New Zealand
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| Principal languages | English, Māori | |||
| Capital | Wellington | |||
| Largest city | Auckland | |||
| Queen of New Zealand | Elizabeth II | |||
| Prime minister | Helen Clark | |||
| Area - Total - % water |
Ranked 73rd 268,680 km² 2.1% | |||
| Population - Total (2004) - Density |
Ranked 120th 4,061,300 15/km² | |||
| Independence | 1907 | |||
| Currency | New Zealand dollar | |||
| Time zone | Universal Time +12 | |||
| National anthem | God Defend New Zealand | |||
| Internet TLD | .nz | |||
| Calling Country Code | +64 | |||
New Zealand, a country of two large islands and a number of smaller islands in the south-western Pacific Ocean, is also called Aotearoa or the "Land of the Long White Cloud." New Zealand is separated from Australia to the northwest by the Tasman Sea, some 2,000 km across. Closest neighbours to the north are New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga. Legends of the indigenous Maori people describe the South Island as a canoe and the North Island as a fish.
Geography
The two main islands are called the North and South Islands in English, or Te-Ika-a-Maui and Te Wai Pounamu in Māori. The smaller islands include Stewart Island/Rakiura; Waiheke Island near Auckland, Great Barrier Island, and the Chatham Islands, named Rekohu by Moriori. The total land area, 268,680 km², is slightly less than Japan. The country, which extends more than 1,600 km along its main, north-north-east axis, has the fifth-largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world covering over four million square kilometres of ocean.
The South Island is divided along its length by the Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Aoraki/Mount Cook, at 3,754 m. The tallest mountain in the less-mountainous North Island is Mount Ruapehu (2,797 m), an active cone volcano.
Temperatures rarely fall below 0°C. or rise above 30°C. Conditions vary from wet and cold on the west coast of the South Island to dry and continental in the Mackenzie Basin of inland Canterbury and subtropical in the Northland.
The population is mostly of European descent, with Māori being the largest minority. Non-Māori Polynesian and Asian peoples are also significant minorities, especially in the cities.
New Zealand also includes the Cook Islands and Niue, which are entirely self-governing; Tokelau, which is moving towards self-government, and Ross Dependency, New Zealand's claim in Antarctica.
Because of its long isolation from the rest of the world, New Zealand has unique flora, 80 per cent of which only occurs in New Zealand. Podocarps, including the giant kauri and southern beech, dominate the forests. It also had a diverse range of birds, including the flightless moa, now extinct, and kiwi, the kakapo, and the takahē, all of which are endangered.
Human settlement had a huge impact on fauna and flora. Over 75 per cent of the forest cover has been burnt or felled, and the land converted into pasture. Many bird species, including the giant moa, became extinct after the arrival of Polynesians, who brought dogs and rats, and Europeans, who introduced other rat species, ferrets, weasels, stoats, cats, pigs and more dogs.
Offshore islands were recognised, by conservationists, as a way of saving threatened bird populations. Once introduced predators were exterminated, birdlife flourished again. Around 30 species are listed as endangered. The kiwi, a national symbol, is also under threat. A curious bird, it cannot fly, has loose, hair-like feathers, long whiskers and is largely nocturnal.
The Department of Conservation, formed in 1987, works to save native threatened species, to manage pests and weeds, to care for marine life, and help landowners to preserve natural heritage.
Environmental concerns opened a niche for The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, a party which holds six seats in parliament. It focuses firstly on environmentalism, arguing that all other aspects of humanity will cease to be of concern if there is no environment to sustain it.
New Zealand's landscape has appeared in the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed in various locations around the country. Mount Taranaki was used as a stand-in for Mount Fuji in The Last Samurai. The latest of such international films are King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
History
Evidence indicates human settlement began in the 13th century C.E., and those first settlers, the Maori people, comprised up to 200 men and women from East Polynesia who arrived in a number of canoes. DNA mapping of their Maori descendants indicate links to the indigenous people of Taiwan. The Moriori people of the Chatham Islands, located 800km east of New Zealand, multiplied from a group of New Zealand Polynesians who transferred themselves there by canoe some time in the 14th or 15th centuries.
