Maori population in an independent Aotearoa

What would the Maori(and non Maori too) population in the case of an independent Maori led country in North Island by the 19th century with contacts and minor migration from South East Asia and China(with an Chinese Australia too) and exchange of crops, animals and knowledge starting around the 16th century? Please don´t discuss the likelihood of such scenario, this is not the request.
 
Probably between 5 to 10 million, I'm just guessing. Disease from these contacts will keep the numbers down to a certain degree, but it seems like the land is there for the taking. Particularly once the potato gets introduced, but buckwheat and other crops should grow well too. Warfare will be another thing keeping the population down, since this sudden population growth with more efficient agriculture will tax Maori social structures, especially if the Chinese are selling them guns. Earlier and more brutal Musket Wars, basically.
 
Probably between 5 to 10 million, I'm just guessing. Disease from these contacts will keep the numbers down to a certain degree, but it seems like the land is there for the taking. Particularly once the potato gets introduced, but buckwheat and other crops should grow well too. Warfare will be another thing keeping the population down, since this sudden population growth with more efficient agriculture will tax Maori social structures, especially if the Chinese are selling them guns. Earlier and more brutal Musket Wars, basically.

By the late 19th century? This is ludicrously high.

OTL population in 1840, before European colonisation had really begun, was only 100,000 at a maximum - and it was about the same when Cook arrived in 1769, so it seems that there was population stasis at about the 100,000 level. You could argue that the introduction of a variety of crops and new agricultural practices would support a much larger population than the staple crops of the previous centuries, but a 5,000% increase in population in 60 years is simply not physically possible.

And that's before you look into the reasons for OTL Maori population decline. These were:

1) The spread of diseases like influenza, TB, etc. from other continents. This isn't going to change vastly in the absence of Pakeha colonisation, because you're still assuming heavy trade and minor migration with China and other parts of Asia. These populations carried the same diseases, and would still communicate them. Even in the case of early Columbian America, where inter-continental contact was relatively minor at first, Old World diseases still killed a vast proportion of the population before the Conquistadors gave way to actual settling populations.

2) Venereal diseases. If there are Chinese people visiting NZ, they are going to have sex with locals. Some of them will have STDs and these will be spread into the local population, as in OTL. Fertility will therefore be reduced, potentially below replacement level.

3) Muskets. This is a very minor cause of death in 19th century Aotearoa. However, it may be reduced if the Chinese don't trade weapons for whatever they want from NZ. Not statistically significant, though.

So we've established that there's still going to be a steep population decline however the Maori are introduced to the rest of the world. I would even go further and say that the recovery of the Maori population in 1880-1900 was principally due to the efforts of Pakeha immigrant doctors working to improve public health and prevent what they saw as the extinction of the Maori (which they saw as a great shame). Without European colonisation, this would not happen to anything like the same extent, and the Maori would have to wait for natural immunity to build up. Chinese medical practices would probably only transfer in a major way if they colonised NZ, and even then they were arguably inferior to Western methods.

So all in all, I'd say the Maori population in the late 19th century would be anywhere between 20,000 and 50,000, and certainly nowhere in the millions.
 
By the late 19th century? This is ludicrously high.

OTL population in 1840, before European colonisation had really begun, was only 100,000 at a maximum - and it was about the same when Cook arrived in 1769, so it seems that there was population stasis at about the 100,000 level. You could argue that the introduction of a variety of crops and new agricultural practices would support a much larger population than the staple crops of the previous centuries, but a 5,000% increase in population in 60 years is simply not physically possible.

And that's before you look into the reasons for OTL Maori population decline. These were:

1) The spread of diseases like influenza, TB, etc. from other continents. This isn't going to change vastly in the absence of Pakeha colonisation, because you're still assuming heavy trade and minor migration with China and other parts of Asia. These populations carried the same diseases, and would still communicate them. Even in the case of early Columbian America, where inter-continental contact was relatively minor at first, Old World diseases still killed a vast proportion of the population before the Conquistadors gave way to actual settling populations.

2) Venereal diseases. If there are Chinese people visiting NZ, they are going to have sex with locals. Some of them will have STDs and these will be spread into the local population, as in OTL. Fertility will therefore be reduced, potentially below replacement level.

3) Muskets. This is a very minor cause of death in 19th century Aotearoa. However, it may be reduced if the Chinese don't trade weapons for whatever they want from NZ. Not statistically significant, though.

So we've established that there's still going to be a steep population decline however the Maori are introduced to the rest of the world. I would even go further and say that the recovery of the Maori population in 1880-1900 was principally due to the efforts of Pakeha immigrant doctors working to improve public health and prevent what they saw as the extinction of the Maori (which they saw as a great shame). Without European colonisation, this would not happen to anything like the same extent, and the Maori would have to wait for natural immunity to build up. Chinese medical practices would probably only transfer in a major way if they colonised NZ, and even then they were arguably inferior to Western methods.

