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Erster Weltkrieg

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Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.[1]

The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century. When transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution, an alternative site was needed to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. Earlier in 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. Seeking to pre-empt the French colonial empire from expanding into the region, Britain chose Australia as the site of a penal colony, and in 1787, the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent. Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land ( Tasmania) in 1803 and Queensland in 1824, while Western Australia, founded in 1829 as a free colony, received convicts from 1850. South Australia and Victoria, established in 1836 and 1850 respectively, remained free colonies. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly the following decade as protests against the convict system intensified throughout the colonies. In 1868, almost two decades after transportation to the eastern colonies had ceased, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.

The majority of convicts were transported for petty crimes. More serious crimes, such as rape and murder, became transportable offences in the 1830s, but since they were also punishable by death, comparatively few convicts were transported for such crimes.[2] Approximately 1 in 7 convicts were women, while political prisoners, another minority group, comprise many of the best-known convicts. Once emancipated, most ex-convicts stayed in Australia and joined the free settlers, with some rising to prominent positions in Australian society. However, convictism carried a social stigma, and for some later Australians, being of convict descent instilled a sense of shame and cultural cringe. Attitudes became more accepting in the 20th century, and it is now considered by many Australians to be a cause for celebration to discover a convict in one's lineage.[3] Almost 20% of modern Australians, in addition to 2 million Britons, are descended from transported convicts.[4] The convict era has inspired famous novels, films, and other cultural works, and the extent to which it has shaped Australia's national character has been studied by many writers and historians.[5]

According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, the population of England and Wales, which had remained steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, began rising considerably after 1740. By the time of the American Revolution, London was overcrowded, filled with the unemployed, and flooded with cheap gin.[6] Poverty, social injustice, child labour, harsh and dirty living conditions and long working hours were prevalent in 19th-century Britain. Dickens's novels perhaps best illustrate this; even some government officials were horrified by what they saw. Only in 1833 and 1844 were the first general laws against child labour (the Factory Acts) passed in the United Kingdom.[7] Crime had become a major problem and, in 1784, a French observer noted that "from sunset to dawn the environs of London became the patrimony of brigands for twenty miles around."[8]

Each parish had a watchman, but British cities did not have police forces in the modern sense. Jeremy Bentham avidly promoted the idea of a circular prison, but the penitentiary was seen by many government officials as a peculiar American concept. Virtually all malefactors were caught by informers or denounced to the local court by their victims. Pursuant to the so-called " Bloody Code", by the 1770s there were 222 crimes in Britain which carried the death penalty,[9] almost all of which were crimes against property. These included such offences as the stealing of goods worth over 5 shillings, the cutting down of a tree, the theft of an animal, even the theft of a rabbit from a warren.

The Industrial Revolution led to an increase in petty crime because of the economic displacement of much of the population, building pressure on the government to find an alternative to confinement in overcrowded gaols. The situation was so dire that hulks left over from the Seven Years' War were used as makeshift floating prisons.[10] Four out of five prisoners were in jail for theft. The Bloody Code was gradually rescinded in the 1800s because judges and juries considered its punishments too harsh. Since lawmakers still wanted punishments to deter potential criminals, they increasingly applied transportation as a more humane alternative to execution.[11] Transportation had been employed as a punishment for both major and petty crimes since the 17th century. Around 60,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Transportation to the Americas ceased following Britain's defeat in the American Revolutionary War. The number of convicts transported to North America is not verified although it has been estimated to be 50,000 by John Dunmore Lang and 120,000 by Thomas Keneally. The British American colony of Maryland received a larger felon quota than any other province.[12]

Alternatives to the American colonies were investigated and the newly discovered and mapped East Coast of New Holland was proposed. The details provided by James Cook during his expedition to the South Pacific in 1770 made it the most suitable.

On 18 August 1786 the decision was made to send a colonisation party of convicts, military, and civilian personnel to Botany Bay under the command of Admiral Arthur Phillip who was to be the Governor of the new colony. There were 775 convicts on board six transport ships. They were accompanied by officials, members of the crew, marines, the families thereof, and their own children who together totaled 645. In all, eleven ships were sent in what became known as the First Fleet. Other than the convict transports, there were two naval escorts and three storeships. The fleet assembled in Portsmouth and set sail on 13 May 1787.[13]

The fleet arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788. It soon became clear that it would not be suitable for the establishment of a colony due to "the openness of this bay, and the dampness of the soil, by which the people would probably be rendered unhealthy" and Philip decided to examine Port Jackson, a bay mentioned by Captain Cook, about three leagues to the north. On 22 January a small expedition led by Phillips sailed to Port Jackson, arriving in the early afternoon:[13]

Here all regret arising from the former disappointments was at once obliterated; and Governor Phillip had the satisfaction to find one of the finest harbours in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line might ride in perfect security. The different coves of this harbour were examined with all possible expedition, and the preference was given to one which had the finest spring of water, and in which ships can anchor so close to the shore, that at a very small expence quays may be constructed at which the largest vessels may unload. This cove is about half a mile in length and a quarter of a mile across at the entrance. In honour of Lord Sydney, the Governor distinguished it by the name of Sydney Cove.[13]

There they established the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent, New South Wales, on 26 January. The area has since developed into the city of Sydney. This date is still celebrated as Australia Day.

There was initially a high mortality rate amongst the members of the first fleet due mainly to shortages of food. The ships carried only enough food to provide for the settlers until they could establish agriculture in the region. Unfortunately, there were an insufficient number of skilled farmers and domesticated livestock to do this, and the colony waited for the arrival of the Second Fleet. The "Memorandoms" by James Martin (convict) provide a contemporary account of the events as seen by a convict on the first fleet.[14] The second fleet was an unprecedented disaster that provided little in the way of help and upon its delivery in June 1790 of still more sick and dying convicts, which actually worsened the situation in Port Jackson.

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Bourke was the ninth Governor of the Colony of New South Wales between 1831 and 1837. Appalled by the excessive punishments doled out to convicts, Bourke passed 'The Magistrates Act', which limited the sentence a magistrate could pass to fifty lashes (previously there was no such limit). Bourke's administration was controversial, and furious magistrates and employers petitioned the crown against this interference with their legal rights, fearing that a reduction in punishments would cease to provide enough deterrence to the convicts.

Bourke, however, was not dissuaded from his reforms and continued to create controversy within the colony by combating the inhumane treatment handed out to convicts, including limiting the number of convicts each employer was allowed to seventy, as well as granting rights to freed convicts, such as allowing the acquisition of property and service on juries. It has been argued that the suspension of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1840[15] can be attributed to the actions of Bourke and other men like Australian-born lawyer William Charles Wentworth. It took another 10 years, but transportation to the colony of New South Wales was finally officially abolished on 1 October 1850.[16]

If a convict was well behaved, the convict could be given a ticket of leave, granting some freedom. At the end of the convict's sentence, seven years in most cases, the convict was issued with a Certificate of Freedom. He was then free to become a settler or to return to England. Convicts who misbehaved, however, were often sent to a place of secondary punishment like Port Arthur, Tasmania, or Norfolk Island, where they would suffer additional punishment and solitary confinement.

