Divide the locals against each other, and conquer them by increasing internal strife that had been the hallmark of the British. They did this in India, and they did this in New Zealand.
Supplying harmful equipment was another strategy. The British missionaries supplied blankets infested with Smallpox to the Native Americans, wiping out over 80% of the Native American population. In New Zealand, they supplied the muskats to certain vulnerable tribes, thus encourages intertribal warfare that wiped out alliances, and combined Maori strength. Here is an except taken from the history of New Zealand.
New firepower – the Musket Wars
Muskets (ngutu parera) quickly became much sought-after trade items in the old New Zealand. While the first muskets peddled by European traders were unreliable and slow to reload, the weapon ultimately changed the face of intertribal warfare. Tens of thousands were killed in the Musket Wars of the 1810s, 1820s and 1830s, and tribal boundaries were drastically altered. From 1818 northern Māori war parties armed with muskets attacked tribes further south. As iwi competed to obtain muskets an arms race developed.
These wars were often cited as the most negative consequence of contact and the reason why Māori needed the purported protection.
Captain Stewart & Elizabeth
In 1830 Captain John Stewart of the brig Elizabeth made an arrangement with Ngāti Toa leader Te Rauparaha to ferry a taua (war party) of 100 warriors from his base on Kāpiti Island to Banks Peninsula. Te Rauparaha wanted to surprise his Ngāi Tahu enemies and avenge the killing and eating of several Ngāti Toa chiefs at Kaiapoi in 1829. Te Pehi Kupe had suffered the ultimate insult when his bones were made into fish-hooks. Te Rauparaha was keen to reassert his mana over his southern rivals.
In return for his services, Stewart would receive a cargo of flax. Although a business partner had been killed by Ngāi Tahu in 1824, Stewart’s motivation in 1830 was primarily economic.
A southern Trojan Horse
The arrival of a European trading ship would not have raised any particular alarm among Ngāi Tahu. Stewart lured the chief Te Maiharanui (Tama-i-hara-nui) aboard by offering to trade flax for muskets. Once they were aboard, Te Rauparaha and his men seized the chief, his wife and daughter. Ngāti Toa warriors attacked and destroyed Te Maiharanui’s settlement, Takapuneke. Several hundred were killed and dozens enslaved.
The brig returned to Kāpiti with Te Maiharanui and his family held captive. Rather than see his daughter enslaved, Te Maiharanui strangled her and threw her overboard. Once on Kāpiti, Te Maiharanui suffered death by slow torture at the hands of the widows of the Ngāti Toa chiefs slain at Kaiapoi; his wife met the same fate.
British law and order
Captain Stewart’s actions caused great concern among the missionaries, who were struggling to make progress in New Zealand. They felt that his participation in an ongoing dispute between tribes sent all the wrong messages to Māori about the effects of European contact.
The incident also highlighted the fact that New Zealand was a kind of judicial black hole. Governor Ralph Darling of New South Wales put Stewart on trial in Sydney as an accomplice to murder. In keeping with contemporary European attitudes, however, Ngāi Tahu were deemed ‘incompetent’ to act as witnesses because they were ‘heathens’. As a result, Stewart and his crew escaped punishment despite subsequent efforts to bring them before English courts.
The fact that no Europeans were killed in this incident meant that most Europeans took little interest in it.
Excerpt from https://nzhistory.govt.nz/
Madhuban - New Zealand 