North American Boosterism in the South Pacific: Evaluating the Failure of New Zealand’s Progress Leagues, 1880–1980

ABSTRACT Regional imbalance in New Zealand continues to have resonance in academic and practitioner’s discussion. During and after the Great War Progress leagues were established in the Southern regions of New Zealand to address what was to become known as the “drift to the North” of the nation’s population. This article examines the activities of the Canterbury Progress League and the Otago Expansion League and explores why these bodies in comparison with their North American counterparts, failed to halt the drift across the mid decades of the twentieth century. The article identifies both external and internal factors that limited their effectiveness.