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The Musket Wars were a series of as many as 3000 battles and raids fought throughout New Zealand as well as the Chatham Islands among Māori between 1807 and 1845, after Māori first obtained muskets and then engaged in an intertribal arms race in order to gain territory or seek revenge for past defeats. The battles resulted in the loss of between 20,000 and 40,000 lives and the enslavement of tens of thousands of Māori and significantly altered the ''rohe'', or tribal territorial boundaries, before the imposition of colonial government in the 1840s. The wars are seen as an example of the "fatal impact" of indigenous contact with Europeans. The increased use of muskets in intertribal warfare led to changes in the design of pā fortifications, which later benefited Māori when engaged in battles with colonial forces during the New Zealand land wars. Responsibility for the beginning of the musket wars is usually attributed to Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika, who in 1818 used newly acquired muskets to launch devastating raids from his Northland base into the Bay of Plenty, where local Māori were still relying on traditional weapons of wood and stone. In the following years he launched equally successful raids on ''iwi'' in Auckland, Thames, Waikato and Lake Rotorua,〔 taking large numbers of his enemies as slaves, who were put to work cultivating and dressing flax to trade with Europeans for more muskets. His success prompted other ''iwi'' to procure firearms in order to mount effective methods of defence and deterrence and the spiral of violence peaked in 1832 and 1833, by which time it had spread to all parts of the country except the inland area of the North Island later known as the King Country and remote bays and valleys of Fiordland in the South Island. In 1835 the fighting went offshore as Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama launched devastating raids on the pacifist Moriori in the Chatham Islands. Historian Michael King suggested the term "holocaust" could be applied to the Musket War period; another historian, Angela Ballara, has questioned the validity of the term "musket wars", suggesting the conflict was no more than a continuation of Māori ''tikanga'' (custom), but more destructive because of the widespread use of firearms.〔 ==Origin and escalation of warfare== Māori began acquiring European muskets in the early 19th century from Sydney-based flax and timber merhants. Because they had never had projectile weapons, they initially sought guns for hunting. Their first known use in intertribal fighting was in the 1807 battle between Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Whātua at Moremonui in Northland near present-day Dargaville. Although they had some muskets, Ngāpuhi warriors struggled to load and reload them and were defeated by an enemy armed only with traditional weapons—the clubs and blades known as ''patu'' and ''taiaha''. Soon after, members of the Ngāti Korokoro hapū of Ngāpuhi suffered severe losses in a raid on the Kai Tutae ''hapu'' despite outnumbering their foe ten to one, because the Kai Tutae were equipped with muskets.〔 Under Hongi Hika's command, Ngāpuhi began amassing muskets and from about 1818 began launching effective raids on ''hapu'' throughout the North Island against whom they had grievances. Rather than occupy territory in areas they defeated their enemy, they seized ''taonga'' (treasures) and slaves, who they put to work to grow and prepare more crops—chiefly flax and potatoes—as well as pigs to trade for even more weapons. A flourishing trade in the smoked heads of slain enemies and slaves also developed. The custom of ''utu'', or reciprocation, led to a growing series of reprisals as other ''iwi'' realised the benefits of muskets for warfare, prompting an arms race among warring groups.〔 In 1821 Hongi Hika travelled to England with missionary Thomas Kendall and in Sydney on his return voyage traded the gifts he had obtained in England for between 300 and 500 muskets, which he then used to launch even more devastating raids, with even bigger armies, against ''iwi'' from the Auckland region to Rotorua.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Musket Wars」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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