Episode 2 of 3
Proclamation of Sovereignty
- When
- 21 May 1840
- Where
- New Zealand
Lieutenant-Governor Hobson declared sovereignty over New Zealand on 21 May 1840; the Colony of New Zealand was constituted separately by Royal Charter effective 3 May 1841.
Hobson declared sovereignty over the North Island by treaty and the South Island and Stewart Island by discovery. This proclamation was partly driven by the illegality of the New Zealand Company's settlement government at Port Nicholson, which Hobson declared illegal shortly after.
Sources
- Treaty of Waitangi Wikipedia
- Colony of New Zealand Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.