# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The white European's colonisation of Australia provides a very revealing chapter in Britain's empire building history. Uncharacteristically for a British punishment, penal transportation involved mass exile, coerced labour, invasion, dispossession and genocide. This combination of convict stain and colonisation was so inglorious that for decades the history was not written. Instead, Australia was characterised as born by the Gold Rush and a working man's paradise ensued, as if by magic. More recently, the 'History Wars' exposed a huge unease within Australia about how to think of its penal past. A focus on negative aspects was denigrated as the "black armband" view of the nation's history, inviting the retort of "white blindfold" for those accentuating the positive. Grey did not come into it. The reality is that this history is full of contradictions. What follows is a brief and contestable account of Australia in the era of Transportation.

Convict Colonies

There were two major convict colonies: New South Wales (1788-1840) and Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803-1853). Eventually, Swan River (Western Australia) would become a third penal colony when the failing settlement requested an injection of convict labourers (1850-1868). The country of origin, colonial distribution and gender breakdown of convicts are given in the adjacent figure.

The premier site in convict Australia was Sydney, NSW. The First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay on the 18th January 1788 but quickly assessed conditions as unsuitable and shifted north to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) on 26th January, now marked as Australia Day/Invasion Day, depending upon perspective. A satellite colony was also established over 1,000 miles away at Norfolk Island, both for strategic imperial reasons and increasingly as a food basket in an attempt to overcome insipient famine in the early years at Sydney Cove.

In Van Diemen's Land, a second major convict colony followed at Sullivans Cove (Hobart) with a further outpost at Patersonia (Launceston) in the north of the island. An initial complement of convicts was sent in 1804 but convicts did not start to arrive regularly in Hobart until 1818, by which time the colony had its own Lieutenant Governor (from 1813).

Other, smaller, convict establishments developed across the continent. NSW then stretched along the eastern coast of Australia encompassing territories that would later become the modern-day states of Queensland and Victoria, and smaller convict establishments were developed at Moreton Bay (now Brisbane), and at Port Phillip (now Melbourne) effectively from 1835. While the latter is sometimes seen as 'convict-free', it received convicts landed via Sydney and directly received convict 'Exiles' between 1846-50. [This was an experiment whereby a convict who had completed part of their sentence in a British prison was then granted a Conditional Pardon or Ticket-of-Leave and sent to the colony.]

Moreton Bay functioned as a place of 'secondary punishment'. Colonial reoffending could be punished with transportation, and several such dedicated penal settlements were dotted around the colonies. They came to include Norfolk Island (resettled for this purpose in 1825), Newcastle (1804), Port Macquarie (1821), Macquarie Harbour (1822) Maria Island (1825, later a Probation Station), the latter two replaced by the iconic Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula (1830). There were many experiments and penal innovations made in the Australian convict colonies, and of particular note is the Point Puer establishment at Port Arthur for the reformation of criminal boys, marking a fundamental shift in the conceptualisation of juvenile offenders and in the rehabilitation of criminals.

South Australia (1834-) received no convicts directly. However, there was a Newgate connection as the colony's development was shaped by the 'art of colonisation' enunciated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, politician and scoundrel imprisoned for the Shrigley abduction. The territories (Northern, and Australian Capital) gained independent existences much later.

Convict Workers

Three-quarters of convicts were transported for non-violent property crimes, more than half exiled for their first offence, at least according to the Convict Indents. The proportion of first offenders changed over time with alterations in English law which increasingly punished recidivism.

Convicts arrived in the colonies having experienced a multiplicity of trades consistent with the diversity of labour markets in the United Kingdom. Between them they had been employed at thousands of different jobs. Several predominated: labourers, farm labourers and farm servants, ploughmen, grooms, shoemakers and tailors, butchers, cooks and housemaids, to name a few (Meredith and Oxley, 2015). There were over 1000 shepherds, immediately useful to a sheep run.

In the colonies, all convicts had to work. Convicts appear in the 1828 NSW Census in very familiar roles, as labourers, servants, farm servants, ploughmen, shoemakers, shepherds, stockmen, constables and wives. Note that even under sentence convicts edged towards greater independence and control over their own labour, including who they worked for doing what, as they secured Tickets-of-Leave, Conditional (sometimes Absolute) Pardons, and at the conclusion of their sentences Certificates of Freedom. In the same census, Ticket holders and Emancipists - who could pick their employment - were engaged in the same mix of jobs as the convicts, suggesting a fairly well-functioning convict labour market: had they been inappropriately allocated, you would expect them to shift when they could (Nicholas, 1988).

Other sections on Transportation as punishment and VDL Labour Contracts outline how labour allocation and management evolved, from a surprisingly free and flexible labour system in the early decades of NSW, with much Government employment, to more formal systems of assignment to mainly private employers and private companies. It was in VDL where the most disciplinary arrangements were imposed, with punitive gang labour a prerequisite to progressive release into the labour market. Each revision of the convict labour system was intended to crank up of the deterrence value of transportation by emphasising coercion, without slipping into something that might actually be deemed slavery.

Being Coerced

Convicts were coerced workers and coercion invited resistance. There were clear patterns of convict protest ranging from union-style action to more subtle malingering. The colonial discipline to which they were subjected criminalised behaviour that amongst free workers would prompt mild rebuke, putting convicts at greater risk of amassing colonial sentences ('status crimes'). They were subject to onerous physical punishment, like the lash, part artefact of the naval context of transportation, later practice favouring further detention and solitary confinement. But they were also offered incentives. In particular, they were extraordinarily well fed, with the convict ration delivering daily calories more than twice those English labourers hoped to receive. Canny employers offered even more. Over time, allowing convicts to earn remission revealed itself as the most powerful labour management tool of all.

Becoming Free

The First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788. Within a year convicts were becoming free as sentences started to expire. Within five years, 85% of this cohort were emancipated, and once emancipated they could qualify for land grants. At its heart, convict society contained this central dynamic driving it towards freedom and normality. Most of those transported would spend far more of their lives at liberty than in chains, real or metaphorical. And for much of the time, freedom meant working for good wages.

Much was done with this liberty. There was money to be had, and ways of spending it. The society convicts and emancipists created was highly urban. If not for the power of the colonial government to direct convict labour to rural employment, very few colonists would ever have ventured into the bush. Towns offered work, housing, and pleasures - amusements, gambling - and access to sex, with or without marriage.

It should be observed that Australia's richest man - ever - was ex-convict Samuel Terry, the 'Botany Bay Rothschild'. Tapping in to the urban consumer culture by importing goods and running pubs were both highly successful ways of accumulating wealth and Terry and his wife Rosetta Pracey successfully exploited both strategies. When Thomas Bigge came to town in 1820 he heard that Terry held 1,450 head of cattle, 3,800 sheep, 19,000 acres of NSW, and that he supplied more mortgages than the Bank of New South Wales (of which he was one of the largest shareholders). At his death in 1838 he was worth 3.39% of the colony's gross domestic product, the equivalent today of over $24 billion (Rubenstein, 2004).

Terry was not alone in forging a fortune, but it was certainly easier for a convict to make good in the early years of NSW than in the later phases.

Blokes & Shealaghs

When penal transportation was conceived as the major alternative to England's reliance on the death penalty for the punishment of felonies, roughly 40% of indictments at the Old Bailey were against women. The ratio dropped precipitously over the course of transportation to Australia (Feeley and Little, 1991).

This made the convict colonies strikingly masculine. The bulk of the penal population were men and boys. Convict women constituted only 15% of the total transportees and at times the ratio of male arrivals to females was nearly 10 to 1 (in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars). Those that controlled them - the marines, seamen, and civil officers - were, with only rare exception, universally male. Moreover, convicts and emancipists dominated the white colonial population for decades as free immigrants were slow to show up.

Mitigation was only found among 'the currency', the colonial born children of Europeans. Yet, constrained by the small number of women, their numbers were insufficient to counteract the ongoing masculinity of new arrivals. Attempts were made to bolster the immigration of free women, and Government migration schemes delivered a much more even balance. However, these were matched by the unassisted, which were again mainly male. Colonial Australia's white population smelt largely of testosterone.

Empire & Sexual Opportunity

The masculinity of colonial society framed a discourse in which 'God's police' - good wives and little children - became the solution to social ills of raucous male behaviour, and inappropriate sexual activity (Summers 1975; Reid 2007). Many men but few women constrained opportunities for heterosexuality and there was much official fretting over the (illegal) sexual alternatives of homosexuality and bestiality, and a little less disquiet over the consequences in terms of violence against women, especially indigenous women. Conversely, did women leverage their scarcity value? They could exploit the market through prostitution, or have their pick of men, and a decent number of women 'married up' into the ranks of those who governed them.

There was something of an irony here, in emphasising family as a solution, as the woman shortage meant most men could never marry a white woman. Only a few married Aboriginal women, as did Jonathan Goldspink when he and Margaret Read wed, pictured. Denying men legitimate family can be seen as one of the defining features of transportation as punishment.

Bigge Changes

The Bigge Report of 1822 is notable for resetting the nature of convict Australia. It signalled a significant reduction in the British state subsidy and provided a blue-print for colonial self-sufficiency. The new agenda promoted the private sector and fostered an export-based economy supplying wool to Britain, making good use of a mainly male population. Wealthy immigrants were to be attracted with large land grants and free convict labour. Places of secondary punishment were to be established for discipling the large coerced workforce. For Britain, this was win-win: it reduced cost, and increased terror, deterring crime at home and setting the scene that would allow wholesale retrenchment of the death penalty in the following decade; and wool from Australia supported an important British industry.

The creation of Australia as a sheep-run took a little time, but it worked, based on monied men, merinos, convict shepherds, and a lot of land - a very big lot of land. Pickings of grass were thin on Australian soil, and it took 6 acres to support one sheep. The land grab that ensued brought intensified conflict with Australia's First Nations.

Black & White

Aboriginal Australians perhaps numbered over one million in 1787 (Butlin 1986). They possessed a very long-standing claim to the land. Theirs is Deep History. Habitation of the continent stretches back at least 40,000 years, the world's oldest outside Africa. European visitors were awed by indigenous land management, creating ''The Biggest Estate on Earth'' (Gammage, 2011).

Without war or treaty the great continent of Eastern Australia was claimed for Britain in 1770 by Captain James Cook, with unending ramifications. The European evaluation that the land could be put to better economic use was justification enough in contemporary British politico-legal thought. The status of the Aboriginal Nations was left undefined, opening the door to the legal fiction of 'terra nullius' meaning Australia was No Man's Land before British occupation. Native title was not recognised in law until the Mabo Judgement of 1992.

British imperial expansion meant invasion to the indigenous peoples in Australia. The invaders brought with them deadly diseases, especially smallpox - accidentally or possibly deliberately; individual renegades - bushrangers and sealers - guilty of violence, abduction and sexual slavery; cloven footed animals that would support economic growth but deplete the environment and disrupt traditional food supplies; and a voracious appetite for Aboriginal land. What accommodation had been reached between some of the Aboriginal First Nations and the Europeans in the early years was shattered when the penal settlements transformed into pastoral capitalist economies from the 1830s swallowing vast tracks of land. (Karskens; Boyce). What ensued were massacres and Black Wars, inherently uneven conflicts (the 'black armband' view of Australian history) or the peaceful European settlement of largely empty lands (the 'white blindfold' account).

Convict Colonisers

The role of convicts in dispossession is complex. Some convict absconders integrated into Aboriginal society, while bands of convict bushrangers are known to have formed working alliances. Sexual relations sometimes meant local women exploiting new options; at other times (more frequently?), it meant men exploiting them. Infamously, in VDL Aboriginal women were either forcibly taken by sealers or exchanged as part of negotiations with Aboriginal groups and were subjected to sexual slavery. Most of Tasmania's current Aboriginal population traces descent from mixed unions. The perceived threat of miscegenation later created the opportunity of assimilation, becoming formal policy in the 20th century.

Convict attitudes to locals readily turned negative. In New South Wales Aboriginal peoples were rewarded for returning runaway convicts. There and in Van Diemen's Land runaways often clashed with indigenous Australians over food resources. When a party of Tasmanian Aborigines were temporarily housed in the bottom level of the convict barracks at Macquarie Harbour the convicts urinated through the floorboards on them. When Aboriginal hunters took sheep that replaced kangaroos, convict shepherds anticipated the punishment their loss of flock entailed. Violence erupted.

Frontier Violence

Much colonial conflict was between Aboriginal Australians and convict and former convict stockmen operating beyond the frontiers of settlement in lands illegally occupied by the Squattocracy, the richest and most powerful political group in the country (McMichael, 1984). Stolen land had to be 'cleared', and they didn't mean trees. This was the eviction by various means of long-term inhabitants, of people who used land in a very different way, and it was rarely accomplished in a single act. What was created was a venue for violence.

Responsibility for colonial violence rested at multiple levels. Individual actors were clearly culpable, but so were private employers who formally or informally sanctioned brutality. The latter had an acute and unwavering belief in the validity of their newly if often illegally acquired property rights, and the legitimacy of any action that guaranteed them. The Squatters' newspaper made their position clear. The Sydney Herald responded vehemently when the state prosecuted the alleged perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre of 1838, urging the jury to acquit. It engaged in 'fake news', accusing the government of failing to protect white settlers under threat from ferocious savages with 'wandering and predatory habits' ('The Blacks', The Sydney Herald, 5/10/1838 p.3). This was a complete red herring, as 'Waterloo' Creek was an entirely unprovoked attack on an unsuspecting gathering of Aboriginal men, women and children (Milliss 1994). Chillingly, the paper told colonists, when besieged 'protect yourselves - SHOOT THEM DEAD' (Wed 14 Nov 1838 p.2).

The Colonial State & Genocide

The colonial state had a duty of care and, as in the case of Myall Creek did act to prosecute under the auspices of new Governor George Gipps. They persevered to a second trial that convicted and executed seven men - 'judicial murder' in the eyes of the Squatters. Notably, prosecution of whites for killing Aborigines was not repeated.

In other respects, the state appears the architect. Genocide - a contested term (Kociumbas 2004) - takes various forms and several are to be found in VDL. Four of the nine Tasmanian Aboriginal nations were engaged in the Black War, forcing pastoralists off indigenous homelands that had become the colony's Settled Districts. The Colonial Government responded with money, men and martial law. The VDL Black Line comprised 2,000 soldiers, settlers and convicts - 'the largest force ever assembled against Aborigines anywhere in Australia' - and was a deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing, sweeping the country to capture and corral the island's warring peoples. Ryan has argued that this was an Imperial strategy used elsewhere in the British Empire, and that it succeeded in ending the war (Ryan, 2013). The job was completed by the 'Friendly Mission' of George Augusts Robinson, who negotiated with the remaining Tasmanian people to relocate to Flinders Island (Lawson 2014).

Colonial states also created Native Police forces that patrolled and 'dispersed' Aboriginal people. Convicts were recruited into these and other roving parties. Analysis of recruits reveals that many had prior military experience suggesting that the colonial government used convicts with appropriate skills as part of its attempt to 'pacify' the frontier. Recent work implicates the Native Police and estimates state sponsored frontier killings in Queensland alone tallied over 65,000 people, between 22-26% of the pre-contact population (Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen, 2014).

Protection

Treatment of indigenous people can be seen to vary in accordance with their economic value to local employers. Aborigines were most at risk when viewed as obstacles to progress. In places where their labour could be utilised - particularly as stockmen, or domestic servants - violence against Aboriginal people was to some degree constrained, and those who regularly employed Aborigines were less likely to participate in killing (Palmer, 2000).

With the smaller numbers, official policy evolved to 'protect' Aborigines on designated reserves and stations run by missionaries - 'smoothing the pillow of the dying race', as Daisy Bates later put it. This led easily into assimilation policy which from 1937 involved the systematic removal of light-skinned Aboriginal children to be brought up white - the Stolen Generations.

Real gains were slow in coming. Inclusion in the census population returns, equal wages - for some, any wages - land rights, enquiries into Black Deaths in Custody and Stolen Generations, all had to wait until later in the 20th century.

It was in the 21st century that symbolic action was taken. This was in response to recommendations made by the 1997 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal Children from their Families, and in a context of growing public pressure. On 13 February 2008, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, led the Parliament in finally saying 'Sorry'. Lorraine Peeters, one of the Stolen Generations, responded graciously presenting the gift of a glass coolamon created by the Balgo artist, Bai Bai Napangardi. Inside was a message of appreciation for the apology. Together these two acts were designed to forge a pathway towards Reconciliation of the Nations.

Conclusion

Just as once the convict stain prevented navel-gazing, the conquest of Aboriginal Nations provides a profound and lasting scar on society that has often been more comfortable to ignore. It is a sign of maturity that such difficult issues are now being confronted. A grand narrative of spectacular economic growth does not drown out Black History: it was predicated upon it.

Convict Australia is a story of sharp contrasts. The colonial cocktail mixed coercion with freedom, deprivation with opportunity, a state that was both strong and weak, economic miracle with calamity, black with white. Colonists annihilated property rights and simultaneously lauded them. A self-styled civilised nation justified genocide. All this resulted from penal policy, but that policy was also at the service of British imperial ambitions, especially against the French. The British government had landed some 160,000 criminals in Australia's convict colonies, and commenced a process that dispossessed perhaps one million indigenous people. Persisting consequences across the centuries make Australia's colonial history a live political topic.

Further Information

Butlin, N.G., 'Contours of the Australian Economy 1788-1860', Australian Economic History Review 26.2 (1986). Butlin's estimate was a population of 1.1 million, with a possible range between 880,000 and 1,320,000 (p.107).

Evans, Raymond and Ørsted-Jensen, Robert, 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier (2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2467836 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2467836

Feeley, Malcolm M. and Deborah L. Little, 'The vanishing female: The decline of women in the criminal process, 1687-1912', Law & Society Review 25.4 (1991)

Gammage, Bill, The Biggest Estate on Earth (Allen & Unwin, 2011)

Kociumbas, Jan, 'Genocide and modernity in colonial Australia, 1788-1850', in A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Genocide and Settler Society (Berghan Books, 2004)

Lawson, Tom, The Last Man: A British genocide in Tasmania (I.B. Tauris, 2014)

McMichael, Philip, Settlers and the Agrarian Question (Cambridge University Press, 1984)

Meredith, David and Deborah Oxley, 'The convict economy', in Simon Ville and Glenn Withers (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Millis, Roger, Waterloo Creek (UNSW Press, 1994)

Nicholas, Stephen (ed.), Convict Workers (Cambridge University Press, 1988)

Palmer, Alison, Colonial Genocide (Crawford House Publishing, 2000)

Reid, Kirsty, Gender, Crime and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2007)

Rubenstein, William D., The all-time Australian 200 rich list (Allen & Unwin, 2004)

Ryan, Lyndall, 'The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: Success or failure?', Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013)

Summers, Anne, Damned Whores and God's Police (Pelican, 1975)

Author Credits

This page was written by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Deborah Oxley, with additional contributions by other members of the Digital Panopticon project team.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Convicts and the Colonisation of Australia, 1788-1868

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The white European's colonisation of Australia provides a very revealing chapter in Britain's empire building history. Uncharacteristically for a British punishment, penal transportation involved mass exile, coerced labour, invasion, dispossession and genocide. This combination of convict stain and colonisation was so inglorious that for decades the history was not written.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
GRIN - Reasons for the British Decision to Colonise Botany Bay in 1788

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Reasons for the British Decision to Colonise Botany Bay in 1788 - Erik Rohleder - Essay - History - Australia, Oceania - Publish your bachelor's or master's thesis, dissertation, term paper or essay

