Fair Say NZ
Aotearoa's Story
A timeline of the forces that shaped New Zealand โ told from both sides. Every event names the real conflict, presents each side's strongest argument, and notes what history shows about where each position led. This is a work in progress, and open to user suggestions at the bottom right of the page.
NZ by the Numbers
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pre-1840
Pre-European Aotearoa
Aotearoa before sustained European contact โ iwi governance, inter-tribal politics, and the world that colonisation would transform.
pre-1840
Tribal governance & the rangatira system
Collective rule without a central state
1807โ1842
The Musket Wars
When European trade rewrote the balance of power
1840โ1900
Colonial Era
The Treaty, the Land Wars, and the foundations of a settler state โ a period of profound dispossession and rapid political change.
1840
The Treaty of Waitangi
A partnership โ or a surrender? The answer depends on which text you read
1845โ1872
The New Zealand Land Wars
Millions of acres. The Crown called it order. Mฤori called it theft.
1893
Women's suffrage
The world's first โ and it nearly didn't happen
1900โ1935
Nation Building
Class conflict, progressive labour law, pandemic, and the slow construction of a modern national identity.
1891โ1912
The Liberal era & the social laboratory
The world watched NZ build the future โ for some
1913
The 1913 Waterfront Strike
Farmers on horseback versus the wharfies โ the state picks a side
1918
The 1918 influenza pandemic
Mฤori died at seven times the Pฤkehฤ rate. This was not biology.
1935โ1984
Welfare State
From the Great Depression to the social contract โ and its first cracks.
1935โ1949
The First Labour Government & the welfare state
Savage built the floor. The argument about the ceiling continues.
1984โ1987
Nuclear-free New Zealand
The US called it a betrayal. Most New Zealanders called it a point of pride.
1984โ2000
Restructuring
Rogernomics, MMP, nuclear-free, and the foreshore โ the era that remade modern New Zealand.
1984โ1990
Rogernomics
The fastest, deepest free-market restructuring any democracy had ever attempted
1996
The introduction of MMP
Voters changed the rules because governments kept ignoring them
2003โ2004
The Foreshore and Seabed controversy
Parliament changed the law to stop Mฤori having their day in court
2000โpresent
Modern NZ
Immigration, terror, pandemic, and the unresolved Treaty debate that defines politics today.
1987โpresent
The changing face of New Zealand
From "White New Zealand" to one of the world's most diverse cities in one generation
2019
The Christchurch mosque attacks
The worst day in modern NZ history โ and the response that defined a government
2020โ2022
COVID-19 and the limits of consensus
From "team of five million" to a Parliament lawn occupation โ in two years
2024โpresent
The Treaty principles debate
Redefine the Treaty in statute โ or repeat 184 years of unilateral Crown action?