In the first three wars Māori fought the British to a standstill each time. They had no wish to beat the British settlers or to drive them from New Zealand[
citation needed]. From the engagements emerged an understanding: English law prevailed in the townships and settlements, and Māori law and customs elsewhere. There followed a period of relative peace and economic cooperation from 1848 to 1860.
During this time European settlement accelerated and in about
1859 the number of
Pākehā came to equal the number of Māori, at around 60,000 each[
citation needed]. By now Pākehā had largely forgotten the painful lessons of the earlier conflicts.
They tried to use military might to push through a very dubious land sale that one of their own courts later repudiated. The result was the
First Taranaki War. Once again the local British forces were more than evenly matched by Māori[
citation needed], and after twelve months both sides were happy to settle for a draw.
However this was clearly just a preliminary. The British settlers were not prepared to countenance Māori controlling and ruling most of the North Island. War broke out again in
1863 with the
Invasion of the Waikato. The Waikato War, including the
Tauranga Campaign, was the biggest of all the New Zealand Wars.
The outcome of this war was the major confiscation of Māori land, which quickly provoked the
Second Taranaki War.
By the mid 1860s the conflict had forced the closing of all the native schools.
The period from the second half of 1864 until early 1868 was relatively quiet. Possibly the most notorious incident during this time was the murder of the missionary
Carl Volkner. There were also two serious intra-tribal conflicts, civil wars in Māori tribes, between adherents and non-adherents of the
Pai Marire or Hau Hau sect—a vehemently anti-Pākehā religious group which was intent upon destabilizing the developing cooperation between the Māori and Pākehā. These are sometimes known as the
East Cape War, but that label oversimplifies a complicated series of conflicts.
