New Zealand's Butcher's Bill

REFERENCES & NOTES:

[1] Inter-tribal Wars: Professor J. Rutherford estimates “the old-style, pre-musket-era tribal wars appear to have destroyed not less than 2,000 people in each five-year period, or say 400 a year, a rate of lass which presumably the Maoris could withstand without appreciable diminution of their total population.”  Additionally, scholars suggest 16,000 warriors took part in the Battle of Hingakaka, (approx. 1790) in which “many thousand” were killed in the Tainui alliance’s utter defeat of the 7-10,000 invading force. [Ref: Pei Te Hurinui (aka P. Jones), King Potatau, Huia Press, 2010 [1960]] Since the Hingakaka battle absorbed so many of the country’s warriors, and so much of that decade’s fighting, a doubling of the otherwise steady attrition rate seems conservative.

[2]  Musket Wars: Figures from Rutherford, J.D. Note on Maori casualties in their tribal wars 1801-1840, James Rutherford Papers. 1926-1963. MSS & Archives A-42, Box 16, Folder 6, Special Collections, The University of Auckland Library. "Rutherford suggests that the minimum Maori death roll in battle, 1801-1840, is 16 per cent, probably 20 per cent. These figures would represent about one-fifth to one-quarter of the male fighting population." [Judith Binney, 'Christianity & the Maoris to 1840', New Zealand Journal of History, v. 3, no. 2, 1969; p. 149, n. 30]
[3] Sovereignty Wars:

Ref: 'End of the New Zealand Wars', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/new-zealand-wars/end, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 30-Oct-2019

[4] Te Kooti’s skirmishes have been included in the 1870s decade

[5] The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902, so all casualties have been included in the decade 1900. “Seventy New Zealanders died in the war as the result of action; 25 were accidentally killed; 133 died of disease” - 'WARS – BOER (SOUTH AFRICAN) WAR, 1899–1902', [An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/1966/wars-boer (accessed 14 Feb 2020)]

[6] WWI: 16,697 New Zealanders were killed (640 in Sinai and Palestine; 2779 at Gallipoli; 1560 at the Somme; 850 at Passchendaele) and 41,317 were wounded during the war – a 58 percent casualty rate. Approximately a further thousand men died within five years of the war's end, as a result of injuries sustained, and 507 died whilst training in New Zealand between 1914 and 1918 ['First World War by the numbers', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/first-world-war-by-numbers, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 27-Mar-2019]

[7] All WWII figures included in decades of the 1940s:11,928 killed, a ratio of 6,684 dead per million in the population which was the highest rate in the Commonwealth (Britain suffered 5,123 and Australia 3,232 per million population). (671 at Crete; 2989 in North Africa) ['Counting the cost', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/second-world-war/counting-the-cost, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 17-May-2017]

[8] 1950s: 3 killed in the Malayan Emergency due to enemy action; 33 in the Korean War

[9] 2000s: Five killed on peacekeeping operations in East Timor [https://teara.govt.nz/en/peacekeeping/page-4]; 8 killed in Afghanistan [Cooke, Henry (17 September 2018). "New Zealand extends Iraq and Afghanistan deployments". Stuff. Retrieved 31 August 2019]