# data[].attributes.body
lucinda3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 Causes Effects Social Political Economical Political Social Economic As the British settled inland, the Aborigines began to lose everything; hunting ground, watering holes, etc. Aborigines suffered from the effects of alchohol and many were injured or killed fighting against the British. According to Captain James Cook, as recorded in the Journal of the First Voyage, "The Eastern side is not that barren and miserable Counrty that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be... In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruits, Roots etc. of every kind would flourish here were they one brought hither planted and cultivated..."His words imply that Australia was good for planting and cultivating grains, roots, fruits and more, which is one reason that the British may have been intrested in colonising Australia. British Causes Effects Political Economic Social Social Political Economic According to Captain Cooks Journal of the First Voyage: "The Eastern side is not that barren and miserable Counrty that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be... In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruits, Roots etc. of every kind would flourish here were they one brought hither planted and cultivated..." This suggest that Great Britain believed Australia would be good to plant and cultivate a numerous amount of grains, plants and roots, this fact also suggests that Australia was fit for colonisation. As the world was largley unexplored, Great Britain wanted to be the first to discover and colonise a lot of it, such as Australia. If Great Britain colonised Australia it would make them a much more powerful, stronger Empire. Colonisation year 9 Hisory Assignment Isabella Miles and Annelise Cron Great Britain wanted to trade with the countries close to Australia. As stated in the Lord Sydney Document of the First Fleet, in 1788: "... considerable advantage will arise from the cultivation of the new Zealand hemp or flax-plant... most of the Asiatic production may also without doubt be cultivated in the new settlement..." this shows that Great Britain was keen to trade with the countries close to Australia. According to a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to a House of Commons Committee from 1779; "...the country was well supplied with water; there was abundance of timber and fuel, sufficient fro any number of buildings which might be necessary... if the people formed among themselves a Civil Government, they would certainly increase and find occasion for many European Commodities; and it was not doubted, that a tract of land such as New Holland, which was larger than the whole of Europe, would furnish matter of advantageous return." This letters clearly states that Great Britain believed Australia was perfect for colonising. Great Britain believed Australia not only would be good for importing foods to cultivate and grow, but also animals. According to a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to a House of Commons Committee from 1779; "...he did not doubt that our Oxen and sheep if carried their, would thrive and increase... The grass was long and luxuriant, and there were some eatable vegetables, particularly a sort of wild spinage; the country was well supplied with water..." this shows that Australia was thought to be equiped for farming animals and that Great Britain planned to transport sheep and Oxen to Australia for farming. At the time the authorities wanted to cultivate and plant roots, grains and fruits and they also wanted to get rid of all the convicts, so they came up with an idea that effectively solved both problems. They would send the convicts to Australia where they would cultivate and grow food for Britain during their sentence. Britain had an urgent need to find space for the nations prisoners as crime was becoming a serious problem. There was a large lower class that had no financial assistance from the government, there was no organised police force and cities such as London were fast becoming overcrowded. Imprisonment was also used for punishing people who were in debt and would pay their bills, which was also a growing issue at the time. The authorities were afraid of the growing lawlessness in the cities so they implied harsher laws and penalties for those who committed crimes. This only made the issue worse as more people were penalised for stealing items such as a loaf of bread to feed their starving family.
According to Pitt, in his Government's plan for Botany Bay Settlement' (1786) "New South Wales... seems particularly adapted to answer the view of government with respect to providing a remedy for the evils likely to result from the... numerous increase in felons in this country"
At the opening of parliament 1787, King George the 3rd stated in a speech that: "a plan has been formed for transporting a number of convicts, in order to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols in different parts of the kingdom."
This letter from Lord Sydney to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury further more confirms the fact that Great Britain wished to send the convict to Australia due to overcrowding. the letter reads: "the several gaols and places for the confident of felons in this kingdom being in so crowded a state...infectious distemper which may hourly be expected to break out amongst them... measures should immediately be pursued... convicts as are under sentence or order of transportation. His Majesty has thought... Botany Bay as a place to answer the above purposes."
As the settlers moved inland, the Aboriginals began to lose their hunting grounds and watering holes. The Aboriginals suffered from diseases that the British brought with them. They suffered from the effects of alcohol and many were killed or injured from fighting with the British. The British government was concerned by the violence towards the Aboriginals, but they had to deal with the conflicting pressures from the settlers. British law stated that the Aboriginals and the settlers had equal rights and responsibilities. That was the theory, but in reality it did not occur. The British used to capture Aboriginals, to intimidate them and scare them away. The first Aboriginal was captured in 1788. His name was Arbanoo and he was described as, 'About thirty years old, not tall but robustly made.' The settlers also described Arbanoo as being excessively agitated. Even though the Aboriginals had lived in Australia for over 40,000 years, the white settlers thought that the land was not being used. They had settled the land believing it to be terra nullius . Terra nullius is Latin for 'no-mans land', or 'land belonging to no one'. Australia. of year 9 history assignment In 1788 when the First Fleet arrived in Australia, it was inhabited by an estimated 300,000 Aboriginals. In actual fact, the British did not wish to harm the Aboriginals. Governor Phillip began the penal settlement with the intentions of, "reconciling the Aboriginals to live among us, and to teach them the advantages they will reap from cultivating the land". However, the British assumed that their ways were far superior to those of the Aboriginals and they deserved to have their country taken over. This resulted in many fights between the two groups. Aboriginals resisted the settlers, sometimes so well that farming and grazing ventures had to be abandoned. The settlers retaliated with their weapons, sometime wiping out whole groups of Aboriginals. They justified their violence with the argument that "these savages needed to be taught a lesson to ensure for future peace". The Aboriginals believed that land was not a commodity for exchange. The British believed the land could be bought and sold and could be taken to be exploited by productive agriculture. They believed those who carry this out have some kind of "moral right" to the land. The British believed they could take the land from the Aboriginals and use it for their own purposes. As said by George Rose, Under-Secretary of the Treasury in 1786: "...the ships that convey them to the said place can have a freight of Tea home from China." this is evidence that Great Britain believed colonising Australia would help to establish different trade routes and expand their trade. CAPTAIN COOK SIR JOSEPH BANKS Great britain wanted to "beat" France to Australia and colonise it first as it was a sort of race. Historic evidence shows that the British beat the French to Australia by only a week. PITT LORD SYDNEY KING GEORGE THE THIRD The settlers delivered poisoned flour to the Aboriginals and introduced diseases, such as measles, chicken pox, influenza and the worst disease of all, smallpox. These diseases had dramatic effects on the Aboriginals, as they did not have the immunity to the viruses that were common to the Europeans. Smallpox wiped out entire tribes. Governor Phillip We hope you enjoyed our presentation!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 - Year 9 History Assignment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 Causes Effects Social Political Economical Political Social Economic As the British settled inland, the Aborigines began to lose everything; hunting ground, watering holes, etc. Aborigines suffered from the effects of alchohol and many were injured or killed fighting against the British.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1786

The colony of New South Wales was proclaimed by King George III

14/06/1825

The colony of VAN DIEMEN'S LAND was established in its own right and its name was officially changed to TASMANIA on 01/01/1856.

The first settlement was made at Risdon on 11/09/1803 when Lieut John Bowen landed with about 50 settlers, crew, soldiers and convicts. The site proved unsuitable and was abandoned in August 1804. Lieut-Col David Collins finally established a successful settlement at Hobart in February 1804 with a party of about 260 people, including 178 convicts. (Collins had previously attempted a settlement in Victoria.)

Convict ships were sent from England directly to the colony from 1812-1853 and over the 50 years from 1803-1853 around 67,000 convicts were transported to Tasmania. About 14,492 were Irish but many of them had been sentenced in English and Scottish courts. Some were also tried locally in other Australian colonies.

The "Indefatigable" brought the first convicts direct from England on 19/10/1812 and by 1820 there were about 2,500 convicts in the colony. By the end of 1833 the number had increased to 14,900 convicts of whom 1864 were females. About 1,448 held Tickets of Leave, 6,573 were assigned to settlers and 275 were recorded as "absconded or missing". In 1835 there were over 800 convicts working in chain-gangs at the dreaded penal station at Port Arthur which operated from 1830-1877.

Convicts were transferred to Van Diemen's Land from Sydney and, in later years, from 1841-1847, from Melbourne.

Between 1826-1840 there were at least 19 ship loads of convicts sent from Van Diemen's Land to Norfolk Island and at other times they were sent from Norfolk Island to Van Diemen's Land.

21/01/1827

WESTERN AUSTRALIA was established when a small British settlement was established at King George's Sound (Albany) by Major Edmund Lockyer who was to provide a deterrent to the French presence in the area.

On 18/06/1829 the new Swan River Colony was officially proclaimed with Captain James Stirling as the first Governor. Except for the settlement at King George's Sound, the colony was never really a part of NSW. King George's Sound was handed over in 1831.

In 1849 the colony was proclaimed a British penal settlement and the first convicts arrived in 1850. Rottnest Island, off the coast of Perth, became the colony's convict settlement in 1838 and was used for local colonial offenders. Around 9,720 British convicts were sent directly to the colony in 43 ships between1850-1868. The convicts were sought by local settlers because of the shortage of labour needed to develop the region. On January 9, 1868, Australia's last convict ship, the "Hougoumont" brought its final cargo of 269 convicts.

Convicts sent to Western Australia were sentenced to terms of 6, 7, 10, 14 and 15 years and some reports suggest that their literacy rate was around 75% as opposed to 50% for those sent to NSW and Tasmania. About a third of the convicts left the Swan River Colony after serving their time.

28/12/1836

The British province of SOUTH AUSTRALIA was established. In 1842 it became a crown colony and on 22/07/1861 its area was extended westwards to its present boundary and more area was taken from New South Wales.

South Australia was never a British convict colony and between 1836-1840 about 13,400 immigrants arrived in the area. 24,900 more arrived between 1841-1850.

Some escaped convicts did settle in the area and no doubt a number of ex-convicts moved there from other colonies. There were also South Australian convicts who were convicted of colonial offences.

1841

NEW ZEALAND separated from New South Wales.

1851

VICTORIA separated from New South Wales (formerly known as the Port Phillip District of NSW. Apart from castaways and runaway convicts in the 1790s, the first attempt at settlement was made on 13/10/1803 by Lieut David Collins and his party of soldiers and convicts. Harsh conditions convinced him to abandon the settlement in January 1804. He moved on to Tasmania and it was not until the Henty brothers landed in Portland Bay on 19/11/1834 and John Batman settled on the site of Melbourne that the Port Phillip District was officially sanctioned on 10/04/1837.

The first immigrant ships arrived at Port Phillip in 1839.

Apart from those involved in early attempts at settlement in 1803 and 1826, the only convicts sent directly to Victoria from Britain were about 1,750 convicts known as the "Exiles" and they arrived between 1844-1849. They were sometimes called the "Pentonvillians" because most of them came from Pentonville Probationary Prison in England. Many ex-convicts and convicts on Tickets of Leave and Conditional Pardons also moved to Port Phillip from Van Diemen's Land.

10/12/1859

QUEENSLAND separated from New South Wales. In 1824 the explorer Lieut. John Oxley took a party of 30 convicts and established a penal colony at Redcliffe. Known as the Moreton Bay Settlement, this later moved to the site now called Brisbane. The name Brisbane Town was in use by 1825 and the main inhabitants in the area were the convicts of the Moreton Bay Penal Station until it was closed in 1839. Around 2,280 convicts were sent to the settlement between 1824-1839 and at the end of 1836 the convict population numbered 337.

The first free settlers moved to the district in 1838 and others followed in 1840.

On 23/12/1862 the area of QUEENSLAND was increased.

1863

In 1825 the area occupied today by the NORTHERN TERRITORY was incorporated into the colony of New South Wales. It was first settled by Europeans in 1824 at Fort Dundas, Port Essington.

In 1863 control of the area was given to the Province, and later the State, of South Australia.

Its capital city, Darwin, was established in 1869 and was originally known as Palmerston.

On January 1, 1912, the NORTHERN TERRITORY as we know it today, was separated from South Australia and became part of the Commonwealth of Australia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Convicts To Australia ... Research Guide - Timeline

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1786 The colony of New South Wales was proclaimed by King George III 14/06/1825 The colony of VAN DIEMEN'S LAND was established in its own right and its name was officially changed to TASMANIA on 01/01/1856. The first settlement was made at Risdon on 11/09/1803 when Lieut John Bowen landed with about 50 settlers, crew, soldiers and convicts.

# data[].attributes.body
Luke

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Captain Cook from New Zealand to Australia; the aborigines; economic progress to the 1840s; the gold rush in Australia; rabbits and self-government to 1870.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The white European's colonisation of Australia provides a very revealing chapter in Britain's empire building history. Uncharacteristically for a British punishment, penal transportation involved mass exile, coerced labour, invasion, dispossession and genocide. This combination of convict stain and colonisation was so inglorious that for decades the history was not written. Instead, Australia was characterised as born by the Gold Rush and a working man's paradise ensued, as if by magic. More recently, the 'History Wars' exposed a huge unease within Australia about how to think of its penal past. A focus on negative aspects was denigrated as the "black armband" view of the nation's history, inviting the retort of "white blindfold" for those accentuating the positive. Grey did not come into it. The reality is that this history is full of contradictions. What follows is a brief and contestable account of Australia in the era of Transportation.

Convict Colonies

There were two major convict colonies: New South Wales (1788-1840) and Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803-1853). Eventually, Swan River (Western Australia) would become a third penal colony when the failing settlement requested an injection of convict labourers (1850-1868). The country of origin, colonial distribution and gender breakdown of convicts are given in the adjacent figure.

The premier site in convict Australia was Sydney, NSW. The First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay on the 18th January 1788 but quickly assessed conditions as unsuitable and shifted north to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) on 26th January, now marked as Australia Day/Invasion Day, depending upon perspective. A satellite colony was also established over 1,000 miles away at Norfolk Island, both for strategic imperial reasons and increasingly as a food basket in an attempt to overcome insipient famine in the early years at Sydney Cove.

In Van Diemen's Land, a second major convict colony followed at Sullivans Cove (Hobart) with a further outpost at Patersonia (Launceston) in the north of the island. An initial complement of convicts was sent in 1804 but convicts did not start to arrive regularly in Hobart until 1818, by which time the colony had its own Lieutenant Governor (from 1813).

Other, smaller, convict establishments developed across the continent. NSW then stretched along the eastern coast of Australia encompassing territories that would later become the modern-day states of Queensland and Victoria, and smaller convict establishments were developed at Moreton Bay (now Brisbane), and at Port Phillip (now Melbourne) effectively from 1835. While the latter is sometimes seen as 'convict-free', it received convicts landed via Sydney and directly received convict 'Exiles' between 1846-50. [This was an experiment whereby a convict who had completed part of their sentence in a British prison was then granted a Conditional Pardon or Ticket-of-Leave and sent to the colony.]

Moreton Bay functioned as a place of 'secondary punishment'. Colonial reoffending could be punished with transportation, and several such dedicated penal settlements were dotted around the colonies. They came to include Norfolk Island (resettled for this purpose in 1825), Newcastle (1804), Port Macquarie (1821), Macquarie Harbour (1822) Maria Island (1825, later a Probation Station), the latter two replaced by the iconic Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula (1830). There were many experiments and penal innovations made in the Australian convict colonies, and of particular note is the Point Puer establishment at Port Arthur for the reformation of criminal boys, marking a fundamental shift in the conceptualisation of juvenile offenders and in the rehabilitation of criminals.

South Australia (1834-) received no convicts directly. However, there was a Newgate connection as the colony's development was shaped by the 'art of colonisation' enunciated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, politician and scoundrel imprisoned for the Shrigley abduction. The territories (Northern, and Australian Capital) gained independent existences much later.

Convict Workers

Three-quarters of convicts were transported for non-violent property crimes, more than half exiled for their first offence, at least according to the Convict Indents. The proportion of first offenders changed over time with alterations in English law which increasingly punished recidivism.

Convicts arrived in the colonies having experienced a multiplicity of trades consistent with the diversity of labour markets in the United Kingdom. Between them they had been employed at thousands of different jobs. Several predominated: labourers, farm labourers and farm servants, ploughmen, grooms, shoemakers and tailors, butchers, cooks and housemaids, to name a few (Meredith and Oxley, 2015). There were over 1000 shepherds, immediately useful to a sheep run.

In the colonies, all convicts had to work. Convicts appear in the 1828 NSW Census in very familiar roles, as labourers, servants, farm servants, ploughmen, shoemakers, shepherds, stockmen, constables and wives. Note that even under sentence convicts edged towards greater independence and control over their own labour, including who they worked for doing what, as they secured Tickets-of-Leave, Conditional (sometimes Absolute) Pardons, and at the conclusion of their sentences Certificates of Freedom. In the same census, Ticket holders and Emancipists - who could pick their employment - were engaged in the same mix of jobs as the convicts, suggesting a fairly well-functioning convict labour market: had they been inappropriately allocated, you would expect them to shift when they could (Nicholas, 1988).

Other sections on Transportation as punishment and VDL Labour Contracts outline how labour allocation and management evolved, from a surprisingly free and flexible labour system in the early decades of NSW, with much Government employment, to more formal systems of assignment to mainly private employers and private companies. It was in VDL where the most disciplinary arrangements were imposed, with punitive gang labour a prerequisite to progressive release into the labour market. Each revision of the convict labour system was intended to crank up of the deterrence value of transportation by emphasising coercion, without slipping into something that might actually be deemed slavery.

Being Coerced

Convicts were coerced workers and coercion invited resistance. There were clear patterns of convict protest ranging from union-style action to more subtle malingering. The colonial discipline to which they were subjected criminalised behaviour that amongst free workers would prompt mild rebuke, putting convicts at greater risk of amassing colonial sentences ('status crimes'). They were subject to onerous physical punishment, like the lash, part artefact of the naval context of transportation, later practice favouring further detention and solitary confinement. But they were also offered incentives. In particular, they were extraordinarily well fed, with the convict ration delivering daily calories more than twice those English labourers hoped to receive. Canny employers offered even more. Over time, allowing convicts to earn remission revealed itself as the most powerful labour management tool of all.

Becoming Free

The First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788. Within a year convicts were becoming free as sentences started to expire. Within five years, 85% of this cohort were emancipated, and once emancipated they could qualify for land grants. At its heart, convict society contained this central dynamic driving it towards freedom and normality. Most of those transported would spend far more of their lives at liberty than in chains, real or metaphorical. And for much of the time, freedom meant working for good wages.

Much was done with this liberty. There was money to be had, and ways of spending it. The society convicts and emancipists created was highly urban. If not for the power of the colonial government to direct convict labour to rural employment, very few colonists would ever have ventured into the bush. Towns offered work, housing, and pleasures - amusements, gambling - and access to sex, with or without marriage.

It should be observed that Australia's richest man - ever - was ex-convict Samuel Terry, the 'Botany Bay Rothschild'. Tapping in to the urban consumer culture by importing goods and running pubs were both highly successful ways of accumulating wealth and Terry and his wife Rosetta Pracey successfully exploited both strategies. When Thomas Bigge came to town in 1820 he heard that Terry held 1,450 head of cattle, 3,800 sheep, 19,000 acres of NSW, and that he supplied more mortgages than the Bank of New South Wales (of which he was one of the largest shareholders). At his death in 1838 he was worth 3.39% of the colony's gross domestic product, the equivalent today of over $24 billion (Rubenstein, 2004).

Terry was not alone in forging a fortune, but it was certainly easier for a convict to make good in the early years of NSW than in the later phases.

Blokes & Shealaghs

When penal transportation was conceived as the major alternative to England's reliance on the death penalty for the punishment of felonies, roughly 40% of indictments at the Old Bailey were against women. The ratio dropped precipitously over the course of transportation to Australia (Feeley and Little, 1991).

This made the convict colonies strikingly masculine. The bulk of the penal population were men and boys. Convict women constituted only 15% of the total transportees and at times the ratio of male arrivals to females was nearly 10 to 1 (in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars). Those that controlled them - the marines, seamen, and civil officers - were, with only rare exception, universally male. Moreover, convicts and emancipists dominated the white colonial population for decades as free immigrants were slow to show up.

Mitigation was only found among 'the currency', the colonial born children of Europeans. Yet, constrained by the small number of women, their numbers were insufficient to counteract the ongoing masculinity of new arrivals. Attempts were made to bolster the immigration of free women, and Government migration schemes delivered a much more even balance. However, these were matched by the unassisted, which were again mainly male. Colonial Australia's white population smelt largely of testosterone.

Empire & Sexual Opportunity

The masculinity of colonial society framed a discourse in which 'God's police' - good wives and little children - became the solution to social ills of raucous male behaviour, and inappropriate sexual activity (Summers 1975; Reid 2007). Many men but few women constrained opportunities for heterosexuality and there was much official fretting over the (illegal) sexual alternatives of homosexuality and bestiality, and a little less disquiet over the consequences in terms of violence against women, especially indigenous women. Conversely, did women leverage their scarcity value? They could exploit the market through prostitution, or have their pick of men, and a decent number of women 'married up' into the ranks of those who governed them.

There was something of an irony here, in emphasising family as a solution, as the woman shortage meant most men could never marry a white woman. Only a few married Aboriginal women, as did Jonathan Goldspink when he and Margaret Read wed, pictured. Denying men legitimate family can be seen as one of the defining features of transportation as punishment.

Bigge Changes

The Bigge Report of 1822 is notable for resetting the nature of convict Australia. It signalled a significant reduction in the British state subsidy and provided a blue-print for colonial self-sufficiency. The new agenda promoted the private sector and fostered an export-based economy supplying wool to Britain, making good use of a mainly male population. Wealthy immigrants were to be attracted with large land grants and free convict labour. Places of secondary punishment were to be established for discipling the large coerced workforce. For Britain, this was win-win: it reduced cost, and increased terror, deterring crime at home and setting the scene that would allow wholesale retrenchment of the death penalty in the following decade; and wool from Australia supported an important British industry.

The creation of Australia as a sheep-run took a little time, but it worked, based on monied men, merinos, convict shepherds, and a lot of land - a very big lot of land. Pickings of grass were thin on Australian soil, and it took 6 acres to support one sheep. The land grab that ensued brought intensified conflict with Australia's First Nations.

Black & White

Aboriginal Australians perhaps numbered over one million in 1787 (Butlin 1986). They possessed a very long-standing claim to the land. Theirs is Deep History. Habitation of the continent stretches back at least 40,000 years, the world's oldest outside Africa. European visitors were awed by indigenous land management, creating ''The Biggest Estate on Earth'' (Gammage, 2011).

