Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Victoria University of Wellington (Department of History), course: New Zealand Social History, language: English, abstract: Edward Gibbon Wakefield has been a controversial figure in the historiography of New Zealand. Once deified, present historians widely disregard him today. This apparent change in the perception of Wakefield’s theory of ‘systematic colonisation’ and the impact of his New Zealand Company on the quality of immigrants shall be examined in this essay. I have chosen to take five general New Zealand Histories into account, which cover the time span of almost a century. The aim will not be to find any history that has contributed to the myth of the better immigrants, but to examine how a widely spread range of the most regarded concise histories of New Zealand have reflected on this issue.