The British colonised Australia in order to expand their empire and to place their convicts. The prisons in England were totally overcrowded. Until 1776, the British King used to send the prisoners to
One reason that Australia was important to the British Empire was its size. The British Empire was the only empire in history to control an entire continent. Another reason was that it was a destination for British colonists. Australia began as a penal colony.
British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance.
Without war or treaty the great continent of Eastern Australia was claimed for Britain in 1770 by Captain James Cook, with unending ramifications. The European evaluation that the land could be put to better economic use was justification enough in contemporary British politico-legal thought.
The British colony of New South Wales was established in 1788 as a penal colony.
If the British had never come in the first place, it is highly likely the east coast of Australia at least would be French. The Dutch might have claimed Tasmania and New Zealand both, and possibly parts of Western Australia as well.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
Australia became officially autonomous in both internal and external affairs with the passage of the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act on 9 October 1942. The Australia Act 1986 eliminated the last vestiges of British legal authority at the Federal level.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.
Australia is the third-largest contributor to the Commonwealth budget. We are represented on the Commonwealth Secretariat's Board of Governors, and its Executive Committee, by the High Commissioner for Australia to the United Kingdom.
The First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony, the first colony on the Australian mainland. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent, and European explorers ventured into its interior.
British imperialism used Australia as a penal colony with an added semi-peasant economy. In its early days the British imperialist idea was to develop Australia as a penal colony with this added semi-peasant economy to maintain the inhabitants.
A penal colony is a settlement that is used to house criminals. The British government believed that Australia would be an ideal place to send their convicts because it was so far away from Britain. They also thought that the climate would be better for their health.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers. The tallies of the dead are not the only measure of what took place, according to Dr Bill Pascoe, a digital humanities specialist and key researcher on the project. “We are always using conservative estimates,” Pascoe said.
Australian English arose from a dialectal melting pot created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of Southeast England.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
Convict women were employed in domestic service, washing and on government farms, and were expected to find their own food and lodging.
If the British had never come in the first place, it is highly likely the east coast of Australia at least would be French. The Dutch might have claimed Tasmania and New Zealand both, and possibly parts of Western Australia as well.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the idea that Aboriginal people were the first Australians.
Prior to British settlement, more than 500 First Nations groups inhabited the continent we now call Australia, approximately 750,000 people in total. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures developed over 60,000 years, making First Nations Peoples the custodians of the world's oldest living culture.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.