New Zealand Company

The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 19th century on a business model that was focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the Southern Hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists, who would then have a ready supply of labour: migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners but would have the expectation of one-day buying land with their savings.^[1]

The New Zealand Company established settlements at Wellington, Nelson, Wanganui and Dunedin and also became involved in the settling of New Plymouth and Christchurch. The original New Zealand Company started in 1825, with little success, then rose as a new company when it merged with Wakefield's New Zealand Association in 1837, received its royal charter in 1840, reached the peak of efficiency about 1841, encountered financial problems from 1843 from which it never recovered, returned its charter in 1850 and wound up all remaining business with a final report in 1858.^{[citation needed]}