New Zealand
The Land of the Long White Cloud
The 1280s were a tumultuous period in English/Welsh relations. In 1282, Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the last actual Prince of Wales, led a rebellion against the English which ended badly for his father, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn at the Battle of Orewin Bridge. Dafydd withdrew to the family stronghold, Castell y Bere. The English laid siege, and a few months later the stronghold fell. Dafydd was captured, and in early October 1283 became the first important person in history to be tried by something approaching a jury that included commoners for the newly created crime of high treason with the latest thing in punishments - being hanged, drawn AND quartered, all on the same day.
Meanwhile, Eastern Polynesians, who were spreading generally throughout the Pacific, arrived in Te Ika a Māui, Māui's Fish. This island had been formed when Māui, who tamed the sun and brought fire to the world, hid in his brothers' canoe and accompanied them, uninvited, on their fishing trip. Using a magical fish hook and words of power he managed to catch a huge fish, which his brothers helped him land. The fish turned out to be an island. While Māui was thanking Tangaroa for the gift of this land, his brothers bagan carving up the fish, which, since it was actually an island, resulted in many valleys, mountains and lakes.
Te Waka a Māui, Māui's Canoe, became an island to the south of the one Māui caught. The Kaikōura peninsula on that island is the seat of the canoe upon which Māui stood to catch the North Island. Te Punga o Te Waka a Māui, The anchor stone of Māui's Canoe, became a smaller island off the South Island.
And so the Polynesians arrived in Te Ika a Māui, or, as it became later known, the North Island of New Zealand. They quickly spread to the South Island, and, seasonally at least, to smaller Stewart Island.
The culture of these new people changed over time from that of their ancestors and they became the Māori People, a bunch of fierce warriors. In 1642, the Māori were visited by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman and his crew. Four crew members were killed and at least one Māori warrior was hit with canister shot. Canister shot is a whole lot of little lead balls shot out of a canon, and when you count the dead afterwards, the result is always "at least one".
That was it for many years. Abel sailed away, thinking he had landed on the Staten Landt that Jacob Le Maire had previously sighted off the coast of South America. This was later corrected by Dutch cartographers, and the land that Abel had discovered was renamed Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. When Captain Cook happened by in 1769 this was anglicized to New Zealand, and that name has stuck.
The Māori welcomed the English; at any rate, they welcomed the English potatoes and the English Muskets. Māori were right bastards. A major fear they had was not dying in battle, so they were always at war with each other, attempting to die in battle. Potatoes are a reliable and easy to grow food that lets you get on with the war thing instead of worrying overly much about your crops, and muskets were a dream weapon for a culture that lacked any sort of projectile weapon - not even spears - and relied solely upon clubs and sticks. So the Māori and the English became BFFs and cemented their friendship in the Treaty of Waitangi.
And they got on famously until 1843 when a group of settlers in possession of a questionable land deed attempted to rid the Wairau Valley of its indigenous Māori who were led by two chiefs. Twenty-two settlers were killed, several after surrendering (surrender was a bit of a concept to the warriors). Four Māori were killed, including one chief's wife and the other's daughter.
Well you know how these things go. There followed almost thirty years of Te riri Pākehā, The White Man's Anger. During this period, thousands of people died, not all of them Māori. But most of them Māori. Add to that Tokotoko Rangi, the Spear from Heaven, which was a general term applying to various white maladies such as venereal disease, measles, influenza, typhoid fever, dysentery and tuberculosis, and the Māori population went into something of a decline. So the English took their lands. And tensions escalated.
Which brings us to football.
Football, or rugby, is huge in New Zealand. Charles Munro introduced the sport to the island in 1870 and it was an instant hit with the Māori, who needed an outlet for their inner warrior, and also the whites, who just liked a good argy-bargy.
By 1888 the Native team, mostly Māori with a few white pākehās, played 107 games in Australasia and Britain and won most of them. In 1892 the New Zealand Rugby Football Union was formed, and the New Zealand team started playing against Australia by 1903. In 1905 the team played a "friendly" in England. Their new team away colours for the game happened to be black, and their unusual style of play was as if they were all playing defence, or all backs. So, maybe due to a typo, maybe not, the team was referred to as the All Blacks in the English papers and this has been the team's name ever since.
The New Zealand team has never cared about a player's ethnicity as long as they can play. In spite of the team being at least half white (their nickname, of course, is the All Whites), at the beginning of every match they perform a Haka, a Māori challenge or posture dance. This went over like a fart in die kerk when they played South Africa at the height of apartheid, and they were forced to leave all of their non-white players at home.
A protest group called HART was set up in New Zealand in 1969 to stop Rugby Union tours to South Africa. Perhaps due to their efforts, Māori players from New Zealand were allowed to play in South Africa by 1970 as honourary whites.
So, depending upon whom you talk to, Rugby has been somewhat single-handedly responsible for bridging the race divide in New Zealand. We'll just gloss over the Māori All Blacks, a team where you have to prove Māori ethnicity to get in.
Which brings us back to the civics lesson.
Over the years, New Zealand has gone from being a British colony to being part of New South Wales to being a Dominion, finally gaining full independence in 1947, although retaining the British Sovereign. That makes it a Constitutional Monarchy, the best form of government there ever was. They have a Unicameral Parliament, though. Strange. No Senate.
Things are pretty peaceful right at the moment in the Land of the Long White Cloud, and they have the best Prime Minister you could hope for. But there is still an undercurrent of tension between Eurocentrism and indigenous culture. In 1975, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up to investigate alleged breaches of the treaty of the same name and while many grievances have been settled, at least the New Zealand Foreshore and Seabed Controversy remains.
So that's the background. Let's go explore Middle Earth!