New Zealand Company
The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 1800s on a business model 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 who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
New Zealand–United Kingdom relations
Much of the migration to New Zealand took place from the constituent countries of the British Isles. This was facilitated from 1839 by the New Zealand Company founded for the purpose of colonization. The work of the Otago Association and Canterbury Association in establishing the primarily Scottish settlement in Dunedin and the primarily English settlement in Christchurch, respectively, encouraged further New Zealand-bound emigration from Britain.