The Columbian Exchange and the Two Colonizations of Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

The Maori military campaign against British forces in the New Zealand Wars has been described as” on the extant record, a unique feat of resistance to nineteenth-century European expansion” (Belich 1988). Maori have strong claims to world-historical distinction in the food area as well: a long struggle to grow a subtropical sweet potato staple in a cool-temperate environment before European contact, and a remarkably rapid adoption of the white potato after its introduction by European explorers around 1770. The links between these two areas of Maori distinctiveness have not yet been systematically explored and the Maori “tale of two potatoes” has received surprisingly little attention in the specialist food literature. This paper attempts to foreground the relationship between Maori food systems and Maori warfare and show that using food as a starting point can lead to a more socially-embedded understanding of Maori military achievements in the New Zealand Wars.