The East Cape War, sometimes also called the East Coast War, refers to a series of conflicts that were fought in the North Island of New Zealand from about 13 April 1865 to June 1868. There were at least three separate unrelated campaigns fought in the area during a period of relative peace between the main clashes of the New Zealand land wars, between the end of the Invasion of the Waikato, and beginning of Te Kooti's War. Although separate, they have all come to be known together as the East Cape War.
All of these conflicts stem from a common cause, the arrival of the Pai Marire Movement or Hau Hauism from the Taranaki region around 1865. Originally Pai Marire was a peaceful religion, a combination of Christianity and traditional Māori beliefs, but it quickly evolved into a violent and vehemently anti-European (Pākehā) movement. The arrival of the Hau Hau in the East Cape effectively destabilized the whole region causing great alarm among the settlers and also seriously disrupting Māori society because of its disregard for traditional tribal structures. During this period the New Zealand Government was inadvertently helping Pai Marire recruitment by the confiscation of rebel Māori land,amounting to 3% of New Zealand's land, a policy that understandably generated enormous resentment among rebel Māori who had land confiscated.
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Read more about East Cape War: Early Actions, Waerenga A Hika, Ngāti Kahungunu Civil War, Napier, Tauranga Again, Further Reading
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“The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-in house, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.”
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