Australia’s Tasman Wars: Colonial Australia and Conflict in New Zealand, 1800-1850

The British settlement in eastern Australia in 1788 and the strong establishment of the British colony of New South Wales created a maritime frontier in the Tasman Sea and Southwest Pacific. Maritime frontier conflict occurred from Tonga to Tahiti, from the New Hebrides to New Caledonia, and was just as frequent as the land frontier conflict on the Australian continent and often much worse. It was also completely different from the land conflict, being driven by commercial and sectarian alliances that involved almost every indigenous community, and much of that conflict involved missionaries, merchants, whalers, sealers, soldiers and sailors from Australia. This book closely examines the conflict in New Zealand as colonisation by a recently colonised eastern-seaboard Australia, with New South Wales serving as the staging point for colonial expansion, in the context of British, French and American colonial expansion.