British Convict Transportation to Australia: Punishment and Legacy

Origins and Rationale for Convict Transportation

The concept of transportation as a punishment for criminals dates back to before the establishment of the Australian colonies. The first British law establishing transportation as a means of dealing with criminals was the Transportation Act of 1718. This imposed sentences of transportation to the American Colonies for offences considered too serious to be adequately punished by whipping, but not serious enough to merit the death penalty. The American War of Independence effectively ended trans-Atlantic transportation, and felons sentenced to be transported were confined within Britain by means of prison hulks, in which conditions were appalling. Transportation overseas began again with the departure of the first convicts for the new Australian penal colony of Botany Bay in 1787. For nearly eighty years after that date, British convicts were sent to penal colonies in Australia; penal transportation was not abolished until 1857, and even after that date, until 1868, convicts were in some circumstances still sent to Western Australia. It is estimated that during this period some 160,000 individuals were sent from Britain to Australia as convicts. Why was such a large population of convicts sent to the other side of the world in this expensive and administratively complex way? Why were they not simply imprisoned and punished within Great Britain?

The fundamental reason is financial. However expensive the transportation system was, providing sufficient jails to house the rising number of convicts was more expensive still. There was no ideological problem with jails — as the Penitentiary Act of 1779, with its provisions for the building of prisons to hold inmates in conditions of varying severity according to their crimes, indicates — but no government was prepared to spend money on the scale of prison construction that would be required. By 1811 more than £2.5 million had been spent by the British government on the administration of the Australian convict colonies, but compared to constructing and maintaining largely non-productive domestic prisons, transportation was cheap. It also had the advantage of removing criminals permanently from British society, thus (it was hoped) reducing crime, and it provided a workforce for developing the colonies. Instead of being a drain on the public purse, the convicts would feed and clothe themselves by cultivating their own farms and producing their own necessities. At least one historian has concluded that the policy of transportation did produce a significant net financial benefit for Great Britain: "Not only was transporting convicts justified on the basis of cost alone but, more importantly, the net returns were very large."

With the American War effectively ending transportation across the Atlantic, the British government sought other potential locations for convict settlements. After considering and rejecting West Africa as too unhealthy, the government put forward a plan:

for effectually disposing of convicts, and rendering their transportation reciprocally beneficial both to themselves and to the State, by the establishment of a colony in New South Wales, a country which, by the fertility and salubrity of the climate, connected with the remoteness of its situation (from whence it is hardly possible for persons to return without permission), seems peculiarly adapted to answer the views of Government with respect to the providing a remedy for the evils likely to result from the late alarming and numerous increase of felons in this country, and more particularly in the metropolis.

The government's view was that the country's overcrowded jails were both socially dangerous and unhealthy. Botany Bay, on the south-east coast of Australia, was sufficiently remote to make the deterrent effect of transportation real and to deny any absconders the opportunity to return home, but it also had the potential for economic development of a particularly valuable kind. The penal colonies, it was suggested, could cultivate hemp and flax to supply the Royal Navy with rope and sailcloth, thus sustaining British naval supremacy and removing Britain's dependency on possibly unreliable European sources for these vital raw materials: "It may not be amiss to remark in favour of this plan that considerable advantages will arise from the cultivation of New Zealand hemp or flax-plant in the new intended settlements, the supply of which would be of great consequence to us as a naval power." In more general terms, the occupation and development of land in Australia, and related claims on adjacent territories in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, would represent an extension of British influence in that region of the globe and a consequent weakening of the positions of other European colonizing powers, at a time of imperial competition and intermittent open warfare between those powers.

Convict Experience: Punishment, Labor, and Incentives

For the convicts themselves, these considerations were irrelevant; their experience of the convict settlements was a harsh one. Conditions on the First Fleet of 1787 were relatively good, with only 32 convicts from the complement of 750 dying in the course of the voyage, but the Second Fleet of 1790 lost more than a quarter of its convicts. Once in the colonies, convicts were subjected to a regime that in many cases was one of great brutality: hard work, flogging and other physical punishment, humiliation (although conditions were highly variable), and of course forced exile in a strange land.

There were, however, incentives to work and contribute to the economy and productiveness of the colonies. Reduction of hours of labour, the granting of privileges, permission to own and develop land, to run businesses, and ultimately to return home once their sentence was served — or to remain as free people in Australia — were all used to encourage convicts to contribute to the penal communities of which they were part. This was the other side of the coin to the harsher punishments and bad conditions that existed at the same time. Ultimately, under the regime of Governor Macquarie, many convicts worked extensively for their own benefit in businesses and on the land, and were able to take employment and receive payment.

