New Zealand History, Map, Flag, Capital, Population, & Facts

The northern and northeastern parts of the South Island are the sunniest areas of the country and receive about 2,400–2,500 hours. Elsewhere, the plate boundary involves the subduction of one plate under the other, producing the Puysegur Trench to the south, the Hikurangi Trough east of the North Island, and the Kermadec and Tonga Trenches further north. The two main islands (the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu) are separated by Cook Strait, 22 kilometres (14 mi) wide at its narrowest point. New Zealand is near the centre of the water hemisphere and is made up of two main islands and more than 700 smaller islands. After the 1982 UNCLOS, the islands contributed significantly to New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone. According to most Māori oral traditions, the islands were first discovered by the semi-legendary explorer Kupe while in pursuit of a giant octopus.

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From the geothermal wonders of Rotorua and the serene beaches of Coromandel to the majestic peaks of Fiordland and Mt Cook, every region offers its own unique charm. Experience the Bay of Islands and cruise through Northland’s Hole the in Rock. Explore the beauty and diversity of New Zealand through its stunning destinations.

• The main ski field in the North Island is Mt Ruapehu, and off season, the town of Ohakune is a great hub for Mountain Biking and hiking.
• New Zealand television primarily broadcasts American and British programming, along with many Australian and local shows.
• Non-Māori Polynesian cultures are also apparent, with Pasifika, the world’s largest Polynesian festival, now an annual event in Auckland.
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• The New Zealand Post Office had a monopoly over telecommunications in New Zealand until 1987 when Telecom New Zealand was formed, initially as a state-owned enterprise and then privatised in 1990.
• The currency is the New Zealand dollar, informally known as the “Kiwi dollar”; it also circulates in the Cook Islands (see Cook Islands dollar), Niue, Tokelau, and the Pitcairn Islands.

In 1978 the New Zealand Film Commission started assisting local film-makers, and many films attained a world audience, some receiving international acknowledgement. New Zealand music has been influenced by blues, jazz, country, rock and roll and hip hop, with many of these genres given a unique New Zealand interpretation. Europeans brought English fashion etiquette to New Zealand, and until the 1950s most people dressed up for social occasions.

• The British brought the Protestant work ethic—the industrious newcomers astonished Maori people.
• There are 13 school years and attending state (public) schools is free to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents from a person’s 5th birthday to the end of the calendar year following their 19th birthday.
• New Zealand has an adult literacy rate of 99%, and over half of the population aged 15 to 29 hold a tertiary qualification.
• Let New Zealand’s natural beauty inspire your next adventure!
• The government sold its telecommunications company, railway network, a number of radio stations, and two financial institutions.
• Cabinet, formed by ministers and led by the prime minister, is the highest policy-making body in government and responsible for deciding significant government actions.
• While New Zealand is experiencing sub-replacement fertility, with a total fertility rate of 1.6 in 2020, the fertility rate is above the OECD average.

The government sold its telecommunications company, railway network, a number of radio stations, and two financial institutions. The formal relationship with the U.S. changed, in 1986, however, after the Labour government adopted an anti-nuclear position, which ended visits of American warships. New Zealand is a party to betista casino login the ANZUS security treaty between Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.
The government has negotiated settlements of these grievances with many iwi, although Māori claims to the foreshore and seabed proved controversial in the 2000s. A Māori protest movement developed, which criticised Eurocentrism and worked for greater recognition of Māori culture and of the Treaty of Waitangi. New Zealand experienced increasing prosperity following the Second World War, and Māori began to leave their traditional rural life and move to the cities in search of work.
After 1840, many issues to do with sovereignty and land ownership remained unresolved and, for a long time, invisible while Maori lived in rural communities. British migrants form the largest single group (30 percent), but new migrants are drawn from many nations, increasingly those of East Asia. Those of full or part-Maori ancestry comprise about 15 percent while most of the remainder are of Asian and Pacific Island origin. Vineyards have proliferated since the 1990s in areas of the country, with a focus on high-quality sauvignon blanc and pinot noir.

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In 2005, agriculture made up about 5 percent of gross domestic product; industry, 28 percent; and services, 67 percent. A period of poor economic growth lasted until the mid-1990s, when the government began a program of immigration to boost GDP. An economic bubble developed in the New Zealand stock market starting in 1984. The businesses the government retained, known as “state-owned enterprises,” are required to operate profitably as stand-alone businesses.
New Zealand has a highly varied terrain with mountain ranges and hill country dominating the landscape. What type of government does New Zealand have? What is the population of New Zealand? Immigration from other areas—Asia, Africa, and eastern Europe—has also made a mark, and New Zealand culture today reflects these many influences. New Zealand also has a unique array of vegetation and animal life, much of which developed during the country’s prolonged isolation.

Government and politics

The All Blacks perform a traditional Maori war dance, or haka, before the start of international matches. The country’s national sporting colors are black and white, and the silver fern is a national emblem. The national rugby team, the All Blacks, has the best winning record of any national team in the world, including being the inaugural winner of the 1987 Rugby Union World Cup. The British brought the Protestant work ethic—the industrious newcomers astonished Maori people.

