New Zealand

New Zealand was a human nation occupying a remote set of islands in the South Pacific on Earth in the Sol System.

Owing to their remoteness, the islands of New Zealand were the last large habitable lands to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began to settle in the islands and then developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, and in 1907 it became a dominion.

New Zealand sent a large number of troops to fight as part of the British Empire and its allies in the Great War, between 1914 and 1916. New Zealand military forces were also involved in the seizure of several of the German Empire's colonies in the South Pacific.

Following its defeat in the Indian War of Independence, and with much of its empire having collapsed since the end of the Great War, Great Britain reorganised what was left of its empire into the Commonwealth of Nations in 1939, in which New Zealand was a founding member. Although New Zealand still maintained a constitutional monarchy, with King Henry IX as its head of state, the 1939 Statute of Westminster removed the ability of the Parliament of Great Britain to pass legislation in the country. All member states of the Commonwealth were declared to be "free and equal" as a result of the London Declaration the same year. Member states of the Commonwealth also became part of a monetary union using a single currency (the Commonwealth pound) and an internal common market with a standardised system of laws applying in all of its member states. The Commonwealth pound therefore replaced the New Zealand pound as New Zealand's currency. The Commonwealth of Nations became a model for future supranational organisations, such as the European Union and the Organisation of African Unity.

In 1968, the supranational political and economic structures of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations were combined to form the United Commonwealth. The Commonwealth pound was replaced as the currency used in New Zealand by the newly-established currency of the United Commonwealth, the Commonwealth credit.

The government of the United Commonwealth federalised in 1988. The New Zealand government was therefore effectively absorbed into the United Commonwealth Government in 1988, and New Zealand is largely regarded to have ceased to exist as a separate nation-state on that date.