Land Distribution in 19th/20th Century New Zealand
The ability to own farmland was important in 19th century New Zealand, yet the pattern of unequal land ownership and concentration of land was historically very visible. With passing the Land for Settlements Act in 1894, the government was able to purchase 223 estates totaling 1.3 million acres which were then subdivided for purchase or lease by independent farmers. This project focused on examining land distribution in New Zealand after this land ballot system was enacted, which was supposed to make distribution more equal. Databases that were used to locate information included AtoJs, digitized parliamentary reports from the National Library of New Zealand; Yearbooks, statistical information about the country by year; and Census reports, which contained useful information about land and farm sizes. Information was obtained from the years 1878 through 1911 about the number and size of farms and the total acreage of farmland in each of nine New Zealand provinces. The obtained data resulted in visualization of how the number of farms changed over time as well as comparing the percent of farms to the percent of farmland. It showed that even in the later years of the land ballot system, farmland was still very unequally distributed in each province.