Edward Gibbon Wakefield (20 March 1796 – 16 May 1862) was a British politician, the driving force behind much of the early colonisation of South Australia, and later New Zealand.
Wakefield, who in 1816 married Eliza Pattle (1799–1820), was the eldest son of Edward Wakefield (1774–1854) and Susanna Crash (1767–1816). He is mentioned and criticised in Chapter 33 of Karl Marx's Das Kapital (Volume 1)
He was imprisoned for 3 years in 1827 for his role as a primary protagonist in the Shrigley abduction.
Read more about Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Early Life, South Australia, Canada, The New Zealand Company, Canada Again, Final Years in Britain, Wakefield in New Zealand, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words edward and/or gibbon:
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)