A millennium ago

Aotearoa/New Zealand was the last major landmass to be colonised by people before the era of mercantile capitalism. A particular predilection of the geographer is to attempt to envisage what is happening in various parts of the world over a similar period of time. Historical Geography, the Geography of past times, through imaginative reconstructions of trading networks within chosen spatial contexts, sees emphases on both human ingenuity and the exercise of power and control over environmental resources. When East Polynesian people arrived in Hawaii, Easter Island and Aotearoa/ New Zealand, it is interesting to contemplate the contemporaneous nature of proto capitalism in Islamic Central Asia as well as the contours of pre-capitalist geographies in the West Coast of North America and in Australia. Maori landfalls in Aotearoa/New Zealand, up to a thousand years ago, are viewed through this prism.