tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62315642024-03-18T05:24:28.527-10:00Far OutliersExploring migrants, exiles, expatriates, and out-of-the-way peoples, places, and times, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3649125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-10526618800514311212024-03-18T05:23:00.001-10:002024-03-18T05:23:31.140-10:00Germany's Territorial Losses at Versailles<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weimar-Years-Frank-McDonough-ebook/dp/B0BFG1VSDF/">The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933</a>,</em> by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 118-120:</p><blockquote><p>It is, of course, an established tradition of war that the loser pays the costs of defeat, but the terms of the proposed Versailles Treaty were severe, to say the least. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, something which had been a French aim during the war. German territory west of the Rhine was to be occupied by Allied troops for at least 15 years to ensure German compliance to the treaty – if Germany did comply, the occupation of Cologne would end after five years, Koblenz after ten years and Mainz after 15 years. The left bank of the Rhine and the right bank to a depth of 31 miles were to be permanently demilitarised. In this region no German arms or soldiers could be stationed. The aim of these clauses was to stop another unprovoked German invasion of Belgium and France.</p><p>The Saar, a rich coal mining region, would be governed for 15 years by a commission of the League of Nations. In that time, the Saar coal mines would be given to France, as compensation for the German destruction of French coal mines during the war. At the end of the 15-year period, the people of the Saar would decide, in a referendum, whether they wished to remain under League control, to unite with France or return to Germany. If the people chose the latter option, Germany would be allowed to buy back the mines from France. Belgium received Moresnet, Eupen and Malmédy, but the local populations there would be allowed a referendum to confirm or reject this change. A referendum was also offered to determine the fate of North Schleswig, which voted in favour of being transferred to Denmark.</p><p>Germany suffered even greater territorial losses in Eastern Europe. The newly constituted state of Poland included the industrially rich area of Upper Silesia, along with Posen and West Prussia – the latter including the so-called Polish Corridor, which controversially separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Poland was also given extensive trading rights in Danzig (Gdansk), which was now designated a Free City under League of Nations authority. Danzig was Poland’s natural seaport, but ethnically it was a German city and would remain a source of unrest between Germany and Poland during the inter-war years. In addition, the German port of Memel was detached from the Reich, but was not formally awarded to Lithuania until 1923.</p><p>German territorial losses under the Treaty as a whole amounted to 13 per cent of its European lands, together with six million of its people. If Germany had been allowed to unite with Austria, it would have lessened the blow of these European territorial losses. Both countries were favourable to the union, but no referendum was offered. The Allies decided instead to prohibit the union with Austria (<em>Anschluss</em>).</p><p>Germany’s European losses were paralleled by the sacrifices it was forced to make elsewhere. All overseas colonies under German control were redistributed under mandates issued by the League of Nations, but it was stipulated these mandates must not simply serve the interests of their guardians. When the German delegation protested the loss of its colonies, the Allies pointed out the native inhabitants of the German colonies were strongly opposed to being returned to German control.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-52518448410637944992024-03-17T05:17:00.004-10:002024-03-17T05:17:44.481-10:00The First Weimar Elections, 1919<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weimar-Years-Frank-McDonough-ebook/dp/B0BFG1VSDF/">The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933</a>,</em> by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 85-87:</p><blockquote><p>The elections for the National Assembly took place on 19 January 1919. This was the first of nine national elections held during the Weimar era. Weimar politics was characterised by a succession of unstable coalition governments, with each political party wanting to pull Germany in different directions. From 1918 to 1933, there were 20 different coalition governments, with an average life-span of no more than nine months, and none served for the full electoral term of four years.</p><p>The voter turnout was 83 per cent, with 30.53 million people casting their votes in Germany’s first truly democratic election. The Social Democrats performed best with 37.9 per cent of the vote, a total of 11.51 million votes. This was the highest percentage vote achieved by any Weimar party in any democratic election before 1933. It gave the SPD 165 seats, which was some way below the 212 seats needed for an overall majority. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Party_(Germany)">Zentrum</a> came next with 19.7 per cent, representing 5.98 million votes and 91 seats. Those elected included a high proportion of right-wing Catholic Bavarians. Third place went to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Democratic_Party">DDP</a>, recording 18.6 per cent, with 5.64 million votes, picking up 75 seats. A large number of middle-class voters opted for the DDP, as it had projected a strong anti-socialist stance during the election campaign. Some way behind was the conservative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_National_People%27s_Party">DNVP</a>, with 10.3 per cent, polling 3.12 million votes and gaining 44 seats. The USPD, representing the far left, performed very poorly with just 7.6 per cent, a total of 2.31 million votes and 22 seats. Of the six main Weimar political parties, the DVP performed much the worst, taking a 4.4 per cent vote share, with 1.34 million votes, leaving it with only 19 seats.</p><p>The 1919 German election was a victory for the three parties who gave the most enthusiastic support to the new Republic – the SPD, Zentrum and the DDP, who between them polled 76.2 per cent of the votes. The two parties on the conservative Right, the DNVP and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_People%27s_Party">DVP</a>, could only muster 14.7 per cent between them. Their position seemed hopeless. The most revolutionary party on offer to voters, the USPD, registered just 7.6 per cent, showing left-wing radicalism had been resoundingly rejected.</p><p>On 3 February, the workers’ and soldiers’ councils formally handed over their powers to the new National Assembly, expressing a desire for the new constitution to create a unitary state in which the central government was supreme, and the powers of the federal states were done away with. They also expressed a desire for the incorporation of the rights of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils into the constitutional framework of the new Republic.