British Women In Australia Research Paper

In the mid-eighteenth century, Britain faced a crisis. The early Industrial Revolution had created new technologies that increased production. However, with it came a restructuring of jobs and low wages. Unemployment increased and crime rose. Many poverty-stricken residents resorted to theft (Harris 74). As more burglars were arrested and imprisoned, prisons became overcrowded. As a result, the British government sought a solution to prison overcrowding and packed most convicts onto prison ships anchored off-shore called hulks. These floating jails, however, proved to be a poor solution because of the lack of hygiene and high death rate among prisoners (“Prison Hulks on the River Thames”). Finally, the government decided to transport these and other convicts to the colonies in America. However, after the successful American Revolution in 1787, American leaders refused to accept Britain’s convicts. This left one far-flung territory claimed by James Cook in 1770 for British settlement: Australia (Morgan). Britain formally colonized Australia in 1788 and quickly established penal colonies for its convicts, transporting nearly

two hundred thousand convicts there from 1788 to 1868. The establishment of these penal colonies had a lasting impact on Australia, including the subjugation of native peoples, poor treatment of native and British convict women, and the introduction of land ownership and Western economic development (Fuchs and Thompson 32).
Prior to Britain’s colonization of Australia, there were Aboriginal Native tribes inhabiting the entire continent. These Native tribes still lived in survivalist traditions thousands of years old. Their value systems, morals, and rules of cooperation were completely different from the British. The Aboriginals respected the world in which they lived and verified each day that no animals or plants were hunted or gathered to a dangerous extent (Peterson and Sanders 35). Additionally, there were no streets, tall buildings, large farms, or horses and carriages. The Aboriginals also did not mark out their lands in ways that were obvious to Europeans. Land was divided by using boundaries such as rivers, lakes, and mountains as opposed to fences and barriers, and there was no such thing as exclusive ownership. The Natives lived a peaceful and primitive culture, making them distinct from the chaos and domination of Britain (41).
On January 20, 1788, the First Fleet of about 775 convicts on six transport ships arrived in Botany Bay. This is where the first encounter between the Natives and the British took place. Before establishing a colony, Governor Phillip and other officials examined the Bay to see if it was suitable for a penal colony (Great Britain House of Commons 311). It was at this time the Aboriginals encountered the British and were armed and ready to defend themselves. When Governor Phillip showed signs of friendship and revealed that he had no weapons, the Natives disarmed themselves. However, rather than respecting the Native Aboriginal people and their land, the British officials executed the Natives so that a “sanguinary temper was no longer to disgrace the European settlers in countries newly discovered.” This kind of military terrorism was the first way the British successfully subjugated Aboriginal Natives (Phillip).
Once penal colonies were established, the British imposed legal edicts over these territories that diminished aboriginal rights (Cavadino et al. 31-32). Then, British authorities declared exclusive ownership of land, pushing Aboriginal populations further into the continent’s interior, or dispersing them completely. The overall impact of these early British policies was a lowered Aboriginal population through conflict, they disturbed traditional values and systems, and they subjugated Native people to working for British government and enterprise for low or no wages. These unfair policies and inequalities are still felt in Australia today (Peterson and Sanders 42).
Another major impact of British colonization in Australia was its effect on the accepted treatment of both Aboriginal and British women. Prior to the British colonization, Aboriginal women for thousands of years had enjoyed basic equal rights within the family and the tribe. Their traditional role was to gather plants, berries, and hunt for smaller animals, and they were honored members of their group. Marriage and courtship was arranged only with their consent and elder women had a voice in tribal traditions and rules (Peterson and Sanders 39). In Britain, women were seen as inferior to men, but important assets to the society for their role in raising the family and managing the home. Law-abiding women in Britain could expect the same legal treatment as their male counterparts. However, for both of these groups of women (Aboriginal and British), the establishment of British penal colonies in Australia meant a change in their status and treatment (Sturma 3-4).
In the Australian colony, British women had problems gaining complete freedom from their sentence, having assets in excess of liabilities, and gaining the respect of the men around them.

