Do the British still settle Australia after winning or avoiding the American Revolutionary War?

Let's have a little discussion involving the butterfly effect.

In 1770, James Cook discovers the east coast of Australia, which he names New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain, declaring it 'Terra nullius'. The British know Australia exists, but they decide to leave the continent alone.

That changes in 1783, with the British losing the American Revolutionary War, and as a result, their American colonies. With nowhere to send their convicts, the British government dispatches Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet to set up a penal colony in New South Wales.

So, the British defeat in the Americas is what prompted them to establish a presence in Australia.

So, let's answer this question: If the American Revolutionary War either never happened or the British won the American Revolutionary War, do the British still colonize Australia (to a much lesser extent) or do they leave it alone?
 
I think they still might if they discover that there are natural resources there (e.g. coal, gold, diamonds). They might also try to ramp up if one of their enemies starts colonizing it. Otherwise, I think they'll leave it alone.
 
Yes, if only because: who else is going to settle Australia? (A France that wethers the *Revolutionary period aside, as notoriously horrible as the French were at settler colonialism)

And, a British America will probably play a major economic and demographic role in the colonization of this *Australia.
 
The 1788 settlement of Australia was already quite contingent, and could be delayed without any changes in North America. With the changes it is quite possible to delay it considerably longer (or have it occur 'on time' for different reasons), but IMO it would be hard to delay some sort of British presence far into the 19th century. OTL Tasmania was settled (and Port Philip attempted to be settled) by the British in response to French interest in the South Pacific during the Napoleonic period. The lack of a Sydney colony may reduce the British impetus to settle these areas - or it might increase them, as the entire continent would be far more open to French advances. Global colonial competition is going to make a piece of real estate as massive and as easily settled as Australia highly tempting, and the British will remain by far the most able to exploit it, though a French Australia or part thereof is certainly possible if less likely.

Furthermore, European "settlement" at a similar point to OTL is essentially inevitable, as Europeans who had nothing to do with the British government settled parts of Australia throughout the early 19th century in search of seals and whales, Australia's first export industry. These people intermarried (i.e. kidnapped and raped) indigenous women and their descendants can be found to this day. Without a British settlement this will still happen, and will inevitably draw interest to the continent from other Europeans, including Christians and other fortune seekers. It would be a much more gradual settlement however, and could lead to some very interesting outcomes.
 
The settlement of Sydney wasn't just intended as a dumping ground for convicts. Sydney was also envisaged as a potential naval base to threaten Dutch, Spanish and French interests in the East Indies (the idea being flax initially imported from NZ for ropes and sails plus masts made from Norfolk Island Pines... they soon discovered most Norfolk Island pine was rotten at it's core rendering it's utility as masts rather lower). That remains a reason to settle at about the same time ITTL as IOTL.

However, with most convicts going to North America instead I suspect expansion of the colony and foundation of other colonies within Australia are likely slowed.
 
Eventually yes, but I would think English settlement would be heavily restricted due to the attractiveness of North America as a place to send convicts. Convicts represented as much as a quarter of all British emigrants to colonial America during 18th century.
 
Wasn't one of the complaints from some of the colonists, especially in the South, that they didn't like being used as a penal colony? In a world where the British avoid the American Revolution, they may decide to mollify the Americans, in part, by sending the convicts elsewhere. Australia would still be a logical choice for that.
 
Wasn't one of the complaints from some of the colonists, especially in the South, that they didn't like being used as a penal colony? In a world where the British avoid the American Revolution, they may decide to mollify the Americans, in part, by sending the convicts elsewhere. Australia would still be a logical choice for that.

This happened in Thande's Look to the West, although IIRC they still didn't send them to Australia in that timeline (Australia wound up settled by the French). Actually, I can't for the life of me remember where they ended up sending convicts in LTTW. In any case, that all depends on butterflies.
 
However, with most convicts going to North America instead I suspect expansion of the colony and foundation of other colonies within Australia are likely slowed.