</p><p>Weimar, a city in central Germany, in the state of Thuringia, was chosen as the first meeting place of the new National Assembly, as it was felt Berlin was still in a state of unrest and disorder. Weimar had been a focal point of the German Enlightenment and was an historic shrine of German liberalism.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-73991219017917902552024-03-16T05:57:00.000-10:002024-03-16T05:57:14.015-10:00Germany Becomes a Republic, 1918<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weimar-Years-Frank-McDonough-ebook/dp/B0BFG1VSDF/">The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933</a>,</em> by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 50-52:</p><blockquote><p>On 6 November, the MSDP [<i lang="de">Mehrheitssozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands</i>] leaders held a crisis meeting in Berlin. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Scheidemann">Scheidemann</a> proposed an ultimatum should be sent to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Maximilian_of_Baden">Prince Max</a> stating that the Social Democrats would leave the government unless Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Ebert">Friedrich Ebert</a>, the joint leader of the MSDP, objected to the idea of sending an ultimatum, and suggested he would meet Prince Max to urge a speedy settlement of the abdication question. On the next day, Ebert told Prince Max: ‘If the Kaiser does not abdicate, the social revolution is unavoidable. But I do not want it, indeed I hate it like sin.’ The German Chancellor agreed to travel to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spa,_Belgium">Spa</a> to see Wilhelm II and convince him to abdicate.</p><p>In the following days, what had begun as a revolt against suicidal naval orders developed into a fully fledged political revolution. Soldiers and sailors in numerous naval base and coastal towns were disobeying orders. Then the revolution spread through all the regions of Germany. The monarchical federal structure of the country, with its 26 constituent territories each with its own kings, dukes, and princes, dissolved. The course of the German Revolution differed from region to region, but what was remarkably similar in each place was the unwillingness of the local authorities, army and naval personnel and local police forces to intervene to stop it.</p><p>The Revolution soon reached the Kingdom of Bavaria in southern Germany. On 2 November 1918, the Bavarian king, Ludwig III, approved a series of democratic reforms, which meant laws in future would be based on a parliamentary majority, not royal consent. This came too late to save the Wittelsbach monarchy, which had ruled Bavaria since the 11th century, from being deposed. The events of 7 November were a key turning point in Bavarian history. On that day, there was a huge anti-war demonstration attended by 60,000 people. The speakers demanded peace and democracy, but taking the lead was the eloquent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Eisner">Kurt Eisner</a>, a member of the USPD [<i lang="de">Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands</i>], who had adopted a strong anti-war stance that proved popular with the local population. Eisner was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin. After studying philosophy and German at university, he became a journalist and had been the editor of the Social Democrat flagship newspaper <em>Vorwärts</em> (Forward). During the war, he was convicted of treason for inciting a strike of munitions workers in 1918. He served nine months in Munich’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadelheim_Prison">Stadelheim Prison</a> before being released during the general amnesty of political prisoners in October 1918. At the end of the huge peace demonstration, Eisner, supported by his followers, liberated the military garrisons, and met with no resistance from the soldiers. By 9 p.m. Eisner had proclaimed Bavaria a republic, and occupied the Bavarian parliament. On the next day, he established a Provisional Government with himself as Minister-President and Foreign Minister. The old order in Bavaria had collapsed with no resistance.</p><p>Within days the regional German kings, princes and dukes were all deposed in quick succession. There was no resistance offered anywhere. On the morning of 9 November, only King Wilhelm of Württemberg and Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany, remained in office.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-61280526958244774342024-03-15T06:23:00.003-10:002024-03-15T06:23:47.477-10:00The Kiel Mutiny, November 1918<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weimar-Years-Frank-McDonough-ebook/dp/B0BFG1VSDF/">The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933</a>,</em> by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 48-50:</p><blockquote><p>The anti-war propaganda campaign unleashed by these left-wing socialist groups made a deep impression on sailors in the High Seas Fleet (<em>Hochseeflotte</em>), who opposed a German admiralty plan, codenamed ‘Plan 19’, scheduled for 28 October 1918, for one last make-or-break North Sea battle. Hopelessly outnumbered by the Allied navies, which included British, French, and American ships, the plan had little chance of success. Few sailors were interested in sacrificing their lives on such a pointless suicide mission. The Naval Supreme Command had sanctioned Plan 19, on the basis that the British would demand the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet as part of the armistice agreement.</p><p>The centre of the agitation against Plan 19 was in the port city of Kiel, on the Baltic coast, which along with Wilhelmshaven formed the anchorage base of the Kaiser’s fleet for the duration of the war. Blockaded by Allied ships, it had remained inactive ever since the inconclusive <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland">Battle of Jutland</a> in late May 1916. Kiel also contained 50,000 troops stationed in barracks, and many industrial workers were working in armaments factories and shipyards. On 29 October, sailors on two major ships at Kiel failed to return from shore leave. Within hours, the mutiny spread to a number of other battleships and cruisers, forcing the Admiralty to abandon Plan 19.</p><p>The mutineers held a meeting on 2 November on a large parade ground in Kiel. They wanted the release of their comrades who had been imprisoned during the rebellion. The key speaker was 27-year-old Karl Artelt, a committed revolutionary and a member of the USPD [<i lang="de">Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands</i>], who called not only for the release of all the rebel sailors, but for the abolition of German militarism and the overthrow of the ruling classes. The sailors held a further meeting on 3 November 1918, again supported by USPD members, attended by about 6,000 people. They demanded the immediate release of the imprisoned sailors. The demonstrators then moved in the direction of the Waldwiese, a beer hall temporarily acting as a naval prison. The guards fired on the demonstrators, killing seven and wounding 29 others. On the next day, the rebel sailors moved through the town, and soon brought public and naval institutions under their control, detaining their officers, and taking control of their ships. By the end of 4 November, about 40,000 rebels in Kiel had formed councils elected at mass gatherings of sailors, soldiers, and workers. The Revolutionary Shop Stewards announced that a general strike in Kiel factories would begin on 5 November 1918.