About this map
122 events from Aotearoa New Zealand between 1800 and 2000, placed where they happened and arranged so you can scrub through two centuries and watch the country change.
What it is trying to do
Most history is delivered as a list, and a list flattens everything to the same importance and hides where things happened. A map with a timeline does two things a list cannot: it shows you that the 1860s were a North Island story and the 1860s gold rushes a South Island one, and it shows you what was happening at the same time as something you already knew about.
It is an overview, not a substitute for reading properly. Every event links out to the people who did the actual scholarship.
How events were chosen
Coverage aims for the events that changed something — the law, the land, who held power, how people lived — spread across 9 eras so no decade is empty. Each is graded for significance: nationally defining moments get a timeline notch and a pulsing marker, the rest sit quietly until you reach their year.
The selection is a judgement, and judgements are arguable. It leans towards the national and constitutional and is thinner on regional and everyday history, particularly the South Island between the gold rushes and 1900. That is a gap, not a claim that nothing happened.
Sources and how they are used
Every event carries at least one citation to 117 distinct references, nearly all of them NZHistory (Manatū Taonga) and Te Ara. Nothing is published here without one.
Both are licensed non-commercially, so nothing is copied from them. The summaries here are written for this project and the links are there so you can check the account against the original — which you should, particularly where the history is contested.
The boundaries are modern, and that matters
The map uses today’s 17 regions. New Zealand’s internal boundaries actually changed a great deal over this period — provinces from 1853 to 1876, then counties and boroughs, then the current regions from 1989.
So colouring ‘Waikato’ in 1863 means the modern region, not any unit that existed at the time. Historical boundary data is scarce and patchy; this is the honest approximation rather than a claim to precision. Read the shading as roughly here, not as an administrative fact.
On the difficult parts
A good deal of this is the New Zealand Wars, raupatu, the Native Land Court, Parihaka and the long consequences of all four. Those entries try to say plainly what happened and who it happened to, using te reo Māori names alongside English, and to note where the Crown has since apologised.
Where historians disagree — over Grey’s justification for invading the Waikato, or the white flag at Rangiriri — the entry says so rather than picking a side quietly.
Feedback
If something here is wrong, it is worth fixing. Dates, names, framing, an event that should be included, a source that would be better — all welcome. Feedback that comes with a source gets acted on fastest.