Nanto-Bordelaise Company

The Nanto-Bordelaise Company — formally La Compagnie de Bordeaux et de Nantes pour la Colonisation de l’Île du Sud de la Nouvelle Zélande et ses Dépendances — was a French company inaugurated in 1839 by a group of merchants from the cities of Nantes and Bordeaux, with the purpose of founding a French colony in the South Island of New Zealand.

The company was formed after negotiations in August 1838 between whaling boat captain Jean-François Langlois and several Ngai Tahu Māori chiefs for the purchase of several thousand acres of land on Banks Peninsula, for which Langlois promised to pay a total of 1000 francs. Upon returning to France in 1839, Langlois set about founding a company with the help of several financial backers, the eventual aim of which was to claim the entirety of the South Island for France. Government support was obtained in December of the same year via King Louis-Philippe to transport 80 settlers to Port Louis-Philippe (now Akaroa). A warship, the corvette Aube, would travel to New Zealand, followed a month later by the colonists aboard the Comte de Paris. The Aube left for the Pacific in February 1840, captained by Charles François Lavaud, who had been appointed as Commissaire du Roi.

Aware of the potential threat of losing sovereignty of parts of the New Zealand island chain to the French, during early 1840, Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson was tasked with securing the whole of the country for the British Government. To this end, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed as an agreement between the British Crown and the indigenous Māori population. By the time the Aube arrived at the Bay of Islands in June 1840, the acquisition of the country by Britain was effectively complete. Faced with no prospect of anything more than a small colonial settlement, Lavaud left for Banks Peninsula to oversee the arrival of the Comte de Paris. Hobson also sent a ship, the HMS Britomart, on board which were colonial magistrates.

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