Sir George Grey was our only politician for whom the premiership was an anticlimax. He governed autocratically from 1845 to 1853 (greatly shaping our constitutional arrangements) and returned as governor in 1861.
Provinces
Articles
British & Irish immigration, 1840-1914
Who were the ancestors of Pākehā New Zealand? Where did they come from and what sort of people were they? These are some of the questions which this feature sets out to answer. Read the full article
Page 7 - Where did immigrants move to?
British-born population living in New Zealand provinces in
The Vogel era
In 1870, Colonial Treasurer Julius Vogel launched the most ambitious development programme in New Zealand’s history. The ‘Vogel era’ was a decisive moment in New Zealand’s 19th-century transformation from a Māori world to a Pākehā one. Read the full article
Page 2 - New Zealand in 1870
Three decades after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s two main islands were like two different
Page 4 - Building Vogel's railways
Julius Vogel wasn’t the first colonial politician to promise to fund public works and immigration with borrowed money. But the early 1870s offered better prospects for
Biographies
William Fox headed New Zealand governments four times. A rug-puller rather than a bridge-builder, he was better at defeating governments than leading them.
Main image: Parliament Buildings, 1890s
This view of part of Parliament House is from the 1890s. The section on the right was built as the Provincial Buildings in 1857. When central government was moved to Wellington it became Parliament Buildings.
