Contained in this database is a collection of city and area directories for New Zealand, from 1866 to 1955. New Zealand, City & Area Directories, 1866-1954. Though rapid, the decline was less steep than in the small islands of the Pacific. At the 1896 census the non-Māori population was just over 703,000. In 1840 the first organised settlement, Britannia (Petone), was established by the New Zealand Company on the banks of the Hutt River. In 1840 there were about 2000 non-Māori living in New Zealand, although the numbers of British people who had lived temporarily in New Zealand was much greater. New Zealand's isolation was at an end. In 1856 physician and politician Dr Isaac Featherston said it was the duty of Europeans to ‘smooth down … New Zealand was originally inhabited by the Polynesian Maori, who came in 800 A.D., making New Zealand the youngest country in the world (Tourism New Zealand, 1999-2010). In the post war period, from 1874 … By the time the war at Waitara began in 1860, the Māori population had fallen to about 60,000. New Zealand, Marriage Index, 1840-1937. Gold and sheep. Ever since the 1840 signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (New Zealand’s founding document), a raft of government initiatives have resulted in Māori losing both resources and power. Europe's ‘explosion outwards’ during the 18th and 19th centuries reached New Zealand in three distinct waves. In 1840, the native Maori signed a treaty with Britian, which resulted in land wars lasting from 1843 to 1872. National population estimates give the best measure between census dates of the population that usually lives in New Zealand. The population decline rapidly continued thereafter. By 1830 a thousand European ships would visit New Zealand shores. The transformation of New Zealand from a Māori to a non-Māori world was complete. New Zealand (1935) New Zealand Federation of Health Camps formed (1936) Women’s Health League formed by nurse Ruby Cameron in the Rotorua District (1937) Māori death rate: crude rate per thousand population was 24.31 for Māori compared with Pākehā rate of 9.71 (1938) World War II (1939–1945) Legislation Find out how many people live in New Zealand and areas within New Zealand, and what these populations may be like in the future. In 1840 the Māori population was 70,000 to 90,000, and by the time of Francis Fenton’s 1858 census Māori numbered around 60,000 – just three-fifths of the population at the time of Cook. The Māori population was under 40,000. The Māori Population When Pākehā first arrived in New Zealand, the Māori population by some estimates stood at about 90,000 people, spread all over Aotearoa though most lived near the coast. Population decline and racist ideologies combined to fuel forewarnings about Māori extinction. Meet the happy couple in this index of marriage records from New Zealand for the years 1840–1937. In the years since 1792 when a group of sealers in Dusky Sound became the first non-Māori to make homes in New Zealand, the country was an extension of the commercial world of Sydney. By the late 1830s the European population of New Zealand had risen to around 2,000. Before 1840 Europeans arrived here in their hundreds. The Māori population continued its downward spiral in the wake of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, reaching a low of about 42,000 in 1896. As New Zealand entered the final third of the 19th century the South Island dominated the economy, largely due to the impact of wool and gold.