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The country has the distinction of being the only one outside the U.S. to hold multiple America’s Cup races, but lost the cup in 2003 to a Swiss team (with a New Zealander skipper). New Zealand hosted the last two competitions for international yacht racing’s top prize, the America’s Cup (2000 and 2003), by virtue of being the home of the winning team in 1995 and 2000. British colonists brought a legal, political, and economic system that has flourished, along with the English system of agriculture that has transformed the landscape.

From the early 19th century, Christian missionaries began to settle New Zealand, eventually converting most of the Māori population. Some Māori later migrated to the Chatham Islands, where they developed their distinct Moriori culture; a later 1835 invasion by Māori iwi resulted in the massacre and virtual extinction of the Moriori. The first people to reach New Zealand were Polynesians in ocean going waka, who are believed to have arrived in several waves between about 1280 and 1350. Similarly the Māori and English names for the whole country are sometimes used together (Aotearoa New Zealand); however, this has no official recognition. For each island, either its English or Māori name can be used, or both can be used together.
New Zealand’s population increased at a rate of 1.9% per year in the seven years ended June 2020. The 2023 New Zealand census enumerated a resident population of 4,993,923, an increase of 6.3% over the 2018 census figure. The New Zealand Space Agency was created by the government in 2016 for space policy, regulation and sector development. The country’s railways were privatised in 1993 but were re-nationalised by the government in stages between 2004 and 2008.
New Zealand participated at the Summer Olympics in 1908 and 1912 as a joint team with Australia, before first participating on its own in 1920. The Polynesian sport of waka ama racing has experienced a resurgence of interest in New Zealand since the 1980s. New Zealand is known for its extreme sports, adventure tourism and strong mountaineering tradition, as seen in the success of notable New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary summiting Mount Everest first. Golf, netball, tennis and cricket have the highest rates of adult participation, while netball, rugby union and football (soccer) are particularly popular among young people. A hāngī is a traditional Māori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven that is still used for large groups on special occasions, such as tangihanga. New Zealand yields produce from land and sea—most crops and livestock, such as maize, potatoes and pigs, were gradually introduced by the early European settlers.

In September 2020 Statistics New Zealand reported that the population had climbed above 5 million people in September 2019, according to population estimates based on the 2018 census.n 9 The road and rail networks in the two main islands are linked by roll-on/roll-off ferries between Wellington and Picton, operated by Interislander (part of KiwiRail) and Bluebridge. In the year to June 2018, dairy products accounted for 17.7% ($14.1 billion) of total exports, and the country’s largest company, Fonterra, controls almost one-third of the international dairy trade. The increase of this since the 1960s led to the formation of the Pasifika New Zealander pan-ethnic group, the fourth-largest ethnic grouping in the country.
It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the whole country before the arrival of Europeans; Aotearoa originally referred to just the North Island. The next year, in 1643, Hendrik Brouwer proved that the South American land was just a small island, and Dutch cartographers subsequently renamed Tasman’s discovery Nova Zeelandia from Latin, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes. It retains visible levels of inequality, including structural disparities between its Māori and European populations. Recognised as a middle power, New Zealand ranks very highly in international measures of quality of life and human rights and has one of the lowest levels of perceived corruption in the world.
A developed country, New Zealand was the first to introduce a minimum wage and give women the right to vote. Reflecting this, New Zealand’s culture mainly derives from Māori and early British settlers but has recently broadened from increased immigration. Subsequently, a series of conflicts between the colonial government and Māori tribes resulted in the alienation and confiscation of large amounts of Māori land. The country’s varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps (Kā Tiritiri o te Moana), owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions.
New Zealand art and craft has gradually achieved an international audience, with exhibitions in the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the “Paradise Now” exhibition in New York in 2004. Certain items of popular culture thought to be unique to New Zealand are called “Kiwiana”. In the 1960s, as tertiary education became more available, and cities expanded urban culture began to dominate, but rural imagery and themes are common in New Zealand’s art, literature and media. From the early 20th century until the late 1960s, Māori culture was suppressed by the attempted assimilation of Māori into British New Zealanders. More recently, American, Australian, Asian and other European cultures have exerted influence on New Zealand.
It also forms the southwestern extremity of the geographic and ethnographic region called Polynesia. New Zealand is part of Zealandia, a microcontinent nearly half the size of Australia that gradually submerged after breaking away from the Gondwanan supercontinent. The country owes its varied topography, and perhaps even its emergence above the waves, to the dynamic boundary it straddles between the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates. The highly active Taupō Volcanic Zone has formed a large volcanic plateau, punctuated by the North Island’s highest mountain, Mount Ruapehu (2,797 metres (9,177 ft)). The closest point between any territory of both countries is between Macquarie Island (Australia) and Auckland Island (New Zealand), which are about 618 kilometers (384 miles) apart.