Unrestrained Slaughter; The Maori Musket Wars 1800-1840, a book by John Robinson

This is a brief account for the general reader of the deadliest and most gruesome chapter in New Zealand’s history - the Musket Wars in which around one third of the Maori population were killed. The wars were a continuation of the inter-tribal fighting that had been a feature of native life ever since the tribes arrived in New Zealand in their canoes but the introduction of muskets increased the killing to an industrial scale.
Tribes were decimated and forced from their homelands, usually to poorer land, and to attack others, bringing bloodshed, widespread insecurity and social breakdown. Deaths demanded revenge (utu) and more killing. The resulting arms race created an economy based on the frantic production of flax and other goods to be traded for ever more muskets as a matter of self-preservation.
https://trosspublishing.co.nz/publication/unrestrained-slaughter-the-maori-musket-wars-1800-1840

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