15

It seems to be a very wide spread claim that Australia was started as a British penal colony. When I first heard of it as a young kid, I envisioned some crime infested dystopia like in the movie Escape from L.A.

From those claim it seems that the main reason for the initial British colonization of Australia was not territorial gain, mercantile (creating new markets for British goods), resource excavation or military, like in the colonization of Africa, America and the conquest of east Asia, but the creation of a Penal colony.

Was the main reason for the colonization of Australia the creation of penal colonies, or was it only a side affect of the vast unexploited areas that the already established Australian colonies had?

Examples of the claim online:

here, here and here

Oddthinking
  • 140,378
  • 46
  • 548
  • 638
SIMEL
  • 29,037
  • 14
  • 123
  • 139
  • Why are you skeptical of this? [Penal transportation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia) is very well documented in the historical record. – rjzii Apr 05 '13 at 22:19
  • @RobZ, I hope it's clearer now. – SIMEL Apr 05 '13 at 22:49
  • 1
    So you are asking about the motivations of the UK Government? – Oddthinking Apr 05 '13 at 23:15
  • 1
    @Oddthinking, I'm asking about the policies of the UK Government, (I think that in those times it was the crown). An answer that compares the number of criminals vs. non criminal colonists will do this trick quite nicely, and preferably the volume of trade in comparison to other British colonies to show the importance of Australia to the contemporary British economy. – SIMEL Apr 05 '13 at 23:22
  • @RobZ, in the wiki article the most relevant sources are dead, so at least there it's not very well documented. – SIMEL Apr 05 '13 at 23:27
  • You need to beware of the 'one motive' fallacy, which claims that there is one and only one reason for doing something. The British Empire may have wanted both to exploit and colonize Australia, and also get rid of unwanted criminals. Sending criminals to Australia would satisfy both desires (given the difficulty of persuading ordinary people to go to an empty land halfway round the world). It sometimes isn't possible to say that one of these was 'their motive'. – DJClayworth Apr 06 '13 at 15:01
  • @DJClayworth, you are right that the British empire could, and probably had several motives, but the question is addressing whether this was an important and one of the main reasons, or just a side benefit. As criminals were also sent to other colonies like N.America, but in such small numbers in comparison to other settlers, that it can't be considered an important reason for the British colonization of N.America. – SIMEL Apr 06 '13 at 16:12
  • @Sancho, yes it is. – SIMEL Apr 06 '13 at 21:18

1 Answers1

17

Yes, a vast majority of the people aboard first European ships to settle Australia were convicts.

The first European settlers arrived in Australia in the First Fleet.

Wikipedia:

The total number of free people was 348 and the total number of prisoners was 696, coming to a total of 1044 persons.

This is supported by a quote from the Empire Newspaper of 1850:

The founders of the colony therefore consisted of one free person to every two prisoners.

(Your childhood vision was inaccurate though. The same sources indicate over 200 marines were also sent. The convicts were still under the control of the British military.)

The Second Fleet was predominantly convicts. Over 1000 convicts left England, but there were many hundreds of deaths on the voyage or shortly afterwards. Ref, Ref

It should be noted that not all British Settlements were penal settlements. Example

Oddthinking
  • 140,378
  • 46
  • 548
  • 638
  • 6
    It's also important to note that many of the convicts' crimes were mild like "cutting down a tree" or "stealing an animal" or "stealing goods worth over £78" (5 shillings in 1788). Also very few Australian's can trace their roots to convicts: "The number of convicts pales in comparison to the immigrants who arrived in Australia in the 1851–1871 gold rush" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia – Coomie Apr 08 '13 at 06:59
  • @Coomie - I'd imagine some may also have been defaulted borrowers. – user5341 Apr 17 '13 at 13:19
  • In my (Australian) office the 5 closest people to me are ethnically Chinese, South African, Italian, British and Brazilian. All either first or second generation migrants. I can trace my family back 5 generations and even then my ancestors were settlers, not convicts. "Almost 50% of the 2006 population were either born overseas or had one or both parents born overseas." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism_in_Australia – Coomie Apr 18 '13 at 03:18