New Zealand Company ships
The New Zealand Company was a 19th-century English company that played a key role in the colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles of systematic colonisation 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 who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
New Zealand Company
The earliest organised attempt to colonise New Zealand came in 1825, when the New Zealand Company was formed in London, headed by the wealthy John George Lambton, MP. The company unsuccessfully petitioned the British Government for a 31-year term of exclusive trade and for command over a military force, anticipating that large profits could be made from New Zealand flax, kauri timber, whaling and sealing.