</p><p>Within <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Maximilian_of_Baden">Prince Max’s</a> government, there was concern over the wider implications of the Kiel Mutiny. A sailors’ mutiny at a time when armistice negotiations were at a very delicate stage could only weaken the hand of the German government. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Scheidemann">Scheidemann</a> feared the rebellion in Kiel might ignite a revolution against the old order and he was worried the formation of sailors’ and soldiers’ councils would turn the naval mutiny into a broader Marxist uprising.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-60384176965811731482024-03-14T05:14:00.003-10:002024-03-14T05:15:32.476-10:00Germany's Military Collapse in 1918<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weimar-Years-Frank-McDonough-ebook/dp/B0BFG1VSDF/">The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933</a>,</em> by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 26-28:</p><blockquote><p>Victory in Russia gave the German people real hope of victory in the war. On 21 March 1918, Germany launched a spring offensive, better known as the Ludendorff Offensive, on the Western Front. It aimed to knock Britain and France out of the war before significant numbers of US forces arrived in Europe. Unfortunately, German expectations of victory proved illusory. Scarcely in the annals of military history has there been such a spectacular reversal of military fortune as Germany suffered towards the end of the war. By early June 1918, it was clear that the Ludendorff Offensive had failed. On 8 August, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), spearheaded by tanks and supported by massive numbers of newly arrived American troops, launched a surprise attack between Amiens and St Quentin in northern France against the German Second Army. It punched a huge hole in the defensive line and captured 15,000 German soldiers. The significance of this decisive British breakthrough in the Battle of Amiens was not lost on Ludendorff, who called it ‘the blackest day of the German army in the history of this war’. He knew the Allies were now able to deploy thousands of tanks on the Western Front while the Germans had been able to manufacture only 20. Fritz Nagel, a German officer in the German anti-aircraft artillery, later recalled: ‘The German armies were in bad shape. Every soldier and civilian was hungry. Losses in material could not be replaced and the soldiers arriving as replacements were too young, poorly trained and often unwilling to risk their necks because the war looked like a lost cause.’</p><p>A two-day military conference on the critical situation on the Western Front was held on 13–14 August 1918 at the headquarters of the Supreme Military Command in Spa, Belgium. Hindenburg chaired it, and Paul von Hintze, the new Foreign Minister, and Ludendorff were present. Ludendorff said Germany now needed to adopt a purely defensive strategy, but he thought it might still be possible to sue for peace with the western Allies on favourable terms. Hindenburg agreed with Ludendorff’s judgement about continuing with strategic defence, while Hintze thought the German Army was in no condition to fight a successful strategic defence, and he felt diplomatic steps had to be taken to bring the war to an end.</p><p>When Kaiser Wilhelm II was apprised of these discussions in a Grand Council meeting, he seemed blinded by the optimism of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and instructed Hintze to refrain from making a direct peace offer to the Allies and to wait for a more favourable moment. This proved wishful thinking, as Germany’s Central Power allies now began to collapse. On 24 September 1918, the Bulgarian Army was defeated when the Allied armies based in Greece broke through the Macedonian Front. The Bulgarian government, which had previously been under German control, requested an armistice and accepted it five days later. This placed the Austro-Hungarian empire, Germany’s principal ally, in a precarious position. Emperor Charles I of Austria, desperate to end the war, sent a circular diplomatic note inviting all the belligerents in the war to send representatives to Vienna to a confidential conference to discuss the basic principles of a peace settlement. On 27 October, Austria-Hungary ended its formal alliance with Germany, and the subject nationalities of the Habsburg Empire all declared their independence. On 30 October, the Ottoman Turks signed a regional armistice. Germany was now left without any allies.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-58463568616004342532024-03-13T02:47:00.000-10:002024-03-13T02:47:27.883-10:00Germany's Eastern Victory in WW1<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weimar-Years-Frank-McDonough-ebook/dp/B0BFG1VSDF/">The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933</a>,</em> by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 21-22, 25-26:</p><blockquote><p>Germany’s confident hopes of a swift victory were halted in September 1914 by British, Belgian, and French troops on the Marne River in France. From this point onwards, the war on the Western Front became a stalemate, with 8 million troops stretched along a 450-mile front from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Numerous attempts to break the deadlock turned into dogged struggles for mere yards of territory, with millions of lives lost and little ground gained. Barbed wire entanglements impeded the advance of competing armies and machine guns mowed down advancing troops. It was a struggle in which an average of 6,000 troops were killed every day.</p><p>The stalemate in the west contrasted sharply with the stunning victories of the German Army on the Eastern Front in 1914 and 1915, masterminded by General Paul von Hindenburg, the chief of the Supreme Army Command (<em>Oberste Heeresleitung,</em> OHL), and his brilliant Chief of Staff, the Quartermaster General, Erich Ludendorff. By the end of 1915, the Germans had driven the Russian armies back remorselessly over 250 miles. These stunning victories turned Hindenburg and Ludendorff into national heroes. As the war progressed, Kaiser Wilhelm proved incapable of effective leadership, which resulted in a power vacuum, filled by the military high command. In late August 1916, Germany became a de facto military dictatorship led by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who were able, until the later stages of the war, to ignore the wishes of the parliamentary parties.</p><p>...</p><p>On 19 July 1917, Erzberger introduced a resolution in the Reichstag for a ‘peace without annexations’, which was passed by 212 to 126 votes. It was the first major intervention by the Reichstag to oppose the war, but Kaiser Wilhelm refused to be bound by the Reichstag. Hindenburg and Ludendorff considered the resolution a ‘scrap of paper’ and ignored it. The blame for the political crisis was placed on Bethmann Hollweg, who had rightly been sceptical about unrestricted submarine warfare. He was forced to resign as Chancellor.