AHC: colonise New Zealand with country other than Britain

Pretty much yes.

Think about it like this - NZ is 18000 kilometers or so from London, 9-10,000km from the likely parts of East Asia (China/Japan etc), 7,000km or so from SE Asia (all distances very general, flight distance not sailing), 4000km or so from Tahiti (a likely Polynesia transit point for the people that became the Maori).
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The fact the Polynesians pulled it off with their level of sea going technology/sized boats is pretty impressive.
What about a situation where France sends Christian missionaries to both French Polynesia and Southern NZ during the early 1800s? Not that possible?
 
I do think though that France could have colonised NZ if Britain had some reason to back down. By the time France was sniffing around with Akaroa they would have easily had the means/will to at least colonise the South Island.

Sending ships of colonists, then maintaining them, in the mid 19th century to the South Pacific holds far less terror than it did in the 18th or 17th centuries.
 
Huh. What was NZ exporting to Australia?

Food, timber, flax, whale oil, seal skins etc. Maori coastal settlements had been supplying the whalers/sealers since the late 18th century, who had reciprocated by supplying European crops, animals, guns, tools etc. These whalers and traders often stopped off in Sydney/etc and a two-way trade started up.

Then as the economy progressed, more of the same and gold, gum etc.
 
For those who suggest the Netherlands colonises New Zealand, I personaly doubt it. There is too little to gain. It is too far away and from the 19th century (and even late 18th century) the Netherlands was too poor and not powerful enough to do it. Also there probably are too few Dutch who wanted to settle there. There were simply too many other options: the America's, South Africa, Indonesia.
 
Food, timber, flax, whale oil, seal skins etc. Maori coastal settlements had been supplying the whalers/sealers since the late 18th century, who had reciprocated by supplying European crops, animals, guns, tools etc. These whalers and traders often stopped off in Sydney/etc and a two-way trade started up.

Then as the economy progressed, more of the same and gold, gum etc.

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought this would be viable at the time given that Australia was exporting many of the same goods.
 
Interesting. I wouldn't have thought this would be viable at the time given that Australia was exporting many of the same goods.

But it wasn't really. NZ offered good wood for boat/mast construction in Australia and maybe for re-export to Britain. Same was true for flax cultivation (rope!). In the case of flax it was often exported as a raw material to Australia and then processed for export to Britain.

So far as food goes, well, pre modern road/rail networks or automobiles, coastal shipping was much better and cheaper. I suspect it often was easier or cheaper to get excess food from Auckland (great market gardening area) or Northland than it was from the colonial hinterlands of Victoria or NSW. Then of course droughts occur regularly in Australia, which would decrease local ability to supply.

Remember, the Australian colonies were slowing colonising their hinterlands and in some cases facing severe fight back from local indigenous peoples. It was easier for some traders or the like just to look further afield, to NZ, which was commonly taken to be under British influence and full of Maori keen to trade for trade goods or weapons or shipping. Traders tend to be treated better than invaders!

Several decades on food exports became much bigger, with cheaper and faster shipping, refrigeration and the like. I'm referring to earlier periods (pre 1850s).

edit - here is an old one page summary of early trade relations. Note the American influence

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/history-settlement-and-development/page-2
 
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I`d like to see a Dutch Northern Island and maybe even German Southern Island.
Or Danish NZ would be also really cool.

It'd be cool to see it being German, but that'd be a bit ridiculous.

Believe me or not, it isnt that hard:

The Dutch are more active in Australia because they get interested in it when Tasman discovers it and in the 17 and 18th century they slowly set up towns in Australia and later mainly *New South Wales (like they did IOTL Cape Colony), first because of food but later they also find other minerals in Australia. Because of trade and Magellan somewhere in the 18th century several ships depart from Dutch Australia to Peru or Chile to trade however due to a storm they shipwreck in New Zealand. It takes several years before they are able to repair their ship and they go back, but some have to stay behind (ot enough room/supplies). The Dutch later come back (and they finally realised it is New Zealand, earlier sightend by Tasman) only to find their freinds being killed by Maoris. The Dutch get mad and invade (repeating the Jan Pieterszoon Coen story, Google him) to go after the Maori. Of course they win with their superior arms but they also find some interesting stuff and even some gold. Slowly the colonies grow and grow and get more immigrants from Europe.

POD to make it German: for colonisation the Dutch almost never used real 'Hollanders' they only went into administration. No, farmers from Eastern Netherlands and Rhineland were used to for the real 'colonisation'. IOTL in both New Netherlands and The Cape these Germans assilimated into the Dutch, but what if we could pull a Czech way (so many immigrants the locals assilimate into the immigrants)? Well New Zeland has a goldrush and so many Germans go there they actually assilimate the Dutch into German, which isnt that hard because of similair cultures.

And that's how you get a German New Zealand. I imagine it it has about 8 million people, most of Western European heritage (largely German and Dutch, but also Scandinavians and Czechs/Poles) both equally distributed on both islands (unlike OTL) and about 65% urban society (10% lower than OTL) because of its adventurer/farmer origin. About 1 million of those people are of various Asian origin, so Polynesians and Indonesians, but mostly Vietnamese, Filippino and many, many Chinese. The Maori, because of the Dutch aggression war, had lost almost all their males and so the women intermarried with Whites. Unlike OTL they most likely almost completly vanished and assilimated (both culturally and ethnically) into White society, like OTL Natives americans in the USA...

Okay it wasnt that easy to get a German New Zealand but it isnt utterly implausible either ;)
 
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Cook

Banned
The simplest thing to do is have Abel Tasman claim the islands when he visits in 1642. Had he made landfall somewhere other than Golden Bay he may have received a friendlier welcome (and have really been able to land and go through the motions of actually claiming the place on dry land). Because the Maori already had the framework of kingdoms established, the potential to negotiate trade existed.
 
it seems its too hard to keep southern New Zealand (or the whole NZ,at that) if it was France doing the colonization. Could there be the Napoleonic wars with France retaining the colonies after it?
 
I would like to see a scenario where France started colonising the South Island sometime in the mid 19th century (say 1830s on-wards) and the North Island sat loosely under their sovereignty but with much British settler interference from *Australia or North America. Gun running and the like.

It would be interesting to see how that mucked about with Franco-British relations in the 1850s-60s - a small, poor but Settler colony but quite capable of gumming the works nicely all the same.
 
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