Happy Independence Day, America. When the British lost in 1783, the newly formed United States refused to accept any more prisoners from England. Anywhere from 50,000 to 120,000 convicts (the number is unverified) were sent to the Colonies (US) between the 1620s and the end of the Revolutionary War. As a result, Britain decided to establish a penal colony in New South Wales on the recently charted east coast of Australia, visited in 1770 by Captain James Cook. The First Fleet (1,420 people, about 1,000 of them convicts on 11 ships) arrived in what is now Sydney on January 26, 1788. The indigenous population of Australia, if they had anyone to thank for the white invasion of the Antipodes, its the American win over the Brits in 1783. Then again, the Spanish, Belgians, Dutch, Portuguese and others were still hot on the exploration trail, so if it wasnt the British, it would have been one of them instead, eventually. That was definitely the reason why settlement was established on the west coast (Albany, then Perth), to thwart a possible landing there by other parties. While the Aboriginal population then didnt fair too well under British rule, they would have faired much worse under others (ask the Africans how well the Belgians treated them, for example). There are other reasons why the British went to Australia, which you can read about in The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. For example, did you know that British shipbuilders, in need of tall trees for masts, were forced to look elsewhere when the Russians cut off supply? Someone recalled seeing tall trees on Norfolk Island, off the coast of Australia, and so off they went... only when they got there did they find that the soft Norfolk Island pine was unsuitable for ships masts (but the island made an ideal penal colony). American Independence was more than just a change to the North American continent, it had a ripple effect around the world, then and since. On the flipside, the first attacks on interests of the new American colonies by Islamic extremists took place, with the Barbary Wars, late 1700s. The newly independent colonies were not recognized by the Islamic powers of North Africa, they were considered infidels back then, and nothing has changed since (so, no, attacks on the US by Islamic extremists is not a new phenomenon). Cheers, USA. Light up the sky.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 18:51:00 +0000
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