Читать книгу The Colonization of Australia : The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building - Richard Charles Mills - Страница 9

In the Australasian group [17] there were two colonies which had been founded at the end of the eighteenth century on entirely novel principles—New South Wales (1788) and Van Diemen's land (1803), "our pickpocket colonies," [18] receiving annually from Great Britain an increment of criminals. [19]

It was not that transportation of convicts to other colonies was unknown—few of the early American colonies were free from the reproach; [20] but never before had England in the "heroical work" of planting, used so extensively this "shameful and unblessed" [21] means. Convicts had provided labour before, but had never actually founded colonies. Even this system of convict colonization had been unable to keep out free settlers, and as early as 1819 in New South Wales, and 1825 in Van Diemen's Land, the bond were outnumbered by the free. [22] John Macarthur, ex-army officer, farmer, and importer of merino sheep, had demonstrated the suitability of Australia for wool-growing; and this was the lure which overcame the emigrant's repugnance [23] to association with convicts and ex-convicts.

Swan River was a very new colony, founded on the West Coast of Australia in 1829, by Act of Parliament and Colonial Office regulations, partly for fear that the French might found a colony there, [24] and partly as an experiment in free settlement. [25]