</p><p>His replacement, Georg Michaelis, who took office on 13 July 1917, was the first German Chancellor who was not of noble birth. His background was in business, but his only previous minor political posts were as an undersecretary of state in the Prussian Treasury, and as the head of the Reich Grain Agency (<em>Reichsgetreidestelle</em>), the office responsible for the distribution of corn and wheat. The prime movers in the unexpected elevation of this inexperienced bureaucrat to the role of Chancellor were Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who felt he would do their bidding. True to form, Michaelis kept the Reichstag completely in the dark on matters of war and foreign relations. He was forced to resign on 1 November 1917 after his refusal to give support to Erzberger’s peace resolution led to the loss of a vote of confidence in the Reichstag.</p><p>In Eastern Europe, relentless German military pressure contributed to the abdication of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917, which eventually led to the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin coming to power in November of that year. Lenin’s return to Russia was assisted by his sealed train being given permission to cross German territory – an incident in which Ludendorff played a key role.</p><p>After seizing power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks opened negotiations for a peace settlement with Germany. This resulted in the signing of the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, under which Russia lost possession of 34 per cent of its population, 54 per cent of its industry, including 89 per cent of its coalfields, and 26 per cent of its railways, and was also obliged to pay 6 billion marks in compensation for German losses. The Treaty completely contradicted the Peace Resolution of the Reichstag, which had pledged ‘peace without annexations’, yet the Reichstag deputies ratified the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk without suggesting any amendments.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-23970578156177323972024-03-12T09:24:00.002-10:002024-03-12T09:33:04.109-10:00Bypassing the Reichstag in World War I<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Weimar-Years-Frank-McDonough-ebook/dp/B0BFG1VSDF/">The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933</a>,</em> by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 18-20:</p><blockquote><p>At the start of the First World War, Imperial Germany was not a parliamentary democracy, but nor was it an autocracy. It had a constitution, a national parliament, and independent states which controlled the local budgets of each region. The national parliament consisted of the Reichstag directly elected by the German people and an upper unelected chamber known as the Federal Council (Bundesrat), with representatives from the 26 individual princely states. Voting in elections for the Reichstag was confined to all males aged 25 and over and based on a constituency-based, first-past-the-post system. Neither the Bundesrat nor the Reichstag had the power to draft legislation but were expected to approve it. Even so, more people were entitled to vote in German parliamentary elections in 1914 than was the case in Britain.</p><p>Despite the Reichstag’s lack of political power, German national elections were hotly contested....</p><p>The power and influence of the military was stronger than that of any of the political parties. It was often described as a ‘state within a state’. The Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II, the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria, had been in power since 1888. He had the final say on policy, controlled the armed forces, appointed the German Chancellor and the cabinet ministers and was able to veto decisions taken by the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. The German Empire’s governing system, dominated by the Kaiser, was called an ‘autocratic state’ (<em>Obrigkeitsstaat</em>). On the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914, the German Emperor told the assembled members of the Reichstag: ‘I no longer recognise parties. I know only Germans.’ He then asked the Reichstag members to endorse an Enabling Act which suspended elections and Reichstag meetings and afforded him unlimited powers. Under Article 68 of the then German constitution, the Army seized wide-ranging executive powers, which included a strict censorship of the press.</p><p>Kaiser Wilhelm decided to finance the war not by raising taxation, but by creating Loan Banknotes (<em>Darlehenskassenscheine</em>), issuing three-month Treasury Bills and printing money. The idea was for these loans to be paid back in the event of Germany winning the war, capturing territory, and imposing reparations on the defeated powers. It was only in 1916 that new taxes were belatedly introduced on business, but not on incomes. Only 13.9 per cent of Germany’s war costs came from direct taxation, compared to 18.2 per cent for Britain. During the war, the amount of money in circulation rose from 7.4 million to 44.4 million marks, which inevitably led to high inflation.</p><p>The Germans prided themselves on the superiority of their armed forces and the strength of their economy. In 1914, Germany possessed the most powerful and dynamic economy on the European continent, which had experienced 50 years of uninterrupted growth. Germany produced two-thirds of Europe’s output of steel, half its coal production, and 20 per cent more electrical energy than Britain, France and Italy put together. It had a population of 67 million, which had grown from 25 million in 1800. It was also Europe’s leader in modern industries such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In agriculture, it produced a third of the world’s output of potatoes.... </p></blockquote><blockquote>Germany in the period from 1916 to 1918 has been correctly described as a ‘Silent Dictatorship’. Censorship over newspapers was tightened; at the same time, Hindenburg ordered the systematic economic exploitation of German-occupied areas in France, Belgium and in East Central Europe, under the Hindenburg Programme of August 1916, which aimed to double industrial production by increasing the output of munitions, explosives, weapons, artillery, and ammunition. On 1 November 1916 Hindenburg and Ludendorff founded the Supreme War Office (<em>Kriegsamt</em>), under General Wilhelm Groener, to create a command economy ruled by the army. Compulsory military service was introduced for everyone aged 16 to 60, and businesses not related to the war economy were closed down. More alarmingly, compulsory hard labour was imposed on prisoners of war in labour camps, often under appalling conditions. Under the ‘Silent Dictatorship’, Germany pursued its war aims in a ruthless manner. At the beginning of 1917, the Imperial Navy (<em>Kaiserliche Marine</em>) adopted unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic to disrupt British and French supplies arriving from the USA. This proved counterproductive and provoked the Americans, led by President Woodrow Wilson, to enter the war on the Allied side in April 1917.