Without war or treaty the great continent of Eastern Australia was claimed for Britain in 1770 by Captain James Cook, with unending ramifications. The European evaluation that the land could be put to better economic use was justification enough in contemporary British politico-legal thought. The status of the Aboriginal Nations was left undefined, opening the door to the legal fiction of 'terra nullius' meaning Australia was No Man's Land before British occupation. Native title was not recognised in law until the Mabo Judgement of 1992.

British imperial expansion meant invasion to the indigenous peoples in Australia. The invaders brought with them deadly diseases, especially smallpox - accidentally or possibly deliberately; individual renegades - bushrangers and sealers - guilty of violence, abduction and sexual slavery; cloven footed animals that would support economic growth but deplete the environment and disrupt traditional food supplies; and a voracious appetite for Aboriginal land. What accommodation had been reached between some of the Aboriginal First Nations and the Europeans in the early years was shattered when the penal settlements transformed into pastoral capitalist economies from the 1830s swallowing vast tracks of land. (Karskens; Boyce). What ensued were massacres and Black Wars, inherently uneven conflicts (the 'black armband' view of Australian history) or the peaceful European settlement of largely empty lands (the 'white blindfold' account).

Convict Colonisers

The role of convicts in dispossession is complex. Some convict absconders integrated into Aboriginal society, while bands of convict bushrangers are known to have formed working alliances. Sexual relations sometimes meant local women exploiting new options; at other times (more frequently?), it meant men exploiting them. Infamously, in VDL Aboriginal women were either forcibly taken by sealers or exchanged as part of negotiations with Aboriginal groups and were subjected to sexual slavery. Most of Tasmania's current Aboriginal population traces descent from mixed unions. The perceived threat of miscegenation later created the opportunity of assimilation, becoming formal policy in the 20th century.

Convict attitudes to locals readily turned negative. In New South Wales Aboriginal peoples were rewarded for returning runaway convicts. There and in Van Diemen's Land runaways often clashed with indigenous Australians over food resources. When a party of Tasmanian Aborigines were temporarily housed in the bottom level of the convict barracks at Macquarie Harbour the convicts urinated through the floorboards on them. When Aboriginal hunters took sheep that replaced kangaroos, convict shepherds anticipated the punishment their loss of flock entailed. Violence erupted.

Frontier Violence

Much colonial conflict was between Aboriginal Australians and convict and former convict stockmen operating beyond the frontiers of settlement in lands illegally occupied by the Squattocracy, the richest and most powerful political group in the country (McMichael, 1984). Stolen land had to be 'cleared', and they didn't mean trees. This was the eviction by various means of long-term inhabitants, of people who used land in a very different way, and it was rarely accomplished in a single act. What was created was a venue for violence.

Responsibility for colonial violence rested at multiple levels. Individual actors were clearly culpable, but so were private employers who formally or informally sanctioned brutality. The latter had an acute and unwavering belief in the validity of their newly if often illegally acquired property rights, and the legitimacy of any action that guaranteed them. The Squatters' newspaper made their position clear. The Sydney Herald responded vehemently when the state prosecuted the alleged perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre of 1838, urging the jury to acquit. It engaged in 'fake news', accusing the government of failing to protect white settlers under threat from ferocious savages with 'wandering and predatory habits' ('The Blacks', The Sydney Herald, 5/10/1838 p.3). This was a complete red herring, as 'Waterloo' Creek was an entirely unprovoked attack on an unsuspecting gathering of Aboriginal men, women and children (Milliss 1994). Chillingly, the paper told colonists, when besieged 'protect yourselves - SHOOT THEM DEAD' (Wed 14 Nov 1838 p.2).

The Colonial State & Genocide

The colonial state had a duty of care and, as in the case of Myall Creek did act to prosecute under the auspices of new Governor George Gipps. They persevered to a second trial that convicted and executed seven men - 'judicial murder' in the eyes of the Squatters. Notably, prosecution of whites for killing Aborigines was not repeated.

In other respects, the state appears the architect. Genocide - a contested term (Kociumbas 2004) - takes various forms and several are to be found in VDL. Four of the nine Tasmanian Aboriginal nations were engaged in the Black War, forcing pastoralists off indigenous homelands that had become the colony's Settled Districts. The Colonial Government responded with money, men and martial law. The VDL Black Line comprised 2,000 soldiers, settlers and convicts - 'the largest force ever assembled against Aborigines anywhere in Australia' - and was a deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing, sweeping the country to capture and corral the island's warring peoples. Ryan has argued that this was an Imperial strategy used elsewhere in the British Empire, and that it succeeded in ending the war (Ryan, 2013). The job was completed by the 'Friendly Mission' of George Augusts Robinson, who negotiated with the remaining Tasmanian people to relocate to Flinders Island (Lawson 2014).

Colonial states also created Native Police forces that patrolled and 'dispersed' Aboriginal people. Convicts were recruited into these and other roving parties. Analysis of recruits reveals that many had prior military experience suggesting that the colonial government used convicts with appropriate skills as part of its attempt to 'pacify' the frontier. Recent work implicates the Native Police and estimates state sponsored frontier killings in Queensland alone tallied over 65,000 people, between 22-26% of the pre-contact population (Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen, 2014).

Protection

Treatment of indigenous people can be seen to vary in accordance with their economic value to local employers. Aborigines were most at risk when viewed as obstacles to progress. In places where their labour could be utilised - particularly as stockmen, or domestic servants - violence against Aboriginal people was to some degree constrained, and those who regularly employed Aborigines were less likely to participate in killing (Palmer, 2000).

With the smaller numbers, official policy evolved to 'protect' Aborigines on designated reserves and stations run by missionaries - 'smoothing the pillow of the dying race', as Daisy Bates later put it. This led easily into assimilation policy which from 1937 involved the systematic removal of light-skinned Aboriginal children to be brought up white - the Stolen Generations.

Real gains were slow in coming. Inclusion in the census population returns, equal wages - for some, any wages - land rights, enquiries into Black Deaths in Custody and Stolen Generations, all had to wait until later in the 20th century.

It was in the 21st century that symbolic action was taken. This was in response to recommendations made by the 1997 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal Children from their Families, and in a context of growing public pressure. On 13 February 2008, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, led the Parliament in finally saying 'Sorry'. Lorraine Peeters, one of the Stolen Generations, responded graciously presenting the gift of a glass coolamon created by the Balgo artist, Bai Bai Napangardi. Inside was a message of appreciation for the apology. Together these two acts were designed to forge a pathway towards Reconciliation of the Nations.

Conclusion

Just as once the convict stain prevented navel-gazing, the conquest of Aboriginal Nations provides a profound and lasting scar on society that has often been more comfortable to ignore. It is a sign of maturity that such difficult issues are now being confronted. A grand narrative of spectacular economic growth does not drown out Black History: it was predicated upon it.

Convict Australia is a story of sharp contrasts. The colonial cocktail mixed coercion with freedom, deprivation with opportunity, a state that was both strong and weak, economic miracle with calamity, black with white. Colonists annihilated property rights and simultaneously lauded them. A self-styled civilised nation justified genocide. All this resulted from penal policy, but that policy was also at the service of British imperial ambitions, especially against the French. The British government had landed some 160,000 criminals in Australia's convict colonies, and commenced a process that dispossessed perhaps one million indigenous people. Persisting consequences across the centuries make Australia's colonial history a live political topic.

Further Information

Butlin, N.G., 'Contours of the Australian Economy 1788-1860', Australian Economic History Review 26.2 (1986). Butlin's estimate was a population of 1.1 million, with a possible range between 880,000 and 1,320,000 (p.107).

Evans, Raymond and Ørsted-Jensen, Robert, 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier (2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2467836 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2467836

Feeley, Malcolm M. and Deborah L. Little, 'The vanishing female: The decline of women in the criminal process, 1687-1912', Law & Society Review 25.4 (1991)

Gammage, Bill, The Biggest Estate on Earth (Allen & Unwin, 2011)

Kociumbas, Jan, 'Genocide and modernity in colonial Australia, 1788-1850', in A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Genocide and Settler Society (Berghan Books, 2004)

Lawson, Tom, The Last Man: A British genocide in Tasmania (I.B. Tauris, 2014)

McMichael, Philip, Settlers and the Agrarian Question (Cambridge University Press, 1984)

Meredith, David and Deborah Oxley, 'The convict economy', in Simon Ville and Glenn Withers (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Millis, Roger, Waterloo Creek (UNSW Press, 1994)

Nicholas, Stephen (ed.), Convict Workers (Cambridge University Press, 1988)

Palmer, Alison, Colonial Genocide (Crawford House Publishing, 2000)

Reid, Kirsty, Gender, Crime and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2007)

Rubenstein, William D., The all-time Australian 200 rich list (Allen & Unwin, 2004)

Ryan, Lyndall, 'The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: Success or failure?', Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013)

Summers, Anne, Damned Whores and God's Police (Pelican, 1975)

Author Credits

This page was written by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Deborah Oxley, with additional contributions by other members of the Digital Panopticon project team.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Convicts and the Colonisation of Australia, 1788-1868

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The white European's colonisation of Australia provides a very revealing chapter in Britain's empire building history. Uncharacteristically for a British punishment, penal transportation involved mass exile, coerced labour, invasion, dispossession and genocide. This combination of convict stain and colonisation was so inglorious that for decades the history was not written.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
" The First Fleet" is the name given to a group of 11 ships that sailed from Portsmouth, England on 13 May 1787 and arrived in Australia on 18 January 1788, with the first European settlers of Australia. They were the founders of the Australian nation we know today.

These first settlers were convicts from Britain's overcrowded prisons who were forcefully resettled in Australia to colonise the country. They were accompanied by guards, civilian officials and the sailors who manned the ships that brought them on a 24,000 km journey half-way across the world to a dry and desolate continent.

Unlike The Pilgrims, the first European settlers of America, who arrived there by choice; the first European settlers of Australia were shipped out to this far away land against their will.

Let's Start with Australia Where was Australia?

For over a thousand years people in the West had an idea that there was a large area of land in the southern oceans past India and China but they had no idea where it was. They called this "must be there somewhere land " " which means the Unknown Southern Land. Many earlier European explorers sailed right past it or bumped into it and didn't realise they had reached this huge southern landmass - Australia.

On 20 April 1770, the British explorer James Cook on board the sailing ship HMS Endeavour arrived off the east coast of Australia at Point Hicks, Victoria. He continued up the eastern coastline and came ashore in an area he named Botany Bay (now part of the city of Sydney). He then went on the chart parts of the eastern coastline of the Australia including the Great Barrier Reef.

James Cook firmly established that there was indeed a southern land. He also claimed the land for Britain; naming it New South Wales. Cook, like most European explorers at the time totally ignored the fact that the land was already occupied by native inhabitants, the Aborigines. He had no idea at the time that the land he was claiming was over 31 times larger than his own homeland of Great Britain. Nothing much came of Cook's discovery. Britain was too busy fighting in the American War of Independence and the discovery on the other side of the world was all but forgotten.
Related Article: Who Discovered Australia?
The Terrible Situation in Great Britain in the 1700'sReasons for the Increase in Crime and Imprisonment

Terrible Poverty, Unemployment and Crime

Great Britain in the 1770's and 1780's was a grim and nasty place. Poor people, of whom there were many, lived in abject poverty. Their dwelling were overcrowded hovels. Their cloths were mostly hand-me-downs and were in tatters. Their lives were short, filthy and riddled with disease. Unemployment and alcoholism was rampant. There were a number of reasons for this situation. Key amongst these were the social upheaval caused by the Industrial Revolution, Britain's lose of its American colonies, the displacement of tenant farmers from the grand estates and the resultant huge influx of people into the cities. With little employment and unable to feed and clothe themselves more and more people turned to crime. They were forced to steal and resort to other criminal acts just to survive. This, together with the availability of cheap alcohol - namely gin, inevitably led to a huge increase in crime.

Harsh Penalties Handed Down by the Courts

The laws, at the time, were harsh and punishment severe. By the 1780s there were over 200 offences which carried a mandatory death penalty. Even petty crimes such as burglary, theft or chopping down a tree, were punishable by death. Over the years judges and juries become more adverse to sentencing people to death for what seemed like less serious offenses. Juries in particular, adopted a more lenient attitude towards petty crimes, deliberately undervaluing the worth of stolen goods, for example, in order to avoid defendants getting a mandatory death sentence. As a consequence many criminals were either being released or put in jail on lesser charges.

Overcrowded Prisons

Soon a huge increase in the prisoner population in Britain resulted with a severe overcrowding of its jails. The situation was so bad that convicts were being housed in derelict old ships, known as 'hulks', that had been converted into floating jails. Conditions on these floating jails was horrid. In some instances nearly 300 prisoners were crammed into a hulk just 65 meters in length (about 6 bus-lengths). In these overcrowded and filthy conditions, over 30% of the convicts died from diseases.

An Urgent Solution Required

The government could not stiffen the sentencing regime because there would have been a huge outcry from the public; but it still needed an urgent solution for its overcrowded jails. The solution they came up with was transportation.

Penal Transportation What was Transportation?

The Meaning of Transportation

Transportation meant, a person convicted of a crime, was forcefully taken ("transported") against their will to a penal colony in a distant part of the British Empire to work in servitude for the term of their sentence.

Why Was Transportation Used?

The British government had a policy of very harsh punishments, even for minor offenses, in order to deter people from crime. Transportation was seen as a more humane alternative to the death penalty.

What Crimes Could Earn you Transportation?

Death sentences for lesser crimes such as larceny which included burglary, robbery, fraud, theft, and similar crimes, were usually commuted to "transportation" for a set period of time, usually 7 or 14 years. Or in the case of more serious crimes this meant "transportation for the term of their natural life".

Where Shall We Transport Convicts To? To the Colonies of Course

Impact of the Loss of Britain's American Colonies on Transportation.

Up until American Independence, Britain relieved some of the pressure on its prisons by transporting over 52,000 convicts to its American colonies. The loss of these colonies meant that that prisoners who had previously been earmarked for America were now also being housed in prison hulks.

Canada Says No

Canada, a British colony at the time, refused to accept convicts and furthermore, the British thought it would be unwise to transport convicts (that also included political agitators) there as it was too close to the newly independent US. These convicts might then stir up trouble in Canada.

Plantation Owners in the Caribbean Say No Too

Another idea was to transport convicts to sugar plantations in the British colonies in the Caribbean. The plantation owner squashed that idea because it was more economical for them to use black slaves than white convicts who would cost them more, demand more rights and possible cause them trouble.

Lets Ship Convicts Off to Australia! Transportation to the Land Down Under

In 1784 the British government was in desperate need of a solution to its overcrowded prisons. Joseph Banks, who had been with James Cook when he explored Australia 1770, suggested just the place - Botany Bay in New South Wales - Australia. After all James Cook had claimed ownership of the land for Britain. Why not ship the prisoners off to far off Australia to set up a settlement there before some other European nation such as France did so, he suggested. The British government saw merit in this suggestion as it addressed both its long-term strategic interests of colonising Australia and the more immediate social problem of prison overcrowding at home. On 18 August 1786 a decision was reached to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay consisting of convicts, their guards and government officials to mange this new settlement.

Preparation of the First Fleet When Did the First Fleet Leave England?

Provisioning the Fleet

On the 1st September 1786 the British Government placed newspaper advertisement for the supply of ships to transport convicts and supplies to New South Wales (as Australia was known at the time). A ship-broker by the name of William Richards was awarded the contract for the princely sum of £54,000. (About 6 million Australian dollars today). From the outset the enterprise was badly organised and poorly managed.

Ships of the Fleet

In total 11 ships were assembled. These consisted of 6 transport vessels, 3 supply ships and two Royal Navy escort vessels. The little flotilla was under the command of Arthur Phillip, a junior naval officer who had been in enforced retirement on half pay at the time of his appointment as the future governor of the soon to be established penal colony in Australia. His yearly salary in his new role was to be £1,000 per year. (A$220,000 in 2014).

On 13 May1787 the 11 ships of the First Fleet departed Portsmouth, England on their epic eight month journey to a distant continent on the other side of the world.

Who were the Convicts of the First Fleet? Convict Statistics

The vast majority of convicts transported to Australia were from England and Wales (70%), Ireland (24%) and Scotland (5%). However, there were also convicts from America (including blacks), India, Canada, Hong Kong, and the Caribbean. Most convicts were from the cities and sentenced for larceny which at the time included burglary, robbery, fraud, theft, and similar crimes. The average age was 29 years and the median age was 27 year.

Number of Convicts Transported on the First Fleet

The exact number of convicts transported on the First Fleet varies from between 756 to 789 depending on how the numbers are determined. It appears that 789 convicts were shipped out from England. The lower number of 756 seems be the number of persons who actually arrived in Australia. This number is derived by taking into account the 43 deaths and 22 births amongst the convicts during the voyage to Australia. So 789 convicts left England and 754 convicts and their newborn children arrived in Australia.

The Youngest & Oldest Convict on the Fist Fleet

The youngest convict was John Hudson, a 11 year old chimney sweep. John was only 8 years old when he was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment. His crime is unrecorded but mostly likely robbery. Given that he was transported at such a young age, he may have been a repeat offender. The oldest convict leave on board the First Fleet was Elizabeth Beckford who was 75 year old and died on the voyage. The oldest convict to arrive in in Australia was Joseph Owen. He was 68 years old.

Journey of The First Fleet to Australia Eight Months and 24,000 km

On the 13th May 1787 a fleet of eleven ships sailed from Portsmouth, Britain with two years supplies and 1420 people on board. These consisted of 736 convicts, 17 children of convicts , 211 marine guards, 27 marines' wives, 14 marines' children and about 300 officers and ships' crew. They were to set up the first British colony in Australia.

The little fleet, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, sailed from Portsmouth to Tenerife, then to Rio de Janeiro and from there they set across the Atlantic through the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town and on to Australia. The journey took eight months. The distance the ships travelled was 24,000 km. During their voyage there were 104 deaths and 20 births on board.

The first ships of the fleet, lead by H.M.S. Supply, sailed into Botany Bay in New South Wales on the 18th of January 1788.

First European Settlement in Australia Finding a Suitable Location

Why did the First Fleet decide not to settle at Botany Bay?

The original intention was to establish the new settlement at Botany Bay. However, after just three days, Captain Phillip realised that it wasn't a suitable place for settlement. The reasons for his decision were the lack of a suitable supply of fresh water, the poor quality of the soil and the bay was too exposed to the sea with strong winds which didn't provide a safe harbour for his ships.

How Sydney was Chosen for the First Settlement

While the ships of the fleet, with their human cargo, remained anchored at Botany Bay, a scouting party set out in search of a more suitable location for the new settlement. They visited a site just 12 kilometres to the north that James Cook had named Port Jackson nearly 18 years earlier. They spent three days there before selecting an area Phillip named Sydney Cove in honour Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, the British Home Secretary. This location had an excellent natural harbour and a stream with a reliable water supply. Philip and his team returned to the waiting fleet at Botany Bay.

Philip returned to Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788, officially came ashore, raised the British Flag and took possession of the area in the name of the British government.

We know this location today as the city of Sydney and we celebrate the 26th of January as "Australia Day".

The first convicts came ashore in Australia on 27 January 1788.

Establishment of the Colony of New South Wales

On 7 February 1788, Phillip officially read out his commission from the British government founding the colony of New South Wales and becoming its first governor. He reaffirmed Great Britain's claim of all of the land from the Pacific Ocean westward to the 135th meridian east between latitudes of 10°37'S and 43°39'S.

An inventory taken by Phillip recorded that his little colony consisted of 1030 Europeans, 7 horses, 29 sheep, 74 swine (pigs and hogs), 5 rabbits, 7 cattle, 18 turkeys, 29 geese, 35 ducks, 122 fowls, 87 chickens, 19 goats, provisions to last two years and tools to establish a settlement. . One bull and 4 cows strayed from the settlement and were lost only to be found alive 7 years later.

Life in the new settlement was very hard and most of the people didn't have the skills (like farming, carpentry, etc.) to tame the new land. Starvation was always a major problem.

There Will Be No Slavery in Australia The Rule of Law

When establishing his settlement Governor Arthur Phillip declared that the European inhabitants of colony would enjoy all the rights and responsibilities under English Law.

He also declared that 'There will be no slavery in a new country and hence no slaves'. This edict was a godsent for the native Aboriginal people. While they were to suffer terribly as a consequence of white settlement they were never enslaved.

Australia's First Police Force were Criminals

The First Court Case in Australia

The first court case in the new colony was by Henry Kable and his wife Susannah, who claimed that Duncan Sinclair, the captain of the convict transport ship the Alexander, had stolen their belongings during the voyage to Australia.

In Britain convicts had no rights, and Sinclair boasted that a criminal could not sue him in a court of law. Unfortunately for Sinclair the court in Australia thought otherwise and ordered that Sinclair pay restitution to Henry and Susannah Kable for the stolen goods. This was a clear indication that the new colony was on the path to a more egalitarian and democratic society than the mother country.

Henry Kable went on to become a successful businessman and landowner in the new colony.

Originally the Royal Marines who accompanied the first fleet were put in charge of law enforcement but crime soon began to increase in the new colony. Due a server scarcity of manpower, Governor Phillip had no choice but to employ the 12 best behaved convicts to form his first police force known as the Night Watch.

