The Coghlan Factor

By Gordon Beckett

The second last volume in this twelve volume set describes and interprets the work of Timothy A. Coghlan. His best known work was the four-volume set of his 1918 published work, "Labour and Industry in Australia", based on his 'massive experience and research as administrator,commissioner and statistician'. Far from being solely a history of workers and their rights and entitlements, and the growth of industries, his tremendous study is a fine economic history of the colonies of Australia between 1788 and 1901.

The publisher's note to the first edition describes Coghlan as being born at Sydney in 1855 and educated at Cleveland Boys' School at Redfern, (Sydney) After working in various woolstores, he joined the NSW Public Works Department in 1873, and from 1886 to 1905 was the NSW. Government Statistician and Registrar of Friendly Societies in that colony. In his senior role, he supervised the censuses of 1891, 1900 and 1901. The 1900 census was supervised for the new Federal Government, following federation.

"He was the author of a great many reports and studies arising from his seat on many commissions of inquiry".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Jul 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490700205

Book preview

Copyright 2013 Gordon Beckett.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-0018-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-0019-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-0020-5 (e)

Trafford rev. 07/11/2013

TFSG-logo_BWFC.psd www.traffordpublishing.com.sg

Singapore

toll-free: 800 101 2656 (Singapore)

Fax: [phone] (Singapore)

CONTENTS

Foreword

1.   Preface And Outline

2.   The Reasons For The Colony

3.   The Transportation Program And Convict Work Practices

4.   The Colonial Economic Drivers 1788-1856

5.   A Population History

6.   British Influence In The Colony & The Economics Of Exploration

7.   Economic Cycles & Growing The Colonial Economy

8.   Capital Formation

9.   Land Policies

10.   Recording & Reporting The Growth Of The Colonial Economy

11.   Entrepreneurs, Capitalists, Free Enterprise & The Rise Of Manufacturing

12.   Summary & Conclusions

Bibliography

FOREWORD

When the thought first came of preparing a comprehensive economic history of Colonial NSW, it was met with comments ranging from ‘over ambitious’ to ‘very Germanic’ and ‘pretentious’.

The task was almost overwhelming but with progress came a realisation of how many gaps there are in assembling such a comprehensive analysis. In fact, questions kept arising, such as ‘was the study to be analytical or merely a recitation of the most important economic events in NSW’s colonial past?

The selection of key events was highly subjective and was guided by the most recognised economic historians such as Shann, Butlin, Fitzpatrick, Fletcher and even Clark, but most of all Coghlan. Coghlan’s masterwork, Labour and Industry in Australia, is coming close to the centenary of its publication and it should not be considered too presumptuous to consolidate his study from the original four volumes into one–much as Michael Cathcart did with the six volumes of Clark’s History of Australia.

Far from being overwhelming the task was exciting and humbling, in identifying the gaps in the author’s colonial economic history, which had been considered to be reasonably complete.

I have only ever met the one economic history, a man whom I admire greatly and thank sincerely for his support during my postgraduate days. Dr. David Meredith (UNSW-FEC) specialises in understanding the convict workers, and has himself made a significant contribution to that aspect of economic history in recent years.

Finally, the selection of significant colonial economic events is mine as is the interpretation and analysis of the Coghlan writings. References to The Coghlan Factor in each chapter is one of abstracts taken from the 4 volumes of Labour and Industry in Australia which I have selected as being representative of the thoughts of Coghlan on the topic of that chapter.

Gordon Beckett

Queensland

June 2013

PREFACE AND OUTLINE

The Coghlan Factor

Coghlan introduces his four-volume study in this way:

The things most nearly affecting the Labour movement in Australia–immigration, land legislation, and political action–are dealt with herein almost to the exclusion of other matters, and while this book is a history of Labour, it is not a history of Australia. It is based on official records, contemporary newspapers and other publications and on information obtained direct from many persons who played such a prominent part in Australian affairs from 1880 onwards. For the statistics I am my own authority as also for the account of the banking crisis of 1893 and for some phases of the labour movement.¹

Introduction to Chapter 1

The Labour history that is Timothy Coghlan’s legacy is, in its origins, a four-volume work published by the Oxford University Press in 1918. In a publisher’s note to Volume 1 of Labour and Industry in Australia, it is recorded that:

. . . during his working life Coghlan was the author of a great many official reports and studies arising out of his activities on commissions of enquiry. As a statistician he prepared the annual edition of Wealth and Progress in New South Wales between 1886 and 1901, and later as Agent-General for NSW in London, he continued to write useful, informative reports on the state of the colony for intending settlers.²

This masterpiece of Australian labour history was first published in 1918 and then reprinted by the Macmillan Company in 1969. The comparable volumes of Australian history by Manning Clark³ or Marjorie Barnard⁴ make their chapters tell the story of related events, rather than the Coghlan approach of mostly following a timescale through the period.

