The financial colonisation of Aotearoa / Catherine Comyn.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. The business of colonisation: economy and society in early-nineteenth-century Britain -- 2. The joint-stock system as instrument of empire -- 3. Speculative colonialism -- 4. 'Possess yourselves of the soil!': materialising colonial value claims -- 5. Settling colonial debts: the New Zealand Company bailout -- 6. Settler bankruptcy and the politics of colonial taxation -- 7. Colonial and anticolonial credit: the Native Lands Acts and Te Peeke o Aotearoa -- 8. The Hokianga Dog Tax uprising -- Conclusion: Unsettled isles.

"Finance was at the centre of every stage of the colonisation of Aotearoa, from the sale of Māori lands and the emigration of early colonists to the founding of settler nationhood and the enforcement of colonial governance. This book tells the story of the financial instruments and imperatives that drove the British colonial project in the nineteenth century. This is a history of the joint-stock company, a speculative London property market that romanticised the distant lands of indigenous peoples, and the calculated use of credit and taxation by the British to dispossess Māori of their land and subject them to colonial rule. By illuminating the centrality of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa, this book not only reframes our understanding of the country's history, but also the stakes of anti-colonial struggle today."--Back cover.