New Zealand Economy and Pacific People
Added on 2020-02-24
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1ECONOMIC IMPACT ON PACIFIC PEOPLE OF NEW ZEALANDECONOMIC IMPACT ON PACIFIC PEOPLE OF NEW ZEALANDName of Student:Name of University:Author Note:
2ECONOMIC IMPACT ON PACIFIC PEOPLE OF NEW ZEALANDHISTORICAL CONTEXT:The world map depicts New Zealand as two islands lying gloriously on the south westpart of Pacific Ocean in the Southern hemisphere of the Earth. The geographical territory of thecountry majorly consists north and south islands with presence of almost six hundred smallerislands and surrounded by sea and oceans. This not only led the country to possess richbiodiversity and natural resources but also made it remote and disconnected from the world. Nowonder why the landmass was explored and settled much later by the human race as compared toother places of the world.Employment opportunities along with the flexibility in citizenship and rights of residencein New Zealand have led to substantial increase in migration of Pacific peoples into the islands.The change in the policies of the government of New Zealand is taken in order to boost theindustrial growth and economic development of the country. The history of origin of the nationdates back to approximately700 years. It was the time about 1250-1300 BC when thePolynesians started living in these islands now known as New Zealand. They developed adistinct Maori culture which is found to be the most primitive existence of human race on therich land masses. The European explorations started around 1642 with Dutch being the first non-natives to find the nation. Later in 1840 a treaty named Treaty of Waitangi was signed betweenBritish and Chief of Maori clan to officially declare the nation operative under sovereignty ofBritain. Just years later the nation became British Empire’s colony and took 66 years to becomea Dominion of present time in 1907. The country is home to rich and diversified ethnic groups allover the world but Europeans who consists of 74% of the total population take higher proportion.Maori follows them by contributing almost14.9% to the population and 11.8% consisted by
3ECONOMIC IMPACT ON PACIFIC PEOPLE OF NEW ZEALANDAsians (Kelsey, 2015). The pacific people are the 4th largest ethnic group to reflect thepopulation of New Zealand that also by 7.4% as per the recent estimates (2013). There was adearth of skilled labor in the island and this gave rise to talent gaps to combat the situation,During the 1950s immigrants from Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Austria settles in theislands in to find occupation in specialized fields around this time new Zealand also signed anaccord with Netherland that was bilateral in nature to recognize and give shelter to the skilledimmigrants. The existence of these pacific people in new Zealand can be traced back in the ancienttime of formation of the country and they mostly origin from different small islands of PacificOcean surrounding the nation.EVOLUTION OF ECONOMY Throwing light on the ancient economic condition of the nation prevalence of subsistenceeconomy is evident prior to the explorations and colonization made by Europeans and Britishrespectively. Existing sub-tribe Hapu was the basis of economic unit. The exploration by varioustrading ships of France, America, and Britain embarked in 1790 (Rodrik, 2014). The shipsloaded with European goods were started being traded with the Maoris to meet their basic needof food, water, shelter. Various metal tools were also exported to the islanders. Initially thesettlers derived their food from the Maoris. After the nation became British colony, the existenceof self dependent farmers increased. The large-scale agricultural activities transformed thelandscape of the country to well nurtured farmland from dense forests. Apart from agriculture,mining was another important economic activity present in that time which is evident in thequarrying of minerals and metals. The discovery of gold in Otego however marked a turning
4ECONOMIC IMPACT ON PACIFIC PEOPLE OF NEW ZEALANDpoint of the economy of New Zealand as this created a hue and cry worldwide for these preciousmetals that set the wealth of the nation. This initiated a Gold Rush in 1861 that remarkablychanged the economic condition owing to two fold increases in population and fivefold increasein the volume of trade.In 1870 the nation saw its first economic collapse in form of long term depressionstemming from larger burden of borrowing toward the end of gold rush in order to conductvarious programs and investments targeting public welfare and infrastructural development likerail and roads. The depression led to mass unemployment and huge emigration to Australia..However the economy bounced back to boom again in 1890 and the next hit it faced wasthe Great Depression of 1929 in the post world war global condition. Even though the country issmall, it has trading ties with many countries giving UK top position.A significant setback of the economy took place when the great depression hit the worldmarket. In the year 1929 when the global market had shrunken the economy of New Zealandalso went down with it, already the economy was facing troubles post World War I. The relationbetween the British had become strong over the years and the maximum amount of internationaltrade was being taken place in between Britain and New Zealand (Jeffs, 2015).Economic development in New Zealand is affected by several internal as well asinternational factors. Since the establishment in the year 1934, the Reserve Bank is the mostimportant financial institution in the New Zealand economy. Economic growth is referred to asthe rate of development and improvement of the national income of a country, which is measuredby the yearly percentage rate of change of country's gross domestic product. Development of the
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