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
In July 1843 the New Zealand Company issued a prospectus for the sale of 120,550 acres (48,000 hectares), divided between town, suburban and rural lots at a new settlement called New Edinburgh. The location of the settlement still remained undetermined. An office was established in Edinburgh to attract Scottish emigrants. A 400,000 acre (160,000 hectare) block was selected around the harbour at Otago in January 1844. The company worked with the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland on the sale of, and ballot for, land and the first body of settlers sailed for what became the settlement of Dunedin in late November 1847.