Setting (British) eyes on New South Wales
After observing the transit of Venus in Tahiti, Cook sailed south and then west expectantly, but what he found was just more Pacific Ocean. Charting New Zealand, he sailed further again, finding nothing until encountering the bottom south-east corner of what was known as New Holland — where Victoria and New South Wales meet each other today. This was disappointing, all things considered, but at least there was a nice lot of charting to do. Just as he’d done in New Zealand, Tahiti, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, Cook set about surveying the coastline he was passing. Banks, meanwhile, gathered new and previously unknown zoological specimens everywhere they stopped, surely feeling a lot like a kid who’d just been let loose in a completely untouched (to European eyes, at least) lolly shop.
Cook, having sailed up the Pacific coast of Australia in the Endeavour, reached the top of the east coast in August 1770. He claimed possession of the entire coast and planted the flag on the rather unimaginatively titled Possession Island (at the top of modern-day Cape York in far-north Queensland). Later on, noting it down in his journal, he racked his brain for a good name for the coast he’d just claimed (without asking any of the Indigenous Australians he’d encountered along the way what they thought of the idea, obviously). He first tried New Wales and then must have said to himself at last, ‘Here’s just the thing’, and wrote down New South Wales.
On Cook’s return to Britain from this first great voyage (he would go on two more before his voyaging ended abruptly in Hawaii) he was promoted to captain.
The Brits are Coming!
New South Wales (NSW), which had been charted and claimed by Cook, turned out to be the right place at the right time. By the time Banks returned from the voyage of discovery, Britain was facing a few international and logistical issues that made founding a new colony a much more attractive proposition. A few years after his return, Banks (along with a few others) piped up with the novel idea of making NSW a new British settlement and, after a few Parliamentary Committees debated the issue, it was indeed chosen.
Quick! New settlement required
Britain didn’t decide to settle in a region as far-flung as NSW just because Cook had claimed possession of it. Those pesky commoners, those pesky Americans, and those pesky French, Spanish and Dutch all factored into the thinking.
Turing to crime in the 18th century
Along with a population boom, Britain in the 18th century experienced a period of rapid transformation — one that would produce a great deal more prosperity for more people but which also uprooted a lot of people from their traditional lives and livelihoods.
Many people moved into cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and London, which offered plenty of job opportunities and, with no police force, plenty of crime opportunities too. As the town populations burgeoned, so too did the criminal underworld.
CONNECTING A FEAR OF POWERFUL KINGS TO BOTANY BAY
It’s a slightly roundabout way to get to Botany Bay, but real connections can be drawn between the political revolutions against the central state and the powerful kings of the 16th century in England, and the institution of transportation. And these connections produce a lot of the momentum to start a colony on the other side of the world in a just-discovered-by-us-practically-yesterday continent.
In what sort of country does shipping your convicted criminals off to the other side of a huge ocean seem like a good idea? In 18th-century Britain is the answer, and here’s why.
Britain was unique in 18th century Europe because it was a country governed essentially without police, and without a large army constantly ready to put down rebellions and keep order. One quirk of this system (or lack of system) was the form of punishment developed to deal with all the crime — transportation.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, most countries in Europe had established strong central states with plenty of power. (We could call these states ‘draconian’ if we were feeling impolite.) Kings, princes and assorted monarchs had established their right to rule as something absolute, ordained by God. In Europe, before the French Revolution, the ‘Divine Right of Kings’, or of ‘Absolute Monarchs’, was still a definite thing.
Figuring this sounded like a pretty good way of running things (and, if you’re a king, I can definitely see the appeal), English kings had tried this out themselves in the 17th century, only to run into troubles with a deeply annoyed populace and a stroppy institution called ‘parliament’. Two civil wars aimed to settle the point, and the English king in question lost both times. In 1648 he lost his head as well, and in 1688 one of his sons to exile.
One effect of this was that the victors in this tug of war became seriously paranoid about giving the central state (and the monarch who happened to be attached to it at the time) extensive powers. The rich and powerful feared the prospect of a king with a powerful army or an effective police force that could be used against them, so they severely constrained the reach of the central state, bound the monarch in ‘constitutional limits’, and pretty much did away with any police force.
What happens when you do away with a police force?
Well, in this particular time and place, the answer is you get a truckload of crime. No police or military force could be called out for assistance. The rich continued to hold the reins of power, but it wasn’t easy to keep order. Pretty much the only option they had to hand was making the punishment for crimes committed by any criminals they did manage to catch completely over the top (‘draconian’ again comes to mind).
From the early 18th century, a whole new series of laws were passed by the wealthy Members of parliament, which punished lots of ordinary crimes with either the death penalty or, you guessed it, transportation.
Losing America and a terrible outbreak of peace