</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-5654582116990774552024-03-04T06:28:00.000-10:002024-03-04T06:28:00.423-10:00Australian Given Names<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle p. 401:</p><blockquote><p>The [1814] muster record also reveals the most popular first names in the colony. The most common male first name was ‘John’ (1 in 5 males), followed by ‘William’, ‘Thomas’ and ‘James’. These four names accounted for almost half the male population, whereas the name of ‘Anthony’ was rare – only seven men had this name (0.2%). One in five adult females were called ‘Mary’, followed by ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Ann’. Every second female had one of these three names. When combined with the names ‘Sarah’, ‘Jane’, ‘Catherine’ and ‘Margaret’, almost three quarters of the female population were accounted for.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-84656831877042624762024-03-02T06:43:00.006-10:002024-03-02T06:43:55.765-10:00New Holland Becomes Australia<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle p. 415:</p><blockquote><p>Increasingly, the continent of which New South Wales was part of became known as ‘Australia’ in official communications and documents. Captain Matthew Flinders was the first to adopt this name in the 1814 publication of his charts and journal of the exploratory voyage. The use of <em>Australia</em> for the colony rather than New South Wales first appeared in <em>The Sydney Gazette</em> in 1816. After that, the name ‘Australia’ was widely used. A year later, Governor Macquarie introduced it into his letters to the Colonial Office and on 21 Dec 1817, he recommended that henceforth the continent and colony be called ‘Australia’ rather than ‘New Holland’.</p><p>The first <em>Australia Day</em> celebration was held on 26 Jan 1818 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the colony. The official celebration of this day paid tribute to Arthur Phillip ‘whose virtues and talents entitle him to the grateful remembrance of his Country, and to whose arduous exertions the present prosperous state of the Colony may chiefly be ascribed’. In recognition of the anniversary, a 30-gun salute was fired.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-91302739483759231982024-03-01T17:32:00.001-10:002024-03-01T17:52:57.420-10:00Australia's Currency Lads and Lasses<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 443-445:</p><blockquote><p>The younger Rope family members were typical of the new generation of free colonialists, commonly known as the ‘currency lads and lasses’. This was the expression used in the colony to describe those who were Australian born with emancipist or convict parentage. This generation grew up in an adult society in which free immigrants often made slights and barbs about their origins – they were ‘the offspring of thieves’ and ‘good for nothings’. But the spirit and energy of this new breed had its admirers. Surgeon Peter Miller Cunningham was optimistic about the ‘currency youth’.</p><blockquote><p>Our colonial-born brethren are best known here by the name of <em>Currency,</em> in contradistinction to <em>Sterling,</em> or those born in the mother-country. … Our Currency lads and lasses are a fine interesting race, and do honour to the country whence they originated. … The Currency youths are warmly attached to their country, which they deem unsurpassable, and few ever visit England without hailing the day of their return as the most delightful in their lives….</p></blockquote><p>The currency lads and lasses were also referred to as <em>Corn Stalks</em> because they were taller than their British counterparts the <em>Sterlings,</em> and they had a distinct way of talking. The children of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Exclusive-Australian-history">exclusives</a> saw themselves as the pure bloods of the colony and, if they came from large estates, as the <em>Pure Merinos.</em> Among the colony’s youth, the currency lads stood together and if one was attacked the ‘whole hive sally to his aid’. Interestingly, drunkenness was much less common among the currency youth than their parents or the adult population as a whole.</p><p>Most had at least one convict or ex-convict parent but, to the surprise of their elite contemporaries, they were generally law-abiding. Work was plentiful in the colony, and many had respectable well-paid jobs. In fact, there were far fewer temptations for youth to commit crime in the colony than in the overcrowded and underemployed British cities. Australia had shown itself to be a land of promise for the parents of the currency youth, and so it would be for them. Toby Ryan, as the son of a convict father, reflected on this in his book <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tobys-Gun-REMINISCENCES-AUSTRALIA-1788-1894/dp/0980766044/">Reminiscences</a>.</em></p><blockquote><p>Many of the early Australians sprang from the well-behaved emancipists and military men, who settled down at once, uncontaminated by drink, disease, or other enervating diseases; the result was fine men and women. Of course, hard work and wholesome food were partly the means of raising so fine a race…. Their red cheeks showed the bloom of health and beauty, and they required no artificial means to make them representable. They moved with agility, and were straight and well-formed, showing that their ancestors came from a good stock.</p></blockquote><p>For most emancipists and their children Australia was their home, and they had no intention of returning to the Mother Country. They formed a strong political block that sought to ensure lawful access to all levels in Australian society. In 1821 the emancipists sent a petition to King George IV requesting the removal of any impediments to legal representation and rights. Some members of the community, and particularly the exclusives, government officials, and even governors, consistently discriminated against them. Their work opportunities were improving, but they now feared that the rapid increase in new free immigrants arriving would slow their acceptance into Australian society.</p><p>Equal opportunity remained a hot issue in the colony.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-40153422668631577722024-02-27T10:28:00.002-10:002024-02-27T10:28:36.490-10:00Macquarie's Egalitarianism in NSW<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 382-385:</p><blockquote><p>The appointment of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachlan_Macquarie">Lachlan Macquarie</a> as governor in January 1810 brought much needed stability and efficiency to the colonial administration. With William Bligh’s reputation reinstated, the settlers had hoped that Macquarie would follow a similar policy of assisting small farmers to increase food production in the colony. However, although Macquarie gave assurances of his support for this policy, his actions by no means matched those of the Bligh administration. The governor’s first priority was to try and heal the serious rifts still in the community, and he avoided overt favouritism, initially at least, to any particular sector. In his hands, the colony’s overall economy began to recover from the mishaps of the rebel administration.</p><p>Nevertheless, Macquarie made it clear that grain production was a priority for the government, and the free and emancipist settlers quickly understood this. Most importantly, with the removal of the New South Wales Corps from the marketplace, the financial rewards to farmers who cultivated large crops rose sharply. Fair-trading became the norm and grain prices were stable and predictable. Macquarie made sure the government civil servants and the court officials treated everyone equally, independent of their social status or occupation. His policies eventually enabled people from all sectors of the community to be promoted into important positions in the administration, and he insisted that emancipists in the community be given the same social and business opportunities as free settlers.