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...