The joke about Australia is that it was establish by a crowd of outlaw . And from 1788 until 1868 , Britain did send roughly 164,000 con to the nation down under . America ’s dirty little secret ? The same accurate thing was encounter here . In fact , expert estimate that over 52,000 British prisoners were shipped off to colonial America .
Britain had been shipping convicts to America for 10 before they started charge them to Australia . In fact , it was precisely because of America ’s fight for independency that the Brits had to start send their criminals to Australia . But from 1718 until 1775 , convict transportation to the American colony flourished . Some estimates take that almost 10 percent of migrants to America during this time were British con .
Typically , getting relegate to America was for a term of either seven or fourteen years , after which the inmate could theoretically come back the Britain . Escaping home betimes , however , was punishable by death . And it was n’t just adult male . Some distaff convicts were transported to the American colonies as well , for offence such as being “ salacious ” and “ walk[ing ] the streets after ten at dark . ”
Many Australians have more or less embraced their convict history . But if you ’re an American who had no idea that your country ’s founding include a huge prison population , you ’re not alone . Historically , Americans have not been too keen on discussing the fact that yardbird came to what would finally become love as the United States .
As Anthony Vaver explains in his bookBound With An Iron Chain , historians have search to cover up the fact that so many captive were sent to America :
Through the 19th century , most historians but ignored the mental hospital , and those who did recognize it usually claimed that nearly all of the people who were transported were political prisoner .
No less a figure than Thomas Jefferson himself adjudicate to play down the story of penal transportation to America . Writing in 1786 , Jefferson insist that even if British criminals had been mail , they must ’ve been small in figure :
The Malefactors sent to America were not sufficient in number to merit numbering as one class out of three which peopled America . It was at a late period of their history that the practice start . I have no Scripture by me which enables me to steer out the engagement of its commencement ceremony . But I do not think the whole number send would amount to 2000 and being principally world eaten up with disease , they married rarely and circulate little . I do not suppose that themselves and their descendants are at present four thousand , which is little more than one thousandth part of the whole inhabitants .
Except that this was n’t true . British convicts come over in droves , and detached Americans were n’t too happy about it . In fact , even before the Transportation Act of 1718 really start the door for Britain ’s dumping of undesirables in America , some colonies prove to pass police that would prohibit the practice . In 1670 authorities in Virginia travel by an act that prohibited convicts from being sent to the area . This , unsurprisingly , wasoverruled by the mogul .
Pennsylvania tried to do something similar in 1722 by passing a taxation for the importation of any hoi polloi for servitude who had been ascertain “ guilty of heinous crime . ” The king , naturally , said that this was n’t set aside either , proclaimingin 1731 : “ Whereas acts have been passed in America for lay duties on crook import , — in direct opposition to an enactment of Parliament for the more effectual transportation of felons , — it is our royal will and more pleasure that you O.K. of no obligation lay on the importation of any outlaw into Pennsylvania . ”
Many of those send to the American colony were put to employment doing manual working class . From an 1896 paperon the subjectby James Davie Butler :
planter both in the West Indies and in Virginia , which was reckoned a part of them far on in the 18th century , needed laborers , and welcomed a supplying from whatever poop . [ … ] As Virginia ’s basic was tobacco , it naturally became a meat of bloodless as well as dim servitude , whether its victim were indented or not , and criminal or not .
Americans have rather quixotic melodic theme about how their nation was set up . We ’ve long been fond of the mythology surrounding persecuted mass freely traveling to the New World and building the gravid state on Earth . But , like all history , it ’s much , much messier than that . Our story include plenty of race murder , slavery , and just a dash of prison folk — and the latter may be news to many Americans who would n’t pause to make jokes about Australia being populated by the descendants of criminals .
But Australia really was n’t special in that esteem . Shipping criminals halfway around the world was part of America ’s sordid chronicle , too .
Image : 1828 instance of the convict ship ‘ Discovery ’ bounce for Australia via Hulton Archive and Getty Images
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