1838 – 39 Land-sharking peaks

Purchasers raced to buy as much land as they could. Apart from the few who wanted relatively small areas for their own settlement, large-scale speculators were putting pressure on Māori all over the country to enter into the flimsiest of deals, often for huge areas. Missionaries petitioned London to intervene to protect Māori. Some of the largest alleged purchases included: W.B. Rhodes, who claimed to have bought Kapiti, Banks Peninsula, Wellington and most of Hawke's Bay, the last for £150; Daniel Cooper, who claimed to have purchased 133,000 hectares of the Hawke's Bay, Cape Turnagain and Table Cape districts for £383; and especially the New Zealand Company, which claimed to have bought some 20 million acres, effectively the middle third of New Zealand from New Plymouth to Banks Peninsula, within only a few months.