AHC: Australia/Tasmania maintain penal colonies

What POD(s) would it take so that at least one penal colony was maintained on the mainland of Australia and/or Tasmania into the late 1800s or early 1900s? Could they gain a similar setup to France's 'Devil's Island' in which female and male prisoners are introduced in hope of building up the population faster? Would this require more changes to the politics/society of mainland Australia/Tasmania or to that or England and parliament?
 
With the enfranchisement of the convicts' descendants and the gold rush, the end of the transportation was inevitable. And while it may be possible to keep Australia stratified, preventing the discovery of gold is much harder.
 
With the enfranchisement of the convicts' descendants and the gold rush, the end of the transportation was inevitable. And while it may be possible to keep Australia stratified, preventing the discovery of gold is much harder.
Specifically, how do those two effect the situation?
 
Specifically, how do those two effect the situation?

The enfranchisement meant that there are people voting in Melbourne who don't directly profit from transporting dangerous convicts. NIMBY applies. Also, having said convicts in Australia meant that there was a justification for a military establishment which was extremely unpopular, and curtailed the rights of Australians. An Australia that still had transportation would never achieve full self-government. As for the gold, it made going to Australia attractive, rather than a punishment. In most states, transportation ended as soon as gold was discovered during the rush. The last state with transportation, Western Australia, ended it in 1868, quite soon after gold was discovered.
 
The enfranchisement meant that there are people voting in Melbourne who don't directly profit from transporting dangerous convicts. NIMBY applies. Also, having said convicts in Australia meant that there was a justification for a military establishment which was extremely unpopular, and curtailed the rights of Australians. An Australia that still had transportation would never achieve full self-government. As for the gold, it made going to Australia attractive, rather than a punishment. In most states, transportation ended as soon as gold was discovered during the rush. The last state with transportation, Western Australia, ended it in 1868, quite soon after gold was discovered.
Sorry, but I though gold was not found in the west until 1885. According to wikipedia in 1868 there was gold found in Victoria.

If the majority of interest against penal colonies is in Melborne, couldn't new colonies be setup in more remote areas on the continent? Away from Melborne.

Perhaps a more hardline government may maintain convict transports from England for the sake of their own paranoia?
 
Sorry, but I though gold was not found in the west until 1885. According to wikipedia in 1868 there was gold found in Victoria.

If the majority of interest against penal colonies is in Melborne, couldn't new colonies be setup in more remote areas on the continent? Away from Melborne.

Perhaps a more hardline government may maintain convict transports from England for the sake of their own paranoia?

People that paranoid also wouldn't allow general enfranchisement, I'm still right on one count.

The gold rush started in 1851 in NSW (Victoria didn't become a separate colony until slightly later). The 1868 date came from Bill Bryson's A Sunburned Country, I guess he was wrong.
 
A key point is making penal colonies profitable for jail wardens. As long as cotton-picking convicts remain profitable, they will retain convicts as slave labour. They will retain convicts as cheap labour until some industrialist (like Eliah Whitney) invents a machine that will do the job cheaper.

Meanwhile they could send convicts down into the mines.
Remember that trans-continental railroads were built across North America by Chinese collies who were treated Lottie better than slave labourers. Only starving refugees from Ireland were willing to work for wages as low as Chinese coolies.
 
A key point is making penal colonies profitable for jail wardens. As long as cotton-picking convicts remain profitable, they will retain convicts as slave labour. They will retain convicts as cheap labour until some industrialist (like Eliah Whitney) invents a machine that will do the job cheaper.

Meanwhile they could send convicts down into the mines.
Remember that trans-continental railroads were built across North America by Chinese collies who were treated Lottie better than slave labourers. Only starving refugees from Ireland were willing to work for wages as low as Chinese coolies.

What do you mean by "lottie"? I've never heard the phrase.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
I like the idea of Chinese collies, actually...

I like the idea of Chinese collies, actually...;)

I know it was just a typo, but it suggested some sort of border collie/Chinese crested mix.

Best,
 
If its any help our family sent our convict to Australia in 1907, well after the British stopped. I know its not much, but we did our best.
 
Easy: Just have the Americans export their 2 million+ prison population to Australia!
Its not like the Aussies really use their Outback for much anyway.

Incidentally this is also how you could make Mad Max a reality as well.


:D
 
Easy: Just have the Americans export their 2 million+ prison population to Australia!
Its not like the Aussies really use their Outback for much anyway.

Incidentally this is also how you could make Mad Max a reality as well.


:D
WIN!!!

Was there any form of legislation that could have been created to maintain those colonies for the sake of slave labor and providing profit to the empire? Or make it like a British Guantanamo?
 
Last edited:
Easy: Just have the Americans export their 2 million+ prison population to Australia!
Its not like the Aussies really use their Outback for much anyway.

Incidentally this is also how you could make Mad Max a reality as well.


:D


I know you're probably joking, but there is no way the US ships its prison population to Australia. Apart from the moral/ethical/constitutional problems this represents, the prison industry in the US (increasingly privatised) is worth at least £2.9 billion.

What you need to change above all is attitudes in Britain to prisons. By the 1850s and 60s there was a growing consensus that the sort of "convict em and dump em" model of transportation as a punishment was not the right course of action. The new theory was that prisoners needed careful control to be remolded into productive citizens. Hence you got the growth of the prison as a place of reform and re-education, which is cheaper to do back in Britain.

One way around this would be to have thinking about prisons develop in an alternate way - into the realms of open-labour camps. They were talking about these for the poor well into the 20th century, so its not too much of a stretch to have a reforming agenda favour open-air work-as-character-building punishment in Australia over the industrial-education of the modern prison.
 
The 'putting out' system for assigning convicts to land owners and the like was seen by the anti slavery movement as akin to slavery, so there was a domestic moral push to end transportation from within Britain itself.
 
What about making Tasmania a literal island prison for the whole of the Empire?

Australia proper becomes the home of colonists, Tasmania for prisoners and/or political exiles, perhaps from other countries as well?
 
The problem was that people who finished their sentence weren't shipped back to Britain and were given land grants so after half a century the colony was populated by free people with their own power base to contend with.
 
The problem was that people who finished their sentence weren't shipped back to Britain and were given land grants so after half a century the colony was populated by free people with their own power base to contend with.
Do you mean they were 'given' the grants as compensation for their internment. Or that they purchased grants themselves.
 
There were different rules at different times but in the early years of Sydney convicts who had served their sentences were given a land grant of 5 (I think?) acres and 7 if married. Other ex convicts such as James Ruse bought in the first successful wheat harvest in 1788 was given a land grant of 30 acres. Soldiers and other officials were also given land grants and a handful of free settlers arrived in 1793 and were given land from 60-120 acres.

Something to bear in mind too was that there is evidence that people were committing crimes in Britain specifically so they could be transported to Australia as convicts. And why not! 1788-1840 was not a good time to be poor in England, but get out to Australia and work unsupervised for a few years, keep your nose clean and get a land grant or set yourself up in a trade or whatever.
 
Top