More Populous and Powerful New Zealand

New Zealand in terms of land area is larger than the United Kingdom. However the population of NZ is tiny in comparison. I realize that there are huge geographic differences, but why is its population only 4 million? What could have changed to have made NZ a much more populous and powerful country, rather like a pacific version of the UK (Not necessarily the most powerful nation in the world)? How would a large prosperous NZ affect Australia's development as a nation in terms of demographics and power?
 
Few things to remember here. New Zealand is only a relatively young country, as is Australia in the grand scheme of things. It's population hasn't had the time to develop a larger population to rival say the UK, which has been inhabited considerably longer and faced urbanisation much earlier. Honestly I'm not sure but perhaps a stronger British Empire would help ensure New Zealand prominence. Another way that I've often seen is a hot, cold war resulting in New Zealand and Australia's rise to power but as fun as that is, I don't think that's what your looking for. :p
 
New Zealand in terms of land area is larger than the United Kingdom. However the population of NZ is tiny in comparison. I realize that there are huge geographic differences, but why is its population only 4 million? What could have changed to have made NZ a much more populous and powerful country, rather like a pacific version of the UK (Not necessarily the most powerful nation in the world)? How would a large prosperous NZ affect Australia's development as a nation in terms of demographics and power?

To attempt to answer this, British settlement just wasn't as heavily encouraged as it could have been. How else to explain that Canada only has ~35 million people IOTL? Or only 22 million in Australia?
All we'd need to do here, I think, is encourage more immigration, particularly from other countries as well as Britain.......not all that hard when you think about it. ;)
 
There are only 4 million humans in NZ sure, but they aren't running things. It's the 40 million sheep who run things.
 
All we'd need to do here, I think, is encourage more immigration, particularly from other countries as well as Britain.......not all that hard when you think about it. ;)
Slightly harder if the immigration is from Europe, not so hard if its from Southeast Asia.

Besides that, there needs to be an incentive to have a prolonged government sponsored or forced migration to said area. The most common incentive would be the exploitation of local resources either minerals or plant/animal life; for either of those there would have to be exploration of the interior by the colonizer or established ingenious powers that are actively exploiting the resources (which would require the island to be more populous in the first place for the knowledge to not only be lost, but also 'common' knowledge on the island). Not only that, New Zealand is fairly out of the way of any trade routes that were used in that area.
 
There are only 4 million humans in NZ sure, but they aren't running things. It's the 40 million sheep who run things.

Ha, the Shadow government: The Sheep council doesn't want to upset the balance of power, more humans would only weaken their hold on NZ society.

Realistically, N.Z is too far away from the rest of the world to care, so it'll always have a more isolationist foreign policy. It won't bother being powerful, as there's really little potential threats it has to face unlike Australia which is closer to Asia.

Encouraging people to move to what is pretty much the opposite end of the world from Europe in the last 2 centuries would be pretty hard. The US, South America and even Australia are much closer and attractive locations.

Even if there's a nuclear war that leaves N.Z untouched, flimsy refugee boats would have a much lower survival rate getting there compared to Australia.
 
Has anyone thought of a much different world where European colonialism doesn't happen, and New Zealand's Maori tribes end up uniting and colonizing Australia? Maybe they get firearms and some modern agriculture from Indonesian traders, which lets them grow into a very powerful confederation of states?
 
Immigration and growth are harder to get right than one would think.

The settler government did encourage further settlement when it could afford it, but it had many demands on its paltry resources. Then, economic cycles also intervened. For example, during the depression era, the government closed the immigration service!

Further, NZ did not exist in a vacuum, it was one of several British settlements vying for attention from settlers or investors and it was the most distant from the UK. Then, once immigrants arrived, they had to have farms or jobs. If either did not eventuate, then the migrants could move on within the Empire, to Australia or otherwise. Many did. Many also moved to the US. Others moved to NZ from the above as well. So a decade of good work by the government or the private economy in attracting settlers could be undone quickly by a crash (see the Hungry 80s).
 
One of GURPS Alternate Earths had a world in which a Japan which never closed off the outside world colonized New Zealand a century and a half before the Europeans OTL, and the islands were as densely populated as Japan by the 21st century...

Bruce
 
We have to remember that one of the key reasons why the white hordes didn't come charging down to New Zealand was because it had a really bad reputation during the 19th Century. The country was in the middle of a series of civil wars from the mid-1840s right through to the 1870s and it wasn't until the North Island Main Trunk Railway was built in the 1890s that white folks were even allowed in a substantial part of the North Island.

There is only one way the country could've become populous and powerful and that is if the British treated the Maori the same way they treated the Aborigines. That was unlikely to happen due to the basic problem the British respected the Maori too much as a warrior class (the noble savage) and the Maori proved they could stand up to the British and give them a decent hiding. New Zealand's wars ended because neither side could win but the British won the peace.
 
Has anyone thought of a much different world where European colonialism doesn't happen, and New Zealand's Maori tribes end up uniting and colonizing Australia? Maybe they get firearms and some modern agriculture from Indonesian traders, which lets them grow into a very powerful confederation of states?

yes! in fact i'm writing a TL about that as we speak. (have been for awhile know; it was originally going to be ASB.)
 
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