Might it also be a different kind of settlement - far fewer convicts and a more respectable type of settler - more like New Zealand?
 
Might it also be a different kind of settlement - far fewer convicts and a more respectable type of settler - more like New Zealand?
Probably more like South Australia. As a general thing, though, I suspect that Australia would have been colonised by the British anyway, not least because the explorers, Banks in particular, lobbied for such extensively, and without the distraction of war in the Americas might have happened earlier. There were closer, and thus cheaper, places to dump convicts than Australia, I strongly suspect the main aim of the colony was to keep it out of French hands.
 
I agree with those who think that the British will attempt to claim the whole continent later if not sooner, and that the runners up for grabbing some part of it and in British default, the whole thing, France, are distant second runners, since they rarely succeeded in getting large numbers of French settlers to emigrate to colonies under French control. I do not know if the number of French immigrants to the USA, or other independent countries or other country's colonies were proportionate to their settlers in their own colonies, or not. But the only French colony I know of that got really large numbers of Europeans was Algeria, where they remained outnumbered by native Algerians--and where in order to pump up the numbers of Europeans, the French Third Republic invited other Europeans, with mainly southern Europeans responding, to settle there too. And this discrepancy in colonial emigration was evident in the low numbers of settlers in New France and Louisiana before the demographic drop in French birthrates in the 19th century, so that phenomenon merely underscored a deeper, longer trend.

Other nations in Europe, notably the Germanies and Italian states, were sources of much emigration, but lacked an established colonial system; their emigrants would settle, as I left open the possibility a large number of French emigrants may have, other nations' colonies or in independent nations like the USA or the Latin American nations. If Britain unaccountably left Australia alone until very late in the 19th century, acting as a dog in the manger only to deter French claims, or claims by other old established European colonial powers in the region (the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese) I suppose that sometime after Bismarck's downfall the Germans might take an interest, or perhaps earlier, Italy, but the sensible thing to expect the British to do is to cement their claim by having some settlements there long before any other powers but France have any strong presence in the colonial game that far afield. Even settling at a tenth the OTL rate, that should place enough loyalist bases there to deter shoestring operations by other powers.

OTOH, I also agree that if Georgia and other North American territories remain open for penal colonies of Britain, they will probably not divert them all the way to the Antipodes and thus the character of Australia as a set of British colonies would be quite different, more like New Zealand only without the detente with the native peoples.

But--we might need to look more closely at how and why Britain is able to hang on to the North American colonies. I believe it is going to be very hard to avoid some kind of showdown with American secessionists eventually, because the problems at issue were not trivial, and simple decrees from Westminster that the colonials were expected to simply obey would not resolve them well. I fear it would take something like an attempted American secession to get the British ruling classes thinking seriously and effectively about what it would take systematically to keep those colonies under control, and the outcome would be timelines where Britain had more resolve to win, perhaps at the expense of losing other assets they held or expanded OTL. And that having defeated the rebels, they would work out rather harsh means of staying in control, involving maintaining heavy forces there paid for by taxes and requisitions extorted by those same forces, in league with an invidiously maintained local elite amounting to a kind of aristocracy, based on loyalism during the Rebellion. I also think an element of control would be exercised by alliance with Native tribes, who would hit demographic bottom (due to diseases) and then increase in number while being culturally assimilated to British society--as a privileged collective aristocracy themselves.

The upshot is that dumping cumulatively one quarter of Britain's entire massive 19th century emigration in the form of presumably disgruntled convict laborers into this stew might seem like a risky thing to do, because the convicts might join forces with disgruntled American colonial subject masses and overwhelm the classes set above them. Even if British leaders share confidence that such rebellions can in the end be put down, bringing in the dry tinder for them in the form of penal colonists might seem not only risky but also a breach of faith with the various entities set in place to keep order in America. Thus, perhaps somewhat later than 1788, but probably not a lot later, certainly by the time of the Napoleonic Wars at the latest when other reasons to set up shop in Australia were also providing motives, the drive to use Australia as a penal colony will pick up. I suppose America will continue to get some convicts, but the bulk of them might well wind up being diverted to the Antipodes after all. In this case, Australia's history will differ in detail but not in essence and the overall outcome there will be quite similar.