This current study is an attempt to concentrate the four volumes into one, and not by compression but by analysis, interpretation, interpolation and recitation of the Coghlan grasp of statistics, make a 2400 page text on Labour history into an abbreviated sub-study of the economic history of the colonies of Australia between 1788 and 1900.

The economic history of the colony of NSW has long been a favourite topic of study for the writer and the chance to conjoin all the separate events into a factual, statistically validated study has long been a challenge. That a modern interpretation of significant events and a topical analysis of why things happened and explaining the outcomes is a missing link in Australian Economic History. The greats of this type of study are in short number–obviously Coghlan (in the specific area of labour history), but then can come Shann, even CMH Clark, Brian Fletcher and Brian Fitzpatrick. My favourite of the modern economic historians is Butlin, mainly N.G. but also brother S.J.

Having been encouraged to write a new economic history of the colony of NSW, it seemed both logical and economical to combine a re-examination approach to Coghlan and an interpretative history of economic events concurrently through a re-appraisal of Coghlan’s work.

Another endeavour would be to extend the Coghlan study from 1900 to 2000. This is most probably a challenge more suited to a labour historian or a social and political historian, for what economic historian could grapple successfully with the roles, advances and costs of the two World Wars, the great Depression, and then the boom times and economic growth and development since the 1950s.

Coghlan concentrates on labour’s contributions of output, labour costs and commodity prices. Most labour historians recognise Coghlan’s contribution to our knowledge and understanding of particular subjects (the workforce, fiscal and banking issues, federation) came from his pen while he conducted the censuses of 1891 and 1901 for NSW.⁵

The masterpiece of Labour and Industry in Australia was the culmination of his critical views on Australia’s lack of equity in wealth and income distribution, facilitated by his exile in London. In 1906 he wrote that he "could have completed his exhaustive study of Labour and Industry in Australia, but for my difficulty in determining the causes which gave the workers so little in the way of comfort, in spite of the enormous progress of recent years".⁶

McFarlane’s opinion is ‘the book is not a chronicle. It is a carefully planned and constructed as a theoretical model of economic growth. Economic change has causes, which are themselves to be explained by economic categories. Moral judgements are rarely made with respect to individuals, but private enterprise is often criticised’.⁷

Coghlan has a unique starting point for his statistical analysis. Writing the Preface to The Wealth and Progress of New South Wales 1900-1901, Coghlan opines, A period of over forty-two years has elapsed since NSW was restricted to its present boundaries. At the close of 1859, when Queensland was separated from it, the mother State contained a population of 336,572 persons. After forty-two years the number has risen to 1,379,890⁸.

Thus the majority of the Coghlan statistics and comparisons have the starting point of 1859/1860 at which time the north, south and western boundaries of the colony were finally fixed and the base for an ongoing economic model could be established. This starting point then gave expression to population (and other demographic data) progress with rail services, postal services, overseas trade and colonial production ⁹

Coghlan is nothing if not parochial and an animated supporter of his colony–NSW. In his preface to the 1887 edition of the Wealth & Progress of NSW, Coghlan writes, ‘(This volume) is designed to trace the progress of the colony during the first century of its history, (and) show that NSW maintains its position as the leading province of the Australasian Group.’¹⁰

Coghlan also makes the point in that same Preface ‘Statistics reaching back to the foundation of the colony are, unfortunately, not procurable. The earlier years have, therefore, been dealt with in the form of an historical sketch.’

In a publisher’s note to each volume of Labour and Industry in Australia, it is recorded that:

Timothy Augustus Coghlan was born in Sydney in 1855 and educated at Cleveland Street National School, Redfern, and Sydney Grammar School. After some time in a wool broker’s office, then as a pupil teacher at Fort Street School, he was appointed in 1873 to the staff of the Public Works Department, becoming Assistant Engineer of Harbours and Rivers in 1884. From 1886-1905 he was Government Statistician, at the same time fulfilling from time to time other public service roles. He was awarded a K.C.M.G. in 1918 and died in London in 1926.¹¹

Synopsis of this Study

The Economic History of Australia began long before the arrival of the first fleet. It began significantly with the loss of the British colonies in North America and the need to find replacement repositories for the burgeoning number of prisoners being housed in British goals. The reasons for selecting new South Wales as the ‘prison’ of choice for the British Government are of more than passing interest, plus the detailed planning for the transportation program and the unrealistic figuring of James Matra all help explain why the colony of Botany bay began with such a bad start.

