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Story: South Africans

Settling immigrants from Cape Town, 1864

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Settling immigrants from Cape Town, 1864

New Zealand’s colonial government paid the passage of hundreds of settlers from Cape Town. Most were Irish and had not spent long in Africa. They were to be military settlers, helping to secure land confiscated from Māori. In this letter the superintendent of Auckland writes to the colonial secretary, lamenting the lack of a place for recent arrivals from Cape Town to settle. He complains that they are ‘being maintained in idleness in the immediate vicinity of a public house at the North Shore’.

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Reference: Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives (New Zealand), 1864, D–3, p. 19.

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How to cite this page

Carl Walrond, South Africans – Migration, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/document/686/settling-immigrants-from-cape-town-1864 (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Carl Walrond, published 4 March 2009, updated 1 August 2024.