Ownership and Distribution of Land "Terra Nullis"

The concept of "Terra Nullis"

Terra nullis is a Latin term from ancient Roman law, meaning "nobody's land". Many European colonialists and imperialists conveniently adopted this concept to justify the occupation of foreign lands they settled in. Because the native Aboriginals were hunter gathers and did not have permanent settlements; the British conveniently declared them to be uncivilised and not owning any land. On this premise they declared that all land in the new colony was Crown Land. That is; public land owned by the British government.

First Distribution of Land

In order to expand the colony and make it self-sufficient the government actively gave away crown land to ex-convicts and marines on the proviso that they demonstrated that it would be used for some productive purpose. Because of this condition of use, only small parcels of land were distributed in the first five years or so of settlement.

The first land grant was issued on the 3 January 1792 to Isaac Archer and John Colethread in the area of today's City of Ryde. Contrary to folklore it was not James Ruse who had been the first person to successfully grow a crop of wheat in the harsh environment of the new colony. James Ruse was, however, the first registrant in the New South Wales Lands Registry. (James Ruse had been sentenced to 7 years prison for breaking and entering and transported to Australia).

Ex-convicts and free settlers were entitled to 30 acres with an addition 20 acres if they were married and 10 additional acres for every child. Non-commissioned marines were entitled to an additional 100 acres above that given to ex-convicts and free-settlers.
Related Article: The History of Immigration to Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
First Fleet - First European Settlers of Australia - Facts, History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
" The First Fleet" is the name given to a group of 11 ships that sailed from Portsmouth, England on 13 May 1787 and arrived in Australia on 18 January 1788, with the first European settlers of Australia. They were the founders of the Australian nation we know today.

# data[].attributes.body
alec

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Botany Bay

Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping.

To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they could relocate the convicts. Sir Joseph Banks, who had joined James Cook on his voyage to Australia, suggested Botany Bay as a penal settlement.

In August 1786, the British Government decided to establish a convict settlement in New South Wales.

The First Fleet

Arthur Phillip was the person chosen to lead the First Fleet to Botany Bay and to rule the colony. Phillip found that the bay was shallow and ships were not protected from storms and strong winds, so he did not stop there.

Phillip chose Port Jackson as the place to make a settlement. He chose that particular bay because it had good, fresh water and the ships could anchor close to the shore. He named it Sydney Cove in honour of Lord Sydney, an official who helped to arrange the voyage.

On 20 January 1788 Phillip went ashore after an eight-month voyage with eleven ships. Phillip began the first permanent settlement on January 26, now known as Australia Day.

There were nearly 1500 people on the ships of the First Fleet, including officials, crewmen, marines, convicts, their children and wives. These people were going to start a new colony, New South Wales.

Problems for the new colony

Not long after his arrival at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788, Phillip began to encounter problems. British ways of meeting basic needs were at first unsuccessful in the Australian environment.

The greatest problem for the new colonists was the food supply. The natural food sources of fish and kangaroos were not enough. The new colony relied mainly on the provisions of food from England as attempts to produce food themselves had been unsuccessful.

The seed which had been brought from England did not grow as it had dried out after the long voyage or been attacked by insects. The remaining seed also failed to germinate because the land around Sydney Cove was too sandy for farming. The sheep brought from England could not survive either in the new environment. The supplies that were left had to be used very sparingly.

Another problem facing Arthur Phillip was that the convicts were from the city and were not farmers. Some were too old or too ill to work and were a burden on the meagre food supplies. Some convicts resorted to stealing.

In an effort to improve the situation, Phillip attempted to build farms on the banks of the Hawkesbury River a few miles north-west of Sydney. This land, however, was often flooded and was used by Aboriginal people, so the move did not improve the food shortage.

The situation became more and more desperate for the new colony. In 1789 a supply ship was sent to the new colony but it was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. In March 1790 Phillip sent the 'Sirius' to China to find food but it was shipwrecked near Norfolk Island.

The Second Fleet

The Second Fleet arrived in June 1790 to provide much-needed food supplies for the colony.

This fleet, however, brought even more trouble and became known as the 'Death Fleet'. 267 convicts had died on the way and 480 were sick. The convicts from the second fleet were of no benefit to the new colony as most of them were too ill.

The end of Phillip's government

In 1792, Arthur Phillip resigned. During his four years as Governor, Phillip had faced the problems of lack of food, unskilled workers and disease. He had, however, ruled fairly. Phillip also encouraged friendly relations with the local Aboriginal people.

In 1792 there was another change which affected the colony. The British Government replaced Royal Marines with the New South Wales Corps. These settlers had been specifically recruited in Great Britain and were granted a certain amount of land. They became the colony's best and largest farmers who came to pose a serious threat to the governors as they controlled the economy.

Despite its problems, the colony of New South Wales began to thrive. More free settlers arrived and opened up more farms and businesses and Sydney began to grow. The whaling and sealing industries also appeared.

More convicts also arrived. Between 1788 and 1868, 193000 convicts were transported to Australia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The British Arrival, British colonisation of Australia, Colonisation: resources, power and exploration, SOSE, Year 6, QLD Botany Bay Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping. To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The white European's colonisation of Australia provides a very revealing chapter in Britain's empire building history. Uncharacteristically for a British punishment, penal transportation involved mass exile, coerced labour, invasion, dispossession and genocide. This combination of convict stain and colonisation was so inglorious that for decades the history was not written. Instead, Australia was characterised as born by the Gold Rush and a working man's paradise ensued, as if by magic. More recently, the 'History Wars' exposed a huge unease within Australia about how to think of its penal past. A focus on negative aspects was denigrated as the "black armband" view of the nation's history, inviting the retort of "white blindfold" for those accentuating the positive. Grey did not come into it. The reality is that this history is full of contradictions. What follows is a brief and contestable account of Australia in the era of Transportation.

Convict Colonies

There were two major convict colonies: New South Wales (1788-1840) and Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803-1853). Eventually, Swan River (Western Australia) would become a third penal colony when the failing settlement requested an injection of convict labourers (1850-1868). The country of origin, colonial distribution and gender breakdown of convicts are given in the adjacent figure.

The premier site in convict Australia was Sydney, NSW. The First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay on the 18th January 1788 but quickly assessed conditions as unsuitable and shifted north to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) on 26th January, now marked as Australia Day/Invasion Day, depending upon perspective. A satellite colony was also established over 1,000 miles away at Norfolk Island, both for strategic imperial reasons and increasingly as a food basket in an attempt to overcome insipient famine in the early years at Sydney Cove.

In Van Diemen's Land, a second major convict colony followed at Sullivans Cove (Hobart) with a further outpost at Patersonia (Launceston) in the north of the island. An initial complement of convicts was sent in 1804 but convicts did not start to arrive regularly in Hobart until 1818, by which time the colony had its own Lieutenant Governor (from 1813).

Other, smaller, convict establishments developed across the continent. NSW then stretched along the eastern coast of Australia encompassing territories that would later become the modern-day states of Queensland and Victoria, and smaller convict establishments were developed at Moreton Bay (now Brisbane), and at Port Phillip (now Melbourne) effectively from 1835. While the latter is sometimes seen as 'convict-free', it received convicts landed via Sydney and directly received convict 'Exiles' between 1846-50. [This was an experiment whereby a convict who had completed part of their sentence in a British prison was then granted a Conditional Pardon or Ticket-of-Leave and sent to the colony.]

Moreton Bay functioned as a place of 'secondary punishment'. Colonial reoffending could be punished with transportation, and several such dedicated penal settlements were dotted around the colonies. They came to include Norfolk Island (resettled for this purpose in 1825), Newcastle (1804), Port Macquarie (1821), Macquarie Harbour (1822) Maria Island (1825, later a Probation Station), the latter two replaced by the iconic Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula (1830). There were many experiments and penal innovations made in the Australian convict colonies, and of particular note is the Point Puer establishment at Port Arthur for the reformation of criminal boys, marking a fundamental shift in the conceptualisation of juvenile offenders and in the rehabilitation of criminals.

South Australia (1834-) received no convicts directly. However, there was a Newgate connection as the colony's development was shaped by the 'art of colonisation' enunciated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, politician and scoundrel imprisoned for the Shrigley abduction. The territories (Northern, and Australian Capital) gained independent existences much later.

Convict Workers

Three-quarters of convicts were transported for non-violent property crimes, more than half exiled for their first offence, at least according to the Convict Indents. The proportion of first offenders changed over time with alterations in English law which increasingly punished recidivism.

Convicts arrived in the colonies having experienced a multiplicity of trades consistent with the diversity of labour markets in the United Kingdom. Between them they had been employed at thousands of different jobs. Several predominated: labourers, farm labourers and farm servants, ploughmen, grooms, shoemakers and tailors, butchers, cooks and housemaids, to name a few (Meredith and Oxley, 2015). There were over 1000 shepherds, immediately useful to a sheep run.

In the colonies, all convicts had to work. Convicts appear in the 1828 NSW Census in very familiar roles, as labourers, servants, farm servants, ploughmen, shoemakers, shepherds, stockmen, constables and wives. Note that even under sentence convicts edged towards greater independence and control over their own labour, including who they worked for doing what, as they secured Tickets-of-Leave, Conditional (sometimes Absolute) Pardons, and at the conclusion of their sentences Certificates of Freedom. In the same census, Ticket holders and Emancipists - who could pick their employment - were engaged in the same mix of jobs as the convicts, suggesting a fairly well-functioning convict labour market: had they been inappropriately allocated, you would expect them to shift when they could (Nicholas, 1988).

Other sections on Transportation as punishment and VDL Labour Contracts outline how labour allocation and management evolved, from a surprisingly free and flexible labour system in the early decades of NSW, with much Government employment, to more formal systems of assignment to mainly private employers and private companies. It was in VDL where the most disciplinary arrangements were imposed, with punitive gang labour a prerequisite to progressive release into the labour market. Each revision of the convict labour system was intended to crank up of the deterrence value of transportation by emphasising coercion, without slipping into something that might actually be deemed slavery.

Being Coerced

Convicts were coerced workers and coercion invited resistance. There were clear patterns of convict protest ranging from union-style action to more subtle malingering. The colonial discipline to which they were subjected criminalised behaviour that amongst free workers would prompt mild rebuke, putting convicts at greater risk of amassing colonial sentences ('status crimes'). They were subject to onerous physical punishment, like the lash, part artefact of the naval context of transportation, later practice favouring further detention and solitary confinement. But they were also offered incentives. In particular, they were extraordinarily well fed, with the convict ration delivering daily calories more than twice those English labourers hoped to receive. Canny employers offered even more. Over time, allowing convicts to earn remission revealed itself as the most powerful labour management tool of all.

Becoming Free

The First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788. Within a year convicts were becoming free as sentences started to expire. Within five years, 85% of this cohort were emancipated, and once emancipated they could qualify for land grants. At its heart, convict society contained this central dynamic driving it towards freedom and normality. Most of those transported would spend far more of their lives at liberty than in chains, real or metaphorical. And for much of the time, freedom meant working for good wages.

Much was done with this liberty. There was money to be had, and ways of spending it. The society convicts and emancipists created was highly urban. If not for the power of the colonial government to direct convict labour to rural employment, very few colonists would ever have ventured into the bush. Towns offered work, housing, and pleasures - amusements, gambling - and access to sex, with or without marriage.

It should be observed that Australia's richest man - ever - was ex-convict Samuel Terry, the 'Botany Bay Rothschild'. Tapping in to the urban consumer culture by importing goods and running pubs were both highly successful ways of accumulating wealth and Terry and his wife Rosetta Pracey successfully exploited both strategies. When Thomas Bigge came to town in 1820 he heard that Terry held 1,450 head of cattle, 3,800 sheep, 19,000 acres of NSW, and that he supplied more mortgages than the Bank of New South Wales (of which he was one of the largest shareholders). At his death in 1838 he was worth 3.39% of the colony's gross domestic product, the equivalent today of over $24 billion (Rubenstein, 2004).

Terry was not alone in forging a fortune, but it was certainly easier for a convict to make good in the early years of NSW than in the later phases.

Blokes & Shealaghs

When penal transportation was conceived as the major alternative to England's reliance on the death penalty for the punishment of felonies, roughly 40% of indictments at the Old Bailey were against women. The ratio dropped precipitously over the course of transportation to Australia (Feeley and Little, 1991).

This made the convict colonies strikingly masculine. The bulk of the penal population were men and boys. Convict women constituted only 15% of the total transportees and at times the ratio of male arrivals to females was nearly 10 to 1 (in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars). Those that controlled them - the marines, seamen, and civil officers - were, with only rare exception, universally male. Moreover, convicts and emancipists dominated the white colonial population for decades as free immigrants were slow to show up.

Mitigation was only found among 'the currency', the colonial born children of Europeans. Yet, constrained by the small number of women, their numbers were insufficient to counteract the ongoing masculinity of new arrivals. Attempts were made to bolster the immigration of free women, and Government migration schemes delivered a much more even balance. However, these were matched by the unassisted, which were again mainly male. Colonial Australia's white population smelt largely of testosterone.

Empire & Sexual Opportunity

The masculinity of colonial society framed a discourse in which 'God's police' - good wives and little children - became the solution to social ills of raucous male behaviour, and inappropriate sexual activity (Summers 1975; Reid 2007). Many men but few women constrained opportunities for heterosexuality and there was much official fretting over the (illegal) sexual alternatives of homosexuality and bestiality, and a little less disquiet over the consequences in terms of violence against women, especially indigenous women. Conversely, did women leverage their scarcity value? They could exploit the market through prostitution, or have their pick of men, and a decent number of women 'married up' into the ranks of those who governed them.

There was something of an irony here, in emphasising family as a solution, as the woman shortage meant most men could never marry a white woman. Only a few married Aboriginal women, as did Jonathan Goldspink when he and Margaret Read wed, pictured. Denying men legitimate family can be seen as one of the defining features of transportation as punishment.

Bigge Changes

The Bigge Report of 1822 is notable for resetting the nature of convict Australia. It signalled a significant reduction in the British state subsidy and provided a blue-print for colonial self-sufficiency. The new agenda promoted the private sector and fostered an export-based economy supplying wool to Britain, making good use of a mainly male population. Wealthy immigrants were to be attracted with large land grants and free convict labour. Places of secondary punishment were to be established for discipling the large coerced workforce. For Britain, this was win-win: it reduced cost, and increased terror, deterring crime at home and setting the scene that would allow wholesale retrenchment of the death penalty in the following decade; and wool from Australia supported an important British industry.

The creation of Australia as a sheep-run took a little time, but it worked, based on monied men, merinos, convict shepherds, and a lot of land - a very big lot of land. Pickings of grass were thin on Australian soil, and it took 6 acres to support one sheep. The land grab that ensued brought intensified conflict with Australia's First Nations.

Black & White

Aboriginal Australians perhaps numbered over one million in 1787 (Butlin 1986). They possessed a very long-standing claim to the land. Theirs is Deep History. Habitation of the continent stretches back at least 40,000 years, the world's oldest outside Africa. European visitors were awed by indigenous land management, creating ''The Biggest Estate on Earth'' (Gammage, 2011).

Without war or treaty the great continent of Eastern Australia was claimed for Britain in 1770 by Captain James Cook, with unending ramifications. The European evaluation that the land could be put to better economic use was justification enough in contemporary British politico-legal thought. The status of the Aboriginal Nations was left undefined, opening the door to the legal fiction of 'terra nullius' meaning Australia was No Man's Land before British occupation. Native title was not recognised in law until the Mabo Judgement of 1992.

British imperial expansion meant invasion to the indigenous peoples in Australia. The invaders brought with them deadly diseases, especially smallpox - accidentally or possibly deliberately; individual renegades - bushrangers and sealers - guilty of violence, abduction and sexual slavery; cloven footed animals that would support economic growth but deplete the environment and disrupt traditional food supplies; and a voracious appetite for Aboriginal land. What accommodation had been reached between some of the Aboriginal First Nations and the Europeans in the early years was shattered when the penal settlements transformed into pastoral capitalist economies from the 1830s swallowing vast tracks of land. (Karskens; Boyce). What ensued were massacres and Black Wars, inherently uneven conflicts (the 'black armband' view of Australian history) or the peaceful European settlement of largely empty lands (the 'white blindfold' account).

Convict Colonisers

The role of convicts in dispossession is complex. Some convict absconders integrated into Aboriginal society, while bands of convict bushrangers are known to have formed working alliances. Sexual relations sometimes meant local women exploiting new options; at other times (more frequently?), it meant men exploiting them. Infamously, in VDL Aboriginal women were either forcibly taken by sealers or exchanged as part of negotiations with Aboriginal groups and were subjected to sexual slavery. Most of Tasmania's current Aboriginal population traces descent from mixed unions. The perceived threat of miscegenation later created the opportunity of assimilation, becoming formal policy in the 20th century.

Convict attitudes to locals readily turned negative. In New South Wales Aboriginal peoples were rewarded for returning runaway convicts. There and in Van Diemen's Land runaways often clashed with indigenous Australians over food resources. When a party of Tasmanian Aborigines were temporarily housed in the bottom level of the convict barracks at Macquarie Harbour the convicts urinated through the floorboards on them. When Aboriginal hunters took sheep that replaced kangaroos, convict shepherds anticipated the punishment their loss of flock entailed. Violence erupted.

Frontier Violence

Much colonial conflict was between Aboriginal Australians and convict and former convict stockmen operating beyond the frontiers of settlement in lands illegally occupied by the Squattocracy, the richest and most powerful political group in the country (McMichael, 1984). Stolen land had to be 'cleared', and they didn't mean trees. This was the eviction by various means of long-term inhabitants, of people who used land in a very different way, and it was rarely accomplished in a single act. What was created was a venue for violence.

Responsibility for colonial violence rested at multiple levels. Individual actors were clearly culpable, but so were private employers who formally or informally sanctioned brutality. The latter had an acute and unwavering belief in the validity of their newly if often illegally acquired property rights, and the legitimacy of any action that guaranteed them. The Squatters' newspaper made their position clear. The Sydney Herald responded vehemently when the state prosecuted the alleged perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre of 1838, urging the jury to acquit. It engaged in 'fake news', accusing the government of failing to protect white settlers under threat from ferocious savages with 'wandering and predatory habits' ('The Blacks', The Sydney Herald, 5/10/1838 p.3). This was a complete red herring, as 'Waterloo' Creek was an entirely unprovoked attack on an unsuspecting gathering of Aboriginal men, women and children (Milliss 1994). Chillingly, the paper told colonists, when besieged 'protect yourselves - SHOOT THEM DEAD' (Wed 14 Nov 1838 p.2).

The Colonial State & Genocide

The colonial state had a duty of care and, as in the case of Myall Creek did act to prosecute under the auspices of new Governor George Gipps. They persevered to a second trial that convicted and executed seven men - 'judicial murder' in the eyes of the Squatters. Notably, prosecution of whites for killing Aborigines was not repeated.

In other respects, the state appears the architect. Genocide - a contested term (Kociumbas 2004) - takes various forms and several are to be found in VDL. Four of the nine Tasmanian Aboriginal nations were engaged in the Black War, forcing pastoralists off indigenous homelands that had become the colony's Settled Districts. The Colonial Government responded with money, men and martial law. The VDL Black Line comprised 2,000 soldiers, settlers and convicts - 'the largest force ever assembled against Aborigines anywhere in Australia' - and was a deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing, sweeping the country to capture and corral the island's warring peoples. Ryan has argued that this was an Imperial strategy used elsewhere in the British Empire, and that it succeeded in ending the war (Ryan, 2013). The job was completed by the 'Friendly Mission' of George Augusts Robinson, who negotiated with the remaining Tasmanian people to relocate to Flinders Island (Lawson 2014).

Colonial states also created Native Police forces that patrolled and 'dispersed' Aboriginal people. Convicts were recruited into these and other roving parties. Analysis of recruits reveals that many had prior military experience suggesting that the colonial government used convicts with appropriate skills as part of its attempt to 'pacify' the frontier. Recent work implicates the Native Police and estimates state sponsored frontier killings in Queensland alone tallied over 65,000 people, between 22-26% of the pre-contact population (Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen, 2014).

Protection

Treatment of indigenous people can be seen to vary in accordance with their economic value to local employers. Aborigines were most at risk when viewed as obstacles to progress. In places where their labour could be utilised - particularly as stockmen, or domestic servants - violence against Aboriginal people was to some degree constrained, and those who regularly employed Aborigines were less likely to participate in killing (Palmer, 2000).

With the smaller numbers, official policy evolved to 'protect' Aborigines on designated reserves and stations run by missionaries - 'smoothing the pillow of the dying race', as Daisy Bates later put it. This led easily into assimilation policy which from 1937 involved the systematic removal of light-skinned Aboriginal children to be brought up white - the Stolen Generations.

Real gains were slow in coming. Inclusion in the census population returns, equal wages - for some, any wages - land rights, enquiries into Black Deaths in Custody and Stolen Generations, all had to wait until later in the 20th century.

