Everything about The New Zealand Company totally explained
The
New Zealand Company was formed in
1839 to promote the "systematic" colonisation of
New Zealand. It was founded on the colonising principles of
Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new model English society in the southern hemisphere. Wakefield's emigration system professed higher, more noble aims than mere financial profit.
The company established settlements at
Wellington,
Nelson,
Wanganui and
Dunedin and also became involved in the settling of
New Plymouth and
Christchurch. It reached the peak of efficiency about 1841, encountered financial problems from 1843 from which it never recovered, and wound up in 1858.
The company's activities were notable for elaborate and grandiose advertising and for its vigorous attacks on those it perceived as its opponents – the British Colonial office and successive governors of New Zealand. It stridently opposed the
Treaty of Waitangi and was in turn frequently criticised by the Colonial office and New Zealand governors for its "trickery" and lies.
The company also saw itself as a prospective quasi-government of New Zealand and in 1845 and 1846 proposed splitting the colony in two, along a line from
Mokau in the west to
Cape Kidnappers in the east – with the north reserved for Maori and missionaries, while the south would become a self-governing province, known as "New Victoria" and managed by the company for that purpose. The proposal was rejected by Britain's Colonial Secretary.
Early attempts at colonisation
The earliest organised attempt to colonise New Zealand came in 1825, when a company that also bore the name of "The New Zealand Company" formed in
London, headed by
John George Lambton,
MP. The company unsuccessfully petitioned the British Government for a 31-year term of exclusive trade as well as command over a military force, anticipating that large profits could be made from
New Zealand flax,
kauri timber, whaling and sealing. The following year it dispatched two ships under the command of Captain James Herd to explore trade prospects and potential settlement sites in New Zealand.
In September or October 1826 the ships, the
Lambton and the
Isabella (or
Rosanna), sailed into
Te Whanganui-a-Tara, (present-day
Wellington Harbour), which Herd named Lambton Harbour. Herd explored the area and identified land at the south-west of the harbour as the best place for a European settlement. The ships then sailed north to explore prospects for trade, purchasing what was later claimed to be one million acres (4000 sq km) of land from local
Māori in
Hokianga,
Manukau and
Paeroa on the way. The company opted against pursuing any trade or settlement ventures and ceased activity, having spent ₤20,000 on the venture.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield
Edward Gibbon Wakefield revived plans for the settlement of New Zealand during the 1830s. Wakefield, who had grown up in a family with roots in philanthropy and social reform. In 1829, while in prison for abducting a 15-year-old heiress, he'd published a pamphlet and a series of newspaper articles – the latter eventually republished as a book – promoting the colonising of
Australasia. Wakefield's plan entailed the company buying land from the indigenous residents very cheaply, then selling it to speculators and "gentleman settlers" for a much higher sum. The emigrants would provide the labour to break in the gentlemen's lands and cater to their employers' everyday needs. They would eventually be able to buy their own land, but high land prices and low rates of pay would ensure they first laboured for many years.
His ideas were embraced by many of those who had been in the New Zealand Company of 1825 and used in 1834 as a basis for the colonisation of
South Australia, where his supporters proposed recreating "a perfect English society". Wakefield regarded the South Australian experience as a failure, however, and in 1836 set his sights on New Zealand, where his theories of "systematic" colonisation could be put into effect. A year later he chaired the first meeting of the New Zealand Association. Its members soon included MPs
William Hutt and
Sir William Molesworth,
R.S. Rintoul of
The Spectator and London banker John Wright. Wakefield drafted a
Bill to bring the association's plans to fruition.
The Bill attracted stiff opposition, however, from Colonial Office officials and from the
Church Missionary Society, who took issue both with the "unlimited power" the colony's founders would wield and the inevitable "conquest and extermination of the present inhabitants". Anglican and Wesleyan missionaries were particularly alarmed by claims made in pamphlets written by Wakefield in which he declared that one of the aims of colonisation was to "civilise a barbarous people" who could "scarcely cultivate the earth". Maori, he wrote, "craved" colonisation and looked up to the Englishman "as being so eminently superior to himself, that the idea of asserting his own independence of equality never enters his mind". Wakefield suggested that once Maori chiefs had sold their land to settlers for a very small sum, they'd be "adopted" by English families and be instructed and corrected.