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Within a month of the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, a group of convicts and free settlers were sent to take control of Norfolk Island, a small island 1,412 kilometres (877 mi) east of the coast of New South Wales. More convicts were sent, and many of them proved to be unruly; early 1789 saw a failed attempt to overthrow Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, the island's commandant. This was followed by the wreck of HMS Sirius on one of the island's reefs while attempting to land stores.

Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) Edit

In 1803, a British expedition was sent from Sydney to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) to establish a new penal colony there. The small party, led by Lt. John Bowen, established a settlement at Risdon Cove, on the eastern side of the Derwent River. Originally sent to Port Philip, but abandoned within weeks, another expedition led by Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins arrived soon after. Collins considered the Risdon Cove site inadequate, and in 1804 he established an alternative settlement on the western side of the river at Sullivan's Cove, Tasmania. This later became known as Hobart, and the original settlement at Risdon Cove was deserted. Collins became the first Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land.

When the convict station on Norfolk Island was abandoned in 1807-1808, the remaining convicts and free settlers were transported to Hobart and allocated land for resettlement. However, as the existing small population was already experiencing difficulties producing enough food, the sudden doubling of the population was almost catastrophic.

Starting in 1816, more free settlers began arriving from Great Britain. On 3 December 1825 Tasmania was declared a colony separate from New South Wales, with a separate administration.

The Macquarie Harbour penal colony on the West Coast of Tasmania was established in 1820 to exploit the valuable timber Huon Pine growing there for furniture making and shipbuilding. Macquarie Harbour had the added advantage of being almost impossible to escape from, most attempts ending with the convicts either drowning, dying of starvation in the bush, or (on at least two occasions) turning cannibal. Convicts sent to this settlement had usually re-offended during their sentence of transportation, and were treated very harshly, labouring in cold and wet weather, and subjected to severe corporal punishment for minor infractions.

In 1830, the Port Arthur penal settlement was established to replace Macquarie Harbour, as it was easier to maintain regular communications by sea. Although known in popular history as a particularly harsh prison, in reality, its management was far more humane than Macquarie Harbour or the outlying stations of New South Wales. Experimentation with the so-called model prison system took place in Port Arthur. Solitary confinement was the preferred method of punishment.

Many changes were made to the manner in which convicts were handled in the general population, largely responsive to British public opinion on the harshness of their treatment. Until the late 1830s, most convicts were either retained by the Government for public works or assigned to private individuals as a form of indentured labour. From the early 1840s the Probation System was employed, where convicts spent an initial period, usually two years, in public works gangs on stations outside of the main settlements, then were freed to work for wages within a set district.

Transportation to Tasmania ended in 1853 (see section below on Cessation of Transportation).

In 1803, two ships arrived in Port Phillip, which Lt. John Murray in the Lady Nelson had discovered and named the previous year. The Calcutta under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Collins transported 300 convicts, accompanied by the supply ship Ocean. Collins had previously been Judge Advocate with the First Fleet in 1788. He chose Sullivan Bay near the present-day Sorrento, Victoria for the first settlement - some 90 km south of present-day Melbourne. About two months later the settlement was abandoned due to poor soil and water shortages and Collins moved the convicts to Hobart. Several convicts had escaped into the bush and were left behind to unknown fates with the local aboriginal people. One such convict, the subsequently celebrated William Buckley, lived in the western side of Port Phillip for the next 32 years before approaching the new settlers and assisting as an interpreter for the indigenous peoples.

A second settlement was established at Westernport Bay, on the site of present-day Corinella, in November 1826. It comprised an initial 20 soldiers and 22 convicts, with another 12 convicts arriving subsequently. This settlement was abandoned in February 1828, and all convicts returned to Sydney.[17]

The Port Phillip District was officially sanctioned in 1837 following the landing of the Henty brothers in Portland Bay in 1834, and John Batman settled on the site of Melbourne.

Between 1844 and 1849 about 1,750 convicts arrived there from England. They were referred to either as "Exiles" or the "Pentonvillians" because most of them came from Pentonville Probationary Prison. Unlike earlier convicts who were required to work for the government or on hire from penal depots, the Exiles were free to work for pay, but could not leave the district to which they were assigned. The Port Phillip District was still part of New South Wales at this stage. Victoria separated from New South Wales and became an independent colony in 1851.

In 1823 John Oxley sailed north from Sydney to inspect Port Curtis and Moreton Bay as possible sites for a penal colony. At Moreton Bay, he found the Brisbane River, which Cook had guessed would exist, and explored the lower part of it. In September 1824, he returned with soldiers and established a temporary settlement at Redcliffe. On 2 December 1824, the settlement was transferred to where the Central Business District (CBD) of Brisbane now stands. The settlement was at first called Edenglassie. In 1839 transportation of convicts to Moreton Bay ceased and the Brisbane penal settlement was closed. In 1842 free settlement was permitted and people began to colonize the area voluntarily. On 6 June 1859 Queensland became a colony separate from New South Wales.

Although a convict-supported settlement was established in Western Australia from 1826 to 1831, direct transportation of convicts did not begin until 1850. It continued until 1868. During that period, 9,668 convicts were transported on 43 convict ships. The first convicts to arrive were transported to New South Wales, and sent by that colony to King George Sound (Albany) in 1826 to help establish a settlement there. At that time the western third of Australia was unclaimed land known as New Holland. Fears that France would lay claim to the land prompted the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, to send Major Edmund Lockyer, with troops and 23 convicts, to establish a settlement at King George Sound. Lockyer's party arrived on Christmas Day, 1826. A convict presence was maintained at the settlement for over four years. On 7 March 1831 control of the settlement was transferred to the Swan River Colony, and the troops and convicts were withdrawn.[18]

In April 1848, Charles Fitzgerald, Governor of Western Australia, petitioned Britain to send convicts to his state because of labor shortages. Britain rejected sending fixed-term convicts, but offered to send first offenders in the final years of their terms.

Most convicts in Western Australia spent very little time in prison. Those who were stationed at Fremantle were housed in the Convict Establishment, the colony's convict prison, and misbehaviour was punished by stints there. The majority, however, were stationed in other parts of the colony. Although there was no convict assignment in Western Australia, there was a great demand for public infrastructure throughout the colony, so that many convicts were stationed in remote areas. Initially, most offenders were set to work creating infrastructure for the convict system, including the construction of the Convict Establishment itself.

In 1852 a Convict Depot was built at Albany, but closed 3 years later. When shipping increased the Depot was re-opened. Most of the convicts had their Ticket-of-Leave and were hired to work by the free settlers. Convicts also manned the pilot boat, rebuilt York Street and Stirling Terrace; and the track from Albany to Perth was made into a good road. An Albany newspaper noted their commendable behaviour and wrote, "There were instances in which our free settlers might take an example".

Western Australia's convict era came to an end with the cessation of penal transportation by Britain. In May 1865, the colony was advised of the change in British policy, and told that Britain would send one convict ship in each of the years 1865, 1866, and 1867, after which transportation would cease. In accordance with this, the last convict ship to Western Australia, the Hougoumont, left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868.

