Jonathan LALOU 2A
Australia: penal colony
• History Australia was usually portrayed as a remote and unattractive land for European settlement, but for Great Britain it had strategic and, after the independence of the American colonies (1783), socio-economic value. Control of the continent would provide a base for British naval and merchant power in the eastern seas, supporting Great Britain's growing commercial interests in the Pacific and eastern Asia. It also offered a solution to the problem of overcrowded domestic prisons. Food shortages, a harsh penal code, and the social upheaval caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization had led to a sharp rise in crime and the prison population. Great Britain's defeat in the American War of Independence meant that, from now and then, it could no longer relieve the pressure on prisons by shipping convicts to America. In 1786 the British government decided to establish a penal settlement at Botany Bay, on the south-eastern coast of New South Wales.
• The foundation of Sydney On May 13, 1787, Phillip set sail from Portsmouth, in England, with the First Fleet. The 11 ships carried 759 convicts (568 men and 191 women); some children belonging to the convicts; 211 sailors and officers to guard the convicts; naval personnel’s 46 wives and children; and Phillip's administrative staff of 9. Phillip arrived at Botany Bay on January 18, 1788. Sydney was founded as a British penal colony on January 26, 1788. The British government sent ships of convicts from overcrowded British jails to Sydney until the mid-1800s.
• Former population Mainly, the convicts came from England. 0Scots were among those sent to Australia to serve time, and many remained afterwards, working as farmers and laborers. Nevertheless, some Scottish immigrants went voluntarily, including explorers Charles Stuart and John McDouall Stuart. Lachlan Macquarie, a soldier from the Inner Hebrides, was governor of New South Wales for eleven years. Macquarie helped to build the area into a community, instead of just a penal colony. When the Commonwealth of Australia was founded in 1900, its first Governor-General was the Marquis of Linlithgow. Later, many Irish people will come. The potatoe disease was among the main reasons that led Irish men to leave their land and immigrate in Australia.
• Early Australian society The convicts—and reactions to them—became the major theme of early Australian history. By the time the British government abolished the transportation of convicts to eastern Australia in the 1850s, more than 150,000 had been sent to New South Wales and Tasmania.
Approximately 1 out of 5 were women, and about 1 out 3 were Irish. Drawn predominantly from the urban poor, many had been repeatedly convicted of petty crimes. Most of the convicts had low level education; only about half of them could read or write. A minority of the prisoners were from the wealthiest classes and were serving sentences for crimes such as forgery; these convicts were often able to use their training in business and in government offices. In general, however, because they were unskilled and unaccustomed to the rigours of colonial or prison life, this kind of convicts was a particularly difficult group with which to build a new society. Until the 1830’s, colonial officials endorsed harsh punishments for convicts who committed crimes once in the colony. Flogging was a common penalty— up to 200 lashes for crimes of theft. Those with cunning and skills might accumulate wealth, and a few became the founders of prominent colonial families. •
Convict life in literature
Since most of the early Australian population was convicts, convict life was to be a prominent axis of literature. So, it was depicted in Henry Savery’s Quintus Servinton (written in 1830), but it was not until almost a century after the first prisoners arrived that they received their due, in Marcus Clarke’s classic account of life in a penal colony, For the Term of His Natural Life (written in 1874). We must quote the novels of Rolfe Boldrewood (whose pseudonym was of Thomas A. Browne) and James Tucker, whose Ralph Rashleigh (written in 1844) was the first book to focus on Australia’s unique combination of prison life, aborigines, and bushrangers. Other important 19th-century novelists were Miles Franklin (1879–1954), whose My Brilliant Career (1901) is often designated the first authentically Australian novel, and diarist-novelist Tom Collins (1843–1912). Poets of note include Hugh McCrae (1876–1958) and Dame Mary Gilmore (1865–1962).
