Edward Gibbon Wakefield (20 March 1796 – 16 May 1862) was an English politician in colonial Canada and New Zealand. He is considered a key figure in the establishment in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s of British colonies in Australia and New Zealand (where he later served as a member of parliament). He also played a role in the history of Canada, being involved in the drafting of Lord Durham's Report and serving as a member of the Parliament of the Province of Canada for a short time.
He was best known for his colonisation scheme, sometimes referred to as the Wakefield scheme or the Wakefield system, which aimed to populate the new colony of South Australia with a workable combination of labourers, tradespeople, artisans and capital. The scheme was to be financed by the sale of land to the capitalists who would thereby support the other classes of emigrants.
Despite being found guilty and imprisoned in 1827 for kidnapping a fifteen-year-old girl, he enjoyed a lengthy career in colonial governments and colonial policy.
Wakefield was born in London in 1796, the eldest son of Edward Wakefield (1774–1854), a distinguished surveyor and land agent, and Susanna Crush (1767–1816). His grandmother, Priscilla Wakefield (1751–1832), was a popular author for the young, and one of the introducers of savings banks.
He was the brother of: Catherine Gurney Wakefield (1793–1873) (who was the mother of Charles Torlesse (1825–1866)); Daniel Bell Wakefield (1798–1858); Arthur Wakefield (1799–1843); William Hayward Wakefield (1801–1848); John Howard Wakefield (1803–1862); Felix Wakefield (1807–1875); Priscilla Susannah Wakefield (1809–1887); Percy Wakefield (1810–1832); and an unnamed child born in 1813.
Wakefield was educated at Westminster School in London, and Edinburgh.
Early career, marriage and family
He served as a King's Messenger, carrying diplomatic mail all about Europe during the later stages of the Napoleonic Wars, both before and after the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
In 1816, he eloped with a Miss Eliza Pattle and they were subsequently married in Edinburgh. It appears to have been a love match, but the fact that she was a wealthy heiress probably played a part, with Edward receiving a marriage settlement of £70,000 (almost US$7m in 2018 dollars), with the prospect of more when Eliza turned 21.
The married couple, accompanied by the bride's mother and various servants, moved to Genoa, Italy, where Wakefield was again employed in a diplomatic capacity. Here his first child, Susan Priscilla Wakefield, known as Nina, was born in 1817. The household returned to London in 1820 and a second child, Edward Jerningham Wakefield, was born. Four days later Eliza died, and Edward resigned his post. The two children were brought up by their aunt, Wakefield's older sister, Catherine.
Nina was suffering from tuberculosis, and Wakefield took his daughter to Lisbon in Portugal in the hope of recovery. He employed a young peasant girl, Leocadia de Oliveira, whom he later fostered, to help care for Nina, and after Nina's death in 1835, sent Leocadia on to Wellington, New Zealand, where she met John Taine and had 13 children.
Although wealthy by contemporary standards, Wakefield was not satisfied. He wished to acquire an estate and enter Parliament, for which he lacked sufficient capital. Through deception he wed another wealthy heiress in 1826 when he abducted 15-year-old Ellen Turner, after luring her from school with a false message about her mother's health. Wakefield was brought to trial for the case known as the Shrigley abduction in 1826 and, along with his brother William, sentenced to three years in Newgate prison; the marriage, which had not been consummated, was dissolved by a special act of parliament.
Influence on British colonisation (1829–1843)
Principles of "systematic colonisation"
He turned his attention while in prison to colonial subjects, and considered the main causes of the slow progress of the Australian colonies in the enormous size of the landed estates, the reckless manner in which land was given away, the absence of all systematic effort at colonisation, and the consequent discouragement of immigration and dearth of labour. He proposed to remedy this state of things by the sale of land in small quantities at a sufficient price, and the employment of the proceeds as a fund for promoting immigration. These views were expressed in his Letter from Sydney (1829; published under a false name), published while he was still in prison, but often quoted as if written on the spot. He had published pamphlets in prison in 1828 under the title "Sketch of a Proposal for Colonising Australia", which received a lot of interest. Wakefield's utopian theorising on systematic colonial settlement policy in the early-19th century centred on economic considerations, but with a view to preserving class distinctions;
The National Colonization Society (also spelt National Colonisation Society) was created in 1830 in order to advocate for the type of "systematic colonisation" set out in Letter from Sydney, based on three principles: careful selection of emigrants; the concentration of settlers; and the sale of land at a fixed, uniform, "sufficient price", to provide funding for new settlers. Wakefield was a founder member, and Robert Gouger was elected (or appointed) inaugural secretary of the society, although he was later to fall out with Wakefield when they disagreed on the price that should be charged for land. Members over time included Robert Rintoul (editor of The Spectator), Charles Buller, John Stuart Mill, Sir William Molesworth, W. W. Whitmore, and Sir William Hutt. Jeremy Bentham supported the ideas of the society. Colonel Robert Torrens and Robert Wilmot-Horton were on the committee of the society. The society published The Outline of a Plan of a Colony, later expanded and elaborated upon by Wakefield.
In 1831, Lord Howick, Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office was won over by the idea of selling land at a fixed, uniform price, and based his "Ripon Regulations" on this principle, issued in February 1831, which abolished free land grants, replacing them with and land sales at public auction, set at a minimum price of five shillings per acre in the colony of New South Wales.
After his Letter from Sydney in 1829, Wakefield's name became associated with other "scientific theories" of colonisation similar to his. People who accepted these ideas were usually on the side of the colonists, and were called "systematic colonisers," or (more commonly) "colonial reformers" and "radical imperialists," to highlight their Radical Whig political roots.