Between 1788 and 1852, about 24,000 transportees were women, one in seven. 80% of women had been convicted of theft, usually petty. For protection, many quickly attached themselves to male officers or convicts. Although they were routinely referred to as courtesans, no women were transported for prostitution, as it was not a transportable offence.[19]

Approximately 3,600 political prisoners were transported to the Australian colonies, many of whom arrived in waves corresponding to political unrest in Britain and Ireland. They included the First Scottish Martyrs in 1794; British Naval Mutineers (from the Nore Mutiny) in 1797 and 1801; Irish rebels in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1868; Cato Street Conspirators (1820); Scots Rebels (1820); Yorkshire Rebels (1820 and 1822); leaders of the Merthyr Tydfil rising of 1831; the Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834); Swing Rioters and Luddites (1828-1833); American and French-Canadian prisoners from the Upper Canada rebellion and Lower Canada Rebellion (1839), and Chartists (1842).[20]

With increasing numbers of free settlers entering New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) by the mid-1830s, opposition to the transportation of felons into the colonies grew. The most influential spokesmen were newspaper proprietors who were also members of the Independent Congregation Church such as John Fairfax in Sydney and the Reverend John West in Launceston, who argued against convicts both as competition to honest free labourers and as the source of crime and vice within the colony. Bishop Bernard Ullathorne, a Catholic prelate who had been in Australia since 1832 returned for a visit to England in 1835. While there he was called upon by the government to give evidence before a Parliamentary Commission on the evils of transportation, and at their request wrote and submitted a tract on the subject. His views in conjunction with others in the end prevailed. The anti-transportation movement was seldom concerned with the inhumanity of the system, but rather the hated stain it was believed to inflict on the free (non- emancipist) middle classes.

Transportation to New South Wales temporarily ended 1840 under the Order-in-Council of 22 May 1840,[21] by which time some 150,000 convicts had been sent to the colonies. The sending of convicts to Brisbane in its Moreton Bay district had ceased the previous year, and administration of Norfolk Island was later transferred to Van Diemen's Land.

Opposition to transportation was not unanimous; wealthy landowner, Benjamin Boyd, for reasons of economic self-interest, wanted to use transported convicts from Van Diemen's Land as a source of free or low-cost labour in New South Wales, particularly as shepherds.[22][23] The final transport of convicts to New South Wales occurred in 1850, with some 1,400 convicts transported between the Order-in-Council and that date.[21]

The continuation of transportation to Van Diemen's Land saw the rise of a well-coordinated anti-transportation movement, especially following a severe economic depression in the early 1840s. Transportation was temporarily suspended in 1846 but soon revived with overcrowding of British gaols and clamour for the availability of transportation as a deterrent. By the late 1840s most convicts being sent to Van Diemen's Land (plus those to Victoria) were designated as "exiles" and were free to work for pay while under sentence. In 1850 the Australasian Anti-Transportation League was formed to lobby for the permanent cessation of transportation, its aims being furthered by the commencement of the Australian gold rushes the following year. The last convict ship to be sent from England, the St. Vincent, arrived in 1853, and on 10 August Jubilee festivals in Hobart and Launceston celebrated 50 years of European settlement with the official end of transportation.

Transportation continued in small numbers to Western Australia. The last convict ship, the Hougoumont, left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868. In all, about 164,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868 onboard 806 ships. Convicts were made up of English and Welsh (70%), Irish (24%), Scottish (5%), and the remaining 1% from the British outposts in India and Canada, Maoris from New Zealand, Chinese from Hong Kong, and slaves from the Caribbean.

In 2010, UNESCO inscribed 11 Australian Convict Sites on its World Heritage List. The listing recognises the sites as "the best surviving examples of large-scale convict transportation and the colonial expansion of European powers through the presence and labour of convicts."[24]

Convict George Barrington is (perhaps apocryphally) recorded as having written the prologue for the first theatrical play performed by convicts in Australia, one year after the First Fleet's arrival. It is known as "Our Country's Good", based on the now-famous closing stanza:

From distant climes, o'er wide-spread seas, we come,

Though not with much éclat or beat of drum,

True patriots all: for, be it understood:

We left our country for our country's good.

The poems of Frank the Poet are among the few surviving literary works done by a convict while still incarcerated. His best-known work is "A Convict's Tour of Hell". A version of the convict ballad " Moreton Bay", detailing the brutal punishments meted out by commandment Patrick Logan and his death at the hands of Aborigines, is also attributed to Frank. Other convict ballads include " Jim Jones at Botany Bay". The ballad " Botany Bay", which describes the sadness felt by convicts forced to leave their loved ones in England, was written at least 40 years after the end of transportation.

Perhaps the most famous convict in all of fiction is Abel Magwitch, a main character of Charles Dickens' 1861 novel Great Expectations. The most famous convict novel is Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life (1874), followed by John Boyle O'Reilly's Moondyne (1879). The Broad Arrow by Caroline Woolmer Leakey was one of the first novels to depict the convict experience, and one of the only to feature a female convict as its protagonist (Marcus Clarke drew on Leakey's book in writing For the Term of His Natural Life).[25] Thomas Keneally explores the convict era in his novels Bring Larks and Heroes (1967) and The Playmaker (1987). Convicts feature heavily in Patrick White's take on the Eliza Fraser story, the 1976 novel A Fringe of Leaves. Convictism is canvassed in Bryce Courtenay's " Australian trilogy": The Potato Factory (1995), Tommo & Hawk (1997) and Solomon's Song (1999). The title character of Peter Carey's 1997 novel Jack Maggs is a reworking of Dickens' Magwitch character. Many modern works of Tasmanian Gothic focus on the state's convict past, including Gould's Book of Fish (2001) by Richard Flanagan, a fictionalised account of convict artist William Buelow Gould's imprisonment at Macquarie Harbour. Kate Grenville based the novel The Secret River (2005) on the life of her convict ancestor Solomon Wiseman.

Along with bushrangers and other stock characters of colonial life, convicts were a popular subject during Australia's silent film era. The first convict film was a 1908 adaptation of Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life, shot on location at Port Arthur with an unheard-of budget of £7000.[26] This was followed by two more films inspired by Clarke's novel: The Life of Rufus Dawes (1911), which draws on Alfred Dampier's stage production of His Natural Life, and the landmark For the Term of His Natural Life (1927), one of the most expensive silent films ever made.[26] W. J. Lincoln directed many convict melodramas including It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1911), an adaptation of Charles Reade's 1856 novel about cruelties of the convict system; Moodyne (1913), based on John Boyle O'Reilly's novel; and Transported (1913). Other early titles include Sentenced for Life, The Mark of the Lash, One Hundred Years Ago, The Lady Outlaw and The Assigned Servant, all released in 1911. Few convict films were made after 1930; even the Australian New Wave of the 1970s, with its emphasis on Australia's colonial past, largely avoided the convict era in favour of nostalgic period pieces set in the bush around the time of Federation. One exception is Journey Among Women (1977), a feminist imagining of what life was like for convict women.[26] Alexander Pearce, the infamous Tasmanian convict and cannibal, is the inspiration for The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce (2008), Dying Breed (2008) and Van Diemen's Land (2009). The British film Comrades (1986) deals with the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs to Australia.

Esther Abrahams - British Jew, who was one of the Jewish convicts (about 1,000 in all) and common-law wife of a leader of the Rum Rebellion.

