Book contents
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: connecting past, present and future
- Part 1 Framework
- Part 2 Transition
- 4 The Aboriginal legacy
- 5 The convict economy
- Part 3 Economic expansion of the colonies
- Part 4 A national economy
- Part 5 Building the modern economy
- Part 6 Looking backwards and to the future
- Statistical Appendix: selected data series, 1800–2010
- References
- Subject index
- Company index
5 - The convict economy
from Part 2 - Transition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
Book contents
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: connecting past, present and future
- Part 1 Framework
- Part 2 Transition
- 4 The Aboriginal legacy
- 5 The convict economy
- Part 3 Economic expansion of the colonies
- Part 4 A national economy
- Part 5 Building the modern economy
- Part 6 Looking backwards and to the future
- Statistical Appendix: selected data series, 1800–2010
- References
- Subject index
- Company index
Summary
This chapter focuses on the contribution made to economic growth by British penal transportation. It explains the development of penal policy before examining convicts as criminals, then as coerced workers. The chapter then examines the role of convicts in creating a free labour force. It presents the results by weighting the data from Convict Database to reconstruct the entire convict population in order to estimate national figures for crime, occupations, age, literacy, and geographical origins. Economic growth in early colonial Australia was also enhanced by convicts being forced to build transport links. In addition to contributing to the free wage labour force by becoming emancipists, convicts also created free labour by having children. The contribution of the convict system to Australia's early economic growth was prodigious. The chapter concludes by assessing the importance of penal transportation for colonial economic growth and the legacy white Australia inherited from its convict origins.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Economic History of Australia , pp. 97 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
- 1
- Cited by