Seminar series Land ownership and voting rights in settler colonial New Zealand Add to calendar 2025-10-16 12:00 2025-10-16 13:00 Europe/Rome Land ownership and voting rights in settler colonial New Zealand Sala Triaria Villa Schifanoia YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Oct 16 2025 12:00 - 13:00 CEST Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia Organised by Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies GGP: Global Governance Programme GlobalCit: Global Citzenship Observatory Join Kate McMillan to explore how land, empire, and electoral design shaped New Zealand's democratic trajectory Over the period during which Britain claimed New Zealand as a colony (1840) and established the New Zealand parliament and franchise (1852), British society was convulsed by popular demands for universal suffrage. With a queasy eye on revolutions in America and France, British politicians reluctantly enacted a series of Reform Acts between 1832 and 1884 that gradually reduced the property requirements of the franchise in Great Britain. In this talk I explore how 19th century British ideas about property’s relevance to voting rights interacted in 19th century New Zealand with colonists’ land lust, Maori collective land tenure, and Edward Wakefield’s influential ideas about the role of land and responsible government in an ideal colony. The result was a series of electoral developments that gave New Zealand both a reputation for liberal electoral innovations and a new set of institutionalised relationships between land ownership and voting, the consequences of which continue to animate New Zealand’s electoral politics in 2025.