George Barrington - pickpocket, superintendent of convicts and high constable of Parramatta

Samuel Barsby - one of the first two coopers in Australia and the first convict to be flogged[27]

Joseph Backler - transported for passing forged cheques, became a colonial painter

William Bannon - transported from New Zealand to Van Diemen's Land for army desertion/theft. Escaped Port Arthur through the 'dog line' at EagleHawk Neck.

Billy Blue - a black man from Jamaica, New York, established a ferry service

James Blackburn - Famous for contribution to Australian architecture and civil engineering

William Bland - naval surgeon transported for killing a man in a duel; he prospered and was involved in philanthropy, and had a seat in the legislative assembly.[28]

Mary Bryant - a famous escapee

William Buckley - famously escaped and lived with Aboriginal people for many years

John Cadman - had been a publican, as a convict became Superintendent of Boats in Sydney; Cadmans Cottage is a cottage granted to him.

Martin Cash - Famous escapee and bushranger

William Chopin - a convict whose work in prison hospitals in Western Australia grounded him in chemistry; on receiving a ticket of leave he was appointed chemist at the Colonial Hospital, but preferred to open his own chemist shop. He was later convicted as an abortionist.

Daniel Connor - sentenced to seven years transportation for sheep-stealing, became a successful merchant, by the 1890s one of the largest landowners in central Perth.

Daniel Cooper - successful merchant.

William Cuffay (convict and tailor) - Black London Chartist leader who became an important workers' rights leader in Hobart.

John Davies - co-founded The Mercury newspaper.

Margaret Dawson - First Fleeter, "founding mother"

John Eyre - painter and engraver

William Field - notable Tasmanian businessman and landowner

Francis Greenway - famous Australian architect

William Henry Groom - successful auctioneer and politician, served in the inaugural Australian Parliament.

Michael Howe - bushranger, subject of the first work of general literature published in Australia

Laurence Hynes Halloran - founded Sydney Grammar School.

William Hutchinson - public servant and pastoralist.

John Irving - doctor transported on First Fleet, was the first convict to receive an absolute pardon.

Mark Jeffrey - wrote a famous autobiography

Jørgen Jørgensen - eccentric Danish adventurer influenced by revolutionary ideas who declared himself ruler of Iceland, later became a spy in Britain.

Henry Kable - First Fleet convict, arrived with wife and son (Susannah Holmes, also a convict, and Henry) filed 1st lawsuit in Australia, became a wealthy businessman

Lawrence Kavenagh - notorious bushranger

John "Red" Kelly - Irish convict and father of bushranger Ned Kelly

Solomon Levey - wealthy merchant, endowed Sydney Grammar School.

Simeon Lord - pioneer merchant and magistrate in Australia

Nathaniel Lucas - one of the first convicts on Norfolk Island, where he became Master carpenter, later farmed successfully, built windmills, and was Superintendent of carpenters in Sydney.

John Mitchel - Irish nationalist

Francis "Frank the Poet" McNamara - composer of various oral convict ballads, including The Convict's Tour to Hell

John Mortlock - a former marine

Thomas Muir - convicted of sedition for advocating parliamentary reform; escaped from N.S.W and after many vicissitudes made his way to revolutionary France.

Isaac Nichols - entrepreneur, first Postmaster

Kevin Izod O'Doherty - Medical student, Young Irelander who was transported for treason.

Robert Palin - once in Australia, committed further crimes, and managed to be executed for a non-capital offence

Alexander Pearce - cannibal escapee

Joseph Potaskie - first Pole to come to Australia.

William Smith O'Brien - famous Irish revolutionary; sent to Van Diemen's Land in 1849 after leading a rebellion in Tipperary

John Boyle O'Reilly - Famous escapee, poet, and writer; author of Moondyne

William Redfern - one of the few surgeon convicts

Mary Reibey - businesswoman and shipowner

James Ruse - successful farmer

Henry Savery - Australia's first novelist; author of Quintus Servinton

Robert Sidaway - opened Australia's first theatre

Ikey Solomon - professional thief; inspiration for the character Fagin in Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist

James Squire - English Romanichal (Romany) - First Fleet convict and Australia's first brewer and cultivator of hops.

Joseph Sullivan - sentenced to fourteen years transportation for stealing, then killed for murdering his master and the other convicts in the area.

William Sykes - historically interesting because he left a brief diary and a bundle of letters.

John Tawell - served his sentence, became a prosperous chemist, returned to England after 15 years, and after some time murdered a mistress, for which he was hanged.

Samuel Terry - wealthy merchant and philanthropist.

James Hardy Vaux - author of Australia's first full-length autobiography and dictionary.

Mary Wade - Youngest female convict transported to Australia (13 years of age) who had 21 children and at the time of her death had over 300 living descendants.

William Westwood - bushranger and leader of the 1846 Cooking Pot Uprising

Joseph Wild - explorer

Solomon Wiseman - merchant and operated ferry on Hawkesbury River hence town name Wisemans Ferry.

1. ^ "Convicts and the British colonies in Australia". Government of Australia. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016.

2. Barlass, Tim (20 February 2019). ^ "Descendants of mostly convicts and they're proud of it" Archived 20 February 2019 at the Wayback Machine, The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 3 May 2020.

3. ^ "Online records highlight Australia's convict past" Archived 25 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine, ABC News (25 July 2007). Retrieved 21 September 2016.

4. ^ Hirst, John (July 2008). "An Oddity From the Start: Convicts and National Character" Archived 27 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine, The Monthly. Retrieved 4 May 2015.

5. ^ "BBC News - Booze". BBC. Archived from the original on 4 March 2009.

6. ^ Del Col, Laura (1988). "The Life of the Industrial Worker in Ninteenth-Century [sic] England". The Victorian Web. Archived from the original on 25 March 2015.

7. ^ Highes, ibid, p. 28

8. ^ Butler, James Davie (1896). "British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies" (PDF). The American Historical Review. 2 (1): 12-33. doi:10.2307/1833611. JSTOR 1833611. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 December 2019.

9. ^

10. A ^ free download of Memorandoms by James Martin Archived 22 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Edited by Tim Causer, UCL Press, ISBN 978-1-911576-81-5.

11. ^ bpwxhtml0508. "Tocal's convict 1822-1840". Tocal. Archived from the original on 27 May 2009.

12. ^ "King George's Sound Settlement". State Records. State Records Authority of New South Wales. Archived from the original on 17 May 2014.

13. ^ Hughes, ibid, pp. 244-246

14. ^ "Convicts To Australia ... Research Guide - Political Prisoners". Convicts to Australia.

15. ^ Lucy Turnbull, Sydney: Biography of a City, Random House Australia, Milsons Point NSW, 1999

16. ^ "COLONIAL EXTRACTS". Geelong Advertiser and Squatters' Advocate (Vic. : 1845 - 1847). 1 October 1847. p. 1.

17. ^ Boyd, Benjamin (1992). A letter to His Excellency Sir William Denison : ... Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, on the expediency of transferring the unemployed labour of that colony to New South Wales. By Benjamin Boyd. Sydney : printed by E. Wolfe, George Street.

18. ^ Henry), Wilde, W. H. (William (1994). The Oxford companion to Australian literature. Hooton, Joy W., Andrews, B. G., 1943-1987. (2nd ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019553381X. OCLC 32470151.

