Australian+history+term+1

18th Century England

=England in the Eighteenth Century =

Living in England during the 1770’s was very hard for poor people.

During this century the “Industrial Revolution” began, steam power was discovered. Machines powered by steam were invented and these machines were now being used to do the jobs that many people once did by hand on farms. Less people were needed on farms to work the fields. As a result of this many families left the country and went to live in the cities to work in factories.

Before long the cities became overcrowded and dirty. The crime rate increased and poverty levels worsened because many unskilled farmers were unable to find jobs. Families were unable to feed their children, clothe their children or pay their rent. Unfortunately many children became homeless, abandoned by their families. Young children as young as seven and eight began stealing food, clothing, money, anything in order to survive. It was very common to see dirty, poorly clothed children roaming the streets of London begging for food, clothes and money as the poverty levels worsened.

The rich people however, were only interested in their property and not at all interested in the desperate lives that poor people were living. Instead they wanted even harsher sentences for the crimes being committed by these desperate and unfortunate people and children. As a result of this the punishment for crimes such as stealing became punishable by death. Many young people died by hanging for stealing minor objects such as a loaf of bread or a piece of fruit. There were over 200 crimes punishable by death.

Transportation was another popular form of punishment. Instead of being hung, the prisoner was sent to work for the rest of his or her life in one of England’s colonies in America thousands of kilometers away. Some prisoners never ever returned to their families. In 1776, however, America won their war of Independence against England so the practice of transportation had to stop.

Without transportation, the English jails soon became overcrowded. The English government tried to solve this problem of overcrowding by keeping prisoners in hulks of ships moored on the River Thames. Before long these too became overcrowded and many sicknesses broke out amongst the prisoners. They needed another solution. Something had to be done. The crime rate continued to increase, the ships were becoming far too overcrowded and transportation to America had stopped. The government decided to set up another prison colony.

In 1777 a committee was formed to decide where a new prison colony would be established. Seven years earlier in 1770 James Cook had discovered New Holland (later known as Australia) and it seemed like an excellent option. Captain Cook had reported that Botany Bay would make a good settlement. However Captain Cook was no longer alive, Sir Joseph Banks, who had sailed with James Cook on the Endeavour when Australia was first discovered, was asked to advise the committee. Joseph Banks also thought that Botany Bay would be a good place for a prison colony because: · “It was a long way away and made convict escape difficult” · “The land was good for growing food”

The First Fleet of ships to carry convicts from England to Botany Bay sailed from Portsmouth, England, on 13 May 1787. It arrived at Botany Bay on 18 January 1788. It soon became very clear that Botany Bay was not suitable for a settlement so the fleet made its way a short distance up the coast and on 25th of January 1788 entered what is now known as Sydney Harbour and anchored in Sydney Cove. This was the beginning of white settlement in Australia. The 25th of January is a public holiday, which is celebrated every year but is better known as **__Australia Day.__**

Questions:  1. What was living in England like during the 1770’s?  2. What did poor people have to do in order to survive?  3. How many crimes were punishable by death? Give examples?  4. In your own words explain what the punishment of transportation involved.  5. Why did the English government have to set up prison hulks? What were “prison hulks”?  6. Why were the prison hulks not suitable for prisoners?  7. Why was Botany Bay selected as the location for a prison colony? What is a prison colony?  8. When did the First Fleet set sail for Australia and when did it arrive in Sydney Cove.

  The Chinese primarily came to Australia because of the goldrushes. The Australian goldrush started in the 1850s, and it was then that large numbers of Chinese began immigrating to Australia, to Melbourne and Sydney first, then out to the goldfields. In many gold boom towns, once the gold ran out, the Chinese who did not return to their homeland went into business in the local towns.

[|chinese goldfields video - Google Search]

[|Bendigo's living Chinese history, REGIONS, Goldfields, video, Victoria, Australia]

[|YouTube - Struggling chinese boy moves to Australia]

[|YouTube - The Gold Rush to Mount Alexander - Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park]

General history of australia sites for you to explore:

[|YouTube - A Brief History Of Australia]

[|YouTube - From a White Australia to one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world!]

An article by Dr Andrew Jakubowych about migration to Australia.

Before the arrival of white British settlers in the mid 1830s, the area now known as Victoria was inhabited by 36 Aboriginal community and language groups whose members were connected by marriage and kinship. At least in the first decade of settlement in Melbourne, there was considerable cultural engagement between Aborigines and settlers, though violence, primarily over land, characterised relations on the frontier. The discovery of gold in 1851, the year in which Victoria became a separate colony, prompted a huge influx of people into Victoria, and especially into the areas around Clunes, Warrandyte, Ballarat, Castlemaine and Bendigo. People came to the goldfields from many places around the world. Seeking to make their fortunes, large numbers of Chinese, Italians, other Europeans and Americans joined the ‘rush’ to Victoria. Among them were people imbued with ideals of democracy and republicanism, drawn from their experiences of the Irish famine, the revolutionary turbulence of late 1840s’ Europe and the American War of Independence. Some of these sentiments came to the fore in the Eureka rebellion of 1854, in which a group of gold diggers of diverse origin demanded an end to mining licenses and were brutally put down by government forces. This iconic event would have a long-lasting impact on the public culture of Victoria and become a founding myth of the Australian nation. <span style="font-size: 10px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 30px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">The sudden appearance of large numbers of Chinese in Victoria in the mid 1850s triggered racist fears that Australia would be “swamped” by Asian hordes. This prompted the government in 1855 to introduce the first anti- Chinese immigration legislation among the colonies of Australia, imposing a poll tax of £10 per head for each Chinese person arriving in Victorian ports. Other restrictive measures followed as clashes continued on the goldfields and anti-Chinese agitation grew among the trade unions. In 1881, Victoria introduced a law to virtually prohibit Chinese immigration, in line with uniform legislation agreed at the first Intercolonial Conference in 1880. This was the precursor to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the Australian parliament after Federation. <span style="font-size: 10px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 30px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">Not all new migrants arriving in the 1850s came to dig for gold. Some became market gardeners, small traders and hawkers, providing supplies and provisions to the goldfields and towns that sprang up around the diggings. Early Muslim immigrants included North Indian and Afghan cameleers, who provided essential transport to outback settlements, and participated in major journeys of exploration, such as those of Bourke and Wills in 1860. Other new arrivals flocked to the thriving metropolis, known in the 1880s as “marvelous Melbourne” for its booming economy and cosmopolitan flair. But the depression of the 1890s hit hard. Immigration was reduced to a trickle over the next decade, while unemployment and uncertainty inflamed ethnic, class and social cleavages and sectarian animosities. In 1896 immigration restriction was extended to all non-European peoples and a Factories Act decreed that furniture made by Chinese labour had to be so stamped.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 130%; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 30px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">Botany Bay


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 * Bound for Botany Bay Song [] **