Colonisation was the best thing that ever happened to Maori. No more tribal wars and no more cannibalism. The British and European settlers (of which all Maori today are related by marriage) and Protestant missionaries stopped Maori being taken advantage of by unscrupulous whalers and the big traders such the New Zealand Company and Wakefield’s company, selling land that didn’t belong to them to unsuspecting settlers. This crooked company was stopped and eventually bankrupted around 1850 with pressure from the British Colonial Office, successive governors of New Zealand, the Church Missionary Society and prominent missionary the Rev. Henry Williams et al.
The NZ company and Wakefield’s company eventually merged and strongly opposed the Treaty of Waitangi, which was an obstacle to the company obtaining the greatest possible amount of New Zealand land at the cheapest price. Apart from those dodgy crooks Colonisation was excellent for Maori as colonisation brought an entrepreneurial spirit that switched-on Maori took hold of and developed the skills the British and Europeans taught them.