</p><p>It was not long before Lachlan Macquarie realised that some ‘better members of society’ were excluding emancipists who had become successful through hard work and entrepreneurship from legitimate recognition in the colony. Such unjustified discrimination clashed with his Scottish and military upbringing, and he was determined that it be stamped out. As early as April 1810, Macquarie appointed the emancipist farmer-industrialist Andrew Thompson as a Justice of the Peace and Magistrate in the Hawkesbury District. Thompson was the first ex-convict to become a Magistrate, and Simeon Lord, another emancipist, was the second. Lord was appointed as Magistrate on the Sydney court benches. These appointments were strongly criticised by wealthy free settlers and civil officers, who argued such men had no place in respectable society, and that granting them positions of power would corrupt the social order. Macquarie believed these criticisms were made by people who had only recently achieved social standing in the colony and did not want this diluted by nouveau-riche emancipists.</p><p>Reverend Marsden was one of the most outspoken opponents of Macquarie’s encouragement for widespread social equality. Marsden’s views on the importance of social distinctions were in stark contrast to those of the governor, and he became a persistent critic of all aspects of the Macquarie administration. When Marsden refused to join a trustee board of which Andrew Thompson and Simeon Lord were members, Macquarie considered it an act of civil disobedience. Like Bligh, Macquarie was a military man who had little tolerance for dissent. He was hostile to those opposing his egalitarian efforts, maintaining that equality was essential to the harmony of such a diverse community.</p><p>Andrew Thompson gained wide acceptance in the community for his courage, honesty and fairness as a magistrate, and became a regular dinner guest at Government House. Unfortunately his health deteriorated rapidly following his heroic rescues in the Hawkesbury floods and he died in October 1810 at the age of 37. He was one of the colony’s wealthiest settlers with an estate worth in excess of £20,000 (over £2 million today). Thompson, who was unmarried, bequeathed a quarter of his estate to Governor Macquarie for recognising his abilities, and a quarter to his friend and fellow emancipist-magistrate Simeon Lord. The remaining half was to be equally divided between his brother, and four nephews and nieces in Scotland. Bizarrely, they never accepted the inheritance – perhaps believing that benefiting from a transported criminal’s honest earnings would taint their good name. Their refusal to benefit from Thompson’s estate is a telling example of 19th century propriety and prejudice, befitting a Charles Dickens tale. Andrew Thompson had been an honest, industrious and successful young man, of whom any family would have been proud if they had known of his achievements and good deeds.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-6275988109598395082024-02-26T08:26:00.000-10:002024-02-26T08:26:14.109-10:00Captain Bligh's Foes and Fans<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 365, 377-381:</p><blockquote><p>In one sense, the life of Bligh is a tragedy, but a tragedy in the grand manner. He was the victim of two mutinies, one at sea, the other on land. In neither case was he the victim of his own tyranny. The objective of the Bounty mutineers was immediate return to the Lotus Land of Tahiti. In the case of Bligh’s New South Wales administration, the thought of forcible rebellion was probably suggested by the fact of the prior Bounty mutiny. It is only a child who would reason that, because there were two mutinies against Bligh, he must have been guilty of conduct justifying both.</p><p>...</p><p>William Bligh was a blunt opinionated man who vigorously opposed anyone who disagreed with him. He had little time for the fripperies and subtleties of society; he lived by simple rules and expected others to do so as well. Despite the colony’s small size and isolation, it had strict social protocols and etiquettes, and the veteran mariner’s language and brusque manners probably shocked upper-class sensitivities. For people who knew him well, Bligh’s social crassness was more than offset by his courage, his honesty, and a generosity to those he thought deserved it. Few leaders, then or today, could rise above the indignities and pressure he had been subjected to, and fought so strongly for what he believed in. In a very real sense Australia’s egalitarian society and fair judicial system survived because of Bligh’s determined spirit. He had fought against entrenched opposition and won.</p><p>...</p><p>The minor penalties imposed on [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_Rebellion">Rum Rebellion</a> leaders] Johnston and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Foveaux">Foveaux</a> are unlikely to have satisfied William Bligh. While the courts had clearly vindicated him and his government, the sentences imposed on the rebels were unusually light. From all accounts, Bligh shrugged off his disappointment and moved on. In 1812, Bligh was promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue, and in 1814 to Vice-Admiral of the Blue. In 1812, he was invited to give advice to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Transportation, and a year later was granted a full government pension. Vice-Admiral Bligh died on 7 Dec 1817, aged 63.</p><p>What can be said about the contribution of this controversial man to the fledgling colony? The Hawkesbury settlers regarded him as a person of courage and honour; a heroic fighter against what they saw as a corrupt system. He was considered ‘one of them’, who had fought for their cause and had been arrested as a consequence. Portrayals of Bligh’s character vary greatly in contemporary history, ranging from a fractious troublemaker to inspirational leader. But all assessments agree that Bligh’s actions were always honest. He strived to do the right thing by the colonialists who battled the hardest, however, he appeared unable, or unwilling, to rally the entire colony to his causes. Bligh either lacked, or undervalued, the political and diplomatic skills needed to convince the businessmen that his goals would lead to a successful prosperous colony. His blunt edicts were uncompromising, and this outraged the trading community who expected some give and take in government transactions – in any case, since Hunter’s time they were accustomed to get what they wanted. Bligh’s rigid no-compromising reforms came as a real shock, and those most effected believed they had no option but to fight against them.</p><p>In modern times, the support or damnation of the Bligh governorship seems to be divided along ideological lines. One right-wing opinion is that the rebellion ‘was caused not by rum but by the code of honour, which set out how gentlemen should behave. Governor William Blight was overthrown by the powerful people of Sydney because he was no gentleman’. Those in the opposite corner, claim that Bligh’s battles with Macarthur and the Corps were to protect the underprivileged, and to preserve democracy and equality. Overall, the latter camp appears to have many more historical facts on their side.