19. ^ Byrnes, Paul. Prisons on Film Archived 12 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Australian Screen. Retrieved 31 August 2015.

20. D. Richards 'Transported to New South Wales: medical convicts 1788-1850' ^ British Medical Journal Vol 295, 19-26 December 1987, p. 1609

Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships, 1787-1868, Sydney, 1974.

Pardons & Punishments: Judge's Reports on Criminals, 1783 to 1830: HO (Home Office) 47, volumes 304 & 305, List and Index Society, The National Archives, Kew, England, TW9 4DU

Gillen, Mollie, The Founders of Australia: a biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1989.

Gordon Greenwood, Australia: A Social and Political History, Angus and Robertson 1955.

Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore, London, Pan, 1988.

A Pictorial History of Australia, Rex & Thea Rienits, Hamlyn Publishing group, 1969.

Robson, Lloyd. History of Tasmania, 2 Volumes.

Edward Shann, An Economic History of Australia, Georgian House 1930.

John West, History of Tasmania, 1852.

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Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.[1] The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century. When transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution, an alternative site was needed to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks.

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Französische Revolution

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British Colonization

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The British colonization of the Americas describes the history of the establishment of control, settlement, and decolonization of the continents of the Americas by the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, and, after the union of those two countries in 1707, the Kingdom of Great Britain.[a] Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with unsuccessful efforts by the Kingdom of England to establish colonies in North America, but the first permanent English colony was established in Jamestown in 1607.[1][2] Over the next several centuries more colonies were established in the Americas. While the vast majority have achieved independence, a few remain as British Overseas Territories.

North America had been inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years of prior to 1492.[3] European exploration of North America began after Christopher Columbus's 1492 expedition across the Atlantic Ocean.[4] English exploration of the continent commenced in the late 15th century, and Sir Walter Raleigh established the short-lived Roanoke Colony in 1585.[5] The English established their first successful, permanent colony in North America at Jamestown in 1607 on the Chesapeake Bay, which eventually grew into the Colony of Virginia.[6][7] In 1620, a second permanent colony at Plymouth was founded, followed in 1630 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. These settlements in present day Virginia and Massachusetts gave the English a foundation to establish more colonies and resulted in significantly increased settlement activity.[8][9] At conclusion of the Seven Years' War with France, Britain took control of the French colony of Canada and several colonial Caribbean territories.[10][11]

With the assistance of France and Spain, many of the North American colonies gained independence from Britain through victory in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783. Historians sometimes refer to the British Empire after 1783 as the "Second British Empire"; this period saw Britain increasingly focus on Asia and Africa instead of the Americas, and increasingly focus on the expansion of trade rather than territorial possessions. Nonetheless, Britain continued to colonize parts of the Americas in the 19th century, taking control of British Columbia and establishing the colonies of the Falkland Islands and British Honduras. Britain also gained control of several colonies, including Trinidad and British Guiana, following the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars.

In the mid-19th century, Britain began the process of granting self-government to its remaining colonies in North America. Most of these colonies joined the Confederation of Canada in the 1860s or 1870s, though Newfoundland would not join Canada until 1949. Canada gained full autonomy following the passage of the Statute of Westminster 1931, though it retained various ties to Britain and still recognizes the British monarch as head of state. Following the onset of the Cold War most of the remaining British colonies in the Americas gained independence between 1962 and 1983. Many of the former British colonies are part of the Commonwealth of Nations, a political association chiefly consisting of former colonies of the British Empire.

Following the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spain and Portugal established colonies in the New World, beginning the European colonization of the Americas.[12] France and England, the two other major powers of 15th-century Western Europe, employed explorers soon after the return of Columbus's first voyage. In 1497, King Henry VII of England dispatched an expedition led by John Cabot to explore the coast of North America, but the lack of precious metals or other riches discouraged both the Spanish and English from permanently settling in North America during the early 16th century.[13] Later explorers such as Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson sailed to the New World in search of a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic Ocean and Asia, but were unable to find a viable route.[14] Europeans established fisheries in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and traded metal, glass, and cloth for food and fur, beginning the North American fur trade.[15] During the Summer and Autumn of 1585 Bernard Drake launched an expedition to Newfoundland which crippled the Spanish and Portuguese fishing fleets there from which they never recovered from. This would have consequences in terms of English colonial expansion and settlement. Meanwhile, in the Caribbean Sea, English sailors defied Spanish trade restrictions and preyed on Spanish treasure ships.[16]

In the late sixteenth century, Protestant England became embroiled in a religious war with Catholic Spain. Seeking to weaken Spain's economic and military power, English privateers such as Francis Drake and Humphrey Gilbert harassed Spanish shipping.[17] Gilbert proposed the colonization of North America on the Spanish model, with the goal of creating a profitable English empire that could also serve as a base for the privateers. After Gilbert's death, Walter Raleigh took up the cause of North American colonization, sponsoring an expedition of 500 men to Roanoke Island. In 1584, the colonists established the first permanent English colony in North America,[18] but the colonists were poorly prepared for life in the New World, and by 1590, the colonists had disappeared.[19] A separate colonization attempt in Newfoundland also failed.[20] Despite the failure of these early colonies, the English remained interested in the colonization of North America for economic and military reasons.[21]

In 1606, King James I of England granted charters to both the Plymouth Company and the London Company for the purpose of establishing permanent settlements in North America. In 1607, the London Company established a permanent colony at Jamestown on the Chesapeake Bay, but the Plymouth Company's Popham Colony proved short-lived. The colonists at Jamestown faced extreme adversity, and by 1617 there were only 351 survivors out of the 1700 colonists who had been transported to Jamestown.[22] After the Virginians discovered the profitability of growing tobacco, the settlement's population boomed from 400 settlers in 1617 to 1240 settlers in 1622. The London Company was bankrupted in part due to frequent warring with nearby Native Americans, leading the English crown to take direct control of the Colony of Virginia, as Jamestown and its surrounding environs became known.[23] In 1609, an English ship traveling to Virginia wrecked off the shores of the island of Bermuda; though the crew was eventually rescued, England subsequently colonized Bermuda and established the Town of St. George.[24] Between the late 1610s and the Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 convicts to their American colonies.[25]

Meanwhile, the Plymouth Council for New England sponsored several colonization projects, including a colony established by a group of English Puritans, known today as the Pilgrims.[26] The Puritans embraced an intensely emotional form of Calvinist Protestantism and sought independence from the Church of England.[27] In 1620, the Mayflower transported the Pilgrims across the Atlantic, and the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony in Cape Cod. The Pilgrims endured an extremely hard first winter, with roughly fifty of the one hundred colonists dying. In 1621, Plymouth Colony was able to establish an alliance with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, which helped the Plymouth Colony adopt effective agricultural practices and engaged in the trade of fur and other materials.[28] Farther north, the English also established Newfoundland Colony, which primarily focused on cod fishing.[29]

The Caribbean would provide some of England's most important and lucrative colonies,[30] but not before several attempts at colonization failed. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years, and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits.[31] Colonies in St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) also rapidly folded.[32] Encouraged by the success of Virginia, in 1627 King Charles I granted a charter to the Barbados Company for the settlement of the uninhabited Caribbean island of Barbados. Early settlers failed in their attempts to cultivate tobacco, but found great success in growing sugar.[30]

