The British explorer James Cook arrived in 1769, with the French hot on his tail. At that point, suffice to say, Māori isolation was over and contact grew rapidly over the next 60 years. Initially there was a relatively easy relationship between early European visitors and Māori.
The British were tentative about their settling at first, seeing formal colonisation as unnecessary and expensive, especially as their Empire was stretched. Then things changed comparatively quickly for a variety of reasons. Tensions grew between the recently arrived European settlers, and between Māori and Europeans.