Following an analysis of the reasons for the colony being brought into existence as a penal colony, the second chapter of this study unveils the complex state of affairs that was the Transportation (and convict work program) commencing in 1788. This leads directly into the highlights of the colonial economy and more directly the economic cycles and their various causes. A brief population history is recounted, which policy used the officially sponsored immigration program as the major basis for population growth between 1788 and 1856.

British influence in and over the colony was both direct and indirect. The official influence was found in the various pieces of Westminster legislation that was directed towards the colony, the official appropriations that maintained the colony and the personnel selected by the Home government to work in and for the colony, contrary to the demands by successive governors to allow personnel recruitment, and the setting of their pay rates, to be controlled by the colonial officials rather than by Whitehall. Indirectly the economic cycles in Britain, including the various European wars and other foreign policy initiatives Britain was involved in, were quite influential in the colony. The greatest impact was on the level of private investment attracted to the colony together with the level of immigration flowing from Britain to its newest colony.

This discussion of colonial economic cycles is followed by a study of capital formation, public and private, human and financial. Land policies, which include the impact of the sale of crown lands and the policies and actions of the Land Board are discussed and then following an analysis of the growth of the colonial public accounting and the development of government departments and the various government instrumentalities, an economic overview is made of the growth and contribution of colonial entrepreneurs, capitalists’ industrialists and the rise of the manufacturing sector.

Coghlan’s contribution in Labour and Industry is compared with the views of Shann, Butlin, Fitzpatrick, Fletcher and Beckett. Coghlan has carefully structured each of his four volumes such that there is a logical progression to the story of Australian labour practices, policies and performance. Here is a brief outline of the four Coghlan volumes.

Profile of the Coghlan Study

LABOUR AND INDUSTRY IN AUSTRALIA

From the First Settlement in 1788 to the Establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901

By T.A. Coghlan

In Four Volumes

Volume 1

1.   From the Foundation of settlement to the crossing of the Mountains

i.   Introduction to First Period

ii.   The Assignment System

iii.   Musters

iv.   Wages and Working Hours

v.   The Currency

vi.   Land Policy

vii.   The Genesis of the Wool Industry

viii.   The Industries of the Period

ix.   Trade and Prices

2.   From the Crossing of the Mountains to the Abolition of the Assignment System

i.   Introduction

ii.   Convict Labour: Assignment

iii.   Free Labour

iv.   Immigration

v.   The occupation of Land

vi.   Agricultural and Pastoral Pursuits

vii.   The Currency

viii.   Trade and Prices

3.   From the Abolition of the Assignment System to the Discovery of Gold

i.   Introduction

ii.   Transportation

iii.   Immigration

iv.   Land Legislation–NSW, VDL, WA

v.   Land Legislation & Settlement–SA, and Wakefield’s Theories

vi.   Labour and Wages

vii.   Prices

viii.   The Financial Crisis of 1841, 1842 and 1843

ix.   Industries

4.   From the Discovery of Gold to the Introduction of Free Selection of Land before Survey

i.   Introduction

ii.   The end of the Convict System

iii.   The Discovery of Gold in Australia

iv.   Immigration

v.   Land Legislation and Settlement

vi.   Industries

vii.   Wages & Conditions of Labour

viii.   Prices

ix.   The Railway Beginnings of Australia

x.   Currency, Banking and Exchange

Volume 2

5.   From the Introduction of Free Selection before Survey to the Establishment of Protection in Victoria, and the Beginning of a vigorous policy of Public Works in all the colonies