So all in all, I'd say the Maori population in the late 19th century would be anywhere between 20,000 and 50,000, and certainly nowhere in the millions.
Chinese contact happens in 16th century, are you saying they would not be able to build immunity in 3 centuries when the isolation lasted even shorter? Also consider the effects of a united Maori government.
 
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Chinese contact happens in 16th century, are you saying they would not be able to build immunity in 3 centuries when the isolation lasted even shorter?

My mistake, I assumed Chinese contact in the same period as OTL Pakeha contact.

In that case, we're talking about, very roughly (assuming first contact in 1550):
1600AD - 30,000
1650AD - 50,000
1750AD - 100,000
1850AD - 250,000
Today - very roughly 700,000 Maori, plus immigrants and immigrant-descended populations from China and the rest of the world.

This would be broadly in keeping with global population growth over time, along with improvements in agricultural practices, etc.
 
My mistake, I assumed Chinese contact in the same period as OTL Pakeha contact.

In that case, we're talking about, very roughly (assuming first contact in 1550):
1600AD - 30,000
1650AD - 50,000
1750AD - 100,000
1850AD - 250,000
Today - very roughly 700,000 Maori, plus immigrants and immigrant-descended populations from China and the rest of the world.

This would be broadly in keeping with global population growth over time, along with improvements in agricultural practices, etc.
Isn´t it a bit small? The growth of settlers in America was quite large even for groups that experienced only small early settlements like French Canadian. Also if you would estimate the Chinese population, how high could it reasonably get by 1850 in % of the total population of North Island?
For example look at the growth of Quebec, in 1750 it was 50.000 and today 7 million(in this case there is immigration ofc)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Quebec
Also for curiosity, you said that without the improvement in healthcare in late 19th century the Maori population would have declined even more, what would you estimate the population of the maori to be in that case?
Thanks for the tips.
 
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Isn´t it a bit small? The growth of settlers in America was quite large even for groups that only small early settlements like French Canadian. Also if you would estimate the Chinese population, how high could it reasonably get by 1850 in % of the total population of North Island?
For example look at the growth of Quebec, in 1750 it was 50.000 and today 7 million(in this case there is immigration ofc)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Quebec
Also for curiosity, you said that without the improvement in health care in later 19th century the Maori population would have declined even more, what would you estimate the population of the maori to be in that case?
Thanks for the tips.

There's a cultural difference between self-consciously pioneering people (who tend to have large numbers of children) and indigenous cultures which prioritise symbiosis with the environment. So for instance, you really have to compare the First Nations population of Quebec in 1750 and today to get the real picture of how the demographics have developed. I've given you ball-park figures, of course, so you can do what you like, but anything more than a million Maori in 2000 is pushing plausibility.

Sidenote: although White immigration will have a dampening effect on indigenous fertility and mortality rates, the level of interbreeding will go some way towards negating this effect. In NZ, you are officially a Maori if you have 1/64 Maori blood, so the current Maori population of 680,000 would still be a lot lower if it weren't for Pakeha immigration and intermarriage.

In terms of the Chinese population, I couldn't really guess without knowing whether they were a colonising population or more on the level of a few whaling bases and trade posts growing up into urban communities. And then we get into plausibility issues regarding what the Chinese are actually doing here and how may would realistically want to emigrate.

In terms of Maori population without European medicine: I couldn't say, really, since the buildup of natural immunity is so varied between different diseases and different rates of contact. It certainly took a few centuries for the indigenous American population to stabilise, but I'd hope for their own sakes that the Maori population wouldn't drop below 10-20,000 at worst.
 
This is a fascinating discussion (as someone who used to have an obsession with all things NZ that I haven't entirely recovered from). I think the sort of state that would result could resemble something like Belize, or other Central American countries, with a large portion of the population being of mixed-race.
 
There's a cultural difference between self-consciously pioneering people (who tend to have large numbers of children) and indigenous cultures which prioritise symbiosis with the environment. So for instance, you really have to compare the First Nations population of Quebec in 1750 and today to get the real picture of how the demographics have developed. I've given you ball-park figures, of course, so you can do what you like, but anything more than a million Maori in 2000 is pushing plausibility.

Sidenote: although White immigration will have a dampening effect on indigenous fertility and mortality rates, the level of interbreeding will go some way towards negating this effect. In NZ, you are officially a Maori if you have 1/64 Maori blood, so the current Maori population of 680,000 would still be a lot lower if it weren't for Pakeha immigration and intermarriage.

In terms of the Chinese population, I couldn't really guess without knowing whether they were a colonising population or more on the level of a few whaling bases and trade posts growing up into urban communities. And then we get into plausibility issues regarding what the Chinese are actually doing here and how may would realistically want to emigrate.

