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
Despite the ₤20,000 loss incurred in his earlier venture, Lambton (from the 1830s known as Lord Durham) continued to pursue ways to become involved in commercial emigration schemes and was joined in his endeavours by Radical MPs Charles Buller and Sir William Molesworth. In 1831 and again in 1833 Buller and Molesworth backed Wakefield as he took to the Colonial Office elaborate plans to recreate a perfect English society in a new colony in South Australia in which land would be sold at a price high enough to generate profit to fund emigration. The Whig government in 1834 passed an Act authorising the establishment of the British Province of South Australia, but the planning and initial sales of land proceeded without Wakefield's involvement because of the illness and death of his daughter. Land in the town of Adelaide was offered at ₤1 an acre on maps showing town and country sites—though the area was still little more than a sandhill—but sales were poor. In March 1836 a survey party sailed for South Australia and the first emigrants followed four months later. Wakefield claimed all credit for the establishment of the colony, but was disappointed with the outcome, claiming the land had been sold too cheaply.