There was great variety among the convicts sent for transportation to Australia. The majority were of urban rather than rural origin (60.8%) and represented skilled working-class trades (skilled: 54.3%, unskilled: 26.5%). More than half the convicts recorded had already one or more previous convictions in addition to the crime for which they were transported; most were young, and the majority of their offences were crimes born of poverty. Overall, there is evidence both for most convicts being genuine criminals rather than simply the victims of an unjust society — whatever view we may take today of the crimes for which they were convicted and the penalties imposed — and for a range of skills being available in convict ranks which were of benefit in building up the penal colonies and, ultimately, Australia itself. The experience of individual convicts within the transportation system was very varied; as one historian puts it, transportation was "not a simple punishment, but rather a series of punishments ranging through every degree of human suffering from a slight restraint on freedom to long and tedious torture."

The benefits of the work required of convicts in penal colonies were always seen as among the most powerful arguments for transportation. In 1785 the Parliamentary Committee enquiring into the Transportation Act of 1784 commented, with reference to transportation to America, that "the old system of Transporting to America, answered every good Purpose which could be expected from it — That it tended directly to reclaim the Objects on which it was inflicted, and to render them good Citizens… That the Colonies seem to have been sensible of the beneficial Consequences of this Practice." In the case of the Australian penal colonies, drawing workers from the ranks of the convicts was not only a matter of policy; it was also a necessity, given that no other suitable workforce existed:

Rehabilitation and Reform in the Penal Colonies

Governor Phillip [the first governor of Botany Bay] accordingly had to find all his overseers from among the ranks of the convicts. The supervisors' reward at first was freedom from toil. Later they were paid by being allotted one or two convicts for their own use. Some employed these convicts in businesses they ran; others allowed the convicts to work on their own account and took a portion of their earnings. Since it was difficult and expensive to attract non-convict professional people to the settlement, the colony's government also drew on skilled convicts for services in medicine, law, architecture, and surveying. Overseers, superintendents, and professional people were further encouraged to good service by the granting or promise of pardons.

That there were incentives for convicts working successfully was a constant feature of the Australian penal colonies throughout their existence, although the opportunities did not apply to all prisoners. Convicts in the hard-labor colonies such as Norfolk Island did not have the chance to contribute to civilian life and make a success of their new surroundings.

The type of work a convict might be employed upon varied from manual labor to clerical work, agricultural work to construction. In 1819 Governor Macquarie, responding to the increased numbers of convicts being transported since the ending of war in Europe, established farms upon which convicts not in government service or working for settlers as laborers would work. Macquarie had become Governor in 1809 following the deposition of Governor Bligh and the ending of the corrupt rule of the New South Wales Corps over the colonies. He had shown himself a reformer, enabling convicts to rise in government service, establishing schools for children in the colonies, and reconstructing large areas of Sydney and other settlements. His efforts to establish government farming with convict labor were in the same tradition; his aim was to make something useful and productive from the unfortunate necessity of transportation and confinement.

During Macquarie's administration (he left Australia in 1821) three official British investigations into transportation took place, in 1812, 1819, and 1820. The first was a Select Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation, established in 1812 because of concern among many philanthropists at the way in which the transportation policy was being carried out. Many notable witnesses with direct experience of the Australian colonies appeared before the committee, including Captain Bligh. The committee's conclusion was that in general, transportation was achieving the purposes it was intended to achieve, including that of providing convicts with useful work and the possibility of a degree of rehabilitation. In 1819 another select committee considered aspects of penal conditions in Australia as part of an examination of the condition of jails, while in 1820 one J. T. Bigge was appointed as a special commissioner to investigate conditions in the Australian colonies. The cause of this appointment lay in the complaints reaching London from free settlers in Australia, who were dissatisfied at the extensive powers exercised by Governor Macquarie and the arbitrary nature of his authority. The result of this enquiry was that upon Macquarie's departure no subsequent governor was able to exert the extensive powers he had exercised. However, rehabilitation through work remained an aim of the penal colonies until they came to an end in the 1860s.

That is not to say that the regime of the penal colonies was not a harsh one, or that in many cases any hope of rehabilitation must not have been destroyed by the harshness of overseers or the severity of punishments. Macquarie himself was a firm advocate of flogging as a means of keeping discipline and deterring hardened criminals from challenging the penal regime. The harshness of the penal settlements within the colonies, in Tasmania and on Norfolk Island, left little hope of any kind for the convicts sent there.

The main hope for a convict to "earn" a degree of freedom was the ticket of leave system, which essentially exempted a convict, for as long as the magistrates accepted, from labour details within the colonies, enabling the convict to live in a particular place with a particular person and, within varying degrees, work for themselves. Holders of a ticket of leave were under the supervision of the magistrates at all times and were liable to lose all their privileges at a moment's notice. Most holders had worked for at least three years in government service, and with the introduction in the 1820s of the probation system, time spent in industrious, sober, and reliable work for the government was counted towards tickets of leave. This system essentially provided the convicts with better conditions while serving their sentences; it did not end the sentence early. Only a pardon could do that; generally a convict had to see their sentence out to the end, and all incentives to good behaviour, hard work, and reformation of character took place within that context.

