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.
Pākehā settlers
Edward Gibbon Wakefield established the New Zealand Company in 1839. This company was established to attract settlers from England to set up homes and farms in New Zealand. The objective of the company was to bring over a ‘slice of England'. The company wanted a range of people from working class to upper class to establish a similar class system in New Zealand as was in England. Settlers were offered paid passage and the possibility of eventually buying land at a price low enough to attract them, but high enough to make them work manually for a few years to earn it. This principle was applied in many areas throughout New Zealand. Generally it worked and settlers began to arrive in droves.