Famille dans la Baye Dusky (Obseure) de la Nouvelle Zelande.

Title

Famille dans la Baye Dusky (Obseure) de la Nouvelle Zelande.

Description

View showing a family in Dusky Sound, New Zealand. Engraved by Benard.

ca. 1770

Artist

Webber (1752-1793)

John Webber R.A. (c.1752-1793), the son of a Swiss sculptor, living in London, submitted his work to the Royal Academy Schools, one of the first to admire his paintings was Dr Daniel Solander, the Swedish naturalist who had accompanied Cook and Banks on the first voyage. Knowing that no artist had yet been selected for Cook's voyage, Solander recommended Webber to the Admiralty and Royal Society. His appointment was made just days before the departure. Webber was lucky enough to escape the massacre in Hawaii, where Cook met his death, and returned to London in October 1780.

Historical Description

New Zealand was one of the last areas on earth to be colonized by humans. In his book The Penguin History Of New Zealand, New Zealand historian Michael King describes the Maori people as “the last great community on earth to live untouched and unaffected by the outside world”. The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Their ancestors from the Pacific islands are believed to have been the first immigrants to settle in previously uninhabited New Zealand in several waves from Polynesia in the 13th century, some 300 years before the European seafarers. Early European explorers including Abel Tasman, who reached New Zealand in 1642, and Captain James Cook, whose first visit took place in 1769, described encounters with Maori. These early accounts describe the Maori as a fierce and combative warrior people. Fighting between tribes was common at this time and the vanquished were sometimes enslaved or killed. From the 1780s onwards, Maori encountered European sealers and whalers, some of whom signed on to their ships. Refugees from the Australian convict colony also had an increasing influence on the Maori at this time. The close contact of many tribes with the Europeans and their weapon technology, especially muskets, led to a military imbalance between the tribes and to numerous armed conflicts between various tribes, which in the middle of the 19th century went down in New Zealand's history as the Musket Wars. In addition, the Musket Wars led to various forced migrations of individual fleeing tribes with displacements of their traditional settlement areas. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840, stipulated that the Maori tribes should have undisturbed possession of land, forests, fishing grounds and other taonga. In the years leading up to 1872, there were several armed conflicts as a result of ambiguities in this treaty. Today, the Waitangi Tribunal settles disputes. Even though Maori and Europeans intermarried to a considerable extent and thus intermingled, many still retained their cultural identity. There are therefore numerous ways of defining who is Maori and who is not. In this respect, there is no clearly homogeneous social group called Maori.