Push/Pull Europeans

Why Aotearoa? Push/pull factors

When Europeans began arriving in Aotearoa New Zealand in the late 1700s and 1800s, they were looking for opportunity. Many Europeans were leaving overcrowded cities, poverty, limited land, and strict class systems in their home countries.

Aotearoa offered things that were becoming rare in Europe:

1. Abundant land that could be farmed or owned

2. Natural resources such as timber, flax, whales, seals, and later gold

3. A climate that was familiar and suitable for European farming methods

4. New economic opportunities, especially through trade, farming, and industry

5. The promise of a “new life”, where people believed they could improve their social status

Writing Home

Many English immigrants came to New Zealand through a process of ‘chain migration’, this is where settlers wrote home to their friends and relatives encouraging them to also make the long journey out. These letters from immigrants who had come to New Zealand in 1872 to build railways were published...