i.   Introduction

ii.   Immigration

iii.   Recrudescence of Bushranging

iv.   Land Legislation & Settlement

v.   Labour and Wages

vi.   Introduction of coloured Labour into Queensland

vii.   Prices

viii.   Tariff Changes and the establishment of Protection in Victoria

ix.   Intercolonial Tariff Regulations

x.   The crisis in Queensland during 1866

xi.   Trade and Industry

xii.   Currency and Banking

xiii.   Railway Extension and Public Works Policy

Volume 3

6.   From the Year 1873 to the Financial crisis of 1893

i.   Introduction

ii.   Immigration

iii.   The exclusion of the Chinese

iv.   Land & Settlement

v.   A vigorous policy of public works

vi.   Labour and Wages

vii.   The Maritime Strike of 1890

viii.   Prices

ix.   The Financial Developments of the Period and the crisis of 1893

x.   Trade & Finance in South Australia

xi.   Trade & Finance in Western Australia and Tasmania

xii.   The formation of the Political Labour Party in Australia

Volume 4

7.   From the Financial Crisis of 1893 to the Establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901

i.   Introduction

ii.   Land Legislation & Settlement

iii.   Immigration

iv.   Labour & Wages

v.   Factory & Shop Legislation and the Settlement of Industrial Disputes

vi.   Prices

vii.   Trade & Banking after the crisis

viii.   The Labour Party: Continuation of its History

ix.   White Australia

x.   Events Leading up to the Federation of Australia

Although Groenewegen and McFarlane claim this is a labour history of Australia, it is remarkably similar to an Economic History of the colonies between 1788 and 1900. For example, in three other volumes relating to economic history of the period, there are only marginal changes from the selected Coghlan topics.

C.M.H.. Clark, writing Select Documents in Australian History, includes only six headings for this special section.

1.   Land Policy and Agriculture

2.   The Pastoral Industry

3.   Sugar

4.   Immigration

5.   The Tariff

6.   The Depression of 1890-3

Beckett’s Economic History of Colonial NSW 1788-1900¹² includes the following topics:

1   Reasons for the colony

2   The Aboriginal Economy

3   Economics of the Transportation Program

4   Development goals & plans for implementation

5   Gubernatorial economic policies

6   Key Economic Events (1788-1856) & economic cycles

7   The economic depression of 1841-1843

8   British Influence in the colony

9   Immigration & population

10   Capital formation

   Public

   Private

   Human

11   The Public Finance of the colony

12   Aspects of the colonial economy—drivers

13   Supporting Services

   Commissariat

   public service & department

   land Board

14   Entrepreneurs& the origins of capitalism

15   Rise of Manufacturing

16   Colonial financial Institutions

17   The Agrarian economic revolution

18   Analysing the Statistics

19   Events that led to self-government in 1856

20   Summary & Conclusions

The point being made here is that Coghlan’s study may, in fact, specialise in labour analysis, but the wide-ranging other topics covered include most important economic history topics which would cover the period between the founding of the colony and Federation (1788-1901). Thus this regurgitated Coghlan magnum opus can truly form the basis of pre-Federation Australian economic history, and even be classed as the first detailed work of Australian Economic history published.

In any list of events that shaped Australia there would be both concurrence and great dissent as to which events to include or exclude. However at the risk of offending a reader or two, the following list is offered in the hope that Coghlan’s study will be seen to be as inclusive as any could be.

1.   Cook takes possession of Eastern Australia (1770)

2.   Britain loses her American Colonies (1781)

3.   The First Fleet sails for Botany Bay, and the Colony is proclaimed (1788)

4.   Rule by the Rum Corps (1792-1809)

5.   Macarthur founds the Wool Industry (1796)

6.   Discovery of Coal (1796)

7.   Exploration (VDL–1798; Flinders sails around VDL 1801-03)

8.   The Macquarie Years—A guided Administration (1809-1821)

9.   Crossing the Mountains (1813)

10.   The Bank of NSW founded (1817)

11.   Representative Government (1823)

12.   A free Press (1824)

13.   Morton Bay Founded (1824)

14.   Settling Port Phillip (1835)

15.   Transportation to NSW ends (1840)

16.   Victoria Separates (1850)

17.   The Gold Rush starts (1850)

18.   The Eureka Rebellion (1854)

19.   Responsible Government (1855-1859)

20.   Queensland Separates (1859)

21.   Unlocking the Lands (1860s)

22.   Transport & Communications: The revolutionary Years (1860-90)

23.   The Conquest of the Inland

24.   The Drift to the Cities

25.   Refrigeration

26.   Boom & Bust: The Depression of 1890-1893

27.   Birth of the Labour Party (1891)

28.   Federation (1900-01)

In the one hundred years since Coghlan commenced his masterwork, any selection of major events that comprise the economic history of the country, through to Federation still remains much the same, whether Coghlan selected them, or Clark, or Beckett. Therefore the opportunity to revisit Coghlan, consolidate his four volumes into one and update the Economic History of the Colonies from 1788 to Federation in 1901 is a challenge not to be missed.

The Methodology of the Undertaking

Coghlan’s 2,400 pages in four volumes are well crafted and follow the time scale of Australian history. Although Coghlan protests that his is not a history, the real history of the settlement, its growth and development is bound tightly with its integral parts–the economic, political, Labour and Industry, social and financial components. Thus an underlying knowledge and understanding of the economic history of the colonies is essential to the history of this nation.