New Zealand Land Company
By late 1837 the association had started to gain some favour in government circles, and in December was offered a
Royal Charter to take responsibility for the administration, and the legislative, judicial, military and financial affairs of the colony of New Zealand, subject to safeguards of control by the British Government. To receive the charter, however, the association was told by
Colonial Secretary Lord Glenelg it would have to become a
joint stock company, a condition the association iinitially rejected. But in August 1838 the association was wound up and replaced with two organisations, the New Zealand Colonisation Company and New Zealand Land Company. In May 1839 both bodies merged with the 1825 New Zealand Company to form the New Zealand Land Company and in December the name "New Zealand Company" was selected for the one and only company that would send emigrants to New Zealand. Once again Edward Gibbon Wakefield provided the driving impetus, although by then the offer of a charter had been withdrawn.
Within the
British Government, meanwhile, concern had grown about the welfare of Maori and increasing lawlessness among the 2000 British subjects in New Zealand, who were concentrated in the
Bay of Islands. Because of the population of British subjects there, officials believed colonisation was now inevitable and at the end of 1838 the decision was made to appoint a
Consul as a prelude to the declaration of British sovereignty over New Zealand. The officers of the New Zealand Company knew that any such declaration would involve a freeze on all land sales pending the establishment of effective British control, and control over the purchase of Maori lands by Europeans. They had other plans, which involved treating New Zealand as a foreign country and buying the land directly from the
Māori, knowing they could get a better deal that way.
1839 expedition and land purchases
The New Zealand Company hastily organised a land-buying expedition, which sailed to New Zealand in the
Tory in May
1839, commanded by Wakefield's younger brother, Colonel
William Wakefield and with Edward Main Chaffers as the ship's Master.
A second vessel, the
Cuba, with a surveyors' team headed by Captain
William Mein Smith, R.A., sailed in August, followed a month later by the first of nine immigrant ships, even before word had reached London of the success of the
Tory and
Cuba. The immigrant fleet had instructions to sail to Port Hardy on
D'Urville Island where they'd be told of their final destination.
With the aid of whaler and trader
Dicky Barrett, who had good contacts with Māori and a grasp of their language, William Wakefield began negotiating to buy land from the Māori around
Petone in the
Wellington area as soon as he arrived in New Zealand, and by the end of
1839 had concluded several purchases extending as far north as
Patea that quickly became mired in controversy over their legitimacy.
The settlement differed greatly from what had been planned in England: among the many falsehoods in company prospectuses and advertising about the nature of the country, Wellington had been described as a place of undulating plains suitable for the cultivation of grapevines, olives and wheat. Plans prepared in England showed parallel streets and sections that bore no relation to the physical contours of the area. Streets and sections, parks and cemeteries had been drawn in an area that consisted of swampy delta or high hills and steep gullies.
Treaty of Waitangi
The New Zealand Company had long expected intervention by the British Government in its activities in New Zealand, and this finally occurred following the signing of the
Treaty of Waitangi on
6 February 1840. The treaty not only transferred sovereignty from Māori to the British Crown, but under its so-called pre-emption clause, Māori were prohibited from selling land to anyone but the Government and its agents. Lieutenant-Governor
Hobson immediately froze all land sales and declared all existing purchases invalid pending investigation. The treaty put the New Zealand Company in a very difficult position. They didn't have enough land to satisfy the arriving settlers and they could no longer legally sell the land they claimed they owned.
Restrictions on land sales were progressively eased after an agreement at the end of the year between the company and Colonial Secretary
Lord John Russell, which provided for land sales by the company from the Crown at a discount price, and a charter to buy and sell land under government supervision. Money raised by the government from sales to the company would be spent on assisting migration to New Zealand. The agreement was hailed by the company as "all that we could desire ... our Company is really to be the agent of the state for colonizing NZ." The Government waived its right of pre-emption in the Wellington region, Wanganui and New Plymouth in September 1841.
Hobson sent his Colonial Secretary,
Willoughby Shortland, and some soldiers, to Port Nicholson (Wellington) to raise the Union flag and put an end to what his administration perceived as a challenge to British sovereignty – a "colonial council", complete with primitive legal institutions, headed by Wakefield and Smith. Hobson considered the colonists were creating a "republic" and regarded the council's activities as treason.
Wellington
The initial settlement of 1100 one-acre town sections, to be called "Britannia", was established at
Pito-one, at the mouth of the
Hutt River. As well as a town section, each settler had bought 100 "country acres" (about 40ha) to be located nearby, on which they could grow thir food and support themselves initially. However the valley at Pito-one was a mix of dense forest, scrub, flax and swamp, prone to flooding and with a beach so flat ships were forced to anchor 1600 metres from the shore. In April, 11 weeks after the first passenger ship arrived, Wakefield decided the settlement would move to Thorndon, to the south-west of the harbour, one of the few comparitively flat areas on the harbour.
