Britain Colonised Australia to Transport Criminals There [15min]

Britain colonised Australia as somewhere to dump criminals. The idea was twofold: it would be a way of getting rid of some of them and the thought of transportation to a remote and hard land would act as a deterrent. The latter did not work. Some minor villains committed felonies in the hope of being deported to Australia. "This Sceptred Isle: Empire" is a narrative history of the British Empire from Ireland in the 12th century to the independence of India in the 20th, told in 90 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Juliet Stevenson. (You may listen again online to up to five most recent episodes of "Empire".)

The Whig law reformer Sir Samuel Romilly in 1810 said it was a bold and unpromising project to establish a new colony which should consist entirely of the "outcasts of society and the refuse of mankind". It had never been tried before. Transporting criminals was hardly new, but setting up a penal colony was, certainly on the scale envisaged when New South Wales was established for that purpose in 1788 when the first 750 felons arrived.

Originally, the whole of Australia other than Western Australia was called New South Wales. At the time, there were many doubts that the British could afford to protect and maintain her colonies. Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham both said the empire was too expensive. Colonial planner Sir James MacKintosh thought Britain would collapse beneath her empire because she could not afford to defend it. An 1812 Government Finance Committee thought that the empire though desirable, was draining resources. Yet the British remained committed to empire and determined to maintain Australia as a colony for criminals.

Phillip King, who became governor of New South Wales in 1800 said that the colony consisted chiefly of those who sold rum and those who drank it. How the convict was treated depended very much on the colony's governor. Thomas Brisbane was tough, Ralph Darling was strict, William Bligh (he of the Bounty) was a disciplinarian and held hostage in prison during a rebellion against his rule. At the other extreme was the liberal Richard Bourke. Whoever the governor and whatever the choices, there was an 18th century Calvinist belief that the brawny penance of deportation to Australia was good for the criminals' souls and potentially redemptive.