He then spent several years off the coast of West Africa as part of the flotilla engaged in the suppression of the slave trade.

[13] Immediately after Arthur Wakefield left the Navy in 1841, his brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield recruited him to join the New Zealand Company, tasking him to select settlers for a new settlement to be named Nelson, escort the party to New Zealand, and supervise the growth of the new town.

The New Zealand Company, and particularly Wakefield's brother, had made extravagant promises to the settlers about the availability of land.

On the other hand, some members of the New Zealand Company and many of the settlers saw Māori as ignorant savages who had no right to stand in the way of honest British colonists.

This was a period when the growing British Empire was very aware of what it saw as its manifest destiny,[citation needed] to rule the native peoples of the world.

The British colonists believed they were owed the land, and resented the fact that their survival was dependent on the goodwill of Māori, who held all the power.

For once, Edward Gibbon Wakefield urged caution, but he was in London and his brother Arthur was the man on the spot.

Henry Thompson appears to have been the driving force behind the attempt to arrest Te Rauparaha and he already had a reputation for headstrong, irrational impulses.

It is still unknown as to what initiated the incident at Wairau yet Wakefield, Thompson and seven other settlers surrendered during the clash and were summarily executed on the orders of Chief Te Rangihaeata who was enraged and demanded utu (revenge) for the death of his wife Rongo, Te Rauparaha's daughter, who had been shot in the affray.

This did not sit well with the colonists, who immediately began a political campaign against Governor Robert FitzRoy that contributed to his early recall.