It was in the 21st century that symbolic action was taken. This was in response to recommendations made by the 1997 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal Children from their Families, and in a context of growing public pressure. On 13 February 2008, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, led the Parliament in finally saying 'Sorry'. Lorraine Peeters, one of the Stolen Generations, responded graciously presenting the gift of a glass coolamon created by the Balgo artist, Bai Bai Napangardi. Inside was a message of appreciation for the apology. Together these two acts were designed to forge a pathway towards Reconciliation of the Nations.

Conclusion

Just as once the convict stain prevented navel-gazing, the conquest of Aboriginal Nations provides a profound and lasting scar on society that has often been more comfortable to ignore. It is a sign of maturity that such difficult issues are now being confronted. A grand narrative of spectacular economic growth does not drown out Black History: it was predicated upon it.

Convict Australia is a story of sharp contrasts. The colonial cocktail mixed coercion with freedom, deprivation with opportunity, a state that was both strong and weak, economic miracle with calamity, black with white. Colonists annihilated property rights and simultaneously lauded them. A self-styled civilised nation justified genocide. All this resulted from penal policy, but that policy was also at the service of British imperial ambitions, especially against the French. The British government had landed some 160,000 criminals in Australia's convict colonies, and commenced a process that dispossessed perhaps one million indigenous people. Persisting consequences across the centuries make Australia's colonial history a live political topic.

Further Information

Butlin, N.G., 'Contours of the Australian Economy 1788-1860', Australian Economic History Review 26.2 (1986). Butlin's estimate was a population of 1.1 million, with a possible range between 880,000 and 1,320,000 (p.107).

Evans, Raymond and Ørsted-Jensen, Robert, 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier (2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2467836 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2467836

Feeley, Malcolm M. and Deborah L. Little, 'The vanishing female: The decline of women in the criminal process, 1687-1912', Law & Society Review 25.4 (1991)

Gammage, Bill, The Biggest Estate on Earth (Allen & Unwin, 2011)

Kociumbas, Jan, 'Genocide and modernity in colonial Australia, 1788-1850', in A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Genocide and Settler Society (Berghan Books, 2004)

Lawson, Tom, The Last Man: A British genocide in Tasmania (I.B. Tauris, 2014)

McMichael, Philip, Settlers and the Agrarian Question (Cambridge University Press, 1984)

Meredith, David and Deborah Oxley, 'The convict economy', in Simon Ville and Glenn Withers (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Millis, Roger, Waterloo Creek (UNSW Press, 1994)

Nicholas, Stephen (ed.), Convict Workers (Cambridge University Press, 1988)

Palmer, Alison, Colonial Genocide (Crawford House Publishing, 2000)

Reid, Kirsty, Gender, Crime and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2007)

Rubenstein, William D., The all-time Australian 200 rich list (Allen & Unwin, 2004)

Ryan, Lyndall, 'The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: Success or failure?', Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013)

Summers, Anne, Damned Whores and God's Police (Pelican, 1975)

Author Credits

This page was written by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Deborah Oxley, with additional contributions by other members of the Digital Panopticon project team.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Convicts and the Colonisation of Australia, 1788-1868

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The white European's colonisation of Australia provides a very revealing chapter in Britain's empire building history. Uncharacteristically for a British punishment, penal transportation involved mass exile, coerced labour, invasion, dispossession and genocide. This combination of convict stain and colonisation was so inglorious that for decades the history was not written.

# data[].attributes.body
lucinda

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 Causes Effects Social Political Economical Political Social Economic As the British settled inland, the Aborigines began to lose everything; hunting ground, watering holes, etc. Aborigines suffered from the effects of alchohol and many were injured or killed fighting against the British. According to Captain James Cook, as recorded in the Journal of the First Voyage, "The Eastern side is not that barren and miserable Counrty that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be... In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruits, Roots etc. of every kind would flourish here were they one brought hither planted and cultivated..."His words imply that Australia was good for planting and cultivating grains, roots, fruits and more, which is one reason that the British may have been intrested in colonising Australia. British Causes Effects Political Economic Social Social Political Economic According to Captain Cooks Journal of the First Voyage: "The Eastern side is not that barren and miserable Counrty that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be... In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruits, Roots etc. of every kind would flourish here were they one brought hither planted and cultivated..." This suggest that Great Britain believed Australia would be good to plant and cultivate a numerous amount of grains, plants and roots, this fact also suggests that Australia was fit for colonisation. As the world was largley unexplored, Great Britain wanted to be the first to discover and colonise a lot of it, such as Australia. If Great Britain colonised Australia it would make them a much more powerful, stronger Empire. Colonisation year 9 Hisory Assignment Isabella Miles and Annelise Cron Great Britain wanted to trade with the countries close to Australia. As stated in the Lord Sydney Document of the First Fleet, in 1788: "... considerable advantage will arise from the cultivation of the new Zealand hemp or flax-plant... most of the Asiatic production may also without doubt be cultivated in the new settlement..." this shows that Great Britain was keen to trade with the countries close to Australia. According to a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to a House of Commons Committee from 1779; "...the country was well supplied with water; there was abundance of timber and fuel, sufficient fro any number of buildings which might be necessary... if the people formed among themselves a Civil Government, they would certainly increase and find occasion for many European Commodities; and it was not doubted, that a tract of land such as New Holland, which was larger than the whole of Europe, would furnish matter of advantageous return." This letters clearly states that Great Britain believed Australia was perfect for colonising. Great Britain believed Australia not only would be good for importing foods to cultivate and grow, but also animals. According to a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to a House of Commons Committee from 1779; "...he did not doubt that our Oxen and sheep if carried their, would thrive and increase... The grass was long and luxuriant, and there were some eatable vegetables, particularly a sort of wild spinage; the country was well supplied with water..." this shows that Australia was thought to be equiped for farming animals and that Great Britain planned to transport sheep and Oxen to Australia for farming. At the time the authorities wanted to cultivate and plant roots, grains and fruits and they also wanted to get rid of all the convicts, so they came up with an idea that effectively solved both problems. They would send the convicts to Australia where they would cultivate and grow food for Britain during their sentence. Britain had an urgent need to find space for the nations prisoners as crime was becoming a serious problem. There was a large lower class that had no financial assistance from the government, there was no organised police force and cities such as London were fast becoming overcrowded. Imprisonment was also used for punishing people who were in debt and would pay their bills, which was also a growing issue at the time. The authorities were afraid of the growing lawlessness in the cities so they implied harsher laws and penalties for those who committed crimes. This only made the issue worse as more people were penalised for stealing items such as a loaf of bread to feed their starving family.
According to Pitt, in his Government's plan for Botany Bay Settlement' (1786) "New South Wales... seems particularly adapted to answer the view of government with respect to providing a remedy for the evils likely to result from the... numerous increase in felons in this country"
At the opening of parliament 1787, King George the 3rd stated in a speech that: "a plan has been formed for transporting a number of convicts, in order to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols in different parts of the kingdom."
This letter from Lord Sydney to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury further more confirms the fact that Great Britain wished to send the convict to Australia due to overcrowding. the letter reads: "the several gaols and places for the confident of felons in this kingdom being in so crowded a state...infectious distemper which may hourly be expected to break out amongst them... measures should immediately be pursued... convicts as are under sentence or order of transportation. His Majesty has thought... Botany Bay as a place to answer the above purposes."
As the settlers moved inland, the Aboriginals began to lose their hunting grounds and watering holes. The Aboriginals suffered from diseases that the British brought with them. They suffered from the effects of alcohol and many were killed or injured from fighting with the British. The British government was concerned by the violence towards the Aboriginals, but they had to deal with the conflicting pressures from the settlers. British law stated that the Aboriginals and the settlers had equal rights and responsibilities. That was the theory, but in reality it did not occur. The British used to capture Aboriginals, to intimidate them and scare them away. The first Aboriginal was captured in 1788. His name was Arbanoo and he was described as, 'About thirty years old, not tall but robustly made.' The settlers also described Arbanoo as being excessively agitated. Even though the Aboriginals had lived in Australia for over 40,000 years, the white settlers thought that the land was not being used. They had settled the land believing it to be terra nullius . Terra nullius is Latin for 'no-mans land', or 'land belonging to no one'. Australia. of year 9 history assignment In 1788 when the First Fleet arrived in Australia, it was inhabited by an estimated 300,000 Aboriginals. In actual fact, the British did not wish to harm the Aboriginals. Governor Phillip began the penal settlement with the intentions of, "reconciling the Aboriginals to live among us, and to teach them the advantages they will reap from cultivating the land". However, the British assumed that their ways were far superior to those of the Aboriginals and they deserved to have their country taken over. This resulted in many fights between the two groups. Aboriginals resisted the settlers, sometimes so well that farming and grazing ventures had to be abandoned. The settlers retaliated with their weapons, sometime wiping out whole groups of Aboriginals. They justified their violence with the argument that "these savages needed to be taught a lesson to ensure for future peace". The Aboriginals believed that land was not a commodity for exchange. The British believed the land could be bought and sold and could be taken to be exploited by productive agriculture. They believed those who carry this out have some kind of "moral right" to the land. The British believed they could take the land from the Aboriginals and use it for their own purposes. As said by George Rose, Under-Secretary of the Treasury in 1786: "...the ships that convey them to the said place can have a freight of Tea home from China." this is evidence that Great Britain believed colonising Australia would help to establish different trade routes and expand their trade. CAPTAIN COOK SIR JOSEPH BANKS Great britain wanted to "beat" France to Australia and colonise it first as it was a sort of race. Historic evidence shows that the British beat the French to Australia by only a week. PITT LORD SYDNEY KING GEORGE THE THIRD The settlers delivered poisoned flour to the Aboriginals and introduced diseases, such as measles, chicken pox, influenza and the worst disease of all, smallpox. These diseases had dramatic effects on the Aboriginals, as they did not have the immunity to the viruses that were common to the Europeans. Smallpox wiped out entire tribes. Governor Phillip We hope you enjoyed our presentation!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 - Year 9 History Assignment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 Causes Effects Social Political Economical Political Social Economic As the British settled inland, the Aborigines began to lose everything; hunting ground, watering holes, etc. Aborigines suffered from the effects of alchohol and many were injured or killed fighting against the British.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the War of American Independence (1775-83) ended, Great Britain lost its American colonies and was deprived of a place to dispose of its convicts. During the war, Great Britain could not transport convicts and their numbers had increased significantly. The convicts were jailed in the hulks of old dilapidated warships moored in Plymouth and on the Thames estuary.

# data[].attributes.body
Luke

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Until 1782, English convicts were transported to America. However, in 1783 the American War of Independence ended. America refused to accept any more convicts so England had to find somewhere else to send their prisoners. Transportation to New South Wales was the solution.

Why so many convicts?

Life in Britain was very hard. As new machines were invented, people were no longer needed to do farming jobs so they moved to the cities. The cities became overcrowded. Many people didn't have a job and were very poor. People stole things to survive. Minor crimes such as stealing items worth more than 1 shilling (about a day's wages for a working person), cutting down a tree in an orchard or stealing livestock were punishable by transportation. The prisons quickly became full and prisoners were kept in old, rotting prison ships called hulks. These ships were usually an old naval or merchant ship that could not go to sea anymore but could still float safely in the harbour.

What was life like on the hulks?

Conditions in these floating gaols were terrible. The hulks were over-crowded and cramped, often there wasn't even room to stand up! A hulk could be up to 65 metres long. This is the same size as 6 buses placed end to end. On board each hulk there could be up to 300 convicts. There were many diseases on board and convicts died. Between 1776 and 1795 nearly 2000 out of almost 6000 convicts held on hulks, died. The majority died from diseases such as typhoid and cholera.

The convicts were not fed very well. The people in charge wanted to keep costs low. The daily diet was often made up of ox-cheek, either boiled or made into soup, pease (peas), bread or biscuits. The biscuits were often mouldy. Tobacco could be supplied as part of their ration as a reward for a job well done or for good behaviour.

Convicts got up at sunrise and worked hard for up to 10 hours a day. All convicts were sentenced to hard labour as part of their punishment and could be forced to work at just about any manual task such as timber cutting, brick making or stone cutting.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why were convicts transported to Australia?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Until 1782, English convicts were transported to America. However, in 1783 the American War of Independence ended. America refused to accept any more convicts so England had to find somewhere else to send their prisoners. Transportation to New South Wales was the solution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The idea of establishing a colony at Botany Bay started with the 'Matra proposal'5 in August 1783, even before the end of the War of Independence between America and England.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History: Colonisation : Working with Indigenous Australians

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Working with Indigenous Australians Website

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Botany Bay

Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping.

To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they could relocate the convicts. Sir Joseph Banks, who had joined James Cook on his voyage to Australia, suggested Botany Bay as a penal settlement.

In August 1786, the British Government decided to establish a convict settlement in New South Wales.

The First Fleet

Arthur Phillip was the person chosen to lead the First Fleet to Botany Bay and to rule the colony. Phillip found that the bay was shallow and ships were not protected from storms and strong winds, so he did not stop there.

Phillip chose Port Jackson as the place to make a settlement. He chose that particular bay because it had good, fresh water and the ships could anchor close to the shore. He named it Sydney Cove in honour of Lord Sydney, an official who helped to arrange the voyage.

On 20 January 1788 Phillip went ashore after an eight-month voyage with eleven ships. Phillip began the first permanent settlement on January 26, now known as Australia Day.

There were nearly 1500 people on the ships of the First Fleet, including officials, crewmen, marines, convicts, their children and wives. These people were going to start a new colony, New South Wales.

Problems for the new colony

Not long after his arrival at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788, Phillip began to encounter problems. British ways of meeting basic needs were at first unsuccessful in the Australian environment.

The greatest problem for the new colonists was the food supply. The natural food sources of fish and kangaroos were not enough. The new colony relied mainly on the provisions of food from England as attempts to produce food themselves had been unsuccessful.

The seed which had been brought from England did not grow as it had dried out after the long voyage or been attacked by insects. The remaining seed also failed to germinate because the land around Sydney Cove was too sandy for farming. The sheep brought from England could not survive either in the new environment. The supplies that were left had to be used very sparingly.

Another problem facing Arthur Phillip was that the convicts were from the city and were not farmers. Some were too old or too ill to work and were a burden on the meagre food supplies. Some convicts resorted to stealing.

In an effort to improve the situation, Phillip attempted to build farms on the banks of the Hawkesbury River a few miles north-west of Sydney. This land, however, was often flooded and was used by Aboriginal people, so the move did not improve the food shortage.

The situation became more and more desperate for the new colony. In 1789 a supply ship was sent to the new colony but it was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. In March 1790 Phillip sent the 'Sirius' to China to find food but it was shipwrecked near Norfolk Island.

The Second Fleet

The Second Fleet arrived in June 1790 to provide much-needed food supplies for the colony.

This fleet, however, brought even more trouble and became known as the 'Death Fleet'. 267 convicts had died on the way and 480 were sick. The convicts from the second fleet were of no benefit to the new colony as most of them were too ill.

The end of Phillip's government

In 1792, Arthur Phillip resigned. During his four years as Governor, Phillip had faced the problems of lack of food, unskilled workers and disease. He had, however, ruled fairly. Phillip also encouraged friendly relations with the local Aboriginal people.

In 1792 there was another change which affected the colony. The British Government replaced Royal Marines with the New South Wales Corps. These settlers had been specifically recruited in Great Britain and were granted a certain amount of land. They became the colony's best and largest farmers who came to pose a serious threat to the governors as they controlled the economy.

Despite its problems, the colony of New South Wales began to thrive. More free settlers arrived and opened up more farms and businesses and Sydney began to grow. The whaling and sealing industries also appeared.

More convicts also arrived. Between 1788 and 1868, 193000 convicts were transported to Australia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The British Arrival, British colonisation of Australia, Colonisation: resources, power and exploration, SOSE, Year 6, QLD Botany Bay Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping. To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The ships setting sail in 1836 to found the Province of South Australia were part of the global network of trade, communication and governance that was the British Empire.

Britain had already established the Australian colonies of New South Wales (1788), Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803) and Western Australia (Swan River Colony, 1829). In 1836 the areas of Australia later to be the colonies of Queensland and Victoria were still part of New South Wales.

In the 1830s the British Empire was in a phase of expansion. It included New Zealand, colonies in Canadian North America, islands in the West Indies and the Pacific, British Guinea in South America, the Cape Colony in Africa, and strategic and trading ports across the globe, including St Helena, Singapore and Malacca. It was also consolidating power and territory in India, and able to exert considerable political power in many more countries through its dominant position in trade. Companies, including the British East India Company, had played a crucial role in expanding British interests.

Russia was Britain's major rival for colonial power in this period. The previously powerful European colonial powers of France, the Netherlands and Spain were in decline.

British colonies in the 1830s had varying levels of local control, but the Australian colonies were ruled by a resident Governor, who represented the British monarch and communicated with the British Government through the Colonial Office.

Britain acquired its colonial 'possessions' in a range of ways, including treaty with other colonial powers and Indigenous peoples, exploration, war and invasion. The establishment of the Australian colonies was based on the doctrine of terra nullius: the idea that Britain could claim sovereignty as the land was 'belonging to no one' and hence open to acquisition through occupation. This was overturned by the Mabo case of 1992 which recognised that Australia's Indigenous peoples had native title at the time of colonisation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ships setting sail in 1836 to found the Province of South Australia were part of the global network of trade, communication and governance that was the British Empire. Britain had already established the Australian colonies of New South Wales (1788), Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803) and Western Australia (Swan River Colony, 1829).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The reality of the first collision of cultures between Indigenous Australians and British colonials has gone unacknowledged for most of our shared history. Many Indigenous Australians have wrestled with defining their identity when so much of their pre-contact culture has been lost, and at the same time their relationship with mainstream Australian culture is complicated by its role in the deterioration of their own culture.

# data[].attributes.body
222222222

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The history of Australia is the story of the land and peoples of the continent of Australia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There were many reasons that a country would want to colonise another country or territory. Mostly, it was to exploit the new land and its resources and to gain more power and prestige over other countries. Sometimes, however, it was to change or 'civilise' the indigenous people. From the 15th to the 17th centuries, the Portuguese and the Dutch built 'trading empires' in Africa and Asia for the exploitation of resources. The Spanish and Portuguese also established important colonies in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, for the purpose of exploiting the mineral wealth of the lands they conquered. In all circumstances, the European settlers assumed that they were superior to the indigenous population and were intent on leading them to what they believed to be a 'higher level' of civilisation and culture.

New land and territory

The Age of Exploration was a period in history that began in the early 15th century and continued into the early 19th century. This period was made possible by improvements in map making, navigation and ship building. Many European explorers sailed around the world and found land, and, in doing so, encountered people and cultures that had not been seen before. The first discoveries caused great excitement and encouraged further exploration. Refer Image 1

There was great competition between countries to find and settle these new lands and territories. The first European explorers were the Spanish and Portuguese, later followed the Dutch, the French and the English. Each country was determined to find and colonise more land than the other countries and thus have a larger territory and become more powerful. More land would mean more military glory and diplomatic advantage over other countries.

Land and resources

An important reason to colonise a country was to take control of its land and resources. Many of the new lands had resources that could either be used to make the colonising country more rich and powerful, or could be traded with another country. Gold and silver were particularly important resources that were much sought after. The Spanish, in particular, found great quantities of gold in Central and South America and used the indigenous population or slaves to mine it.

Exotic food and spices were also in great demand. Many of the new countries and islands that were being discovered had new foods and spices that could be traded or used by people back in Europe. If the country was colonised, it would mean that the colonising country would have control over these resources. Even today, the resources that a country has may determine how wealthy or powerful it is.

Trade

One of the main historical reasons why one country colonised another was to set up a trading route or trading partner. As the world's population grew, there was more demand for food and other goods. A lot of these goods, such as silk and spices, came from India and China,. European traders soon realised that if they obtained the goods directly from the source rather than through other traders, they would be significantly cheaper and more profit could be made. Refer Image 2

The Spice Islands, or Maluku, are a group of islands in eastern Indonesia that were discovered and colonised by the Portuguese in the early 16th century. Many sought-after spices such as cloves and nutmeg grew on these islands, so the Portuguese established a trading centre. In the 17th century the Dutch took control of these islands and secured the monopoly on the trade of cloves. This reduced competition and made the venture more successful. Refer Image 3

Plantation colonies were also established to control the trade of certain goods and food. These colonies used black slaves to grow crops such as tobacco, bananas and pineapples. By establishing a colony, it meant the food resource could be controlled.

Trade routes

Another reason to colonise other countries was that trade routes could be better controlled. A trade route, such as the Silk Road, is the route taken over land or sea for the transport of goods. The problem with trade routes is that they can cross many different countries and territories, which increases the potential for conflict on the journey. If, however, various countries along the trade route were colonised, the journey could be made safer, faster and easier.

Religion and new ideas

Religion and other ideas were also important factors for countries choosing to colonise. There was a great rivalry between the Catholic Church and the Protestants. Each church wanted to bring more and more people into their own churches and they set out to do this by converting other cultures to Christianity - in some cases by force. They also wanted to stop the spread of other religions, such as Islam, around the world.

Colonisation can bring new standards of government, administration and health services to a country; but it can also mean exploitation, the breakdown of traditional lifestyles and the disruption of the indigenous civilisation and culture.