Except perhaps that without the successful American Revolution to uphold and exemplify republican ideals, and with my belief that on the contrary the manner of governing America will become distinctly less democratic, and more strongly oligarchic, perhaps in none of Britain's colonies, no matter how distant or how European-like its demography becomes, will there be democratic local autonomy. The British ruling system may well take the lesson from the American rebellion to be that a firm hand must always be in place, even if costs more money, and so there would be no place for autonomous Dominions under the Crown--colonial regimes will be legally under strong Crown control, and practically an alliance of the interests of the central powers in London and the handpicked recognized colonial elites, who I think will probably remain canny enough to reinforce their strength with pragmatic rule, ensuring a good business environment winning the regime the support of middle classes without necessarily giving even them, let alone the ruled working class majority, significant political privilege--that would be reserved for the most successful and demonstrably loyal. No democracy in Australia, Canada, South Africa or the OTL USA--Canada will be in a continuum with the other American colonies of course; privileged perhaps as regions most of whose populace stayed effectively loyal and quiet. Or at any rate very little democracy, and that subject to being overridden or dissolved should things seem to be getting unruly.

Note I'm not necessarily talking about a dystopia, exactly. I think retarding Anglophone democracy (and I also expect a firm hand in the colonies will blow back to Britain, retarding advances of the masses into the voting classes there too) is a bad thing in and of itself, and that it will be accomplished by rather terroristic means. But there may well be compensations of various kinds, perhaps. Anyway it would be quite a different society than OTL I think, and the world as a whole, with the British example reversed on these points, will be a lot less liberal politically across the board. Perhaps the French, in defiance, will figure out how to manage to maintain a genuine universal manhood suffrage Republic earlier, or at any rate much the same as OTL (genuine broad based parliamentarian republic after 1871 or so).
 
This happened in Thande's Look to the West, although IIRC they still didn't send them to Australia in that timeline (Australia wound up settled by the French). Actually, I can't for the life of me remember where they ended up sending convicts in LTTW. In any case, that all depends on butterflies.

Susan-Mary

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Yes, if only because: who else is going to settle Australia? (A France that wethers the *Revolutionary period aside, as notoriously horrible as the French were at settler colonialism)

And, a British America will probably play a major economic and demographic role in the colonization of this *Australia.

The Dutch are not quite out of contention yet, even if the British are the favorites to bother to set up there.
 
How much longer would the North American colonies have been willing to accept the sweepings from Britain's jails even if they hadn't rebelled? I don't see Britain risking losing North America just to get rid of some gallows bait.
 
How much longer would the North American colonies have been willing to accept the sweepings from Britain's jails even if they hadn't rebelled? I don't see Britain risking losing North America just to get rid of some gallows bait.

North America is huge, plenty of places to put some convicts even if it does end up requiring more work than just throwing them at some pre-established colonies. I doubt the colonies would ever rebel just based on angst over convicts either.
 
North America is huge, plenty of places to put some convicts even if it does end up requiring more work than just throwing them at some pre-established colonies. I doubt the colonies would ever rebel just based on angst over convicts either.

Florida needs some colonists since if the British win the Revolution in a quick crush (like the Saratoga campaign), there is no need to give away Florida.
 
The fact that LaPerouse arrived in Sydney Harbour not long after the arrival of the First Fleet would indicate strong knowledge if not interest in the region by the French and for that reason may prompt the English to go ahead with colonization with or without a penal settlement.
 
North America is huge, plenty of places to put some convicts even if it does end up requiring more work than just throwing them at some pre-established colonies. I doubt the colonies would ever rebel just based on angst over convicts either.

No, but if TTL's AWI ends in a negotiated settlement, agreeing to end penal settlement in British North America would be a logical choice for the British, as it makes them look generous by conceding something but also doesn't cause them much extra hassle.
 
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