a desired target for settlement by various British groups.
There are a lot of issues with NZ that would need to be resolved, which are hard.
1. Everyone knew NZ was there by the 19th century and many people, not just the British were aware of the economic opportunities of the islands. The whaling and sealing industries particularly fell upon NZ with great vigour. There were stations build all around the coast line by these groups, usually with local Maori permission (for a fee of course). Many of these sailors were based out of New England. One of my best friend's father is from a Northland Iwi, who trace their surname to that of a whaler from Nantucket (iirc), who married one of their ancestors some time in the 1810s-20.
2. It is too close to Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania. By this I mean once those cities develop, they also develop an economic hinterland. Given this is an era where shipping technology had vastly improved, that means going to New Zealand a lot. NZ being one of the more accessible colonies as basically everywhere is close to the coast. So if one wants timber or food from the Maori tribes, it is reasonably easy to go obtain that. IOTL Maori in the North Island made a good living for decades before the British properly took over selling food for consumption in the Australian colonies. They used this trade to fund purchases of tools, seeds, clothes and of course guns.
3. NZ was well known for flax and trees. These were extremely useful for the maritime and naval economy of Britain and others.
So what to do?
Assuming we can't arrange some form of world war involving all of Europe, US and Chile/Peru/Mexico in the 1830s-50s, which distracts everyone with an interest for a generation or two, then I think the answer is probably going to require an earlier agricultural POD. The classic being someone in a ship full of trade goods including pigs, potatoes and grain seed stock somehow ends up beaching itself in the Taranaki with most of the crew surviving, sometime no later than the early 18th century. The idea being that they are able to be co-opted into local Iwi who can use their skills/stock, then being where they are, diffuse rapidly to the Waikato, Northland, Central, Taranaki and of course the East Coast. Roll forward 70 years or so and the base Maori population of the North Island should be a fair bit higher. If we do it in the Taranaki, then even better, as local people already send a lot of trader/raider expeditions across the straights to Nelson-Marlborough and the West Coast. This last bit is the key.
The South Island is the easy bit to settle of the two islands. Not because the North Island has terrible farm land/climate (it doesn't), more just because the local peoples were there in large numbers everywhere. So whilst there were many coastal British settlements, it took a lot more effort to obtain / seize land to expand their hinterlands. Whereas the South Island only really had dense Maori population at the tip, as it shares the climate of the NI and thus is easier to transfer Maori crops. Much of the SI, which IOTL is a breadbasket, only became that way with the British agricultural package. So it was super easy for British groups to expand quickly once coastal settlements were established. Sadly an agricultural revolution in the North Island means mass immigration/war for the South Island iwi, as per OTL, but more so in this case. But by arrival of Cook*, this would likely mean that all the OTL South Island Maori settlements would be more densely settled, leaving little gap.
1. Everyone knew NZ was there by the 19th century and many people, not just the British were aware of the economic opportunities of the islands. The whaling and sealing industries particularly fell upon NZ with great vigour. There were stations build all around the coast line by these groups, usually with local Maori permission (for a fee of course). Many of these sailors were based out of New England. One of my best friend's father is from a Northland Iwi, who trace their surname to that of a whaler from Nantucket (iirc), who married one of their ancestors some time in the 1810s-20.
2. It is too close to Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania. By this I mean once those cities develop, they also develop an economic hinterland. Given this is an era where shipping technology had vastly improved, that means going to New Zealand a lot. NZ being one of the more accessible colonies as basically everywhere is close to the coast. So if one wants timber or food from the Maori tribes, it is reasonably easy to go obtain that. IOTL Maori in the North Island made a good living for decades before the British properly took over selling food for consumption in the Australian colonies. They used this trade to fund purchases of tools, seeds, clothes and of course guns.
3. NZ was well known for flax and trees. These were extremely useful for the maritime and naval economy of Britain and others.
So what to do?
Assuming we can't arrange some form of world war involving all of Europe, US and Chile/Peru/Mexico in the 1830s-50s, which distracts everyone with an interest for a generation or two, then I think the answer is probably going to require an earlier agricultural POD. The classic being someone in a ship full of trade goods including pigs, potatoes and grain seed stock somehow ends up beaching itself in the Taranaki with most of the crew surviving, sometime no later than the early 18th century. The idea being that they are able to be co-opted into local Iwi who can use their skills/stock, then being where they are, diffuse rapidly to the Waikato, Northland, Central, Taranaki and of course the East Coast. Roll forward 70 years or so and the base Maori population of the North Island should be a fair bit higher. If we do it in the Taranaki, then even better, as local people already send a lot of trader/raider expeditions across the straights to Nelson-Marlborough and the West Coast. This last bit is the key.
