After Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) scientific journeys through South America and the Pacific, especially his visit to the Galapagos Islands (1831-36), he publishes his

theories on evolution in The Origin of Species through Natural Selection in 1859. He built on the earlier ideas of biologists such as Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) from Sweden. Linnaeus divided the living world into categories, from the main divisions of mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish and plants, to species and sub-species.

His system is still used to this day with little change--along with all those Latin names Linnaeus gave to each and every living thing. But where Linnaeus saw his system as unchanging, Darwin brought in the idea that animals and plants were always changing, evolving, and that new species had their origins in older ones. Darwin also created the modern idea of extinction, that species of animals were constantly disappearing, dieing out as new species arose, "the survival of the fittest."

Linnaeus also marks the start of modern racism. Just as animals were divided up into categories, so were people. Linnaeus identified five races: European, Asian, African, American and "wildmen". Darwin's theories were used to support the idea of the superiority of one race over another (Darwin himself never said this however). It just so happened that the people who thought up these ideas, Europeans, were also identified as the "superior" race. This in turn was used to justify the European domination of everyone else. In the most extreme form such theories would lead to the racism of Nazi Germany. The idea of race, while still commonly believed, no longer has any scientific basis. Modern genetic research has shown that all people around the world are very closely related. Comparing the genes of two brown-skinned Africans, for example, you could find more differences than between the genes of one of those Africans and a white-skinned European.

Kamehameha, chief and greateast warrior of thePolynesian island of Owhyhee (or Hawaii as we now call it), conquers the other local chiefs one by one in what was then called the Sandwich Islands by Europeans. Kamehameha was born around 1750. One island after another, Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Oahu, fell to his warriors. By 1810, he was ruler of the new kingdom of Hawaii, called King Kamehameha I. Only one island, Kauai, could not be defeated, but Kamehameha married the daughter of the high chief of Kauai, bringing the island into his realm by alliance. Kaahumanu was her name, and she became the king's favourite wife (Hawaiians could marry more than once). It was through her wisdom and the loyalty of her powerful family that Kamehameha governed Hawaii. The Hawaiian kingdom lasted to 1893.

The Treaty of Waitangi is seen as the founding document of the nation of New Zealand. It was signed in 1840 by representatives of the British crown, Queen Victoria, and Maori chiefs. Due to differences in culture and language, (for example, there is no exact word in Maori for the English word "government" or "sovereignty") there was a huge misunderstanding. To the British, the treaty meant that the Maori's had given up their sovereignty or independence and had become subject to the English queen and government. The Maori chiefs saw the treaty as an agreement of friendship with the British, but it did not reduce their independence.