Assuming the twin goals of recreating and consolidating Coghlan and of recording a statistically based Economic History of the colonies from 1788 to 1901, then the logical and practical approach would be to recite the key events and utilise the invaluable statistical resources of Coghlan and add an analytical and illustrative approach to the most important events.

Selecting the Events for an Economic History of the Colonies

Mention has already been made of Shann’s "Economic History of Australia’, and the contribution of Clark, Fitzpatrick, Fletcher and Butlin, not least of all, that of Coghlan. Therefore by highlighting the events chosen by those economic historians let them all guide the most promising events for an up-to-date Economic History.

131415161718Thus, by consensus and preference, here is the comprehensive list of topics under which, two processes will have been achieved–the systematic reduction of Coghlan’s four volumes of Labour History into one abbreviated volume and coincidentally an accumulated and comprehensive volume of Economic History of the colonies between 1788 and 1900. Selected topics are:

2—The Aboriginal Economy in 1788

3—Reasons for the Colony

3—The Transportation Program

4—Highlights of the Colonial Economy 1788–1824 (economic drivers)

5—A Population History (immigration planning)

6—British Influence in the Colony

7—Public Finance, local revenues andTaxation

8—Economic Cycles

9—Capital Formation

10—Land Policies (and the Land board)

11—Entrepreneurs, Capitalism, free enterprise and the rise of Manufacturing

Summary of Chapter 1

The Coghlan challenge is one of selecting the major events of specialised Australian history between 1788 and 1900, sand comparing it firstly, with the nominated events of the same period selected by other prominent specialist historians, in order to understand if Coghlan covered all the required ground.

Having determined that Coghlan had, in fact, been thorough, it is secondly important to identify and highlight the major topics of the 19th century colonial economy in reality dating back to the first settlement in 1788 and compare the Coghlan treatment of those selected topics and events with the treatment given to those same events by Clark, Fletcher, Fitzpatrick, Butlin and Beckett. Coghlan’s writing was largely statistically based, and in the process of reassessing Coghlan study of Labour and Industry in Australia, it will be invaluable to refine the existing Handbook of Colonial Statistics 1788-1900 by Beckett¹⁹

THE REASONS FOR THE COLONY

The Coghlan Factor

The American colonies were long used as a receptacle for political prisoners and offenders against the laws of England. Even after the revolt of the thirteen states, convicts were transported to America.

When the independence of the Union (of those thirteen states) was, by the provisions of the Peace of Versailles, recognised by England, the overcrowded conditions of the gaols compelled the authorities to deport the criminals elsewhere. However, convicts were still transported to the thirteen states of North America in 1783 and 1784. By this time the criminals were fast becoming a danger and an embarrassment . . . . The coasts of Africa were first tried, however the unhealthiness of the climate was so great and the mortality so appalling that transportation to Africa was given up in 1785 and a new depot was looked for. Sir Joseph Banks and others holding influential office advocated the establishment of a colony in NSW—the beautiful and ‘fertile’ territory discovered in 1770 by Captain Cook It is fruitful to now enquire as to how much or how little the English Ministry were moved by sentimental considerations towards relocating those American loyalists who preferred quitting the land of their birth to living under of the successful republicans in founding a colony in Terra Australis. The original scheme of settlement actually carried out was purely penal and military. In truth, the authorities saw clearly that the idea of a penal settlement and a free colony at the same place and under the same government was an impossible one. Inconsistent as it may seem, they did not consider they were founding a mere goal but an industrial colony, from which would arise in due season a new home for the British people–how the free colony was to be evolved out of the penal settlement does not appear to have been clearly foreseen; indeed it was more a pious hope than a real expectation.²⁰

The task laid upon Phillip and his successors of forming an industrial community on the shores of Botany Bay was one that might well have been deemed impractical. From the animal or vegetable life of the country not even a slight supply of food could be obtained, everything required must be imported, nor were there other natural resources to help them in their early struggles. Yet there were some points in favour of success. The site chosen (at Sydney Cove) was all that could be desired; the climate was excellent; the aborigines few and comparatively harmless; the governors were conscientious, humane and capable; the money provided by the English Government adequate to the needs of the establishment

Introduction to Chapter 2

Coghlan introduces his 1886-87 edition of Wealth & Progress of NSW with a detailed historical sketch of ‘The Establishment of the Colony of NSW’:²¹

The favourable reports brought to England by the ‘Endeavour’ on her return, and the graphic account of his voyage published by Cook, together with the fact that Great Britain had just lost her North American colonies, by their successful rebellion, turned all eyes to New Holland (as it continued to be called). The difficulty of disposing of their criminal population was only one of the causes, which determined the government of the day to found the Colony of New South Wales; for all concerned felt that they were engaged in founding a new home in the Southern Hemisphere for the British people, and that visions of even greater progress than has yet been attained filled the minds of many reflecting persons, including Viscount Castlereagh, Governor Phillip, and many now in the Colony.

