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5 - The convict economy

from Part 2 - Transition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

By
David Meredith  and
Deborah Oxley
Edited by
Simon Ville  and
Glenn Withers
Simon Ville
Affiliation:
University of Wollongong, New South Wales
Glenn Withers
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
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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.
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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of Australia , pp. 97 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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