Europeans also had little respect for, or understanding of, indigenous cultures. These indigenous cultures had been developing in their own ways for thousands of years and each culture had their own unique relationship with the land. Europeans saw their own culture as superior. They felt it was their duty to colonise and rule these indigenous populations in order to establish what they believed to be a higher level of civilisation and culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Why colonise?, Colonisation, First Australians and the European Arrivals, SOSE: History, Year 9, QLD There were many reasons that a country would want to colonise another country or territory. Mostly, it was to exploit the new land and its resources and to gain more power and prestige over other countries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there. He thought that the southern coastline was reminiscent of South Wales, and "New South Wales" it has been ever since.

A Perfect Colony?

What made Australia perfect for colonization was that it was an untouched, empty continent that the British could occupy without opposition. Although Dutch navigators had discovered parts of Australia long before Cook arrived, their countrymen made no attempt at settling there. Cook had noticed that there was a native population, but they proved to be largely docile and to have no intention of resisting any incursions by Europeans.

On the other hand, as the first settlers soon discovered, this new continent proved to be an unfriendly host. The natives were hunter-gatherers who had made no attempt to cultivate the land or build settled communities, so there was no infrastructure to take over or imitate. The wildlife was impossible to tame or farm (you can't milk a kangaroo), and there were many species of snake, spider and scorpion that were armed with deadly venom. The climate was baking hot away from the coast, and although several fairly large rivers disgorged into the sea close to Botany Bay, others proved to be highly seasonal, drying up completely for many months of the year. There were no obvious natural resources that anyone would want to exploit and send back to England. So what reason could there possibly be for wanting to colonize this place?

The answer was precisely its remoteness and harshness. These properties were exactly what were needed when the old country wanted to export its most troublesome commodity, namely its criminals and undesirables. Australia was perfectly suited to becoming a penal colony.

Somewhere to Send British Criminals

This function had previously been taken by the American colonies, particularly those of Georgia and the Carolinas, although Newfoundland was also used for this purpose. With American independence, a new convict settlement was needed, and Botany Bay sounded just about right, although nearby Sydney Cove turned out to be more suitable for building a settlement.

The Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 25 April 1785 stated that: "Michael Dennison (from Poole), for having broken open a sloop, from which he stole several articles, was sentenced to be transported for seven years". He made the journey aboard the Alexander, which was one of the ships of the "First Fleet" that arrived at its destination in January 1788 with its thousand or so convicts, soldiers and officials. Although 28 convicts died on board the Alexander during the passage, Michael Dennison survived to become one of the first white Australians.

Who Were The Convicts?

The convicts were, generally speaking, from the lowest rungs of the English social ladder, who were used to living hard lives and settling disputes with their fists.

Although the convicts were often tough people, and were transported for having committed offences, many of the crimes would strike us today as being mild in the extreme. Stealing as little as a shilling, for a first offence, could land someone in Australia. There was a case in my wife's family history of a girl of fifteen who was asked to a hold a horse for a man who had just ridden up and dismounted next to where she was standing. The horse had been stolen, and when the constable arrived she was arrested for being in possession of stolen property. The girl later became one of Australia's matriarchs and the ancestor of a great Australian dynasty.

In the 19 th century, many transportees were political prisoners, notable among which were the "Tolpuddle Martyrs" from Dorset who were transported in 1834 for organising themselves into an agricultural trade union. They were later reprieved and returned to England.

Staying On

In Australia, discipline was often harsh, although there were other colonies, such as nearby Norfolk Island, where life was even tougher due to the brutality of the regime. If anyone could survive and make a living in Australia, the English criminal courts had chosen their candidates well. It was soon apparent to the convicts that, because escape was impossible in that there was nowhere to escape to, they might as well make the best of a bad job. Although transportation was not usually for life, seven years being the almost universal term, convicts who had served their sentence often chose not to return, preferring to make a new life for themselves in a new country.

The suggestion has been made that the penal colony was in fact originally planned as a colonial establishment, and that it was always the intention to build an outpost of Empire on the far side of the world. That is hard to establish, given that at the time of the First Fleet nobody knew anything about the conditions that would be found there, or even whether survival was possible at all. The officials and soldiers who travelled with the prisoners must have been every bit as apprehensive as their charges.

Building New Colonies

Later fleets took supplies with them that made it more likely that permanent colonies would be established. These supplies included cattle and sheep, which proved to be far more adaptable to the conditions than might have been imagined. There is a story that, when explorers tried to find a route to the interior through the notoriously difficult Blue Mountains, they discovered a herd of wild cattle on the other side, these being descendants of the original cattle that had found their own way round the mountains rather than across them!

In time, Australia did reveal its natural resources, such as gold, sapphires, opals, coal and iron (much later discoveries included uranium and natural gas). These made the early colonies much more valuable than simply a place to dump exiles from the home country. It did not take long before Australia became a place of voluntary emigration for people who wanted to make a fresh start, with more than 500,000 colonists arriving from the United Kingdom between 1851 and 1861. Many incentives were offered down the years to persuade people to go there, and it has only been relatively recently that immigration has had to be capped.

Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, by which time the colony was well established as the home of free people.

The Australian continent was never the scene of colonial rivalry between the European powers, with non-British immigration being unknown until the 20 th century. The Australian colonies became an untouchable British preserve, with Britain as their sole export market and the one source of commodity imports. The way of life of the colonists was British in all but name, and they also became annoyingly good at playing cricket!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there.

# data[].attributes.body
Nina3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The colonization in the history of Australia was very similar to the colonization of the Americas. In addition to settlers who traveled to America voluntarily, governments used the colonies as prisons. Once the American Revolution began in 1776, the English government needed a new place to send its prisoners, since the American colonies would no longer take them. So in 1788, England sent a crew to Australia, then known as New South Wales, and began building prisons. This would mark the beginning of the fall of the Aborigines.

As with the American Indians, the English forced the Aborigines off their land. Many were beaten and killed. Others contracted diseases that were foreign to them. Their immune systems couldn't fight these illnesses off, and many people died. Starvation became a major problem -- the Aborigines could no longer roam the land where they found their food, and many tribes died out completely.

The English forced many of those who weren't killed into slavery. Women and children did everything from gathering food to cleaning. Many women were also kept as sex slaves.

When the English arrived in 1788, the number of Aborigines was in the hundreds of thousands and possibly into the millions. With the death that followed the arrival of the English, the numbers of Aborigines dwindled drastically until there was almost no one left.

Unfortunately, over the next centuries things got worse before they got better. Besides losing hundreds of thousands of lives, the Aborigines also lost much of their culture. They could no longer tell their stories and traditions, and in some cases, there was no one to hear them. History was lost. At the time of colonization, Aborigines spoke an estimated 250-300 different languages [source: Contemporary Review]. More than half of these have disappeared altogether.

Then, in the early part of the 20 th century, non-Indigenous Australians (anyone not an Aborigine) decided the only way to save the Aborigines was to assimilate them to the white-Australian way of life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The colonization in the history of Australia was very similar to the colonization of the Americas. In addition to settlers who traveled to America voluntarily, governments used the colonies as prisons. Once the American Revolution began in 1776, the English government needed a new place to send its prisoners, since the American colonies would no longer take them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Why is there a random island, filled mainly with white people, in the middle of the Indian and Pacific Ocean? This does seem rather bizarre, does it not? Well it all started on January 26, 1788, the day that Australia succumbed to its former name, the penile colony. Aboriginals, Australian natives, possessed the land since time immemorial, but now with the entrance of eleven British vessels that carried 1030 convicts Australia was transformed, and as some may argue, never to be restored. The British did not only wish to exile their convicts far away from their homeland, but if possible to make them disappear. What better way to do this then ship them off to a remote, exiled and what some called 'invisible island', who's land had no previous history with it's now anomalous white creators [British's terms to move in their convicts to the virgin lands of Australia were mainly based off of net benefit calculation. The net benefits had three key elements: "the difference between the costs of keeping convicts in Great Britain and in Australia during their period of servitude; the net output the ex-convicts produced in each country after their release; and the cost of transportation." [However, when the British took over Australia they brought in more than technology and livestock, they also brought war and multiple diseases as well. Throughout this "well thought out plan" the British shared no empathy for how these actions were going to affect Australia's native people. Overall, the aboriginals viewed the arrival of the convicts as a catastrophe [ 1]. 2] 3].

The British's attempts to colonize Australia had numerous effects on Australia's indigenous people as well. At first Aboriginals saw the British Settlers as no threat, they welcomed them as visitors and there were even moments of cultural exchange. There was a temporary time where they suggested no conquest, just adventure. There was not necessarily unity, but there was peace between the settlers and the indigenous people. During this time the Aboriginals did not bother the British newcomers, and the British were ordered not to fire unless remotely necessary. The Aboriginals were simply waiting for them to leave. However, during the next few months the Aboriginals grew impatient. Aboriginal tribes became aggravated with the British's selfish acts and began making attacks on officers and convicts, in hopes to drive them out [ 3].

The aboriginals were offended with the settlers over staying their welcome. Shortly both parties began to realize they did not meet eye to eye after all, and what was once civil turned to chaos. There was no visible political framework among the aboriginals, and in fact they among themselves were definitely not united either. Multiple languages and dialects were spoken among the hundreds of different tribes, bands, families etc., all of which had a different class and lifestyle as well. This posed a great deal of conflict with the British because the aboriginals had a unique way of dividing and "owning" land that the British did not quite understand. Aboriginals began to attack the settlers to move them off their land and rightfully defend what had always been theirs. However, the British did not see the land as theirs, so they saw it as unjustified attacks [ 4]. The domino effect hit hard as war didn't just break out between aboriginals and the white settlers, it expanded between indigenous peoples tribes as well. Aboriginals were acclaimed to be living in a constant state of tribal warfare [ 5].

The British had sailed into an "empty" continent, scattered with even less primitive men. The British strongly believed that the fittest triumphed so they used it as a means to rationalize the destruction of the aboriginals by saying that it was the natural law. Ironically enough though, the first white settlers were extremely unfit for survival on the new land themselves. The settlers lived on the edge of starvation for months because they didn't know how to provide for themselves with what they thought to be limited natural resources [ 6]. In short, "By standards, the Aborigines were technologically weak but manually adept." [ 7]. During attacks aboriginals used tactics that would undermine the economic basis of many areas of white settlement [ 8].

Numerous killings and raids by the blacks, and torturing's and slaughtering's by the settlers drew on. Finally, as the aboriginal population was dwindling Governor King tried to instill some peace. He forcefully reminded colonists that the killings of natives "will be punished with the utmost severity of Law". Colonists were to be hung, flogged or given some sort of public shaming in offense to harming a native. This may had stopped some British from their crusades, but to the aboriginals the British law was a grey area. They had no knowledge or comprehension of basic law nor evidence that would be clear to put their trust in them. From then on any contact with an aborigines would be much the same. There would be a collision between "white culture or private property and a black one of primitive communism" in which they disagree on how the land or other resources were to be unitized and/or owned. Sometimes the blacks would move on, but usually the tribe's warriors would attack, only to be rendered helpless against the colonist firearms [ 8].

Attacks and raids drew on, but as the time for reassembling parliament was drawing near talk of a few new Bills raved. However, much surprise was expressed when there was not a nation emigration scheme proposed. Aboriginals were complaining how emigration was whipping off the top of their industrial population and in hand, leaving many women and children dependent on the support of their community and public. Many felt that it would be beneficial to create a new policy that would give back a sense of accomplished services as consumers and producers to the people who initially created it, even though they were about to render them to Britain. Overall, they hoped that they could utilize, the skills the immigrants possessed to make reproductive investments with their power instead of putting them to waste. This in proportion would also strengthen the imports of the mother country. This then would create benefits for the British as well as Australia. [ 9]

Although there was high hope in the air that aboriginals would surrender to the British's demands, their resistance to imperialism lasted as long as ten years in some areas of Australia. Although they were fated to lose because Europeans modern technology was against them they would not give in. Aboriginals fought for their natural and sacred land. Not only had they endured war, but their hunting environment had been torn apart as introduction of livestock drove out other game, pasteurization defeated the bases of aboriginal life, their habitat in nature was destroyed by having the rich forestry cut back and they watched as familiar plants died out. And to top it off their ancient routes and runs were fenced off. Aboriginals were now mute. They no longer had a say or do in anything about their lives or land. What was really ironic about all of this inequality and madness though, was that Aboriginals were classified as British subjects [ 8].

If Australia was Britain's place to put their defects, how poorly must their regards for Aboriginals have been? Britain's decision to unlimitedly "dump" their unwanted citizens in Australia truly showed their utter disregard for native peoples. Over the torturous years attempting to administer imperialism, British had effectively absorbed aboriginals socially into the lower class of the colony. This was in part due to the convicts that were brought into Australia, noticeably lowering the class and civilization of the region. From then on Australia was viewed as distant, weird and tainted, overall undesirable to all foreigners [ 10].

On June 21st, 1845 convicts of conditional pardons were given reports that they may find themselves being extended from Van Dieman's Land and to the property of Australian colonies and New Zealand. There were meetings held to discuss this matter the following months, but opposing resolutions and many South Australian societies expressiveness of "moral calamity" was overlooked. In addition, many letters and were passed between the South Australian Company and the Colonial Secretary. On September 6th, 1845 a letter shows Lord Stanley stating grave disapproval of the situation by saying that "...respectable persons would be deterred from emigrating to South Australia." The last dispatched document was written by the Colonial-office on May 13th. In this letter Mr. Secretary Gladstone denied any convicts even those who had received the Queens pardon to move to Australian colonies once departing from Van Dieman's Land. Gladstone continued by stating that all convicts, with the Majesty's pardon, now had the right of removing themselves to any desired country or colony except the ones in which they had been transported from [ 11].

By the 1850's things were looking better for Australia as a free country. There was no day of national celebration where autonomy was seized in Australia nor was there was a definite sign of sheer independence, because determining when Australia achieved its independence is difficult to pin point, but by the time they passed the Australian Acts in 1986 Australia was claimed free at last. Many minorities in Australia still argue that the British monarchy remains head of state in the commonwealth of Australia, but it doesn't hinder their independence. There is no day of national celebration where autonomy was seized in Australia but January 1 st, 1901 remains Australia's celebratory date, because it marks the birthdate of a new and united country. Historians call the relationship between the United Kingdom and Australia as "Empire and Separation". Much like native peoples in our country, the current state of Aboriginals in Australia is not good. Approximately aboriginals make up 3% of Australia's current population [ 12]. The legacy of British imperialism has traumatized not only Australia's land, but more so, it's former native people.
Footnotes:
[1] Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) 1-2.

[2] Nicholas, Stephen. "Australia: An Economical Prison?" The Economic History Review 43, 3. (Aug., 1990): 470-476.

[3] Deryck Schreuder and Stuart Ward, Australia's Empire. ( Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) 83.

[4] Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) 274-275.

[5] Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) 274.

[6] Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) 7.

[7] Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) 12.

[8] Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) 276-277.

[9] "New South Wales." The Times (London, England), Oct. 5, 1869, 8.

[10] Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (New York: Vintage Books, 1988) 283.

[11] "Convicts In South Australia." The Times (London, England), Sept. 9, 1846, 7.

[12] Gare, Deborah. "Dating Australia's Independence: Nation Sovereignty and the 1986 Australian Acts." Australian Historical Studies 113, 30. (Oct., 1999): 251-252.
Bibliography: Secondary Sources:
Gare, Deborah. "Dating Australia's Independence: Nation Sovereignty and the 1986 Australian Acts." Australian Historical Studies 113, 30. (Oct., 1999): 251-266.

Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

Nicholas, Stephen. "Australia: An Economical Prison?" The Economic History Review 43, 3. (Aug., 1990): 470-476.

Paterson, Alistair. The Lost Legions : Culture Contact in Colonial Australia. Lanham, MD : AltaMira Press, 2008.

Proudfoot, Lyndsay. Imperial Spaces : Placing the Irish and Scots in Colonial Australia. Manchester University Press, 2011.

Schreuder, Deryck Marshall and Stuart Ward. Australia's Empire. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Primary Sources:
"Convicts In South Australia." The Times (London, England), Sept. 9, 1846, 7.

"New South Wales." The Times (London, England), Oct. 5, 1869, 8.
Illustrations:
Figure 1. The Fatal Shore, Australia Map, http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/lawdemo/MAPS/MAPA4.HTM

Figure 2. Canning Stock Route Project, Story: Aboriginal Guides, http://www.canningstockrouteproject.com/history/story-aboriginal-guides/ .

Figure 3. Aboriginal Children, The Telegraph, 2013,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10335584/Australian-education-minister-admits-Aboriginal-children-treated-like-rubbish.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Why is there a random island, filled mainly with white people, in the middle of the Indian and Pacific Ocean? This does seem rather bizarre, does it not? Well it all started on January 26, 1788, the day that Australia succumbed to its former name, the penile colony.

# data[].attributes.body
lucinda

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the War of American Independence (1775-83) ended, Great Britain lost its American colonies and was deprived of a place to dispose of its convicts. During the war, Great Britain could not transport convicts and their numbers had increased significantly. The convicts were jailed in the hulks of old dilapidated warships moored in Plymouth and on the Thames estuary.

# data[].attributes.body
Zachary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
GRIN - Reasons for the British Decision to Colonise Botany Bay in 1788

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Reasons for the British Decision to Colonise Botany Bay in 1788 - Erik Rohleder - Essay - History - Australia, Oceania - Publish your bachelor's or master's thesis, dissertation, term paper or essay

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
British colonization of Australia & New Zealand - working

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Home Rule for Britain's Colonies, Australia and New Zealand Captain James Cook, British Sea Captain... ...Claimed New Zealand in 1769 ...Claimed Australia in 1770 Inhabited by Maori, a Polynesian people who had settled New Zealand around A.D. 800. Maori culture was based on farming, hunting, and fishing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance. From 1788 marines guarded English settlements at Sydney Cove and Norfolk Island; they were relieved in 1790 by a unit specifically recruited for colonial service, and in 1810 the 73rd Regiment of Foot became the first line regiment to serve in Australia. From then until 1870, 25 British infantry regiments and several smaller artillery and engineer units were stationed in the colonies. One role of the troops was to guard Australia against external attack, but their main job was to maintain civil order, particularly against the threat of convict uprisings, and to suppress the resistance of the Aboriginal population to British settlement.

With the end of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1840, the need for military forces diminished and troop strength began to decline, particularly as British troops were required in the first Anglo-Maori wars in New Zealand and as colonial police forces were formed. After the last British regiment left in 1870 the colonies were obliged to assume responsibility for their own defence. Only rarely during their time in Australia did British troops fire upon fellow Europeans. In March 1804 British regulars suppressed a convict rebellion near Castle Hill, and in 1829 soldiers were involved in putting down the "Ribbon Gang" outbreak near Bathurst. In an incident that took place after transportation had ended, British troops, along with police, battled insurgent miners at the Eureka Stockade, on the Ballarat goldfields, on 4 December 1854.

British soldiers based in Australia who did partake in military operations were more likely to have fought across the Tasman in the Anglo-Maori wars of the 1840s and 1860s. Resulting from the continuing expansion of European settlers onto Maori land and the colonial government's determination to crush native independence, the first war took place in 1845-46. With insufficient troops in New Zealand to meet the threat, the 58th Regiment of Foot, then based in Australia, was dispatched in February 1845, soon to be followed by further troops. Fighting died down after 1846 but flared again in 1860 before a truce was declared and peace returned.

By 1863 hostilities had reignited, and New Zealand's colonial authorities requested further assistance from Australia. A contingent of British troops was dispatched, along with Her Majesty's Colonial Steam Sloop Victoria. In July 1863 British troops invaded the Waikato area and news of the continuing campaign spread through the Australian colonies. Some 2,500 volunteers offered their services on the promise of settlement on confiscated Maori land by New Zealand recruiters; most joined the Waikato Militia regiments, others became scouts and bush guerrillas in the Company of Forest Rangers. Few of these volunteers were involved in major battles, and fewer than 20 were killed.

Despite the preponderance of British troops in the Australian colonies, colonial military forces were maintained from as early as December 1788, when the commandant of Norfolk Island, Phillip Gidley King, ordered his free male settlers (numbering six) to practise musketry on Saturdays. The first military unit raised on the Australian mainland appeared in September 1800, when Governor Hunter asked 100 free male settlers in Sydney and Parramatta to form Loyal Associations (English volunteer units raised to put down civil unrest) and practice military drills in case the Irish convicts rebelled. Six years later Governor King recruited six ex-convicts as the nucleus of a military bodyguard, creating the first full-time military unit to be raised in Australia. Both these groups joined British regulars in suppressing the Castle Hill uprising.

Not until 1854 were volunteer corps and militia again formed in the Australian colonies, but news of war between Britain and Russia in the Crimea led to the establishment of volunteer corps in some colonies and the formation of informal rifle clubs in others. When the Crimean War ended in 1856 volunteer units faded, to be revived in 1859 when it appeared that Napoleon III was preparing to invade England. By early 1860 most suburbs and towns in Australia supported a volunteer unit, usually a rifle corps.