It is hard to say how effectively the penal colonies worked as places of rehabilitation and reformation. By removing criminals from the streets of Britain, transportation lowered the possibilities for re-offending; any rehabilitatory effect beyond that was a bonus. However, if the system of transportation was to work to the benefit of the colonies, the convicts within those colonies did have to be "encouraged" to work hard and contribute to the greater good. In as much as the convict legacy provided one of the foundations for the success of the later Australian colonies, it can be said to have had a beneficial effect.

The Evolving Britain–Australia Relationship

Indirectly, the policy contributed to the development of the Australian territories as economically successful and populous regions, which was beneficial to Britain and her empire. The establishment of the penal colonies was the basis upon which Britain claimed, eventually, the whole territory of Australia, and the basis for its development with agriculture, irrigation, transport, and urban settlement. Trade and commerce benefited as a result. The success of the policy of transportation in populating Australia and laying the foundations of a successful nation can perhaps be seen most clearly in the fact that today, rather than regarding the penal colony period of their history as something to be ashamed of, "Most family historians in Australia regard a convict in their ancestry as enormously desirable."

Modern Australia was a British creation. From the beginnings of white settlement, "Australia was committed to 'Anglo' values, interests, institutions and cultural perspectives." From the British perspective, Australia was, as one of the white imperial dominions, a vital part of the global British community — a significance strengthened by the experience of two twentieth-century world wars. "Australia was a British nation and took pride in its British inheritance: Britain was the ultimate reference point… This was not an 'imperial imposition'. Australians were not forced to be British; they simply wanted to be British." This is a modern historian's summary of the attitude which Australians had towards Britain between 1901 and 1960: a positive attitude which saw "Britishness" not as something imposed from outside but as something arising from within and an essential part of Australian identity.

So what has changed between 1901 and the early twenty-first century? Perhaps the immediately striking thing about the Australia of 2004 is that it does not present the apparently "monocultural" image of the Australia of a century or half-century ago: "there has been an extraordinary increase in the number of ethnic cultural groups in Australia since 1945, which has meant that in ethnic terms Australia has become a much more diverse place." The European faces on Australian streets have been joined by many Asian faces; the languages of east and south-east Asia are to be heard alongside English. The opening up of Australia to immigration from beyond the white heartlands — Asia, southern Europe — has brought social and cultural changes that have paralleled political and strategic developments that have seen Australia position itself as a regional, Pacific/Asian power rather than as an outpost of European/British power.

The wartime experiences of Australia were of great importance in forging a sense of national identity and in influencing the development of the relationship with Britain. Australians fought alongside Britain with great courage, and the ties of blood remain strong in the military field. Equally, however, a distinctly Australian identity developed from the experience of both world wars. In the First World War the huge losses suffered by Australia and the sense that Australian troops had been "let down" at Gallipoli and elsewhere by incompetent British commanders struck a chord; while in the Second World War the rapid collapse of British power in Asia in 1941–2 left Australia unable to rely, as before, upon the protection of Great Britain. The result was that she looked to the United States, and US–Australian ties in the defence field remain strong. This is not to say that the military ties between Australia and Britain are not important to both countries; they remain strong and mutually beneficial. But Australia's concern with its own region first and foremost — a concern strengthened by the "war on terror" in which the Australian government of John Howard saw itself as standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States — made this orientation even more significant.

Such distancing from Britain reflects the United Kingdom's own changing position in the world. Since the end of the Second World War, Britain abandoned global empire and placed herself firmly in Europe. The switching of UK trade to the EEC during the 1970s was seen by some in Australia and New Zealand as an act of betrayal, losing them protected agricultural markets, but it reflected the fact that the world had changed and the ties of empire were no longer the most appropriate for Britain or Australia.

Australian main trading partners in 2000–2001, in order of size, were Japan (A$23.5m), the USA (A$11.7m), South Korea (A$9.2m), New Zealand (A$6.9m), PR China (A$6.8m), Singapore (A$6.0m), Taiwan (A$5.9m), and the United Kingdom (A$4.6m). Of the ten chief export markets for Australian goods during this period, seven were Asian states (Japan, South Korea, PR China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia); the other three were the USA, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The entire volume of Australian exports to the European Union (A$8.5m) was only half the volume of Australian exports to Japan during this period. The reality of Australia's economic linkages with Asia and the Pacific is clear from this statistical picture.

Conclusion: Balancing Heritage and Future

Australia was a product of British political and strategic/military policy, immigration (both forced and free) from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, a place in a worldwide Britain-centered imperial commonwealth, and also a growing sense of Australian identity and "difference" associated with such diverse influences as sporting success, military involvements, social and cultural egalitarianism, rejection of "old country" hierarchical values, the nature of the landscape, and the country's location in the Asia/Pacific region. "Though in terms of its cultural and institutional core Australia is a 'fragment' of the West," comments one recent work on Australian identity, "our immediate neighbours are Asian." This poses a problem for Australia, reflecting the paradoxical nature of the country as a product of British colonisation on the other side of the world from the mother country: