Musket Wars

The Musket Wars were a series of as many as 3,000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand among Maori between 1806 and 1845, after Maori first obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats. The battles resulted in the deaths of between 20,000 and 40,000 people and the enslavement of tens of thousands of Maori, and significantly altered tribal territorial boundaries before the 1840 signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. The wars reached their peak in the 1830s, with smaller conflicts continuing until the mid-1840s; some historians argue the later New Zealand Wars were a continuation of the Musket Wars.