Convict women were under great pressure to pay for their food, bedding, and clothes with sexual services. Many of the women in Australia, convict or Native, were victims of sexual assault (Fuchs and Thompson 37). It is a popular belief that the reason convict women seemed to be available for all of the men’s (convict or free) sexual needs is because the British government needed some way to keep the men inactive. “The whore stereotype was devised as a calculated sexist means of social control and then, to absolve those who benefitted from having to admit their actions, characterized as being the fault of the women who were damned by it” (Sturma

4).
Female British convicts were often employed in factories, similar to the standard workhouses in Britain, but were not paid sufficiently enough. These factories housed convict women who were awaiting assignment, pregnant, or being disciplined. Though these were officially prisons, the dual objective was to make the prisoners profitable. Occupants were required to do needlework and washing for long shifts, and if extra work was done, the convict’s sentence might have been shortened. Even punishments for minor misconduct in the factories were meant to humiliate, a common one being the act of shaving the woman’s head (Cavadino 135-136).
This cultural treatment of British women in Australia was reflected in the treatment of Native women too. Those whose families or tribes chose to integrate with the British were also cast into similar roles: sexual assault, prostitution, and low wage work. When once they were equals with men, they were now instruments of domesticity, pleasure, and cheap labor (Peterson and Sanders 39).
The last major impact on Australia by the creation of British penal colonies was in the area of economic development. This activity led to further retreat of Aboriginals and transformation of the continent. In the early years of the penal colony, convicts were put to work immediately on establishing viable farming. British convicts introduced to Native Australia the practices of tilling, planting, and harvesting seed, consequently converting Native hunting grounds into expansive farmlands (Barnard 115). Convicts were known for their experimentation with their own farms once they were free, which led to better technologies and larger farms. Similar changes occurred due to construction and infrastructure. Convicts were often employed to construct roads and bridges in the new colonial areas while on road gangs. New buildings needed to be constructed immediately as the first shelters were just tents and lean-tos. Convicts and immigrants can be given credit for constructing a great number of the buildings of the early decades of British communities in Australia. This construction facilitated further expansion outward, away from the coast, and Natives were either forced to join in the development of the colony or continue moving westward. As the colony developed, the convicts worked in more skilled areas such as smithing, building tools, and even more intellectual pursuits where they showed aptitude. These skills were spread out throughout the colony and eventually were fully implemented into the society (79-80). Finally, the colony also experienced an influx of British goods and services that encouraged consumerism among its residents as well as the export of Australian agricultural and industrial commodities. Overall, the international trade introduced and conducted during the British colonial era created wealth for the British ruling class there. Other classes, including former convicts and Aboriginals, were marginalized from these profits and over time, became part of Australia’s working classes (132).
In the mid-eighteenth century, Britain faced a changing economy and a prison overcrowding crisis and determined it could alleviate these problems by utilizing its new territory in Australia (Harris 74). Britain transported roughly two hundred thousand convicts to Australia between 1788 and 1868. The influx of British convicts to the continent had several impacts, including the subjugation of the Aboriginal Natives of Australia and their traditional culture, the increasingly poor treatment of Aboriginal and convict women, and revolutionary changes to land use, farming, and factory production. Despite these impactful changes, British convicts brought new ideas and practices to Native Australian people. Many Aboriginals, though forced to participate in these changes, gained new skills and experience to assimilate into a modern European society (Peterson and Sanders 39-40). Women, both British and Aboriginal, were increasingly made aware of their rights and over the ensuing generations, mobilized to gain them (Fuchs and Thompson 37). Finally, British economic development introduced modernized farming, construction, and trade (Barnard 120). Though British penal colonies in Australia were a unique way of colonizing foreign lands, the impact it had on the continent and its people is similar to other colonial enterprises around the world throughout history, causing great change and disruption. These impacts are often negative, but have shown over time to have positive outcomes as well (122).