It is an attempt to identify some of the other causes that is the goal of this chapter.

A Revisionist Theory of the Colonial Origins

It is probably not surprising that an Economic Historian, more so than an Historian, would ask for a more rational explanation of the reasons for the formation of the Colony of New South Wales in 1788. Although not traditionally a matter of Australian economic history, this study has grown into one where the regular understanding is clarified and revised by an interpretation and understanding of events that cross over the boundary from history into historical economics. It would seem that the authorities in the British Treasury would have raised consideration, if not in the Home Office, as to what impact another British Colony would have on the Treasury funds. The economic argument would have been more than the mere ‘opportunity’ cost of not having a penal colony as a repository. The first question becomes, is it wise or proper to question the traditional understanding and theories of history? If schoolchildren have been taught for at least 50 years (I can verify from 1950) that Australia was selected as a penal colony and for the transportation of prisoners from British prisons, then why do we raise doubts in 2001?

A.G.L. Shaw introduces Great Britain and the Colonies 1815-1865 with this rather exculpatory comment:

The fate of any historical interpretation about a problem or a period is to become itself re-interpreted. Not infrequently when a reigning hypothesis gets unseated, clarity and simplicity gives place to complexity, conflicting evidence, a melange of contributory causes. And, as the inexact science which history will undoubtedly remain, introducing ‘multi-variables’ is to lose at once that sense of certainty and intellectual satisfaction. Many major themes in the explanation of 19th century British history are currently in need of re-examination.

In this study we are revisiting the traditionalist theory that the only reason for the colony of NSW was as a penal settlement. In fact the pre-occupation of the country was carefully planned and discussed at all levels based on the simple submission by Sir Joseph Banks in evidence before the House of Commons Select Committee on Penitentiaries in 1774.

The traditionalist argument is, in its most simplistic structure: Upon Cook’s news that he had taken possession of a great country (New South Wales), England did not immediately decide to colonise it. She already had a huge empire, and wanted no more for the present, for colonies were expensive to govern, and they oftentimes caused wars. With the American Colonies in mind, it seemed that colonies brought no profit while they were struggling and expensive, and that when they became prosperous they rebelled.

Even though the journals of Cook and Banks were doctored by Hawkesworth before publishing to make NSW sound better than it was, the choice of a new colony would have been (in the opinion of F. Hawke) New Zealand or the Friendly Islands before Botany Bay was selected. However the need was different now with the revolt by the Americas and the accumulation of over 1,000 prisoners each year in Britain. They were being kept in prison and in hulks tethered together in mid-stream, and soon became over-full. It was Banks who suggested Botany Bay as a new penal colony, which is surprising when we remember what Banks said about NSW. He now seemed to think it was just the right place. It was far away from Britain and there was no danger of prisoners escaping. Thus the colony was simply to be used as a jail for prisoners and a repository for the poor of England! Russel Ward in Australia puts it simply ‘In 1788 the Australian nation was founded by and for Great Britain’s surplus of convicted criminals, a fact which used to give many respectable Australians pain and which threatened a few with schizophrenia.’

But this is over-simplistic, for Ward implies that Britain was blinded to all other considerations other than the placement of prisoners somewhere other than in Britain. As any economic Historian would know, if nothing else the economic considerations of adding another colony to the British Empire was just extra expense. But there was something else! Foreign policy issues, trade and industry issues, ridding the homeland of the poor and unemployed following the Industrial revolution were all considered, and the penal colony idea was the icing on the cake, and not the sole determinant.

Why does the traditional view need reviewing?

The record needs setting straight for future generations and at least for the next 50 years!

The answer to the question ‘what are the reasons for the settlement’ once seemed obvious. In the 1780s England was facing an urgent problem–jails were overflowing, crime was increasing; the solution was transportation–but to where? Botany Bay was selected!

This is the traditional copybook answer repeated for the past half-century!

