This book details the interactions between the Seeds of Rangiatea, New Zealand’s Maori people of Polynesian origin, and Europe from 1769 to 1900. It provides a case-study of the way Imperial era contact and colonization negatively affected naturally evolving demographic/epidemiologic transitions and imposed economic conditions that thwarted development by precursor peoples, wherever European expansion occurred. In doing so, it questions the applicability of conventional models for analyses of colonial histories of population/health and of development.
The book focuses on, and synthesizes, the most critical parts of the story, the health and population trends, and the economic and social development of Maori. It adopts demographic methodologies, most typically used in developing countries, which allow the mapping of broad changes in Maori society, particularly their survival as a people.