Tribal culture developed 16th century. Individuals identified with their family (whanau) and tribe (iwi), membership of which was traced to the canoe an ancestor arrived in. There were paramount chiefs (ariki), chiefs (rangatira), commoners (tutua) and slaves. Both aristocrats and commoners could increase their status (mana) by becoming experts (tohunga) in activities of physical, artistic or spiritual nature. The country was divided into tribal districts (rohe). They were a savage, warrior people who practised cannibalism.
Abel Janszoon Tasman, the commander of a two-ship Dutch East India Company trading expedition, was the first European to visit. An encounter with two canoes full of Maori warriors on December 18, 1642, led to the deaths of four Dutch men. Tasman sailed away without setting foot on land. He named that area Murderers’ Bay, and named the country Staten Landt. This was changed by Dutch cartographers to Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland.
Lieutenant James Cook, of the British Royal Navy, who sailed south from Tahiti where, in July 1769, he observed the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun, was the next European contact. Cook mapped of the main islands, and the east coast of Australia, named the country New Zealand. He recognized the relationship between the Maori and Tahitian people.
The year of Cook's first visit was the year French explorer Jean de Surville conducted the first Christian service in New Zealand waters on Christmas Day.
The first Europeans to live in New Zealand were seamen who jumped ship, convicts who had escaped from British penal coloniesin Australia, sealers, whalers and traders. Timber and flax attracted traders, and led to tribes acquiring muskets, initially for hunting, but inevitably for inter-tribal fighting known as the Musket Wars, in which more than 20,000 were killed over 30 years.
The first missionary was Samuel Marsden sent by the Church Missionary Society, in 1814, to evangelise the Maori people. Successive missionaries can take the credit for brokering peace between warring tribes, and ending slavery and cannibalism.
The Treaty of Waitangi was concluded between the British Queen and Maori chiefs in early 1840. In the three-sentence treaty, the chiefs cede to the Queen government of their lands; the Queen acknowledges that the chiefs and tribes own their lands, and if they wish to sell, must sell to a Queen-appointed agent; and the Queen promises to protect Maori people as British subjects. But unresolved disputes over land ownership and sovereignty led to a series of armed clashes, known as the Maori Wars, the NZ Wars, or the Land Wars, that continued until 1872.
New Zealand was initially administered as a part of the colony of New South Wales. Sir George Grey, was the first governor with the resources to enforce the rule of law with military strength. His Constitution Act of 1853 set up a national system of representative government, and a prime minister. Voters had to be male owners of property. The Governor retained responsibility for Maori affairs. Foreign policy was controlled by Britain. From 1867, all Maori men could vote, and from 1893, all women could vote. The ballot was secret from 1870, and the property qualification was abolished in 1879.
The first capital was in the Bay of Islands, in the far north, but shortly afterwards moved to Auckland. European settlement progressed rapidly, and by 1860 Europeans outnumbered Maoris. The discovery of gold in Central Otago in 1861 sparked concerns that the South Island would form a separate colony, so in 1865 the capital was moved to the more central city of Wellington.
New Zealand became an independent dominion in 1907, by royal proclamation. Full independence was granted with the Statute of Westminster in 1931, which was adopted by the New Zealand Parliament in 1947. Since then, New Zealand has been a sovereign constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth of Nations.
New Zealand recorded the highest casualties per head of population of any combatant nation during World War I, when 100,000 served and 17,000 were killed. In World War II, 204,000 served and 11,500 killed, and in the Korean War, 1550 served and 38 killed).