</p><p>The commonly cited negative traits of Bligh are difficult to reconcile with our knowledge that he was a devoted family man and was considered something of a hero by most of the small farmers. Some settlers named their newborn sons after him and the use of ‘William Bligh’ or ‘Bligh’ as forenames for boys born in that era are evidence of this admiration. One example of this is William Bligh Turnbull, who was born in 1809 in Windsor, and is the ancestor of a former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull.</p><p>...</p><p>The earliest writings damning Bligh were written by the colony’s educated elite who supported his overthrow. The written opinions of the illiterate emancipists went largely unrecorded, but the few surviving letters and petitions show their determined support and admiration. Probably the most learned and detailed analysis of William Bligh’s governorship is that of the socialist politician, lawyer and historian, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._V._Evatt">H.V. Evatt</a>. In his book <em>Rum Rebellion</em> Evatt reveals that he is an unapologetic admirer of Bligh. This is not surprising. Knowledge of Evatt’s own character, and his fierce battles in the Australian Labor Party and Australian Parliament, leads one to suspect that he and Bligh would have been the very best of friends, had their lives coincided.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-88516744007271360812024-02-25T05:29:00.001-10:002024-02-25T05:29:24.058-10:00NSW Economy Expands, c. 1800<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 328-329:</p><blockquote><p>Under [Governor] King’s astute administration, the colony’s agricultural production and building construction – activities that had so impressed the French three years earlier – flourished. Sheep had been imported from Bengal in 1793 and the Cape in 1796, and these had been crossbred to produce fine wool. Coal mining, as well as whaling and sealing had become profitable enterprises. In 1805 the King George, a locally built whaling vessel owned by Simeon Lord, Henry Kable and James Underwood, was launched in Sydney. By the end of 1805 the wealth of the colony had grown to an extent that the per capita income was at least as high as in Britain. The New South Wales settlement population was now 6980 people; every third was a convict and every fourth a child. With better food more pregnancies carried to full term, and, with a lower incidence of childhood diseases, children reached adulthood in greater proportions than in England. However, the gender imbalance remained at one female to three males.</p><p>The year 1806 started badly for settlers. In March, after a week of heavy rain, the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers rose 50 ft (15 m) inundating the low-lying lands and flooding many farms, including the Ropes. Farmers, and especially Andrew Thompson and Thomas Biggers, used their boats to rescue almost 300 people from roofs, trees and straw rafts. The drowning of five people was attributed to a mistaken belief that the huge floods of 1801 could not happen again.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-15696690024016392822024-02-23T05:25:00.002-10:002024-02-26T05:06:07.035-10:00Misrule of the NSW Corps<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 261-264:</p><blockquote><p>Within a month of Governor Arthur Phillip’s departure the colonial administration regretted the absence of his steading hand. The new Lt. Governor, the 35-year-old affable and indolent Major Francis Grose of the NSW Corps, was in the colony ten months before taking up the reigns in December 1792. He quickly bowed to the demands of the NSW Corps for radical changes to the civil administration. It was not long before he gave the Corps absolute legal authority over all civil and military matters.</p><p>Between 1790 and 1791, Francis Grose had been responsible for recruiting the NSW Corps regiment in Britain and had profited from the selling officers’ commissions. The Corps was not an attractive career choice for ambitious soldiers, and the men he signed on had invariably been rejected by established regiments, or were too old for active military duty, or were past criminals, deserters or mutineers. Since the primary role of the regiment would be to police a small remote colony, it was of little or no interest to professional soldiers looking for active service. These men preferred the famous army regiments based in exotic India, where there were opportunities to become wealthy in the employ of the East India Company. In short, the NSW Corps was not considered distinguished enough for serious soldiers. However, not all Corps recruits were interested in becoming soldiers. Some realised that the NSW Corps offered an ambitious man real opportunities for rapid advancement and wealth, and indeed, this turned out to be the case.</p><p>Judge Advocate David Collins thought the way the NSW Corps had been recruited was ‘disgusting’ because the sorts of men attracted did not have the best interests of the settlement at heart. In order to provide a ‘counterpoise to the vices and crimes’ Collins expected them to be chosen from the ‘best characters’, rather than men exhibiting a ‘catalogue of our most imported vices’.</p><p>...</p><p>The day Grose took over the governorship of the colony, he abolished the civilian courts and transferred their magistrates to the authority of Captain Joseph Foveaux, the senior Corps officer at Parramatta. In effect this gave Corps officers legal authority over all civil and military matters. There is no evidence that Judge Advocate Collins vocally opposed these changes, but his diary entries show that he was definitely against them.</p><p>Next, Grose abolished the equal-rations-for-all policy of Phillip and replaced it with two rations. Free people, watchmen and overseers would receive a larger ration than convicts. But emancipists, who were now officially free citizens, would get the same ration as convicts. Grose had in a few days reimposed the privileges of the English class system on the young colony. He did this on the grounds that it would restore a better sense of order and rank in the settlement, and that the previous government had been overly generous to the convicts.</p><p>With his next action Grose did not attempt to hide behind the guise of good governance. In the same week Phillip departed he permitted the sale of alcohol to convicts – this had been prohibited to avoid drunkenness and disorder in the small fragile colony. Grose’s decision went further than making alcohol available, it allowed the Corps to pay for produce or convict labour <em>in rum.</em> The consequences of this were immediate and tragic. Collins observed that ‘the peaceful retreats of industry were for a time the seats of inebriety and consequent disorder’.