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:
[3] Sovereignty Wars:
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| 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]
Judith Binney's fuller evaluation of Rutherford's figures, in 1969, is helpful here: "J. Rutherford, 'Note of Maori Casualties in their Tribal Wars 1801-1840',
ReplyDeleteSecond draft, MS., History Department, University of Auckland. Rutherford's at-
titude throughout was one of caution. He worked on the basis of the following
population estimates: c. 200,000 in 1769, c. 170,000 in 1800, dropping to c.
100,000 in 1840. The drop in the later eighteenth century is based on the
assumption of the occurrence of disease and a bad epidemic in the nineties. This
decline may well be exaggerated and accounts for his estimating a greater overall
drop than H. M. Wright: c. 200,000 in 1769 to c. 125,000 in 1840. Ruther-
ford 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. He states that there are records
of at least 633 battles in these years. The losses are unequally distributed,
but even for Ngapuhi the price of victory was high. Rutherford estimates their
losses at a minimum of 2,500 to a probable 3,000 out of a population of 17,000
in 1801; probable percentage killed, lost, and captured amounting to 19 per cent.
Mrs Shawcross, p. 366, stresses that Ngapuhi losses probably grew between 1826
and 1830 as their enemies acquired guns; she estimates the Bay of Islands'
population, less than the total Ngapuhi confederation, to be over 12,000 in 1820
(p. 2 5 7 ) . Other tribes were variously affected: the Bay of Plenty tribes, suggests
Rutherford, were terrorised by Ngapuhi guns, but once they became possessors
of arms themselves they set on each other and Ngatikahungunu of the East Coast;
Ngatiwhatua of the Kaipara area were decimated by Ngapuhi 1821-5 and, as
a result, dispersed for a decade: their probable losses, 31 per cent. Under the impact of the gun, however, warfare tactics gradually modified: hand to hand
fighting became less and less frequent, while pa defences were altered. By the
thirties Ngapuhi found that they were no longer invincible. There is no place
here to analyse Rutherford's sources, but it is worth noting that both he and
Mrs Shawcross estimate the numbers of various tribes on the basis of such
information as there exists on the size of taua setting out for battle."