The area of Lambton Bay (later Lambton Quay) took its name in honour of
Lord Durham, who had been closely associated with the formation of the Company.
Surveyors quickly encountered problems, however, when they discovered the land selected as the new settlement already inhabited by Māori, who expressed astonishment and bewilderment to find Pākehā tramping through their homes, gardens and cemeteries and driving wooden survey pegs into the ground. Surveyors became involved in skirmishes with the Māori, most of whom refused to budge, and were provided with weapons to continue their work.
Wakefield had purchased the land during a frantic week-long campaign the previous September, with payment made in the form of iron pots, soap, guns, ammunition, axes, fish hooks, clothing – including red nightcaps – slates, pencils, umbrellas, sealing wax and
jew's harps. Signatures had been gained from local chiefs after an explanation, given by Wakefield and interpreted by Barrett, that the land would no longer be theirs once payment was made. However evidence later provided to the Spain Land Commission – set up by Governor FitzRoy to investigate New Zealand Company land claims – revealed three major flaws: that chiefs representing
pā of Te Aro, Pipitea and Kumutoto, where the settlement of Thorndon was to be sited, were neither consulted nor paid; that Te Wharepouri, an aggressive and boastful young chief eager to prove his importance, had sold land he didn't control; and that Barrett's explanation and interpretation of the terms of the sale was woefully inadequate. Barrett told the Spain Commission hearing in February 1843: "I said that when they signed their names the gentlemen in England who had sent out the trade might know who were the chiefs." Historian Angela Caughey also claimed it was extremely unlikely that Wakefield and Barrett could have visited all the villages at Whanganui-a-Tara in one day to explain the company's intentions and seek approval.
The occupants of the disputed land were promised reserves equal to one-tenth of the area, with their allotments chosen by lottery and spinkled among the European settlers. Spain eventually negotiated a settlement with Te Aro, Kumutoto and Pipitea chiefs to sell their land, but retain possession of their pa, cultivations and burial places.
In August 1840 the New Zealand Company suffered a further setback when the Legislative Council in
New South Wales decreed that payment for land in New Zealand must go directly to the original inhabitants, and that no individual sale could exceed "four square miles". The NSW Government planned to examine all the purchases of the New Zealand Company – which had already claimed to have bought two million acres and sold part of it directly to settlers – as well as more than 1200 individual land claims throughout the country. Panic swept Wellington, as the town was now called, and hundreds of settlers chose to abandon their land and sailed to
Valparaíso,
Chile.
Nelson
In April 1841 the company informed the Colonial Secretary of its intention to establish a second colony "considerably larger" than the first. The colony was initially to be called Molesworth after
Radical MP Sir
William Molesworth, a supporter of Wakefield, but was renamed Nelson (after
the British admiral) when Molesworth showed little interest in leading the colony. It was planned to cover, consisting of 1000 allotments. Each would be 150 acres (60 hectares) of rural land, 50 acres (20 hectares) of accommodation land and one "town acre" (4000 square metres), with half the funds raised by land sales being spent on emigration and about ₤50,000 ending up as company profits. The land would be sold at ₤301 per allotment or 30 shillings an acre, one pound an acre more than land at Wellington, with a lottery to determine the ownership of specific allotments.
Two ships, the
Whitby and
Will Witch, sailed that month for New Zealand with surveyors and labourers to prepare plots for the first settlers who were expected to follow five months later. Land sales proved disappointing, however, and threatened the viability of the settlement: by early June only 326 allotments had been sold, with only 42 purchasers intending to actually travel to New Zealand. Things had improved little by the drawing of the lottery in late August 1841, when only 371 of the allotments were drawn by purchasers, three-quarters of whom were absentee owners.
The two survey ships arrived at Blind Bay (today known as
Tasman Bay), where the expedition leaders searched for land suitable for the new colony, before settling on the site of present-day
Nelson, an area described as marshy land covered with scrub and fern. In a meeting with local Māori, expedition leader Arthur Wakefield claimed to have gained recognition – in exchange for "presents" of axes, a gun, gunpowder, blankets, biscuits and pipes – for the 1839 "purchases" in the area by William Wakefield. By January 1842 the advance guard had built more than 100 huts on the site of the future town in preparation for the arrival of the first settlers. A month later the township was described as having a population of 500, along with bullocks, sheep, pigs and poultry, although the company was yet to identify or purchase any of the rural land for which purchasers had paid.
