Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T08:37:35.982Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter Four - Convicts as Migrants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2013

Get access

Summary

Introduction

The convict settlers were Australia's first migrants. Surprisingly, few Australian historians have recognised that the transported convicts were not just criminals deported to a penal colony. One exception is Geoffrey Blainey whose analysis of the impact of ‘the tyranny of distance’ has done so much to focus attention on the importance to Australian economic growth of importing labour from overseas. By 1830 Australia's population, excluding Aborigines, was about 70,000 and nearly 90 per cent had been transported or were the children of those transported. ‘It is difficult to imagine’, commented Blainey, ‘that the population even under the most favourable conditions would otherwise have exceeded 10,000’.

Peopling Australia with free immigrants would not have been easy. British North America and the United States were far more attractive destinations for free settlers. The cost of the passage from Britain to Australia, five to six times greater than that across the Atlantic, deterred migration. Even when the state intervened to subsidise the shipping fare, the long period of unemployment while at sea imposed a high opportunity cost upon free migrants in terms of the amount of earned income forgone. There was little chance of a migrant returning home. This led to Blainey's claim that transportation of convicts should be viewed as Australia's first immigration policy.

Historians have viewed the convicts as, quite literally, good for nothings. A.G.L.Shaw described them as ‘ne'er-do-wells … quite unable to earn an honest living’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Convict Workers
Reinterpreting Australia's Past
, pp. 43 - 61
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×