page_title: History of New Zealand
section_title: Immigration
hierarchical_section_title: History of New Zealand / Colonial period / Immigration
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster advertising emigration to New Zealand. Collection of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland.
context_page_description: The history of New Zealand dates back approximately 700 years to when it was discovered and settled by Polynesians, who developed a distinct Māori culture. Like other Pacific cultures, Māori society was centred on kinship links and connection with the land but, unlike them, it was adapted to a cool, temperate environment rather than a warm, tropical one.
  The first European explorer known to sight New Zealand was Dutch navigator Abel Tasman on 13 December 1642. In 1643 he charted the west coast of the North Island, his expedition then sailed back to Batavia without setting foot on New Zealand soil. British explorer James Cook, who reached New Zealand in October 1769 on the first of his three voyages, was the first European to circumnavigate and map New Zealand. From the late 18th century, the country was regularly visited by explorers and other sailors, missionaries, traders and adventurers.
  In 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between representatives of the United Kingdom and various Māori chiefs, bringing New Zealand into the British Empire and giving Māori the same rights as British subjects.
context_section_description: From 1840 there was considerable European settlement, primarily from England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland; and to a lesser extent the United States, India, China, and various parts of continental Europe, including the province of Dalmatia in what is now Croatia, and Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic. Already a majority of the population by 1859, the number of Pākehā settlers increased rapidly to reach over one million by 1916.
  In the 1870s and 1880s, several thousand Chinese men, mostly from Guangdong, migrated to New Zealand to work on the South Island goldfields. Although the first Chinese migrants had been invited by the Otago Provincial government they quickly became the target of hostility from white settlers and laws were enacted specifically to discourage them from coming to New Zealand.
caption: "First Scottish Colony for New Zealand" – 1839 poster advertising emigration from Scotland to New Zealand.  Collection of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland.
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