William Hayward Wakefield

William Hayward Wakefield

William Hayward Wakefield (born August 8, 1801 in Burnham Wick , Essex , England , † September 19, 1848 in Wellington , New Zealand ) came from the Wakefield family and was a lieutenant colonel and later a leading representative of the New Zealand Company , leader of the first successful expedition to New Zealand and founder of Wellington.

Live and act

His best-known brothers were Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862), Daniel Bell Wakefield (1798–1858) and Arthur Wakefield (1799–1843). His father Edward Wakefield (1774-1854) was a surveyor and real estate agent. After his mother, Susanna (née Crash) died in 1817, he grew up mainly with his grandmother Priscilla in Tottenham , London . After graduating from Tottenham Grammar School, he went to Turin and worked at the British Embassy, ​​where his older brother Edward was employed.

In 1826 he was imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for three years for complicity in the forced marriage of the wealthy heiress Ellen Turner by his brother Edward .

After his release, he traveled extensively in Austria , Lapland and Russia . In 1832 he became a mercenary in the service of Dom Pedro and fought in the Portuguese Miguelistenkrieg (1832-1834). As a captain, he joined the British Foreign Legion as a British mercenary in 1835, before fighting for Queen Isabella II in the first Spanish Carlist War. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he commanded the Third Spanish Legion in 1837 and was finally knighted by Queen Isabella II for his military services.

After the end of the Carlist War, Wakefield became interested in the activities of the New Zealand Company , in which his brother Edward was active. When his brother Arthur Wakefield refused to work as the principal agent for the New Zealand Company in New Zealand, he took over the job. On May 12, 1839, he sailed with the Tory from London towards New Zealand to establish the first settlement of the New Zealand Company in Port Nicholson, later Wellington . He bought plenty of land on both sides of the Cook Strait and in November 1839 claimed possession of the land around Hokianga Harbor , which the 1st New Zealand Company had bought in 1825.

Wakefield faced two difficult tasks in the new office. As the agent in charge of the New Zealand Company, he was responsible for carrying out and implementing the decisions made in London. On the one hand he was responsible for the purchase of land, the allocation of the land to the settlers, the support of newcomers with the settlement and the correct personnel management of his company on site. On the other hand, since the direction of the British government in relation to New Zealand was not clear, he was forced, with all the uncertainties, to set up an interim administration in the newly founded Wellington. He thereby unofficially became the political leader of the Wellington Administrative Committee.

Through the British annexation of New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi concluded on February 6, 1840 , the administrative committee was dissolved and the right was represented by the governor appointed by the British government, William Hobson . From then on, Wakefield stood between the interests of the settlers and those of the British government. The New Zealand Company's dubious land purchases in the past and the governor's investigation into property claims became an issue for Wakefield and the New Zealand Company he represented.

Under Wakefield's direction, the New Zealand Company established other settlements such as Kapiti Coast (1839), Wanganui (1840), New Plymouth (1841), Nelson (1842) and Dunedin (1848). In addition to the dubious practices of the New Zealand Company, Wakefield was also responsible for their mismanagement, which ultimately led to the company's near bankruptcy in 1845 and financial intervention by the British government. The final end of the company in 1858 was not to see Wakefield again. He died of a stroke in Wellington on September 19, 1848 .

literature

• Bernard John Foster : Wakefield, Lieutenant-Colonel William Hayward . In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Wellington 1966 ( online [accessed December 14, 2015]).
• Philip Temple : A sort of conscience - The Wakefields . Auckland University Press , Auckland 2002, ISBN 1-86940-276-6 (English).

Web links

• Lieutenant Colonel William Hayward Wakefield 1803-1848 . New Zealand Electronic Text Center,accessed August 19, 2012. 
• The New Zealand Company . Rootsweb,accessed on August 19, 2012. 
• The pioneer land surveyors of New Zealand ( Memento from October 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Part 1–3, NZ Institute of Surveyors (PDF file; 792 kB)
• The pioneer land surveyors of New Zealand ( Memento from May 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Part 4, NZ Institute of Surveyors (PDF file; 728 kB)