In 1888, a British historian, Gonner, suggested a larger story–Botany Bay was settled for economic reasons, to compensate Britain for the loss of her American Colonies. This theory found no support in Australia until K.M. Dallas (a Tasmanian historian) discussed it in 1952. Dallas asked–Why would a nation of merchants go so far and pay so much money, if it were merely to dump convicts? Dallas even set Geoffrey Blainey to rethinking the rational explanation.

Lord Sydney, as Secretary of State, had stated the problem and the government’s position in 1780: The traditionalists bought this explanation without much question or even concern:

The several gaols and places for the confinement of felons in this Kingdom, being in so crowded a state that the greatest danger is to be apprehended not only from their escape, but from infectious distempers which may hourly be expected to break out among them.

However these were the reasons for the policy of ‘transportation’ and not for settling the colony!

Some Background to Events leading to the Government 1786 decision

In the 18th Century, England was in the throes of domestic upheaval. She was going through the Industrial Revolution. The country was being transformed from a rural-based economy to an industrial one. Farms were closing. Factories were opening. People were relocating from the country to the city. The results were overcrowding, primitive sewerage, disease and an increase in crime, mostly due to higher levels of poverty. On top of that there was no police force, only a collection of corrupt wardens. The English penal code was to be made even more severe than it already was! Gaol was to be no more of a rehabilitation or preventative strike then, than it is now. The gaols were overflowing and short-term (7 years or less) convicted persons were placed on ‘hulks’²² tied together in mid-stream of the Thames. Men were escaping from the hulks in growing numbers and there was a real fear that the situation would get out of hand. Crime and the cost of crime and of maintaining prisoners were increasing–finance, accommodation and patience with the problem were not.

Building more prisons (made permissible by the Penitentiary Houses Act of 1779) was one solution, where convicts could be employed in hard labour. The scheme foundered because of disagreements over location and cost. By 1784, the authorities moved again to the concept of transportation and a 1784 Act to resume transportation was passed but without a specified location. Parliamentary Committees investigated Africa, but the unhealthiness of the climate, the infertile soil and a fear of hostile natives combined to rule out the region. A disastrous experiment at the Cape Coast Castle resulted in a 45% death rate amongst convicts in a single year.

Even in 1785 and 1786, sites in Canada and the West Indies were under consideration, but by 1779 Joseph Banks had proposed Botany Bay just before Matra wrote his report to the Admiralty in 1883. Matra emphasised the great commercial advantages of Botany Bay, based on his having been a midshipman under Cook during his 7-day stay on the East Coast of New Holland. The colony could serve as a base for trade with China (tea), with Nootka Sound (furs) and the Moluccas (spices) and for the cultivation of flax.

Sir John Young, another adviser to the Peel government, submitted a plan in 1785 for a settlement suitable for convicts and commercial gain. The Beauchamp Committee of the House of Commons rejected both schemes. The cost of transportation was the main objection. The evidence suggested a passage cost of about £30, which was 6 times the cost of passage to America. Although Botany Bay was rejected in 1785 as too expensive, just one year later, on 18 August 1786, it was chosen as the site. Botany Bay was selected as the last resort, almost in desperate circumstances. Circumstances pressuring the decision included the debts of the Prince of Wales, negotiations for a treaty with France, and growing agitation against the ‘slave trade’, which in large part was sponsored by British subjects. The convict problem appeared small, in comparison, but deserved and got a rapid solution. The government’s aim was mercantilist–colonies or settlements were only useful if they benefited the mother country. England was a trading nation with imperial ambitions. Botany Bay was selected for the general advantages it offered as well as being a place suitable for transportation. These general advantages included:

•   Botany Bay was useful as a naval base and a refitting port in the South Seas.

•   England’s interest in the Pacific had increased, especially after the loss of the American colonies.

•   Rivalry with the French in the East became a foundation for a base.

•   The colony of NSW had important commercial attractions; flax and timber, (essential for naval supplies) could be grown there. Convicts were not dumped at Botany Bay; they were sent as the first settlers for a naval base and refitting port.

•   That is why the early emphasis on rehabilitation. From that base, the vital trade routes could be tapped—tea from China, fur from North America, the whaling and sealing industries, and South American loot carried on Spanish ships.

After 1785, when the French and Dutch alliance was renewed, the French revived their version of The East India Company in the Pacific. In 1786 the British annexed Penang and Botany Bay was settled as a useful base for trade. The official documents do give us some details of the profit motive, which the English needed to undertake the venture. These official documents included:

•   Cook’s report of Norfolk Island having superior quality of the ‘spruce pines and flax’; these were of the ‘greatest consequence to us as a naval power’—Matra.