The success of colonization efforts in Barbados encouraged the establishment of more Caribbean colonies, and by 1660 England had established Caribbean sugar colonies in St. Kitts, Antigua, Nevis, and Montserrat,[30] English colonization of the Bahamas began in 1648 after a Puritan group known as the Eleutheran Adventurers established a colony on the island of Eleuthera. England established another sugar colony in 1655 following the successful invasion of Jamaica during the Anglo-Spanish War.[33] Spain acknowledged English possession of Jamaica and the Caiman Islands in the 1670 Treaty of Madrid. England captured Tortola from the Dutch in 1670, and subsequently took possession of the nearby islands of Anegada and Virgin Gorda; these islands would later form the British Virgin Islands. During the 17th century, the sugar colonies adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour.[34] Until the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic.[35] Many of the slaves were captured by the Royal African Company in West Africa, though others came from Madagascar.[36] These slaves soon came to form the majority of the population in Caribbean colonies like Barbados and Jamaica, where strict slave codes were established partly to deter slave rebellions.[37]

Following the success of the Jamestown and Plymouth Colonies, several more English groups established colonies in the region that became known as New England. In 1629, another group of Puritans led by John Winthrop established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and by 1635 roughly ten thousand English settlers lived in the region between the Connecticut River and the Kennebec River.[38] After defeating the Pequot in the Pequot War, Puritan settlers established the Connecticut Colony in the region the Pequots had formerly controlled.[39] The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was founded by Roger Williams, a Puritan leader who was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony after he advocated for a formal split with the Church of England.[40] As New England was a relatively cold and infertile region, the New England Colonies relied on fishing and long-distance trade to sustain the economy.[41]

In 1632, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore founded the Province of Maryland to the north of Virginia.[42] Maryland and Virginia became known as the Chesapeake Colonies, and experienced similar immigration and economic activities.[43] Though Baltimore and his descendants intended for the colony to be a refuge for Catholics, it attracted mostly Protestant immigrants, many of whom scorned the Calvert family's policy of religious toleration.[44] In the mid-17th century, the Chesapeake Colonies, inspired by the success of slavery in Barbados, began the mass importation of African slaves. Though many early slaves eventually gained their freedom, after 1662 Virginia adopted policies that passed enslaved status from mother to child and granted slave owners near-total domination of their human property.[45]

Encouraged by the apparent weakness of Spanish rule in Florida, Barbadian planter John Colleton and seven other supporters of Charles II of England established the Province of Carolina in 1663.[46] Settlers in the Carolina Colony established two main population centers, with many Virginians settling in the north of the province and many English Barbadians settling in the southern port city of Charles Town.[47] In 1729, following the Yamasee War, Carolina was divided into the crown colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina.[48] The colonies of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina (as well as the Province of Georgia, which was established in 1732) became known as the Southern Colonies.

Beginning in 1609, Dutch traders had established fur trading posts on the Hudson River, Delaware River, and Connecticut River, ultimately creating the Dutch colony of New Netherland, with a capital at New Amsterdam.[49] In 1657, New Netherland expanded through conquest of New Sweden, a Swedish colony centered in the Delaware Valley.[50] Despite commercial success, New Netherland failed to attract the same level of settlement as the English colonies.[51] In 1664, during a series of wars between the English and Dutch, English soldier Richard Nicolls captured New Netherland.[52] The Dutch briefly re-gained control of parts of New Netherland in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, but surrendered its claim to the territory in the 1674 Treaty of Westminster, ending the Dutch colonial presence in North America.[53] In 1664, the Duke of York, later known as James II of England, was granted control of the English colonies north of the Delaware River. He created the Province of New York out of the former Dutch territory and renamed New Amsterdam as New York City.[54] He also created the provinces of West Jersey and East Jersey out of former Dutch land situated to the west of New York City, giving the territories to John Berkeley and George Carteret.[55] East Jersey and West Jersey would later be unified as the Province of New Jersey in 1702.[56]

Charles II rewarded William Penn, the son of distinguished Admiral William Penn, with the land situated between Maryland and the Jerseys. Penn named this land the Province of Pennsylvania.[57] Penn was also granted a lease to the Delaware Colony, which gained its own legislature in 1701.[58] A devout Quaker, Penn sought to create a haven of religious toleration in the New World.[58] Pennsylvania attracted Quakers and other settlers from across Europe, and the city of Philadelphia quickly emerged as a thriving port city.[59] With its fertile and cheap land, Pennsylvania became one of the most attractive destinations for immigrants in the late 17th century.[60] New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware became known as the Middle Colonies.[61]

Hudson's Bay Company Edit

In 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French.[62]

In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland-a quarter of Scottish capital[63] was lost in the enterprise-and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences, persuading the governments of both England and Scotland of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns.[64] This occurred in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain.

After succeeding his brother in 1685, King James II and his lieutenant, Edmund Andros, sought to assert the crown's authority over colonial affairs.[65] James was deposed by the new joint monarchy of William and Mary in the Glorious Revolution,[66] but William and Mary quickly reinstated many of the James's colonial policies, including the mercantilist Navigation Acts and the Board of Trade.[67] The Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony and the Province of Maine were incorporated into the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and New York and the Massachusetts Bay Colony were reorganized as royal colonies, with a governor appointed by the king.[68] Maryland, which had experienced a revolution against the Calvert family, also became a royal colony, though the Calverts retained much of their land and revenue in the colony.[69] Even those colonies that retained their charters or proprietors were forced to assent to much greater royal control than had existed before the 1690s.[70]

Between immigration, the importation of slaves, and natural population growth, the colonial population in British North America grew immensely in the 18th century. According to historian Alan Taylor, the population of the Thirteen Colonies (the British North American colonies which would eventually form the United States) stood at 1.5 million in 1750.[71] More than ninety percent of the colonists lived as farmers, though cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston flourished.[72] With the defeat of the Dutch and the imposition of the Navigation Acts, the British colonies in North America became part of global British trading network. The colonists traded foodstuffs, wood, tobacco, and various other resources for Asian tea, West Indian coffee, and West Indian sugar, among other items.[73] Native Americans far from the Atlantic coast supplied the Atlantic market with beaver fur and deerskins, and sought to preserve their independence by maintaining a balance of power between the French and English.[74] By 1770, the economic output of the Thirteen Colonies made up forty percent of the gross domestic product of the British Empire.[75]

Prior to 1660, almost all immigrants to the English colonies of North America had migrated freely, though most paid for their passage by becoming indentured servants.[76] Improved economic conditions and an easing of religious persecution in Europe made it increasingly difficult to recruit labor to the colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Partly due to this shortage of free labor, the population of slaves in British North America grew dramatically between 1680 and 1750; the growth was driven by a mixture of forced immigration and the reproduction of slaves.[77] In the Southern Colonies, which relied most heavily on slave labor, the slaves supported vast plantation economies lorded over by increasingly wealthy elites.[78] By 1775, slaves made up one-fifth of the population of the Thirteen Colonies but less than ten percent of the population of the Middle Colonies and New England Colonies.[79] Though a smaller proportion of the English population migrated to British North America after 1700, the colonies attracted new immigrants from other European countries,[80] including Catholic settlers from Ireland[81] and Protestant Germans.[82] As the 18th century progressed, colonists began to settle far from the Atlantic coast. Pennsylvania, Virginia, Connecticut, and Maryland all lay claim to the land in the Ohio River valley, and the colonies engaged in a scramble to expand west.[83]

