Before the arrival of the Europeans, the area now known as Russell was inhabited by Māori because of its pleasant climate and the abundance of food, fish and fertile soil.

[3][4][5] Early European explorers James Cook and Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne remarked, by their arrival in the 18th century, that the area was quite prosperous.

[6] When European and American ships began visiting New Zealand in the early 1800s, the indigenous Māori quickly recognised there were great advantages in trading with these strangers, whom they called tauiwi.

Fighting on the beach at Kororāreka in March 1830, between northern and southern subtribes (hapū) within the Ngāpuhi iwi, became known as the Girls' War.

On 30 January 1840 at Christ Church, Governor William Hobson read his proclamations (which were the beginnings of the Treaty of Waitangi) in the presence of a number of settlers and the Māori chief Moka Te Kainga-mataa.

A document confirming what had happened was signed at this time by around forty witnesses, including Moka, the only Māori signatory.

[9] By this time, Kororāreka was an important mercantile centre and served as a vital resupply port for whaling and sealing operations.

When the Colony of New Zealand was founded in that year, Hobson was reluctant to choose Kororāreka as his capital, due to its bad reputation.

In 1841–42, Jean Baptiste Pompallier established a Roman Catholic mission in Russell, which contained a printing press for the production of Māori-language religious texts.

On 18 November 1844, while at anchor in the Bay of Islands, Mary Davis Wallis described "Kororarika" [sic] as a town "which appears small, consisting of a few houses along the shore, and cottages scattered here and there on the slope of the hills behind.

The flagstaff was felled for the fourth time at the commencement of the Battle of Kororāreka, and the inhabitants fled aboard British ships, which then shelled and destroyed most of the houses.

[citation needed] In January 2023, the New Zealand Geographic Board proposed that the town's name be officially changed back to Kororāreka, its original Māori name.