A very happy Waitangi Day to all New Zealanders everywhere.
To coincide with Waitangi Day, The National Archives has digitised a series of photo albums from the Colonial Office Library, in Australasia Through a Lens. The images, released on Flickr, include 211 images of New Zealand and New Zealanders. Among these are a signed photo of the All Blacks touring team of 1953-1954, scenic photographs published by Burton Bros, and scans of lithographs from the publication ‘The New Zealanders Illustrated’ by George French Angas.
The National Archives also holds three transcriptions of the Treaty of Waitangi, including the one depicted below, but I don’t want to focus this blog post on the treaty itself. The official copy of the treaty is held in The National Archives of New Zealand in Wellington, and there are plenty of people who can discuss it with far more authority than me.
Treaty of Waitangi, 6 February 1840: copy of the text of the treaty, in Maori, with the names of some of the signatories. Certified, in English, as a true copy by George Clarke, Chief Collector of Aborigines. Reference MFQ 1/402/1