The New Zealand Political Career of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, 1853-54

Abstract

It is not given to every social planner to see the fruition of his ideas and exertions. This opportunity, however, was given to Edward Gibbon Wakefield in the latter years of his life, when from 1853 to 1862 he lived in the colony he regarded as peculiarly his own. For two brief years before a disastrous illness imprisoned him in an invalid's room in Wellington, he took a leading part in the politics of the colony. The following study attempts to outline his activities during these years. The impact of Wakefield on New Zealand in these years was considerable, though not lasting; the impact of New Zealand on Wakefield was more radical. Although this study attempts to assess the effects of his explosive intervention on the New Zealand scene, its main interest probably lies in its examination of the reaction to his new colonial society in the Antipodes, of a man whose claim to fame rests on his earlier years as a theorist of colonisation and a would-be statesman of Empire. His piecemeal jettisoning of the famous Wakefield System in response to political pressures and economic facts is, by itself, a point of considerable interest. His reception by his sociological guinea-pigs, the New Zealand Company settlers, is another, and his clash with Governor Grey a third. I have therefore quoted from source material more liberally, and at first glance more trivially, than is normally the case in a thesis at this level, in particular when dealing with Wakefield's incongruous emergence as champion of the frontier. The source material itself presents an intimate picture of the Wakefield who influenced so much of New Zealand's history. I only hope that my selection and interpretation has not obscured the image.