The search for this remaining 200,000 acres would ultimately lead to the
Wairau Affray – then known as the "Wairau Massacre" – of
June 17, 1843, when 22 Europeans and four Maori died in a skirmish over land in the Wairau Valley, 25km from Nelson. Arthur Wakefield claimed to have bought the land from the widow of a whaler who, in turn, had claimed to have bought it from chief
Te Rauparaha. The chief denied having sold it. Although settlers in Nelson and Wellington were appalled at the slaughter at Wairau, an investigation by Governor
Robert FitzRoy laid the blame squarely at the feet of the New Zealand Company representatives.
As early as 1839 the New Zealand Company had resolved to "take steps to procure German emigrants" and appointed an agent in
Bremen. A bid in September 1841 to sell the
Chatham Islands to the Deutsche Colonisations Gesellschaft was quashed by the British Government. German migrants instead moved to Nelson.
Further settlements
The New Zealand Company also established a settlement at
Wanganui in
1840 – chiefly as a spillover settlement, the site of the rural land promised to Wellington purchasers – and also became indirectly involved in the settlement of
New Plymouth in
1841, through its links with the Plymouth Company, which merged with the New Zealand Company the same year. The company also sent surveyors down the east coast of the
South Island to consider further sites, where they made contact at
Akaroa with the fledgling French colony there.
In July 1843 the company issued a prospectus for the sale of 120,550 acres (48,000 hectares), divided between town, suburban and rural lots at a new settlement called New Edinburgh. The location of the settlement still remained undetermined. An office was established in
Edinburgh to attract Scottish emigrants. A 400,000 acre (160,000 hectare) block was selected around the harbour at Otakou (
Otago) in January 1844. The company worked with the Lay Association of the
Free Church of Scotland on the sale of, and ballot for, land and the first body of settlers sailed for what became the settlement of
Dunedin in late November 1847.
A month later Gibbon Wakefield began actively promoting a plan he'd proposed in 1843: a
Church of England settlement. New Zealand Company directors initially hoped to site the settlement in the
Wairarapa region in the lower North Island. When local Maori refused to sell, however, its surveyor inspected Port Cooper (
Lyttelton Harbour) on the east coast of the South Island and chose this as the location. Land was bought from 40 members of the
Ngai Tahu iwi in June 1848. The colonising efforts were taken up by the
Canterbury Association, Gibbon Wakefield's new project, and the New Zealand Company became a silent partner in the settlement process, providing little more than the initial purchase funds.. The first of the body of 1512 Canterbury settlers sailed on September 8, 1850 for their new home.
Financial difficulties and dissolution
The New Zealand Company began falling into financial difficulties from mid-1843 for two reasons. It had planned to buy land cheaply and sell it dearly and anticipated that a colony based on a higher land price would attract affluent colonists. The profits from the sale of land were to be used to pay for free passage of the working-class colonists and for public works, churches and schools for instance. For this scheme to work it was important to get the right proportion of labouring to propertied immigrants. In part the failure of the company's plans were because this proportion was never achieved – there were always more labourers, whose emigration was heavily subsidised by the company, than landed gentry.
The second major flaw arose because a large proportion of the land in the new colony was bought for
speculative reasons by people who had no intention of migrating to New Zealand and developing the land they'd bought. This meant that the new colonies had a serious shortage of employers and consequently a shortage of work for the labouring classes. From the outset the New Zealand Company was forced to be the major employer in the new colonies and this proved a serious financial drain on the company. Repeated approaches were made to the British government seeking financial assistance and in late 1846 the company accepted an offer for a £236,000 advance with strict conditions on, and oversight of, future company operations.
In June 1850 the company admitted land sales in Wellington, Nelson and New Plymouth had remained poor and its land sales for the year ended April 1849 amounted to only £6266. With little prospect of trading its way to profitability, the company surrendered its charter. A select committee report concluded the company's losses were "mainly attributable to their own proceedings, characterised as they were in many respects by rashness and maladministration."
Gibbon Wakefield, who had resigned from the company in disgust after its 1846 financial arrangement with the British government, remained defiant to the end, declaring in 1852 that had the company been left alone it would have paid a divident, recouped its capital "and there would now be 200,000 settlers in New Zealand".
The company, in its final report in May 1858, conceded it had erred, but said the communities they'd planted had now assumed "gratifying proportions" and they could look forward to the day when "New Zealand shall take her place as the offspring and counterpart of her Parent-Isle ... the Britain of the Southern Hemisphere."
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