For 100 years, New Zealand followed Britain's lead on foreign policy. However, Britain's inability to protect New Zealand from Japanese aggression in World War II led New Zealand to come under the influence of the United States. New Zealand is a party to the ANZUS security treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, although the formal relationship with the United States changed when the Labour Government of David Lange adopted an anti-nuclear position, which ended visits of U.S. warships.
New Zealand considers its own national defence needs to be modest; it dismantled its air combat capability in 2001. New Zealand has contributed forces to peacekeeping missions, in Cyprus, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Sinai, Angola, Cambodia, the Iran/Iraq border, Bougainville and East Timor.
Economy
Since 1984, after reforms by then finance minister Sir Roger Douglas, successive governments transformed New Zealand from a highly protectionist and regulated economy to a liberalised free-market economy. The Government sold its telecommunications company, railway network, a number of radio stations, and two financial institutions. The businesses the Government retained, collectively known as State-Owned Enterprises, are operated as stand-alone businesses that are required to operate profitably.
An economic bubble developed in the New Zealand stock market starting in 1984. This burst in 1987, and the total value of the market halved within a year (it has still to recover this lost value). A period of poor economic growth lasted until the mid-1990s, when the government began a program of immigration to boost GDP. A favourable rate of currency exchange and strong demand for housing buoyed the economy for the next six years, until inflationary pressures in 2005 caused the central Reserve Bank to raise interest rates.
The government's economic objectives, from 1999 to 2002, aimed to move up from the lower ranks of the OECD countries, to pursue free-trade agreements, close the gaps between Maori and others, and build a "knowledge economy." In 2004, it began discussing free trade with China, one of the first countries to do so.
New Zealand is dependent on trade—particularly in agricultural products—, and has been affected by global economic slowdowns and slumps in commodity prices. Since agricultural exports are sensitive to currency values and a large percentage of consumer goods are imported, any changes in the value of the New Zealand dollar has a strong impact on the economy. There had been some discussion about adopting Australian currency or the U.S. dollar.
In 2005, agriculture made up 4.7 percent of gross domestic product, industry 27.8 percent and services 67.5 percent.
Primary export industries are agriculture (sheep, cattle, dairy), horticulture (apples, kiwifruit), fishing and forestry. Residential construction is a big part of the building industry. During the 1990s tourism became the country’s leading earner of foreign exchange. export education industries flourished. The trilogy The Lord of the Rings put New Zealand’s film industry on the world stage. Vineyards proliferated since the 1990s in Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, focusing on high-quality sauvignon blanc and pinot noir.
Demographics
New Zealand has a population of about 4.1 million. About 70 percent of the population are of European descent, mostly English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Dutch ancestry. Māori people are the second-largest ethnic group – those of full or part-Māori ancestry comprise 14.7 percent of the population. Asians make up 6.6 percent of the population while those of Pacific Island origin make up 6.5 percent. Migrants from the United Kingdom constitute the largest single group (30 percent), but new migrants are drawn from many nations, increasingly from East Asia.
English and Maori are the two official languages, although any visitor would find it an English-speaking country, the only visible signs of the Maori language as secondary names of Government departments, one Maori language television channel, and a number of tribal radio stations.
New Zealand is the only country where all the highest offices in the land are occupied by women, including the sovereign, the governor-general, the prime minister, the speaker of the house of representatives, and the chief justice. The Prime Minister is Helen Clark of the New Zealand Labour Party. She has served two complete terms as Prime Minister and has begun her third.
New Zealand is a parliamentary democracy. The executive branch comprises Head of State Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, represented by Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright, the Prime Minister, and a cabinet of ministers appointed by the Governor General on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. The legislative branch is the House of Representatives, or parliament, comprising 120 seats filled by 69 members elected by popular vote in single-member electorates, including seven Maori electorates, and 51 proportional members chosen from party lists, all serving three-year terms.
