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The Convicts
The structure of British society at the time ensured there would be a continuing supply of
convicts for NSW. The enclosure of common land had forced rural poor into theft.
Transportation would frequently become a substitute for execution.
The convicts sailed to Australia on chartered private ships and for the women and men, the voyage could be barely tolerable or horrendous, depending on the avarice of the ship's owner or master. The Gov. paid the owner per convict head for food. Thus unscrupulous owners could increase their profit margins by equipping the vessels poorly and reducing rations.
The first free settlers landed in 1793 but for the next forty years, their arrivals continued to be dwarfed by those of convicts: between 1788 and 1830, of a total of 77 000 arrivals only 18% were free settlers.
(DILGEA, Australia and Immigration: 1788-1988, AGPS, 1988, pp. 5, 7.)
Chronology of Key events
1788 - 1840
| 1788 | First European settlement in Australia established in Port Jackson, later named Sydney. The First Fleet brought approximately 1000 people from the British Isles and, of these, about three quarters were convicts. |
| 1793 | The first (eleven) free settlers from England arrive in NSW and take up land between Sydney and Parramatta. |
| 1804 | Settlement of Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land, later called Tasmania. Unsuccessful mutiny of convicts at Castle Hill, NSW. |
| 1824 | Moreton Bay, near present-day Brisbane, settled as a convict station. |
| 1829 | Swan River Settlement in Western Australia established. |
| 1832 | First shipload of assisted migrants arrive in Australia. |
| 1834 | First European settlement in Port Phillip District, later named Victoria. |
| 1835 | Bounty system introduced whereby free settlers received a bounty payment for each qualified person they encouraged to immigrate. |
| 1836 | First European settlement of South Australia. |
| 1838 | German Lutheran settlers begin arriving South Australia. |
Colony |
|||||||
year |
NSW |
Tasmania (Van diemens land) |
a Norfolk Island | Moreton Bay | Port Phillip | Western Australia | Total |
| 1788-1795 | 4 717 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | 4 717 |
| 1796-1803 | 3 548 | 294 | ~ | ~ | b | ~ | c3 858 |
| 1804-1811 | 2 842 | b299 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | c3 148 |
| 1812-1819 | 11 510 | 1 140 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | c12 701 |
| 1820-1827 | 14 809 | 7 514 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | c22 354 |
| 1828-1835 | 26 235 | 14 422 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | c40 848 |
| 1836-1843 | 13 726 | 21 342 | 617 | ~ | ~ | ~ | c35 980 |
| 1844-1851 | 1 100 | 17 429 | 1 951 | 517 | 1 727 | 977 | 23 701 |
| 1852-1859 | ~ | 4 047 | ~ | ~ | ~ | 4 468 | 8 515 |
| 1860-1868 | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | 4 198 | 4 198 |
| c Totals | 78 487 | 66 487 | 2 568 | 517 | 1 727 | 9 643 | 160 020 |
a. Norfolk Island arrivals were included in NSW figures until 1840.
b. Convicts landed at Port Phillip in 1803 were transferred to Van
Diemen's Land in 1804.
c. Includes 591 convicts from British colonies, who were landed in either
NSW or Van Diemen's Land.
Van Diemen's Land = present day Tasmania
Source: J. Jupp (ed.), The Australian People, Angus & Robertson, 1988, p.25.
| Aborigines and convicts | Aborigines and European settlement |
| The
Aborigines were dismayed to discover that the visitors were staying indefinitely.
Equally dismaying were some of the events of the first few weeks which they observed:
drunkenness and fighting, the flogging of convicts and the first hanging. Conflicts
occurred with growing frequency as Aborigines fought doggedly for their land, to which
they had both economic and spiritual rights.
(L. Lippmann, Generations of Resistance, 2nd edn, Longman Cheshire, 1991, p.4.) |
European settlement had a disastrous effect on the Aborigines. Many Aborigines were shot or poisoned by European settlers and many others died of diseases introduced by the Europeans. Historians have estimated that the Aboriginal population fell from at least 300 000 in 1788, when European settlement began, to less than half this amount in 1840. (E. Foster, The Aborigines: From Prehistory to the Present, OUP, 1985, p. 47.) |
The Convicts
The first thirty-three years of settlement from 1788 were marked by the arrival of nearly
30 000 convicts and 4 500 settlers... Most of the convicts came from the British Isles.
The largest group were English, with the Irish next, followed by a good number of Scots
and Welsh. Most of the convicts were male, with about a fifth of those transported being
female.
As well as those convicts born in Britain, there was a number of convicts who were born outside the British Isles but who were convicted of crimes undertaken in Britain and were subsequently transported to the colony. Various scholars studying transportation have brought to light information about 'foreign-born' convicts. L. L. Robson came across convicts who were born in the United States, Canada, Holland, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Gibraltar, St. Helena, Cape of Good Hope, 'African countries', Mauritius, Madagascar, the Persian Gulf, Muscat, India and East Indies. J. S. Levi found Jewish offenders who were born in France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Russia and Egypt...
This diversity of people highlights the pluralistic nature of settlement of the fifth continent in the early days.
(B. Gigler & M. Cigler, Australia: A Land of Immigrants, Jacaranda, 1985, pp. 38-41.)
Modern Australian History
| The beginning of Immigration to Australia | Convicts in Australia | Letter from a convict |
Immigration
| immigration background | Attitudes towards European immigration | Postwar immigration | Extracts - Immigration Restriction Act 1901 | Refugee's story |
Chronology of key events from:
| 1848-1890 leading upto Gold | 1892-1945 | 1945-73 | 1973-92 |