Nelson is a New Zealand city on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay at the top of the South Island. It is the oldest city in the South Island and the second-oldest settled city in New Zealand; it was established in 1841 and became a city by royal charter in 1858.

The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 19th century on a business model that was focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the Southern Hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists, who would then have a ready supply of labour: migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners but would have the expectation of one-day buying land with their savings.