King Country

King Country is a former New Zealand Parliamentary electorate. The King Country is a largely rural area with a dispersed population. It has no cities. The largest towns are Otorohanga and Te Kuiti. The electorate was created in 1972, and combined with the adjacent rural electorate of Taranaki in 1996 to form the Taranaki-King Country electorate for MMP. It was held by former Prime Minister Jim Bolger for the whole of its 24 years. The name King Country comes from the Māori King Movement that began in 1850 as a response to the arrival of large numbers of British settlers seeking land and the purchase of land by the Colonial government from various Maori Iwi (tribes). After the 1863 attack on the Kingitanga rebels in the Waikato by...