British settlement and its costs

Detail

How Europeans reached Australia

• 1606 — Dutch sailors are the first Europeans to sight Australia. They do not settle.
• 1642 — the Dutch sailor Abel Tasman lands on the island later called Tasmania.
• 1770 — Captain James Cook reaches Botany Bay on the east coast. He names the region New South Wales.
• 1788 — Britain sets up a penal colony (a colony used as a jail for convicts) and founds Sydney.

The turn in British opinion about natives

• Cook's first reports called the natives friendly.
• Feeling turned sharply after Cook was killed by a native. Important exam trap: this happened in Hawaii, not Australia.
• One killing, far from Australia, was later used as an excuse for violence against Australian natives.

Why convicts, and why Australia

• Portugal had tried settling Brazil with convicts and gave it up after natives hit back.
• Britain sent convicts to its American colonies until the Americans won independence.
• Britain then needed a new dumping ground. Transportation removed criminals from Britain and gave the new colony free labour at the same time. [2]
• The First Fleet sailed from Portsmouth on 13 May 1787; the first ship reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788 after about eight months and 15,000 miles (24,000 km). It carried roughly 750 convicts and over 250 free people, under Captain Arthur Phillip. [2]
• Botany Bay proved bad — poor soil, little fresh water, weak anchorage. On 21 January 1788 Phillip moved north and picked Sydney Cove, named after the British home secretary Viscount Sydney. [2]
• Between 1788 and 1868, when transportation ended, more than 160,000 convicts were shipped to Australia. Other convict stations followed at Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), Moreton Bay (Brisbane) and Norfolk Island. [3]

Why freed convicts became land-grabbers

• Freed convicts could not return to Britain. The sentence cut them off from home.
• So they had to build a life in Australia itself.
• They wanted farm land, and felt no hesitation in throwing natives off it.
• Key point for answers: the settler at the frontier was often a poor ex-prisoner, not a rich planter. Land hunger came from the bottom of colonial society as well as the top.

The Daruk view of Sydney (a 1790 description)

From Creating a Nation, the account of the Daruk people:

• A thousand hungry newcomers arrived at once. They ate into local food supplies that had fed a much smaller number.
• Sacred places were destroyed on a large scale.
• Trees were cut down for no reason the Daruk could see — the destruction looked 'inexplicable' to them.
• The Daruk answer was to stay away from the settlement.
• They were brought back only 'by an official kidnapping' — the government seized natives to force contact.

The human cost

• In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nearly 90% of the natives died.
• Three causes, all from the scaffold:
• Germs — natives had no resistance to new European diseases.
• Loss of land and resources — hunting and food grounds were fenced off for farms.

• Battles with settlers.

• External detail: the Aboriginal population in 1788 is estimated at 300,000 to 1,000,000, and was cut by as much as 90 per cent between 1788 and 1900. Smallpox alone was reported to have killed half the Aboriginal people of the Sydney area within just over a year of British arrival. Other imported diseases included measles, scarlet fever, chicken pox, whooping cough and bronchitis. About 20,000 Aboriginal people are estimated to have been killed in the fighting. [4]

Note: The scaffold dates the ~90% loss to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Britannica dates the same scale of loss to 1788–1900 [4]. Keep the NCERT wording in an answer; the figure itself (~90%) is the same in both.

The settler economy

• Less varied than America's. America had many kinds of farming and industry; Australia rested on a few big items.
• Backbone: huge sheep farms and mining stations.
• Later additions: vineyards and wheat.
• So central was this that a name once suggested for the new capital was 'Woolwheatgold' — wool, wheat and gold in one word.
• The city was instead named Canberra, from the native word kamberra, meaning 'meeting place'. Established 1911.

Labour: natives, then Chinese, then a colour bar

• Natives worked on the farms in conditions 'little different from slavery'.
• Chinese immigrants were then brought in as cheap labour — the same pattern as in California.
• Coolie immigration to Australia began in 1851 and was stopped by law in 1855.
• Both Australia and the United States banned Chinese immigration.
• Until 1974, government policy kept 'non-white' people out. This was the White Australia policy — driven by fear of being outnumbered, not by any shortage of work.

Political and demographic pegs

• 1850 — self-government granted.
• 1851–1961 — the long run of gold rushes; gold pulled in migrants and money.
• 1901 — Federation of six states creates the Commonwealth of Australia.
• 1911 — Canberra established as capital.
• 1948–75 — two million European migrants arrive, filling the labour gap the colour bar had created.

Prelims Hooks

• 1606 — Dutch first sight Australia; 1642 — Tasman lands on Tasmania.
• 1770 — Cook reaches Botany Bay, names the region New South Wales.
• 1788 — British penal colony founded; Sydney established. First ship reached Botany Bay 18 January 1788; commander Arthur Phillip; site shifted to Sydney Cove, named after Viscount Sydney. [2]
• Cook was killed by a native in Hawaii, not Australia.
• 160,000+ convicts transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868; convict stations also at Van Diemen's Land, Moreton Bay, Norfolk Island. [3]
• Daruk is the people whose 1790 account of Sydney appears in Creating a Nation; they returned only after 'an official kidnapping'.
• Nearly 90% of natives died in the 19th–20th centuries — germs, land loss, battles. Smallpox killed about half the Aboriginal people around Sydney within a year of 1788. [4]
• Canberra, from kamberra = 'meeting place', established 1911; rejected alternative name 'Woolwheatgold'.
• Coolie (Chinese) immigration began 1851, stopped by law 1855; the White Australia bar on 'non-white' entry lasted till 1974.
• 1850 self-government · 1851–1961 gold rushes · 1901 Federation of six states · 1948–75 two million European migrants.

Mains Points

• Convict transportation links two empires. Losing America forced Britain to find a new outlet for convicts, and Australia became that outlet; 160,000+ convicts arrived between 1788 and 1868 [3]. So an event in the Atlantic world directly shaped land seizure in the Pacific. Compare with Portugal's failure in Brazil, where native reprisals ended the convict experiment.
• Settler violence had a class base. Freed convicts could not go home, so they had to take land to survive. This shows settler colonialism was not only a plan of the state — it was driven by ordinary, poor Europeans who needed farms. Useful counter to the idea that colonial violence came only from officials.
• Disease did more killing than warfare. Around 20,000 Aboriginal people died in fighting, while the total fall was up to 90 per cent of a population of 300,000–1,000,000 [4]. The land grab and the germs worked together: sick and displaced groups could not hold territory. A good GS-I point on why native resistance failed.
• Racial fear outlived the labour need. Natives worked in conditions 'little different from slavery', then Chinese labour was imported, then banned (1851 in, 1855 barred), and White Australia kept non-whites out till 1974 — after which two million Europeans (1948–75) were preferred instead. Prosperity built on wool, wheat and gold was deliberately kept racially closed. Links well with California's parallel ban and with Indian diaspora questions.