i am sick and reading about 19th century New Zealand, and it may be just that I'm a little hallucinatory right now but it seems like strategists and military historians should talk about the Musket Wars a lot more than they do?

like, it's basically the history of human warfare condensed into a few decades.

Hongi Hika, the war leader of the iwi (tribe) with the most European contact at first, and therefore the most muskets, travels to England, becomes a sensation, and meets George IV, who gives him a set of ceremonial armor, as one noble to another.

but in the context of a conflict that has gone from neolithic to early modern almost overnight, the armor is, in fact, a powerful asset itself, which Hongi Hika wears in battle

by the time that the Musket Wars end and the armed conflicts with Europeans begin, Maori are inventing forms of trench warfare so innovative that the British military engineers are studying them