New Zealand was discovered and settled more than a thousand years ago by
the Maori people. They arrived here by canoes. Abel Jansen Tasman, who sailed
up the west coast of the South and North islands in 1642, led the first
Europeans known to reach New Zealand.
From as early as the 1780s, Maori had encounters with European and American
sealer and whalers.
English established there the first colony in 1870. Maori opposed, until 1870,
when they loosed. New Zealand became rich, because exported agricultural
products. In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed with northern iwi.
The first capital of New Zealand was Opiate or Old Russell in the Bay of
Islands but shortly afterwards moved to Auckland.
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