Tasman Discovers New Zealand
In 1642, the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sailed into waters no European had recorded before, sighting the island later named Tasmania and then the west coast of New Zealand's South Island. His voyage did not lead to settlement, but it put the outlines of a new part of the world onto European maps and gave New Zealand the name it still carries, a version of the Dutch province of Zeeland.
Tasman sailed for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which dominated European trade in Asia from its base at Batavia, on the island of Java. For decades, geographers had speculated about a great southern continent, often called Terra Australis, that was supposed to balance the landmasses of the north. Dutch ships had already touched the northern and western coasts of Australia, and company officials wanted to know whether the unknown south held new trading opportunities, precious metals, or a route to South America. In 1642 Governor-General Antonio van Diemen sent Tasman with two ships, the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen.
After sailing west to Mauritius and then south and east across the Indian Ocean, Tasman sighted the coast of what is now Tasmania, which he named Van Diemen's Land in honor of his patron. He continued east and in December reached the coast of New Zealand. Near what is now Golden Bay, the expedition had a violent encounter with local Māori, whose ancestors had settled the islands several centuries earlier. Several of Tasman's men were killed after a clash involving canoes and a ship's boat, and the Dutch left without ever setting foot on shore. Tasman sailed north along the coast, believing it might be part of a vast southern land, and eventually continued on to Tonga and Fiji before returning to Batavia.
The company was disappointed. Tasman had found no obvious source of wealth and no ready market, and he had not realized that Australia was a separate landmass from what he had charted. A second voyage in 1644 explored Australia's northern coast but also produced little that the VOC considered profitable. The Dutch lost interest in the region, and New Zealand was left largely undisturbed by Europeans for well over a century.
The legacy of the voyage is mostly geographic and cartographic. Dutch mapmakers incorporated Tasman's findings, and when James Cook reached New Zealand in 1769, he used the earlier discoveries as a starting point. Van Diemen's Land was renamed Tasmania in the nineteenth century, partly to honor the explorer. For Māori, the encounter was a brief and hostile episode, remembered mainly as a prelude to the far more consequential contact that followed.