The introduction of the potato and the musket had transformed Māori agriculture and warfare.

Potatoes provided a reliable food surplus, which enabled longer and more sustained military campaigns.

The resulting intertribal Musket Wars encompass over six hundred battles between 1801 and 1840, killing thirty thousand to forth thousand Māori.

Christian missionaries began to settle New Zealand from the early nineteenth century, eventually converting most of the Māori population.

The Māori population will decline to around forty percent of its pre-contact level during the nineteenth century; introduced diseases are the major factor.