New Zealand Company

New Zealand Company, (1839–58), British joint-stock company responsible for much of the early settlement of New Zealand. It attempted to colonize in accordance with the theories of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Formed in 1839 after a parent New Zealand Association failed to receive a royal charter to proceed with the settlement of the still-independent islands, the company sent a land purchase expedition to New Zealand later that year. In 1840 it founded the settlements of Wellington and Nelson and, in 1841, through a subsidiary organization (the Plymouth Company), the settlement of New Plymouth.

While the advance group was buying land, Britain annexed New Zealand under the Treaty of Waitangi (May 1840), whose terms necessitated a review of the company’s land purchases from the Maori. From 1840 to 1845 many of its transactions were ruled invalid. Immigrants who had heeded the company’s propaganda found that there was actually little land to be had when they arrived. While the company had finally received a royal charter to continue its work (1841), it was in serious financial difficulty. The massacre in 1843 of its officials and the 1844–47 Bay of Islands War exacerbated the company’s plight. In 1858 it was dissolved.