The Glorious Revolution and the succession of William III, who had long resisted French hegemony as the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, ensured that England and its colonies would come into conflict with the French empire of Louis XIV after 1689.[84] Under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain, the French had established Quebec City on the St Lawrence River in 1608, and it became the center of French colony of Canada.[85] France and England engaged in a proxy war via Native American allies during and after the Nine Years' War, while the powerful Iroquois declared their neutrality.[86] War between France and England continued in Queen Anne's War, the North American component of the larger War of the Spanish Succession. In the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession, the British won possession of the French territories of Newfoundland and Acadia, the latter of which was renamed Nova Scotia.[41] In the 1730s, James Oglethorpe proposed that the area south of the Carolinas be colonized to provide a buffer against Spanish Florida, and he was part of a group of trustees that were granted temporary proprietorship over the Province of Georgia. Oglethorpe and his compatriots hoped to establish a utopian colony that banned slavery, but by 1750 the colony remained sparsely populated, and Georgia became a crown colony in 1752.[87]

In 1754, the Ohio Company started to build a fort at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River. A larger French force initially chased the Virginians away, but was forced to retreat after the Battle of Jumonville Glen.[88] After reports of the battle reached the French and British capitals, the Seven Years' War broke out in 1756; the North American component of this war is known as the French and Indian War.[89] After the Duke of Newcastle returned to power as Prime Minister in 1757, he and his foreign minister, William Pitt, devoted unprecedented financial resources to the transoceanic conflict.[90] The British won a series of victories after 1758, conquering much of New France by the end of 1760. Spain entered the war on France's side in 1762 and promptly lost several American territories to Britain.[91] The 1763 Treaty of Paris ended the war, and France surrendered almost all of the portion of New France to the east of the Mississippi River to the British. France separately ceded its lands west of the Mississippi River to Spain, and Spain ceded Florida to Britain.[92] With the newly acquired territories, the British created the provinces of East Florida, West Florida, and Quebec, all of which were placed under military governments.[93] In the Caribbean, Britain retained Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago, but returned control of Martinique, Havana, and other colonial possessions to France or Spain.[94]

The British subjects of North America believed that the unwritten British constitution protected their rights and that the governmental system, with the House of Commons the House of Lords, and the monarch sharing power, found an ideal balance among democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny.[95] However, the British were saddled with huge debts following the French and Indian War. As much of the British debt had been generated by the defense of the colonies, British leaders felt that the colonies should pay more in taxes, and they began imposing taxes such as the Sugar Act of 1764.[96] Increased British control of the Thirteen Colonies upset the colonists and upended the notion many colonist held that they were equal partners in the British Empire.[97] Meanwhile, seeking to avoid another expensive war with Native Americans, Britain issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which restricted settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.[98] The Thirteen Colonies became increasingly divided between Patriots opposed to British rule and Loyalists who supported it.[99] In the British colonies bordering the Thirteen Colonies, however, protests were muted, as most colonists accepted the new taxes. These provinces had smaller populations, were more dependent on the British military, and had less of a tradition of self-rule.[100]

At the April 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Patriots repulsed a British force charged with seizing Patriot arsenals.[101] The Second Continental Congress assembled in May 1775 and sought to coordinate armed resistance to Britain, established an impromptu government that recruited soldiers and printed its own money.[102] Seeking a final break with Britain, the delegates adopted a Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776.[103] The French entered the war in 1778 following the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga, and were soon joined by the Spain, which sought to regain territories from Britain.[104] By the end of 1781, each of the colonies had ratified a constitution for a new nation, known as the Articles of Confederation;[105] The first article of the new constitution established a name for the former Thirteen Colonies: the United States of America.[106] A combined Franco-American operation trapped a major force at Yorktown, forcing it surrender in October 1781.[107] The surrender shocked Britons, who lost the public will to continue the war in North America, and the British opened peace negotiations.[108] In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Britain ceded all of its North American territory south of the Great Lakes, except for the two Florida colonies, which were ceded to Spain.[109] Having defeated a combined Franco-Spanish force at the decisive 1782 Battle of the Saintes, Britain retained control of all its pre-war Caribbean possessions except for Tobago.[110]

The loss of a large portion of British America is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa.[111] Influenced by the ideas of Adam Smith, Britain also shifted away from mercantile ideals and began to prioritize the expansion of trade rather than territorial possessions.[112] During the nineteenth century, some observers described Britain as having an "unofficial" empire based on the export of goods and financial investments around the world, including the newly-independent republics of Latin America. Though this unofficial empire did not require direct British political control, it often involved the use of gunboat diplomacy and military intervention to protect British investments and ensure the free flow of trade.[113]

From 1793 to 1815, Britain was almost constantly at war, first in the French Revolutionary Wars and then in the Napoleonic Wars.[114] During the wars, Britain took control of many French, Spanish, and Dutch Caribbean colonies.[115] Tensions between Britain and the United States escalated during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy. After the largely inconclusive War of 1812, the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.[116] Following the final defeat of French Emperor Napoleon in 1815, Britain gained ownership of Trinidad, Tobago, British Guiana, and Saint Lucia, as well as other territories outside of the Western Hemisphere.[117] The Treaty of 1818 with the United States set a large portion of the Canada-United States border at the 49th parallel and also established a joint U.S.-British occupation of Oregon Country.[118] In the 1846 Oregon Treaty, the United States and Britain agreed to split Oregon Country along the 49th parallel north with the exception of Vancouver Island, which was assigned in its entirety to Britain.

After warring throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both Europe and the Americas, the British and French reached a lasting peace after 1815. Britain would fight only one war (the Crimean War) against a European power during the remainder of the nineteenth century, and that war did not lead to territorial changes in the Americas.[119] However, the British Empire continued to engage in wars such as the First Opium War against China; it also put down rebellions such as the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838, and the Jamaican Morant Bay rebellion of 1865.[120] A strong abolition movement had emerged in the United Kingdom in the late-eighteenth century, and Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807.[121] In the mid-nineteenth century, the economies of the British Caribbean colonies would suffer as a result of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery throughout the British Empire, and the 1846 Sugar Duties Act, which ended preferential tariffs for sugar imports from the Caribbean.[122] To replace the labor of former slaves, British plantations on Trinidad and other parts of the Caribbean began to hire indentured servants from India and China.[123]

Despite its defeat in the American Revolutionary War and shift towards a new form of imperialism during the nineteenth century,[111][112] the British Empire retained numerous colonies in the Americas after 1783. During and after the American Revolutionary War, between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists migrated from the United States to Canada.[124] The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784.[125] The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.[126]