The South Island is the easy bit to settle of the two islands. Not because the North Island has terrible farm land/climate (it doesn't), more just because the local peoples were there in large numbers everywhere. So whilst there were many coastal British settlements, it took a lot more effort to obtain / seize land to expand their hinterlands. Whereas the South Island only really had dense Maori population at the tip, as it shares the climate of the NI and thus is easier to transfer Maori crops. Much of the SI, which IOTL is a breadbasket, only became that way with the British agricultural package. So it was super easy for British groups to expand quickly once coastal settlements were established. Sadly an agricultural revolution in the North Island means mass immigration/war for the South Island iwi, as per OTL, but more so in this case. But by arrival of Cook*, this would likely mean that all the OTL South Island Maori settlements would be more densely settled, leaving little gap.
Id say a Dutch NZ would probably have fewer Dutch/European settlers but they’d probably import Indonesians or Chinese into the country for labour, which wouldn’t really help the OP’s original question
I don’t think a Dutch New Zealand would be able to support the level of immigration. Politically, I see Māori tribes would be far more important than they would be under a British government as the lack of settler encroachment would cause far less strife than it did in OTL. United tribal responses would make intertribal politicking be far less destructive to inter-iwi social structures and likely accelerate the tribal centralisation that was occurring.
The United Tribes concept might see further workable outcomes and a development into a Māori parliament should the continued peace, development, and prosperity from trade fund tribal development, intertribal commerce and international trade.
Whether it was the British employing divide and conquer tactics or the belligerence of Settler authority pissing off the wrong chiefs, Māori wars caused the largest per capita concentration of British troops in the British Empire.
Determined Māori fighters funded by other European interests or supplied by nearby Colonial merchants could cause quite a headache to Dutch authorities and the tribes they are allied with in Nieuw Zeeland (or whatever approximate Dutch transliteration for the islands comes about.)
It wouldn’t be in the interest of Dutch trade blocs to upset their buyers and possibly labour supplies, or in the interest of ambitious Māori chiefs to bow out their sovereignty. A treaty similar to the one written would likely be pivotal. Understanding of that treaty’s obligations might not be met by either side due to cultural or language mistranslations though.
80s Nuclear War, Stanislav Petrov launches. NZ is pretty much cut off from the rest of the world, and order collapses. The population intermingles in the post-apocalypse. If you go by the one drop rule, and the fact more whites would live in the nuked cities, eventually the majority of post-apocalypse NZ will have one Maori ancestor.
Actually, the percentage of the Maori population in urban areas (84%) is pretty similar to the broader urbanisation rate of NZ (86%).
Can't conveniently find the census data online, but from memory the proportion of urban-dwelling Maori was a bit lower in the 1980s, but not enough to change things very much. (The big shift was in the 60s and 70s).
Good to see @Julius Vogel in this thread too!
Realistically, and barring late *end of the world* PoDs like an Able Archer apocalypse, the PoD should be before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
A few different local conflicts and some shifts in which chiefs live/die could lead to greater centralisation of Maori. What you really need is two rival Maori blocs, one having the support of British merchants and govt and one opposed in order to allow the pro-London confederation enough political clout to demand protectorate status. A confederacy of Northern iwi led by the Nga Puhi would be most likely, especially if they destroyed the upstart Kingitanga in the central North Island.
The South Island is very difficult to keep majority European, but can to an extent be a pressure valve for European settlement. In an (indefinite hiatus) TL of mine I looked at a theoretical French settlement of Te Wai Pounamu (The waters of nephrite - the South Island)
Realistically, and barring late *end of the world* PoDs like an Able Archer apocalypse, the PoD should be before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
A few different local conflicts and some shifts in which chiefs live/die could lead to greater centralisation of Maori. What you really need is two rival Maori blocs, one having the support of British merchants and govt and one opposed in order to allow the pro-London confederation enough political clout to demand protectorate status. A confederacy of Northern iwi led by the Nga Puhi would be most likely, especially if they destroyed the upstart Kingitanga in the central North Island.
The South Island is very difficult to keep majority European, but can to an extent be a pressure valve for European settlement. In an (indefinite hiatus) TL of mine I looked at a theoretical French settlement of Te Wai Pounamu (The waters of nephrite - the South Island)