For the rest of the century volunteer corps became more organised, with instruction duties placed in the hands of professional soldiers. In the early 1890s several thousand citizen soldiers were mobilised in eastern Australia to assist regulars and police to maintain order during the maritime and shearing strikes of the early 1890s. In 1899 trained citizen soldiers were given the opportunity to test their skills in the Boer War, to which the colonial governments, and later the Commonwealth, sent contingents. The administration of colonial military forces passed to the Commonwealth on 1 March 1901, following federation.

Although much of the military training undertaken by volunteers in the colonies was aimed at meeting external threats, European settlement was accompanied by a protracted and undeclared war against Australia's Indigenous inhabitants. Fighting was localised and sporadic, following the frontiers of European settlement across the continent and continuing in remote areas of central and Western Australia until the 1930s. British soldiers (as distinct from armed police and civilians) became involved only rarely, notably during the period of martial law in Tasmania between 1828 and 1832, and in New South Wales in the mid-1820s and late 1830s. Military authorities did not usually regard Aborigines as posing sufficient threat to warrant the expense of committing military forces to pursue them, and most of the fighting was conducted by the settlers, assisted by police.

The conflict between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians followed a broadly similar pattern. At first, the Aborigines tolerated the settlers and sometimes welcomed them. But when it became apparent that the settlers and their livestock had come to stay, competition for access to the land developed and friction between the two ways of life became inevitable. As the settlers' behaviour became unacceptable to the Indigenous population, individuals were killed over specific grievances; these killings were then met with reprisals from the settlers, often on a scale out of proportion to the original incident. Occasionally Aborigines attacked Europeans in open country, resulting in encounters somewhat akin to conventional battles, usually won by the Europeans. Resistance was more successful when Aborigines employed stealth and ambush in rugged country. In addition to guerrilla tactics, Aborigines also engaged in a form of economic warfare, killing livestock, burning property, attacking drays which carried supplies, and, in Western Australia in the 1890s, destroying telegraph lines.

It is estimated that some 2,500 European settlers and police died in this conflict. For the Aboriginal inhabitants the cost was far higher: about 20,000 are believed to have been killed in the wars of the frontier, while many thousands more perished from disease and other unintended consequences of settlement. Aboriginal Australians were unable to restrain - though in places they did delay - the tide of European settlement; although resistance in one form or another never ceased, the conflict ended in their dispossession.

Further information is available on this web site. You can use Collection search to identify photographs and works of art from this era, as well as records of other collection items.

Sources and further reading:

R. Broome, "The struggle for Australia: Aboriginal-European warfare, 1770-1930", in M. McKernan and M. Browne (eds), Australia: two centuries of war and peace, Canberra, Australian War Memorial and Allen and Unwin, 1988

P. Dennis, et al., The Oxford companion to Australian military history, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1995

Kit Denton, For Queen and Commonwealth: Australians at war, vol. 5, Sydney: Time-Life Books Australia, 1987

J. Grey, A military history of Australia, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1990

H. Reynolds, The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia, Ringwood, Vic., Penguin, 1982

P. Stanley, The remote garrison: the British army in Australia, 1788-1870, Kenthurst, NSW, Kangaroo Press, 1986

Craig Wilcox, For hearths and homes: citizen soldiering in Australia, 1854-1945, St Leonards, NSW, Allen and Unwin, 1998

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History of Australia (1788–1850) - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The history of Australia from 1788 to 1850 covers the early British colonial period of Australia’s history. This started with the arrival in 1788 of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson on the lands of the Eora, and the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales as part of the British Empire. It further covers the European scientific exploration of the continent and the establishment of the other Australian colonies that make up the modern states of Australia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the last chapter we saw how Spain built up its colonies. In this chapter, we will look at another powerful coloniser of the 14th century.
What is 'the British Empire'?

The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history. It was a product of the European Age of Discovery in the late 15th century.

The 'first British Empire' included British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 'second British Empire' included all colonies in Asia and Africa from the 18th century until the early 20th century.

At its height in the late 19th and early 20th century, the British Empire had colonies on all continents. The British colonies made up about a quarter of the world's population and area. As the British Empire expanded, it brought with it European ideas and the English language to its colonies.

Why did the British colonise?

The British began colonising mainly because of their need to trade, rather than the need for military conquest. This is why they are known as a trade-based empire.

In the 16th century, England was a poor country. When they began colonising, it was not as missionaries. When the English put to sea, it aimed to seek immediate profits.

The Industrial Revolution which took place in Europe in 17th century gave rise to the need for raw materials. The British looked at Southeast Asia as a good target as they were rich in natural resources. After some early colonies were established and become the sole markets to buy English goods, the English realised the huge commercial potential of overseas acquisitions. They consequently tried to expand their colonisation.

The British Empire lasted very long because of three reasons. First, the British have good command of the sea. Second, they were outstanding in international trading, and finally, the British rule was flexible.

The First Empire

In the late 16th century, Britain had many chartered companies. They were private companies established by the crown. Having the exclusive right to do business in a certain area, these companies became influential in politics. To expand their business and find buyers for their products, these companies looked for trading posts in the other countries. When the government in these countries was not strong enough, the English gradually took complete control. This enable the British to built up colonies in India and the East Indies as well as Hudson Bay.

The most popular chartered company known during the First Empire is the British East India Company. This company was granted an English Royal Charter by Elizabeth title "Elizabeth I of England" in 1600 to support trading in India.

In the 17th century, the British set up plantations to produce sugar and tobacco on the islands of the Caribbean as well as in North America. These colonies attracted a large amount of European settlers. The British needed labourers to work in these plantations, so they started to trade slaves.

During this time, the common way the British traded with its colonies was that it would sell West Indian molasses, sugar, English cloth, manufactured goods, American fish and timber to its colonies. In exchange for these goods, the colonies would sell them African slaves, who the British could use in their plantations. To secure its right and to increase its wealth, the British government passed a law which allowed only British ships to trade with the colonies. This meant that these colonies could only sell their products to England.

In the early 18th century, chartered companies were reorganised. In India, from the 1740s to 1763, the British East India Company had a conflict with its French counterpart. The British finally won. In 1763, the British established colonies in India and Canada. However, the British met many difficulties when they tried to colonise America. The first British Empire ended with the successful revolution of thirteen colonial states in America.

The Second Empire

Realising the potential of the colonies, the British started to expand further, first by the voyages of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and second, through new conquests in India after 1763.

After the victories of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), the British had more colonies. These included, Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, British Guiana (Guyana), and Malta. Early in the 19th century, the British gradually abandoned many strict regulations. It became a very strong country in the world, which allowed it to apply the principle of free trade.

To improve the lives of many native inhabitants, the British government also abolished slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833. The British also built up regular civil service to create a more efficient colonial administration. However, when these colonies became less dependent on the British, they also developed a stronger national identity. Thus, they tried to liberalise themselves from the British, who also encouraged these colonies to have a government of its own.

In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of British North America." Durham suggested, that to retain its colonies, Britain should grant them a large measure of internal self-government.

In 1867, the British gradually surrendered their direct governing powers. Australia and New Zealand also became self-governing dominions. However, the British government still needed to control India because of its relationship with the East India Company. To govern territories with large native populations, the British developed a system called the crown colony system. Such colonies were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils from the native inhabitants.

In the later decades of the 19th century, other European countries competed for empire in which the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings. These colonies included Nigeria, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, Egypt, Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya. This forced the British to encourage a tie and solidarity between its colonies. In 1887, the British government issued the Imperial Conference, which was an attempt to strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories.

Legacies

The British left many legacies to its colonial countries. Although we still discuss the values of these legacies, they should be listed as follows:

It brought significant changes to Southeast Asia. The British built more ports, railways and roads to these countries.

The British colonisation changed the social and racial structure of the colonised countries.

The British colonisation led many local intellectuals to rise up to liberalise their country. It led to the appearance of nationalism.

As a result of British colonisation, English became a popular language of the world and continues to be dominant even today.

The British colonisation brought law, order and technology into India and changed them into a modern state.

The modern technology from the British, which was aimed to serve their productions and trading, was also introduced into the colonised countries thus enabling their modernisation and development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Great Britain, Colonisation History, Colonisation: resources, power and exploration, SOSE, Year 6, QLD In the last chapter we have seen how the Spanish built up its colonies. In this chapter, we will discover another powerful coloniser of the 14th century. You will understand why there is such a saying 'The sun never sets on the British Empire'.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The first shipment of medicinal cannabis arrived in Perth earlier last year, but weed's history in Australia stemmed from the arrival of the First Fleet.

At Joseph Bank's request, hemp boarded the first Fleet as cargo 'for commerce'. His hope was to produce hemp commercially for the new colony. According to Dr John Jiggens, Britain was deep in the hemp trade. Banks saw the settlement of Australia as a way of expanding Britain's hemp trade:

" The implications of Britain´s need for hemp made the hemp trade a strategic target in times of war, as this brief overview of the Hemp Question shows. Although the strategy of reliance on Russian hemp was risky, it was the basis of empire. Without the Russian hemp trade, the British Empire would never have been as great. Great as Great Britain became, its empire dangled by that ribbon of hempen trade that wound its way through the narrow and dangerous passages of the Baltic Sea.¨

Jiggens believes the original plan for New South Wales was to develop a new hemp colony, the resettlement of convicts was just an elaborate cover. In those days, cannabis wasn't about marijuana; it was all about hemp. The long-stem fibres of the plant were used for sails, cables and rigging. For a first-rate warship, hemp was of great importance. Hemp was to them, as oil is to us today.

Image: Pixabay, The Cannabis plant

So was the real reason for colonising New South Wales to create a potential hemp colony?

Banks played a major role in the plan to colonise New South Wales. Banks, as we know, had an interest in hemp and may have seen New South Wales as a potential hemp colony. Even publishing a file called Hemp 1764-1810. Historian K.M Dallas suggested that the 'the dumping of convicts view' was way too simple an explanation for colonisation of Australia and that there were hidden reasons.

Image: Wikipedia, The flora homoeopathica, illustrations and descriptions of the medicinal plants used as homoeopathic remedies /by Edward Hamilton

This may have included Bank's hemp replacement plans. At the height of the French Revolution wars in 1797 Banks was appointed to the Privy Council of Trade. A crucial time for France, Banks was put in charge of hemp policies within the British Empire. His file: Hemp 1764-1810 was full of his papers on hemp trade, growth and economic trade.

The British experimented with hemp colonies in India, but due to an error in cannabis taxonomy, they were unaware that they were trying to turn "dope into rope." Ganga (the plant they were growing in India) is not a fibre crop it's a crop that produces the drug marijuana. Banks seeing the intoxicating the drug has supplied it to the poet Coleridge. Not only was Banks a substantial cultivator of the drug cannabis, he was also the first recorded drug dealer in Britain and Australia.

Image: Simple Wikimedia

Cannabis was enjoyed recreationally and medicinally in Australia and the western world until the 1930s when the drug was demonised as "an evil sex drug that causes its victims to behave like raving sex maniacs."

Surprisingly the campaign against the 'sex drug' didn't stop demand or use. And now more than 100 years after its arrival in Australia, it is (somewhat) legal again.

I guess you could say Joseph Banks really blazed the way forward...

Header: Wikimedia Commons

The Founding of Australia. By Capt. Arthur Phillip R.N. Sydney Cove, Jan. 26th

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Was Cannabis the Real Reason Britain Colonised Australia?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first shipment of medicinal cannabis arrived in Perth earlier last year, but weed's history in Australia stemmed from the arrival of the First Fleet. At Joseph Bank's request, hemp boarded the first Fleet as cargo 'for commerce'. His hope was to produce hemp commercially for the new colony.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The ships setting sail in 1836 to found the Province of South Australia were part of the global network of trade, communication and governance that was the British Empire.

Britain had already established the Australian colonies of New South Wales (1788), Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803) and Western Australia (Swan River Colony, 1829). In 1836 the areas of Australia later to be the colonies of Queensland and Victoria were still part of New South Wales.

In the 1830s the British Empire was in a phase of expansion. It included New Zealand, colonies in Canadian North America, islands in the West Indies and the Pacific, British Guinea in South America, the Cape Colony in Africa, and strategic and trading ports across the globe, including St Helena, Singapore and Malacca. It was also consolidating power and territory in India, and able to exert considerable political power in many more countries through its dominant position in trade. Companies, including the British East India Company, had played a crucial role in expanding British interests.

Russia was Britain's major rival for colonial power in this period. The previously powerful European colonial powers of France, the Netherlands and Spain were in decline.

British colonies in the 1830s had varying levels of local control, but the Australian colonies were ruled by a resident Governor, who represented the British monarch and communicated with the British Government through the Colonial Office.

Britain acquired its colonial 'possessions' in a range of ways, including treaty with other colonial powers and Indigenous peoples, exploration, war and invasion. The establishment of the Australian colonies was based on the doctrine of terra nullius: the idea that Britain could claim sovereignty as the land was 'belonging to no one' and hence open to acquisition through occupation. This was overturned by the Mabo case of 1992 which recognised that Australia's Indigenous peoples had native title at the time of colonisation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ships setting sail in 1836 to found the Province of South Australia were part of the global network of trade, communication and governance that was the British Empire. Britain had already established the Australian colonies of New South Wales (1788), Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803) and Western Australia (Swan River Colony, 1829).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there. He thought that the southern coastline was reminiscent of South Wales, and "New South Wales" it has been ever since.

A Perfect Colony?

What made Australia perfect for colonization was that it was an untouched, empty continent that the British could occupy without opposition. Although Dutch navigators had discovered parts of Australia long before Cook arrived, their countrymen made no attempt at settling there. Cook had noticed that there was a native population, but they proved to be largely docile and to have no intention of resisting any incursions by Europeans.

On the other hand, as the first settlers soon discovered, this new continent proved to be an unfriendly host. The natives were hunter-gatherers who had made no attempt to cultivate the land or build settled communities, so there was no infrastructure to take over or imitate. The wildlife was impossible to tame or farm (you can't milk a kangaroo), and there were many species of snake, spider and scorpion that were armed with deadly venom. The climate was baking hot away from the coast, and although several fairly large rivers disgorged into the sea close to Botany Bay, others proved to be highly seasonal, drying up completely for many months of the year. There were no obvious natural resources that anyone would want to exploit and send back to England. So what reason could there possibly be for wanting to colonize this place?

The answer was precisely its remoteness and harshness. These properties were exactly what were needed when the old country wanted to export its most troublesome commodity, namely its criminals and undesirables. Australia was perfectly suited to becoming a penal colony.

Somewhere to Send British Criminals

This function had previously been taken by the American colonies, particularly those of Georgia and the Carolinas, although Newfoundland was also used for this purpose. With American independence, a new convict settlement was needed, and Botany Bay sounded just about right, although nearby Sydney Cove turned out to be more suitable for building a settlement.

The Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 25 April 1785 stated that: "Michael Dennison (from Poole), for having broken open a sloop, from which he stole several articles, was sentenced to be transported for seven years". He made the journey aboard the Alexander, which was one of the ships of the "First Fleet" that arrived at its destination in January 1788 with its thousand or so convicts, soldiers and officials. Although 28 convicts died on board the Alexander during the passage, Michael Dennison survived to become one of the first white Australians.

Who Were The Convicts?

The convicts were, generally speaking, from the lowest rungs of the English social ladder, who were used to living hard lives and settling disputes with their fists.

Although the convicts were often tough people, and were transported for having committed offences, many of the crimes would strike us today as being mild in the extreme. Stealing as little as a shilling, for a first offence, could land someone in Australia. There was a case in my wife's family history of a girl of fifteen who was asked to a hold a horse for a man who had just ridden up and dismounted next to where she was standing. The horse had been stolen, and when the constable arrived she was arrested for being in possession of stolen property. The girl later became one of Australia's matriarchs and the ancestor of a great Australian dynasty.

In the 19 th century, many transportees were political prisoners, notable among which were the "Tolpuddle Martyrs" from Dorset who were transported in 1834 for organising themselves into an agricultural trade union. They were later reprieved and returned to England.

Staying On

In Australia, discipline was often harsh, although there were other colonies, such as nearby Norfolk Island, where life was even tougher due to the brutality of the regime. If anyone could survive and make a living in Australia, the English criminal courts had chosen their candidates well. It was soon apparent to the convicts that, because escape was impossible in that there was nowhere to escape to, they might as well make the best of a bad job. Although transportation was not usually for life, seven years being the almost universal term, convicts who had served their sentence often chose not to return, preferring to make a new life for themselves in a new country.

The suggestion has been made that the penal colony was in fact originally planned as a colonial establishment, and that it was always the intention to build an outpost of Empire on the far side of the world. That is hard to establish, given that at the time of the First Fleet nobody knew anything about the conditions that would be found there, or even whether survival was possible at all. The officials and soldiers who travelled with the prisoners must have been every bit as apprehensive as their charges.

Building New Colonies

Later fleets took supplies with them that made it more likely that permanent colonies would be established. These supplies included cattle and sheep, which proved to be far more adaptable to the conditions than might have been imagined. There is a story that, when explorers tried to find a route to the interior through the notoriously difficult Blue Mountains, they discovered a herd of wild cattle on the other side, these being descendants of the original cattle that had found their own way round the mountains rather than across them!

In time, Australia did reveal its natural resources, such as gold, sapphires, opals, coal and iron (much later discoveries included uranium and natural gas). These made the early colonies much more valuable than simply a place to dump exiles from the home country. It did not take long before Australia became a place of voluntary emigration for people who wanted to make a fresh start, with more than 500,000 colonists arriving from the United Kingdom between 1851 and 1861. Many incentives were offered down the years to persuade people to go there, and it has only been relatively recently that immigration has had to be capped.

Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, by which time the colony was well established as the home of free people.

The Australian continent was never the scene of colonial rivalry between the European powers, with non-British immigration being unknown until the 20 th century. The Australian colonies became an untouchable British preserve, with Britain as their sole export market and the one source of commodity imports. The way of life of the colonists was British in all but name, and they also became annoyingly good at playing cricket!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What were the reasons (economic, political and social) for the establishment of British colonies in Australia after 1800?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Botany Bay

Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping.

To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they could relocate the convicts. Sir Joseph Banks, who had joined James Cook on his voyage to Australia, suggested Botany Bay as a penal settlement.

In August 1786, the British Government decided to establish a convict settlement in New South Wales.

The First Fleet

Arthur Phillip was the person chosen to lead the First Fleet to Botany Bay and to rule the colony. Phillip found that the bay was shallow and ships were not protected from storms and strong winds, so he did not stop there.

Phillip chose Port Jackson as the place to make a settlement. He chose that particular bay because it had good, fresh water and the ships could anchor close to the shore. He named it Sydney Cove in honour of Lord Sydney, an official who helped to arrange the voyage.

On 20 January 1788 Phillip went ashore after an eight-month voyage with eleven ships. Phillip began the first permanent settlement on January 26, now known as Australia Day.

There were nearly 1500 people on the ships of the First Fleet, including officials, crewmen, marines, convicts, their children and wives. These people were going to start a new colony, New South Wales.

Problems for the new colony

Not long after his arrival at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788, Phillip began to encounter problems. British ways of meeting basic needs were at first unsuccessful in the Australian environment.

The greatest problem for the new colonists was the food supply. The natural food sources of fish and kangaroos were not enough. The new colony relied mainly on the provisions of food from England as attempts to produce food themselves had been unsuccessful.

The seed which had been brought from England did not grow as it had dried out after the long voyage or been attacked by insects. The remaining seed also failed to germinate because the land around Sydney Cove was too sandy for farming. The sheep brought from England could not survive either in the new environment. The supplies that were left had to be used very sparingly.

Another problem facing Arthur Phillip was that the convicts were from the city and were not farmers. Some were too old or too ill to work and were a burden on the meagre food supplies. Some convicts resorted to stealing.

In an effort to improve the situation, Phillip attempted to build farms on the banks of the Hawkesbury River a few miles north-west of Sydney. This land, however, was often flooded and was used by Aboriginal people, so the move did not improve the food shortage.

The situation became more and more desperate for the new colony. In 1789 a supply ship was sent to the new colony but it was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. In March 1790 Phillip sent the 'Sirius' to China to find food but it was shipwrecked near Norfolk Island.

The Second Fleet

The Second Fleet arrived in June 1790 to provide much-needed food supplies for the colony.

This fleet, however, brought even more trouble and became known as the 'Death Fleet'. 267 convicts had died on the way and 480 were sick. The convicts from the second fleet were of no benefit to the new colony as most of them were too ill.

The end of Phillip's government

In 1792, Arthur Phillip resigned. During his four years as Governor, Phillip had faced the problems of lack of food, unskilled workers and disease. He had, however, ruled fairly. Phillip also encouraged friendly relations with the local Aboriginal people.

In 1792 there was another change which affected the colony. The British Government replaced Royal Marines with the New South Wales Corps. These settlers had been specifically recruited in Great Britain and were granted a certain amount of land. They became the colony's best and largest farmers who came to pose a serious threat to the governors as they controlled the economy.

Despite its problems, the colony of New South Wales began to thrive. More free settlers arrived and opened up more farms and businesses and Sydney began to grow. The whaling and sealing industries also appeared.

