New Zealand
Two islands of mountains, fjords, and Maori heritage
New Zealand is a remote pair of mountainous islands in the southwest Pacific, far from any other landmass, where soaring Southern Alps, glaciers, fjords, and volcanic plateaus crowd into a country roughly the size of the United Kingdom. It is a nation with a powerful Maori cultural identity woven into national life, recognized in the use of te reo Maori as an official language and in the haka known the world over through its rugby team. Wellington, perched on a windy harbor, is the capital, while Auckland in the north is the largest city.
The two main islands have sharply different character. The North Island is volcanically active, with geothermal fields, the active cone of Mount Ruapehu, and the broad Central Plateau. The South Island is split by the Southern Alps, which rise at Aoraki / Mount Cook to 3,724 meters and feed glaciers and the deep, spectacular fjords of the southwest. Isolation produced an extraordinary endemic wildlife, most famously the flightless kiwi, evolved in a land that had no native land mammals before human arrival. The climate is temperate and maritime.
Polynesian voyagers settled Aotearoa around the thirteenth century, developing Maori society. British colonization followed the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, whose contested meaning remains central to relations between the Crown and Maori. New Zealand gained self-government and full sovereignty over the twentieth century, pioneering women's suffrage in 1893 and building a strong social democracy. Today it is a stable, prosperous nation whose economy rests on agriculture, especially dairy, tourism drawn to its landscapes, and a film industry that turned the country into Middle-earth.