Māori leaders sign Te Tiriti at Waitangi

Armed men killed at least twenty-eight Wirrayaraay people, many of them women and children, at Myall Creek. The massacre reveals the violence of settler expansion. The later prosecution was unusual,...

The compulsory apprenticeship system ended early following resistance, criticism, and political pressure. Ending it removed a major restriction on formerly enslaved people’s work. Plantation power...

Frederick Douglass escaped from Maryland with assistance from Anna Murray. His pursuit of freedom preceded his public career as an abolitionist. Escape networks, personal risk, and community support...

Seven men were convicted after a second trial concerning the Myall Creek killings. Testimony and renewed prosecution overcame an earlier acquittal. The result challenged the practical impunity of...

Seven men convicted of killing Wirrayaraay people at Myall Creek were hanged. The rare punishment shows a limited breach in the tolerance of colonial violence. It did not end dispossession or the...

The United States Supreme Court recognized the freedom of Africans who had been illegally transported and had resisted aboard the Amistad. Their own revolt and testimony were essential to the case....

A confrontation followed settlers’ attempts to assert control over disputed land at Wairau. Ngāti Toa leaders contested the claimed sale. The deaths and subsequent controversy showed that settler...

Te Haratua and other Ngāpuhi cut down the flagstaff that symbolized British authority. Hōne Heke’s movement protested the Crown’s growing power and threats to chiefly autonomy. Symbolic action against...

Forces associated with Hōne Heke and Te Ruki Kawiti attacked Kororāreka and cut down the British flagstaff again. The conflict challenged the extension of Crown authority. Māori were not a single...

British forces attacked Puketutu during the Northern War. Māori defensive works and military strategy complicated the colonial advance. The conflict belonged to a struggle over authority after the...