In response to the Rebellions of 1837-1838,[126] Britain passed the Act of Union in 1840, which united Upper Canada and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were formed into the confederation of Canada.[127] Rupert's Land (which was divided into Manitoba and the Northwest Territories), British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island joined Canada by the end of 1873, but Newfoundland would not join Canada until 1949. Like other British dominions such as Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, Canada enjoyed autonomy over its domestic affairs but recognized the British monarch as head of state and cooperated closely with Britain on defense issues.[128] After the passage of the 1931 Statute of Westminster,[129] Canada and other dominions were fully independent of British legislative control; they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.[130]

In the early 17th century, English sailors had begun cutting logwood in parts of coastal Central America over which the Spanish exercised little control. By the early 18th century, a small British settlement had been established on the Belize River, though the Spanish refused to recognize British control over the region and frequently evicted British settlers. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris and the 1786 Convention of London, Spain gave Britain the right to cut logwood and mahogany in the area between the Hondo River and the Belize River, but Spain retained sovereignty over this area. Following the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with the United States, Britain agreed to evacuate its settlers from the Bay Islands and the Mosquito Coast, but it retained control of the settlement on the Belize River. In 1862, Britain established the crown colony of the British Honduras at this location.[131]

The British first established a presence on the Falkland Islands in 1765 but were compelled to withdraw for economic reasons related to the American War of Independence in 1774.[132] The islands continued to be used by British sealers and whalers, although the settlement of Port Egmont was destroyed by the Spanish in 1780. Argentina attempted to establish a colony in the ruins of the former Spanish settlement of Puerto Soledad, which ended with the British return in 1833. The British governed the uninhabited South Georgia Island, which had been claimed by Captain James Cook in 1775, as a dependency of the Falkland Islands.[133]

With the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the British government began to assemble plans for the independence of the empire's colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. British authorities initially planned for a three-decades-long process in which each colony would develop a self-governing and democratic parliament, but unrest and fears of Communist infiltration in the colonies encouraged the British to speed up the move towards self-governance.[134] Compared to other European empires, which experienced wars of independence such as the Algerian War and the Portuguese Colonial War, the British post-war process of decolonization in the Caribbean and elsewhere was relatively peaceful.[135]

In an attempt to unite its Caribbean colonies, Britain established the West Indies Federation in 1958. The federation collapsed following the loss of its two largest members, Jamaica and Trinidad, each of which attained independence in 1962; Trinidad formed a union with Tobago to become the country of Trinidad and Tobago.[136] The eastern Caribbean islands, as well as the Bahamas, gained independence in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.[136] Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.[137]

Though many of the Caribbean territories of the British Empire gained independence, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence.[138] The British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Falkland Islands also remain under the jurisdiction of Britain.[139] In 1982, Britain defeated Argentina after in the Falklands War, an undeclared war in which Argentina attempted to seize control of the Falkland Islands.[140] In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as "British Dependent Territories",[1] and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories.[143] The eleven inhabited territories are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for foreign relations and defence.[144] Most former British colonies and protectorates are among the 52 member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people.[145] Sixteen Commonwealth realms, including Canada and several countries in the Caribbean, voluntarily continue to share the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, as their head of state.[146]

These colonies and territories became part of Canada between 1867 and 1873 unless otherwise noted:

The Thirteen Colonies, which became the original states of the United States following the 1781 ratification of the Articles of Confederation:

These colonies were acquired in 1763 and ceded to Spain in 1783:

Province of East Florida (from Spain, retroceded to Spain)

Province of West Florida (from France as part of eastern French Louisiana, ceded to Spain)

These present-day countries formed part of the British West Indies prior to gaining independence during the 20th century:

These British Overseas Territories in the Americas remain under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom:

1. ^ "Bermuda - History and Heritage". Smithsonian.com.

2. James Davie Butler, "British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies," ^ American Historical Review (1896) 2#1 pp. 12-33 in JSTOR; Thomas Keneally, The Commonwealth of Thieves, Random House Publishing, Sydney, 2005.

3. ^ James (1997), p. 17

4. ^ McCusker, John J.; Menard, Russell R. (1991). The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. University of North Carolina Press. doi:10.5149/9781469600000_mccusker.16 (inactive 3 December 2019). JSTOR 10.5149/9781469600000_mccusker.

5. ^ "James Monroe: Foreign Affairs". Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. 4 October 2016.

6. Bolland, Nigel. "Belize: Historical Setting". In ^ A Country Study: Belize (Tim Merrill, editor). Library of Congress Federal Research Division (January 1992).

7. ^ Gibran, Daniel (1998). The Falklands War: Britain Versus the Past in the South Atlantic. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. pp. 26-27. ISBN 978-0-7864-0406-3.

8. R.K. Headland, ^ The Island of South Georgia, Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-521-25274-1

9. ^ "British Nationality Act 1981, Schedule 6". Archived from the original on 1 April 2019.

10. ^ "The British Nationality Act 1981 (Commencement) Order 1982". Archived from the original on 1 April 2019.

11. ^ House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Overseas Territories Report, pp. 145-47

12. ^ House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Overseas Territories Report, pp. 146,153

13. ^ The Commonwealth - About Us Archived 27 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine; Online September 2014

14. ^ "Head of the Commonwealth". Commonwealth Secretariat. Archived from the original on 6 July 2010.

Black, Conrad. Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada From the Vikings to the Present (2014), 1120pp excerpt

Conrad, Margaret, Alvin Finkel and Donald Fyson. Canada: A History (Toronto: Pearson, 2012)

Cooke, Jacob Ernest et al., ed. Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies. (3 vol. 1993)

Gipson, Lawrence. The British Empire Before the American Revolution (15 volumes, 1936-1970), Pulitzer Prize; highly detailed discussion of every British colony in the New World

Rose, J. Holland, A. P. Newton and E. A. Benians (gen. eds.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 9 vols. (1929-61); vol 1: "The Old Empire from the Beginnings to 1783" 934pp online edition Volume I

Louis, William Roger (general editor), The Oxford History of the British Empire

vol 1 The Origins of Empire ed. by Nicholas Canny

vol 2 The Eighteenth Century ed. by P. J. Marshall excerpt and text search

Marshall, P.J. (ed.) The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (1996). excerpt and text search

Mawby, Spencer. Ordering Independence: The End of Empire in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1947-69 (Springer, 2012).

McNaught, Kenneth. The Penguin History of Canada (Penguin books, 1988)

Sobecki, Sebastian. "New World Discovery". Oxford Handbooks Online (2015). DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.013.141

Springhall, John (2001). Decolonization since 1945: the collapse of European overseas empires. Palgrave. ISBN 978-0-333-74600-4.

Historiography Edit

Canny, Nicholas. "Writing Atlantic History; or, Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America." Journal of American History 86.3 (1999): 1093-1114. in JSTOR

Hinderaker, Eric; Horn, Rebecca. "Territorial Crossings: Histories and Historiographies of the Early Americas," William and Mary Quarterly, (2010) 67#3 pp 395-432 in JSTOR

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The British colonization of the Americas describes the history of the establishment of control, settlement, and decolonization of the continents of the Americas by the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, and, after the union of those two countries in 1707, the Kingdom of Great Britain.[a] Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with unsuccessful efforts by the Kingdom of England to establish colonies in North America, but the first permanent English colony was established in Jamestown in 1607.[1] [2] Over the next several centuries more colonies were established in the Americas.