The problem of the origins of modern Australia is one round which controversy has bubbled for more than three decades. The older school of Australian historians did not doubt (in the words of W. A. Sinclair) that ‘the prime intention was to find adestination for convicts sentenced to transportation’. Coglan, Shann, Fitzpatrick, O'Brien, Shaw and Manning Clark were in broad agreement. The wider debate was initiated by K. M. Dallas, in 1952; it turned on less obvious reasons which may have motivated the despatch in 1787 of the First Fleet.

Dallas suggested that alongside the shortage of jail space there were complex economic and strategic reasons for a settlement at Botany Bay. England needed a new naval base to strengthen the trade routes of her eastern commercial empire; also a port where naval and merchant ships could refit and revictual. The China tea trade was expanding after the reduction of the import duties on tea in 1784. The tea ships used the narrow straits near Sumatra, always menaced by pirates and now, as the Dutch were drawn into the strategic embrace of France, menaced by the Franco-Dutch alliance. It would be safer for them to sail round Tasmania and up the east coast of Australia, thence through the islands east of New Guinea. Lucrative smuggling and privateering expeditions were nosing into the rich Spanish trades linking the Philippines, Mexico and South America.For all these, Botany Bay could provide a valuable port of call for fresh water, food and supplies. Dr Dallas expounded this theory brilliantly in Hobart University, but his audience consisted mainly of local historians:it did not set the Derwent on fire.