More convicts also arrived. Between 1788 and 1868, 193000 convicts were transported to Australia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The British Arrival, British colonisation of Australia, Colonisation: resources, power and exploration, SOSE, Year 6, QLD Botany Bay Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping. To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there. He thought that the southern coastline was reminiscent of South Wales, and "New South Wales" it has been ever since.

A Perfect Colony?

What made Australia perfect for colonization was that it was an untouched, empty continent that the British could occupy without opposition. Although Dutch navigators had discovered parts of Australia long before Cook arrived, their countrymen made no attempt at settling there. Cook had noticed that there was a native population, but they proved to be largely docile and to have no intention of resisting any incursions by Europeans.

On the other hand, as the first settlers soon discovered, this new continent proved to be an unfriendly host. The natives were hunter-gatherers who had made no attempt to cultivate the land or build settled communities, so there was no infrastructure to take over or imitate. The wildlife was impossible to tame or farm (you can't milk a kangaroo), and there were many species of snake, spider and scorpion that were armed with deadly venom. The climate was baking hot away from the coast, and although several fairly large rivers disgorged into the sea close to Botany Bay, others proved to be highly seasonal, drying up completely for many months of the year. There were no obvious natural resources that anyone would want to exploit and send back to England. So what reason could there possibly be for wanting to colonize this place?

The answer was precisely its remoteness and harshness. These properties were exactly what were needed when the old country wanted to export its most troublesome commodity, namely its criminals and undesirables. Australia was perfectly suited to becoming a penal colony.

Somewhere to Send British Criminals

This function had previously been taken by the American colonies, particularly those of Georgia and the Carolinas, although Newfoundland was also used for this purpose. With American independence, a new convict settlement was needed, and Botany Bay sounded just about right, although nearby Sydney Cove turned out to be more suitable for building a settlement.

The Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 25 April 1785 stated that: "Michael Dennison (from Poole), for having broken open a sloop, from which he stole several articles, was sentenced to be transported for seven years". He made the journey aboard the Alexander, which was one of the ships of the "First Fleet" that arrived at its destination in January 1788 with its thousand or so convicts, soldiers and officials. Although 28 convicts died on board the Alexander during the passage, Michael Dennison survived to become one of the first white Australians.

Who Were The Convicts?

The convicts were, generally speaking, from the lowest rungs of the English social ladder, who were used to living hard lives and settling disputes with their fists.

Although the convicts were often tough people, and were transported for having committed offences, many of the crimes would strike us today as being mild in the extreme. Stealing as little as a shilling, for a first offence, could land someone in Australia. There was a case in my wife's family history of a girl of fifteen who was asked to a hold a horse for a man who had just ridden up and dismounted next to where she was standing. The horse had been stolen, and when the constable arrived she was arrested for being in possession of stolen property. The girl later became one of Australia's matriarchs and the ancestor of a great Australian dynasty.

In the 19 th century, many transportees were political prisoners, notable among which were the "Tolpuddle Martyrs" from Dorset who were transported in 1834 for organising themselves into an agricultural trade union. They were later reprieved and returned to England.

Staying On

In Australia, discipline was often harsh, although there were other colonies, such as nearby Norfolk Island, where life was even tougher due to the brutality of the regime. If anyone could survive and make a living in Australia, the English criminal courts had chosen their candidates well. It was soon apparent to the convicts that, because escape was impossible in that there was nowhere to escape to, they might as well make the best of a bad job. Although transportation was not usually for life, seven years being the almost universal term, convicts who had served their sentence often chose not to return, preferring to make a new life for themselves in a new country.

The suggestion has been made that the penal colony was in fact originally planned as a colonial establishment, and that it was always the intention to build an outpost of Empire on the far side of the world. That is hard to establish, given that at the time of the First Fleet nobody knew anything about the conditions that would be found there, or even whether survival was possible at all. The officials and soldiers who travelled with the prisoners must have been every bit as apprehensive as their charges.

Building New Colonies

Later fleets took supplies with them that made it more likely that permanent colonies would be established. These supplies included cattle and sheep, which proved to be far more adaptable to the conditions than might have been imagined. There is a story that, when explorers tried to find a route to the interior through the notoriously difficult Blue Mountains, they discovered a herd of wild cattle on the other side, these being descendants of the original cattle that had found their own way round the mountains rather than across them!

In time, Australia did reveal its natural resources, such as gold, sapphires, opals, coal and iron (much later discoveries included uranium and natural gas). These made the early colonies much more valuable than simply a place to dump exiles from the home country. It did not take long before Australia became a place of voluntary emigration for people who wanted to make a fresh start, with more than 500,000 colonists arriving from the United Kingdom between 1851 and 1861. Many incentives were offered down the years to persuade people to go there, and it has only been relatively recently that immigration has had to be capped.

Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, by which time the colony was well established as the home of free people.

The Australian continent was never the scene of colonial rivalry between the European powers, with non-British immigration being unknown until the 20 th century. The Australian colonies became an untouchable British preserve, with Britain as their sole export market and the one source of commodity imports. The way of life of the colonists was British in all but name, and they also became annoyingly good at playing cricket!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
British colonization of Australia & New Zealand - working

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Home Rule for Britain's Colonies, Australia and New Zealand Captain James Cook, British Sea Captain... ...Claimed New Zealand in 1769 ...Claimed Australia in 1770 Inhabited by Maori, a Polynesian people who had settled New Zealand around A.D. 800. Maori culture was based on farming, hunting, and fishing.

# data[].attributes.body
Nina

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Botany Bay

Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping.

To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they could relocate the convicts. Sir Joseph Banks, who had joined James Cook on his voyage to Australia, suggested Botany Bay as a penal settlement.

In August 1786, the British Government decided to establish a convict settlement in New South Wales.

The First Fleet

Arthur Phillip was the person chosen to lead the First Fleet to Botany Bay and to rule the colony. Phillip found that the bay was shallow and ships were not protected from storms and strong winds, so he did not stop there.

Phillip chose Port Jackson as the place to make a settlement. He chose that particular bay because it had good, fresh water and the ships could anchor close to the shore. He named it Sydney Cove in honour of Lord Sydney, an official who helped to arrange the voyage.

On 20 January 1788 Phillip went ashore after an eight-month voyage with eleven ships. Phillip began the first permanent settlement on January 26, now known as Australia Day.

There were nearly 1500 people on the ships of the First Fleet, including officials, crewmen, marines, convicts, their children and wives. These people were going to start a new colony, New South Wales.

Problems for the new colony

Not long after his arrival at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788, Phillip began to encounter problems. British ways of meeting basic needs were at first unsuccessful in the Australian environment.

The greatest problem for the new colonists was the food supply. The natural food sources of fish and kangaroos were not enough. The new colony relied mainly on the provisions of food from England as attempts to produce food themselves had been unsuccessful.

The seed which had been brought from England did not grow as it had dried out after the long voyage or been attacked by insects. The remaining seed also failed to germinate because the land around Sydney Cove was too sandy for farming. The sheep brought from England could not survive either in the new environment. The supplies that were left had to be used very sparingly.

Another problem facing Arthur Phillip was that the convicts were from the city and were not farmers. Some were too old or too ill to work and were a burden on the meagre food supplies. Some convicts resorted to stealing.

In an effort to improve the situation, Phillip attempted to build farms on the banks of the Hawkesbury River a few miles north-west of Sydney. This land, however, was often flooded and was used by Aboriginal people, so the move did not improve the food shortage.

The situation became more and more desperate for the new colony. In 1789 a supply ship was sent to the new colony but it was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. In March 1790 Phillip sent the 'Sirius' to China to find food but it was shipwrecked near Norfolk Island.

The Second Fleet

The Second Fleet arrived in June 1790 to provide much-needed food supplies for the colony.

This fleet, however, brought even more trouble and became known as the 'Death Fleet'. 267 convicts had died on the way and 480 were sick. The convicts from the second fleet were of no benefit to the new colony as most of them were too ill.

The end of Phillip's government

In 1792, Arthur Phillip resigned. During his four years as Governor, Phillip had faced the problems of lack of food, unskilled workers and disease. He had, however, ruled fairly. Phillip also encouraged friendly relations with the local Aboriginal people.

In 1792 there was another change which affected the colony. The British Government replaced Royal Marines with the New South Wales Corps. These settlers had been specifically recruited in Great Britain and were granted a certain amount of land. They became the colony's best and largest farmers who came to pose a serious threat to the governors as they controlled the economy.

Despite its problems, the colony of New South Wales began to thrive. More free settlers arrived and opened up more farms and businesses and Sydney began to grow. The whaling and sealing industries also appeared.

More convicts also arrived. Between 1788 and 1868, 193000 convicts were transported to Australia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The British Arrival, British colonisation of Australia, Colonisation: resources, power and exploration, SOSE, Year 6, QLD Botany Bay Between 1771 and 1784, the prisons of England were overcrowded. The British Government became worried about the possibility of prisoners rioting or escaping. To find a solution, the British Government looked for a colony where they ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Causes and Effects of Britain's Colonisation of Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Britain's Colonisation of Australia 1788 Causes Effects on the Aborigines Economical Political Social According to Cook's journal the positive features for Australia's east coast includethe potential to plant and cultivate"Most sorts of grain, fruits, roots etc." Why the British came to Australia Social Economical Cultural By Meg and Michaela 9B Settling in Australia presented many opportunities to trade and to expand Britain's colonies.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 Causes Effects Social Political Economical Political Social Economic As the British settled inland, the Aborigines began to lose everything; hunting ground, watering holes, etc. Aborigines suffered from the effects of alchohol and many were injured or killed fighting against the British. According to Captain James Cook, as recorded in the Journal of the First Voyage, "The Eastern side is not that barren and miserable Counrty that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be... In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruits, Roots etc. of every kind would flourish here were they one brought hither planted and cultivated..."His words imply that Australia was good for planting and cultivating grains, roots, fruits and more, which is one reason that the British may have been intrested in colonising Australia. British Causes Effects Political Economic Social Social Political Economic According to Captain Cooks Journal of the First Voyage: "The Eastern side is not that barren and miserable Counrty that Dampier and others have described the Western side to be... In this Extensive Country it can never be doubted but what most sorts of Grain, Fruits, Roots etc. of every kind would flourish here were they one brought hither planted and cultivated..." This suggest that Great Britain believed Australia would be good to plant and cultivate a numerous amount of grains, plants and roots, this fact also suggests that Australia was fit for colonisation. As the world was largley unexplored, Great Britain wanted to be the first to discover and colonise a lot of it, such as Australia. If Great Britain colonised Australia it would make them a much more powerful, stronger Empire. Colonisation year 9 Hisory Assignment Isabella Miles and Annelise Cron Great Britain wanted to trade with the countries close to Australia. As stated in the Lord Sydney Document of the First Fleet, in 1788: "... considerable advantage will arise from the cultivation of the new Zealand hemp or flax-plant... most of the Asiatic production may also without doubt be cultivated in the new settlement..." this shows that Great Britain was keen to trade with the countries close to Australia. According to a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to a House of Commons Committee from 1779; "...the country was well supplied with water; there was abundance of timber and fuel, sufficient fro any number of buildings which might be necessary... if the people formed among themselves a Civil Government, they would certainly increase and find occasion for many European Commodities; and it was not doubted, that a tract of land such as New Holland, which was larger than the whole of Europe, would furnish matter of advantageous return." This letters clearly states that Great Britain believed Australia was perfect for colonising. Great Britain believed Australia not only would be good for importing foods to cultivate and grow, but also animals. According to a letter from Sir Joseph Banks to a House of Commons Committee from 1779; "...he did not doubt that our Oxen and sheep if carried their, would thrive and increase... The grass was long and luxuriant, and there were some eatable vegetables, particularly a sort of wild spinage; the country was well supplied with water..." this shows that Australia was thought to be equiped for farming animals and that Great Britain planned to transport sheep and Oxen to Australia for farming. At the time the authorities wanted to cultivate and plant roots, grains and fruits and they also wanted to get rid of all the convicts, so they came up with an idea that effectively solved both problems. They would send the convicts to Australia where they would cultivate and grow food for Britain during their sentence. Britain had an urgent need to find space for the nations prisoners as crime was becoming a serious problem. There was a large lower class that had no financial assistance from the government, there was no organised police force and cities such as London were fast becoming overcrowded. Imprisonment was also used for punishing people who were in debt and would pay their bills, which was also a growing issue at the time. The authorities were afraid of the growing lawlessness in the cities so they implied harsher laws and penalties for those who committed crimes. This only made the issue worse as more people were penalised for stealing items such as a loaf of bread to feed their starving family.
According to Pitt, in his Government's plan for Botany Bay Settlement' (1786) "New South Wales... seems particularly adapted to answer the view of government with respect to providing a remedy for the evils likely to result from the... numerous increase in felons in this country"
At the opening of parliament 1787, King George the 3rd stated in a speech that: "a plan has been formed for transporting a number of convicts, in order to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols in different parts of the kingdom."
This letter from Lord Sydney to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury further more confirms the fact that Great Britain wished to send the convict to Australia due to overcrowding. the letter reads: "the several gaols and places for the confident of felons in this kingdom being in so crowded a state...infectious distemper which may hourly be expected to break out amongst them... measures should immediately be pursued... convicts as are under sentence or order of transportation. His Majesty has thought... Botany Bay as a place to answer the above purposes."
As the settlers moved inland, the Aboriginals began to lose their hunting grounds and watering holes. The Aboriginals suffered from diseases that the British brought with them. They suffered from the effects of alcohol and many were killed or injured from fighting with the British. The British government was concerned by the violence towards the Aboriginals, but they had to deal with the conflicting pressures from the settlers. British law stated that the Aboriginals and the settlers had equal rights and responsibilities. That was the theory, but in reality it did not occur. The British used to capture Aboriginals, to intimidate them and scare them away. The first Aboriginal was captured in 1788. His name was Arbanoo and he was described as, 'About thirty years old, not tall but robustly made.' The settlers also described Arbanoo as being excessively agitated. Even though the Aboriginals had lived in Australia for over 40,000 years, the white settlers thought that the land was not being used. They had settled the land believing it to be terra nullius . Terra nullius is Latin for 'no-mans land', or 'land belonging to no one'. Australia. of year 9 history assignment In 1788 when the First Fleet arrived in Australia, it was inhabited by an estimated 300,000 Aboriginals. In actual fact, the British did not wish to harm the Aboriginals. Governor Phillip began the penal settlement with the intentions of, "reconciling the Aboriginals to live among us, and to teach them the advantages they will reap from cultivating the land". However, the British assumed that their ways were far superior to those of the Aboriginals and they deserved to have their country taken over. This resulted in many fights between the two groups. Aboriginals resisted the settlers, sometimes so well that farming and grazing ventures had to be abandoned. The settlers retaliated with their weapons, sometime wiping out whole groups of Aboriginals. They justified their violence with the argument that "these savages needed to be taught a lesson to ensure for future peace". The Aboriginals believed that land was not a commodity for exchange. The British believed the land could be bought and sold and could be taken to be exploited by productive agriculture. They believed those who carry this out have some kind of "moral right" to the land. The British believed they could take the land from the Aboriginals and use it for their own purposes. As said by George Rose, Under-Secretary of the Treasury in 1786: "...the ships that convey them to the said place can have a freight of Tea home from China." this is evidence that Great Britain believed colonising Australia would help to establish different trade routes and expand their trade. CAPTAIN COOK SIR JOSEPH BANKS Great britain wanted to "beat" France to Australia and colonise it first as it was a sort of race. Historic evidence shows that the British beat the French to Australia by only a week. PITT LORD SYDNEY KING GEORGE THE THIRD The settlers delivered poisoned flour to the Aboriginals and introduced diseases, such as measles, chicken pox, influenza and the worst disease of all, smallpox. These diseases had dramatic effects on the Aboriginals, as they did not have the immunity to the viruses that were common to the Europeans. Smallpox wiped out entire tribes. Governor Phillip We hope you enjoyed our presentation!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 - Year 9 History Assignment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
British Colonisation of Australia in 1788 Causes Effects Social Political Economical Political Social Economic As the British settled inland, the Aborigines began to lose everything; hunting ground, watering holes, etc. Aborigines suffered from the effects of alchohol and many were injured or killed fighting against the British.

# data[].attributes.body
Danyel J

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there. He thought that the southern coastline was reminiscent of South Wales, and "New South Wales" it has been ever since.

A Perfect Colony?

What made Australia perfect for colonization was that it was an untouched, empty continent that the British could occupy without opposition. Although Dutch navigators had discovered parts of Australia long before Cook arrived, their countrymen made no attempt at settling there. Cook had noticed that there was a native population, but they proved to be largely docile and to have no intention of resisting any incursions by Europeans.

On the other hand, as the first settlers soon discovered, this new continent proved to be an unfriendly host. The natives were hunter-gatherers who had made no attempt to cultivate the land or build settled communities, so there was no infrastructure to take over or imitate. The wildlife was impossible to tame or farm (you can't milk a kangaroo), and there were many species of snake, spider and scorpion that were armed with deadly venom. The climate was baking hot away from the coast, and although several fairly large rivers disgorged into the sea close to Botany Bay, others proved to be highly seasonal, drying up completely for many months of the year. There were no obvious natural resources that anyone would want to exploit and send back to England. So what reason could there possibly be for wanting to colonize this place?

The answer was precisely its remoteness and harshness. These properties were exactly what were needed when the old country wanted to export its most troublesome commodity, namely its criminals and undesirables. Australia was perfectly suited to becoming a penal colony.

Somewhere to Send British Criminals

This function had previously been taken by the American colonies, particularly those of Georgia and the Carolinas, although Newfoundland was also used for this purpose. With American independence, a new convict settlement was needed, and Botany Bay sounded just about right, although nearby Sydney Cove turned out to be more suitable for building a settlement.

The Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 25 April 1785 stated that: "Michael Dennison (from Poole), for having broken open a sloop, from which he stole several articles, was sentenced to be transported for seven years". He made the journey aboard the Alexander, which was one of the ships of the "First Fleet" that arrived at its destination in January 1788 with its thousand or so convicts, soldiers and officials. Although 28 convicts died on board the Alexander during the passage, Michael Dennison survived to become one of the first white Australians.

Who Were The Convicts?

The convicts were, generally speaking, from the lowest rungs of the English social ladder, who were used to living hard lives and settling disputes with their fists.

Although the convicts were often tough people, and were transported for having committed offences, many of the crimes would strike us today as being mild in the extreme. Stealing as little as a shilling, for a first offence, could land someone in Australia. There was a case in my wife's family history of a girl of fifteen who was asked to a hold a horse for a man who had just ridden up and dismounted next to where she was standing. The horse had been stolen, and when the constable arrived she was arrested for being in possession of stolen property. The girl later became one of Australia's matriarchs and the ancestor of a great Australian dynasty.

In the 19 th century, many transportees were political prisoners, notable among which were the "Tolpuddle Martyrs" from Dorset who were transported in 1834 for organising themselves into an agricultural trade union. They were later reprieved and returned to England.

Staying On

In Australia, discipline was often harsh, although there were other colonies, such as nearby Norfolk Island, where life was even tougher due to the brutality of the regime. If anyone could survive and make a living in Australia, the English criminal courts had chosen their candidates well. It was soon apparent to the convicts that, because escape was impossible in that there was nowhere to escape to, they might as well make the best of a bad job. Although transportation was not usually for life, seven years being the almost universal term, convicts who had served their sentence often chose not to return, preferring to make a new life for themselves in a new country.

The suggestion has been made that the penal colony was in fact originally planned as a colonial establishment, and that it was always the intention to build an outpost of Empire on the far side of the world. That is hard to establish, given that at the time of the First Fleet nobody knew anything about the conditions that would be found there, or even whether survival was possible at all. The officials and soldiers who travelled with the prisoners must have been every bit as apprehensive as their charges.

Building New Colonies

Later fleets took supplies with them that made it more likely that permanent colonies would be established. These supplies included cattle and sheep, which proved to be far more adaptable to the conditions than might have been imagined. There is a story that, when explorers tried to find a route to the interior through the notoriously difficult Blue Mountains, they discovered a herd of wild cattle on the other side, these being descendants of the original cattle that had found their own way round the mountains rather than across them!

In time, Australia did reveal its natural resources, such as gold, sapphires, opals, coal and iron (much later discoveries included uranium and natural gas). These made the early colonies much more valuable than simply a place to dump exiles from the home country. It did not take long before Australia became a place of voluntary emigration for people who wanted to make a fresh start, with more than 500,000 colonists arriving from the United Kingdom between 1851 and 1861. Many incentives were offered down the years to persuade people to go there, and it has only been relatively recently that immigration has had to be capped.

Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, by which time the colony was well established as the home of free people.

The Australian continent was never the scene of colonial rivalry between the European powers, with non-British immigration being unknown until the 20 th century. The Australian colonies became an untouchable British preserve, with Britain as their sole export market and the one source of commodity imports. The way of life of the colonists was British in all but name, and they also became annoyingly good at playing cricket!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Captain James Cook had sailed along 2,000 miles of the east coast in 1770, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there.

# data[].attributes.body
Mr h