The ways in which successive governments dealt with the relationship between Maori and non-Maori people have worsened race relations. Since 1840, issues to do with sovereignty and land ownership remained unresolved, and, for a long time, invisible while Māori continued to live in rural communities. Agitation regarding treaty issues intensified in the 1970s. The Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975 to consider alleged breaches, and in 1984 was empowered to look back to 1840. In the past 20 years somewhat of a grievance industry has ballooned, generating hostility from voters.
Christianity is the predominant religion in New Zealand, although nearly 40 percent of the population has no religious affiliation. The main Christian denominations are Anglican, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and Methodist. Significant numbers identify themselves with Pentecostal, Baptist, and the LDS (Mormon) church. The Ratana church has many adherents among Māori. A wave of new religious movements, including The Divine Light Mission, Hare Krishna, Children of God, Bahai, and the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon arrived in the early 1970s. Increasing immigration since the late 1990s brought adherents of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.
Culture
Contemporary, Pākehā New Zealand has a diverse contemporary culture with influences from British, Irish, and Māori cultures, along with those of other European cultures (such as Dutch, Dalmatian, and Polish) and - more recently - Polynesian (including Samoan, Tongan, Niuean, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian, and Hawai'ian) and Southern and Southeast Asian (Indian, Chinese, Korean, Cambodian, and Japanese) cultures. There were many people from Scotland amongst the early British settlers and elements of their culture persist; New Zealand is said to have more bagpipe bands than Scotland. Cultural links between New Zealand and the UK are maintained by a common language, sustained migration from the UK and the fact that many young New Zealanders spend time in the UK on their "overseas experience (OE)".
The Government promotes Maori culture by naming government departments in both English and Maori, by insisting on traditional Maori welcomes (powhiri) at Government functions and state school prizegivings, and by having tribes run welfare services targeted at Maori people. The Māori language (Te Reo Māori) was used only in a few remote areas in the post war years but it is now being promoted, with generous state support for Māori language schools and a Māori language television channel.
Rugby union is the sport closely linked to New Zealand's national identity. The national rugby team is called the All Blacks and has the best winning record of any national team in the world, including being the inaugural winner of the World Cup in 1987. New Zealand is to host the 2011 Rugby Union World Cup. New Zealand's national sporting colours are black and white, and the silver fern is a national emblem worn by New Zealand sport representatives. The All Blacks perform a traditional Maori war dance, or haka, before the start of international matches.
Other popular sports are cricket, netball, lawn bowling, soccer, rugby league, golf, tennis, cycling and a variety of water sports, particularly sailing, whitewater kayaking, surf lifesaving and rowing. Snow sports such as skiing and snowboarding are also popular. Equestrian sportsmen and sportswomen make their mark in the world, with Mark Todd being chosen international "Horseman of the Century."
New Zealand is a leading nation in world yachting, especially open water long distance or around the world races. Round-the-world yachtsman, Sir Peter Blake was a national hero. In inshore yachting, Auckland hosted the last two America's Cup regattas (2000 and 2003). In 2000, Team New Zealand successfully defended the trophy they had won in 1995 in San Diego, which made them the only team in the history of the Cup to successfully defend a challenge other than a United States team, but in 2003 they lost to a team headed by Ernesto Bertarelli of Switzerland, whose Alinghi syndicate was skippered by Russell Coutts, the former skipper of Team New Zealand.
Team New Zealand will compete for the America's Cup at the next regatta in Valencia in 2007.
References:
King, Michael, The Penguin History of New Zealand, Penguin Books (NZ)Ltd, 2003
External links
- Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
- Te Puna Web Directory - A directory to New Zealand web sites
- Ministry for Culture and Heritage - includes information on flag, anthems and coat of arms.
- New Zealand Government Portal
- Travel guide to New Zealand from Wikitravel
- New Zealand weather
- NZHistory.net.nz New Zealand history website
- Statistics New Zealand - Official statistics.
- Tourism New Zealand
- www.zoomin.co.nz Maps of New Zealand
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