•   Phillip was instructed to cultivate flax locally, which he did within one month of arriving at Botany Bay. The flax and pine timber were as important in 1788 as steel and oil are today.

However, the traditionalists still argue that Botany Bay was settled at a certain point in time because the government needed to solve its convict problem. The revisionists argue–why that place and not another? The pressure groups won the day in 1786–

•   The politicians saw the disgraceful and frightening state of the hulks;

•   The ‘opposition’ in parliament needled the government for its failure to find a solution;

•   Powerful economic groups (of merchants) were well represented in the discussions for protecting trade against competition from national rivals.

The government made a sudden, but not hasty, decision in the face of all this pressure.

Revising the Interpretation

A revisionist theory draws a very different analysis where there were numerous basic determinants, other than the penal colony was for the formation of the colony and that it became only a means to an end to send convicts from the overflowing British prisons to the early colony.

For a start, the fact was that no British government in the past had been directly responsible for initiating the permanent settlement of any territory. The American colonial enterprises, dating back to the early seventeenth century, had been the work of individuals seeking a better life, or of companies acting with the general support of the government or under Royal charter, but none had been directly fostered or sponsored by the government. With no private or commercial interests likely to set up a pioneering enterprise in the newly chartered territories, emigration from the British Isles to various American colonies went on free from any thought of the more distant places as alternatives. ‘Not only remoteness but the very nature of the lands observed by members of Cook’s expedition inhibited serious interest’, writes Younger in Australia and the Australians ‘whilst New Zealand’s ferocious tribesmen inspired fear, and Sir Joseph Banks wrote of New South Wales that ‘a soil so barren and at the same time entirely void of the helps derived from cultivation could not be supposed to yield much towards the support of man ‘.

The British government supported privatisation of colonisation, but the settlement of such remote and unproductive places did not appeal to any private group, and the British government saw no reason for action. A readiness to take possession (as Cook had done in the name of King George III) did not imply a readiness to follow such action with occupation; nor did the mere declaration of possession in itself confer any substantial right or obligation on the British government.

These five basic determinants of whether or not to settle the area of New Holland included:

•   Foreign Policy considerations

•   Military (in particular, naval) considerations

•   Scientific & technical considerations

•   The tyranny of the distance

•   Economic (in particular, trade) considerations

Only after quantifying the strategic criteria within these five categories did the rationale of the colony being developed at government expense but being made to pay its own way, as rapidly as possible, did the formation of a penal settlement come about as a means to underpin the economics of the future colony.

Foreign Policy Considerations

Commodore John Byron sailed from Plymouth in 1764 with orders, that in order to avoid arousing Spanish jealousies and retaliation were kept secret. After passing through the Straits of Magellan he sailed on the familiar north-westerly course over the Pacific, making few discoveries; he sighted only outlying islands of minor groups, and after visiting Tinian he went on to Batavia and returned home, completing the circumnavigation in the record time of twenty-two months. On his return to England in 1766 his ship, the frigate Dolphin, was placed under Captain Samuel Wallis who, with Captain Philip Carteret in the Swallow, set off on another circumnavigation. The two ships were separated soon after passing through the Straits of Magellan. Wallis reached Tahiti (naming it King George Island), the Society Islands, and the Wallis Archipelago, sailing home by way of Batavia. Carteret discovered Pitcairn Island and sailed through St George’s Channel, so proving that New Ireland and New Britain were separated.

For much of the 18th century there was a distinct possibility that naval warfare (between France and Britain) would be extended into the Pacific. Both the French and English were doing their share of voyaging in these waters, sometimes no more than a few months, or a few leagues, apart. England’s victory in the Seven Years war, acknowledged at the Treaty of Paris in 1763, resulted in England’s supremacy over the French in India, and the loss of France’s North American colonies to England. (France, however, retained some possessions in India and the best of her sugar-islands.) In the long run the English victory also decided the future of the Pacific.

Military (Naval) considerations

K.M. Dallas first probed, in a public lecture in Hobart in 1952, the mystery of why England decided to send many of its convicts to the opposite side of the world rather than Canada, the West Indies or the Cape Colony or Orange River in temperate Africa. These alternatives were cheaper solutions, and even though the locals in those alternate destinations had objected to the potential sale of convicts at those destinations, they had not complained at the idea of setting up ‘guarded prison settlements’ in a remote corner of the settlement for instance, Nova Scotia or Jamaica. Dallas suggested England needed a new sea base and refitting port in order to strengthen her commercial empire in the East. It was to