In terms of Maori population without European medicine: I couldn't say, really, since the buildup of natural immunity is so varied between different diseases and different rates of contact. It certainly took a few centuries for the indigenous American population to stabilise, but I'd hope for their own sakes that the Maori population wouldn't drop below 10-20,000 at worst.
I´m not an expert so I can´t really know much about Maoris but still I have to doubt that this symbiosis culture is or would not be influenced by the living style of the Maori(that itself would be influenced by agricultural and cultural changes thanks to the Chinese). Is hard to estimate using First Nation Americans anyway, as they experienced a different political and social climate.

Ok, so one would need some external immigration to keep the population higher.

Let´s say there were some/few trade posts around North Island with immigration being mostly discontinuous and concentrated around 1500-1650 and 1800-1850. Don´t worry, I don´t need precise or very accurate estimations, I just someone else´s ideas to compare to my own.

Wow, wouldn´t this mean that if the British had the same system in place as in Australia there would be probably no significant Maori population today?
 
Did people misread the OP? It mentions exchange of crops, animals and knowledge from China. In that case, you're having new crops being introduced to an agricultural civilisation on the margins that are much better suited for their environment (compare buckwheat or potato vs. kumara/sweet potato in New Zealand which the Maori farmed). Plus you have exchange of Chinese technology to further increase yields.

You could easily have a couple million Maori depending on how fast the population increases, since you're giving them vastly superior agriculture, animals, and crops for their environment. If Aotearoa is colonised, it will not be a settler colony, or if it is, it'll be like Rhodesia.

I'm not saying the OP is plausible regarding China. But if it happened, that is what would happen.
 
Did people misread the OP? It mentions exchange of crops, animals and knowledge from China. In that case, you're having new crops being introduced to an agricultural civilisation on the margins that are much better suited for their environment (compare buckwheat or potato vs. kumara/sweet potato in New Zealand which the Maori farmed). Plus you have exchange of Chinese technology to further increase yields.

You could easily have a couple million Maori depending on how fast the population increases, since you're giving them vastly superior agriculture, animals, and crops for their environment. If Aotearoa is colonised, it will not be a settler colony, or if it is, it'll be like Rhodesia.

I'm not saying the OP is plausible regarding China. But if it happened, that is what would happen.

I fully accept that this trade would increase population capacity in NZ relative to OTL up to the twentieth century, but due to disease factors, fertility factors, etc. which I've already explained, the Maori would be physically unable to reach anywhere near that capacity for a couple of centuries.
 
I fully accept that this trade would increase population capacity in NZ relative to OTL up to the twentieth century, but due to disease factors, fertility factors, etc. which I've already explained, the Maori would be physically unable to reach anywhere near that capacity for a couple of centuries.

Starting in the 16th century, I think my scenario is very much plausible. You're giving at least three centuries for population growth in a land that can support many, many more people than it did.
 
Starting in the 16th century, I think my scenario is very much plausible. You're giving at least three centuries for population growth in a land that can support many, many more people than it did.

The amount of buckwheat there is to feed people is not the principal factor - whether those people are surviving to produce more people is. If 60% of your population has died from smallpox (similar - and worse - figures are quoted for large parts of America, including the Incan Empire, which imploded into chaos due to the massive loss of life) then who's going to be planting the millet and engaging in economic diversification? Not many people. No, you'd be seeing a long-ish period of subsistence agriculture even with the introduction of new crops, simply because the majority of your population has died and you're struggling to get a grip on the situation.
 
I would say about half a million or so at best. Which would be a huge change compared to OTL. I think the best thing is to compare semi isolated populations in periphery/marginal areas in the mid-late 19th century. There were many such places with sub million populations that now number in the tens of millions due to modern healthcare, infrastructure or the like.

The big change in Maori population would be in the South Island. If your Chinese traders bring North Chinese crops and some stay to help adapt, then in effect the South Island is an Empty Land waiting to be filled. Maori population outside of Nelson Bays was in the low thousands. It would be trivial to increase this and if the locals didn't manage it, then North Island Maori would, as per OTL.
 
I would say about half a million or so at best. Which would be a huge change compared to OTL. I think the best thing is to compare semi isolated populations in periphery/marginal areas in the mid-late 19th century. There were many such places with sub million populations that now number in the tens of millions due to modern healthcare, infrastructure or the like.

The big change in Maori population would be in the South Island. If your Chinese traders bring North Chinese crops and some stay to help adapt, then in effect the South Island is an Empty Land waiting to be filled. Maori population outside of Nelson Bays was in the low thousands. It would be trivial to increase this and if the locals didn't manage it, then North Island Maori would, as per OTL.
The idea was that North Island is united under one Maori group but South Island is still mostly empty as IOTL by the 19th century.

In an independent Aotearoa what would be the most likely place for a capital?
 
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