Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 1796–1862, British colonial statesman. He was attached to the British embassies in Turin (1814–16) and Paris (1820–26), but in 1826 was convicted of an attempt to marry an heiress by trickery. While in prison (1827–30) Wakefield prepared material for a book on capital punishment (pub. 1831) and studied colonial affairs. He evolved his important theory of systematic colonization, embodied in such works as A Letter from Sydney (1829) and A View of the Art of Colonization (1849). Concerned by the problems of increasing population, with resultant poverty and crime, he advocated the settlement of the colonies by ordinary citizens rather than by transported convicts. He argued that land should be sold in small lots at a moderate fixed price instead of given away (the funds thus gathered to be used to support further colonization), and some self-government should be allowed. These influential ideas led to the founding (1834) of the South Australian Association and the establishment of the South Australian colony. Wakefield accompanied (1838) Lord Durham Durham, John George Lambton, 1st earl of (dûr` əm)
..... Click the link for more information. to Canada as an adviser and influenced Durham's report on Canadian government. In 1839 he founded the New Zealand Land Company, which colonized part of that territory. He went to New Zealand in 1852 and entered into politics there, but suffered a complete breakdown in 1854.

Bibliography

See his collected works, ed. by M. F. Lloyd Prichard (1968); biographies by I. O'Connor (1929) and P. Bloomfield (1961); R. C. Mills, The Colonization of Australia (1915, repr. 1968).

Wakefield, Edward Gibbon

(born March 20, 1796, London, Eng.—died May 16, 1862, Wellington, N.Z.) British colonizer of South Australia and New Zealand. After viewing the problems of the penal system, including the forcible removal of convicts to British colonies, he wrote A Letter from Sydney (1829) and proposed colonization by the sale of small landholdings to ordinary citizens. He influenced the founding of South Australia as a nonconvict settlement. As organizer and manager of the New Zealand Company (1838–58), he sent colonists to settle New Zealand and forced the British government to recognize the colony. As an adviser to the earl of Durham, he influenced the report that led to the union of Upper and Lower Canada. He founded a Church of England settlement at Canterbury, N.Z. (1847).