</p><p>Worse was to come. Grose appointed the most opportunistic officer in the Corps, Lt. John Macarthur, as Inspector of Public Works in charge of superintendents, storekeepers, overseers and convicts at Parramatta and Toongabbie. He and other Corps officers aggressively sought to acquire the farm animals given to the emancipist settlers by Phillip. Grose thought emancipists incapable of farming and claimed their only ambition was to save enough money to return to England. The false rumour was circulated that the gifted animals were being killed and sold as meat – Grose decided that they needed to be “rescued” by the Corps. In reality, the Corps officers saw this as a way of acquiring the livestock at a low price and paying for it with rum. It is uncertain just how many sheep were purchased for two gallons of rum per head, though Registrar Atkins records that Corps Captain Foveaux in Parramatta acquired most of the livestock in the district.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-57746120532255054352024-02-22T03:25:00.001-10:002024-02-22T03:25:20.739-10:00"Civilly Dead" Convicts Win Lawsuit<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 186-187:</p><blockquote><p>In July, the convicts Henry and Susannah Kable launched the first civil action in the settlement. They sued the Master of the <em>Alexander,</em> Duncan Sinclair, for the loss of personal items in his charge during the voyage. These articles had been purchased in England from donations sent to them following the newspaper articles about baby Henry not being allowed to board the <em>Dunkirk,</em> and Sinclair had held these during the First Fleet voyage. When Henry and Susannah disembarked in Sydney Cove, most of these personal items had disappeared. The court ruled that the Kables be compensated £15.13</p><p>The importance of this trial is that Judge Advocate Collins’ ruling set the legal precedent of ignoring English common law which maintained that felons were ‘civilly dead’ if they had ever been sentenced to death. A ‘civilly dead’ person was not allowed to hold property, give evidence, make contracts or sue in court. Although [Governor] Arthur Phillip and David Collins were well aware of the English law, they had no official sentence documents to check Kable’s convict status. A large number of the convicts in the colony had been given death sentences that were later commuted to transportation, and, had the English legal interpretation been applied, they would be barred from the commercial and legal affairs of the colony. Collins’ decision to proceed with the case, and to find in favour of the Kables, cleared many legal obstacles for convicts to participate in the commercial development of New South Wales.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-18322123980292566942024-02-21T02:04:00.000-10:002024-02-21T02:04:05.402-10:00From Convict to Emancipist to Settler<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 229-231:</p><blockquote><p>In March 1791, Governor Phillip issued the first colonial grants of land in the Rose Hill district to emancipists. The granting of land to ex-convicts – known as <em>emancipists</em> – was of special significance to the settlement. It was the first official action confirming that this was not a penal colony. The British government had understood that the most compelling inducement for ex-convicts to remain in New South Wales was the ownership of land. A land grant not only gave them an investment in the future, but it encouraged law-abiding participation in the colony’s life and, most importantly, the farmed land contributed to food production. Without such an incentive, the Home Office believed emancipists would return to England and resume a life of crime. Governor Phillip’s commission also gave him authority to discharge convicts from servitude and to issue land grants to those ‘who shall from their good conduct and a disposition to industry, be deserving of favour’. A single man was to be granted 30 acres of land, a married man 50 acres, with an additional 10 acres for each child.</p><p>The emancipist James Ruse, the marines Robert Webb and William Reid, and ex-superintendent of convicts, Philip Schaffer, were the first men to receive land grants. Ruse received 30 acres and the marines 60 acres each. Schafer was a German who had found his command of the English language inadequate to perform his duties, and he preferred to settle as a farmer rather than return to Europe. As an ex-superintendent his entitlement for a land grant was 140 acres.</p><p>The land grant to James Ruse is worthy of special mention, as he was the first convict in the colony to receive one. When his term expired in August 1789 Ruse asked for his release and a land grant to become a farmer. Although Phillip was unable to verify his sentence length, he decided to help Ruse in order to ascertain how quickly an industrious man could support himself as a settler. With this in mind, in November 1789, Phillip ordered a hut to be built for Ruse on the 30-acre Experiment Farm near Rose Hill.</p><p>By February 1791 Ruse was self-sufficient and no longer needed government rations. Because of this, he was given the title deed to the land. Ruse’s success led Phillip to seek other energetic men and families in the Rose Hill area who could become productive and eventually go off-rations. Even prior to receiving the official sentencing records in July 1791, Phillip planned to let other convicts, who claimed their term had expired, become independent settlers.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-27134540562560636342024-02-19T05:52:00.000-10:002024-02-19T05:52:14.454-10:00Australian Convict Fecundity, 1790s<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 227-228:</p><blockquote><p>In early 1791, Rose Hill [now <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta">Parramatta</a>] had a population of about 550 people but only 16 children. This meant that the young received extra attention from everyone and were often spoilt. Many convicts had left families behind in England, so seeing small children brought them both sadness and joy. The First Fleet arrived in January 1788 with only 54 children on board. Over 80% of the transported females were of childbearing age, between 15 and 45 years, so it is not surprising that a further 59 children were born to the colony by February 1790. Child numbers surged with the arrival of later fleets, and by the end of 1791 there were 249 (half below the age of 2) in the colony, and 39 of them lived in Rose Hill.</p><p>Because of the supposedly low food intake of convict women, the high birth rates in the early years of settlement have puzzled historians and medical scientists. One explanation for the high fecundity is that the atrocious diets in English gaols had kept the women’s body weight below that needed for fertility, whereas the adequate rations aboard the transport ships and at the settlement had reversed this. The prompt conception of baby Robert Rope was evidence of Elizabeth’s robust health when she stepped from the <em>Prince of Wales</em> in January 1788.</p><p>Concomitantly, during the colony’s “hunger years” (1789-1790), one might have expected female fertility in the settlement to drop. Diaries and letters from the first two years of the colony show that the above average birth-rate surprised the government administration. Watkin Tench credits this to the healthy climate:</p><blockquote><p>I ascribe the great number of births which happened, considering the age and other circumstances, of many of the mothers. Women who certainly would never have bred in any other climate here produced as fine children as ever were born.</p></blockquote><p>The Surgeon’s Mate [name unknown] on HMS <em>Sirius</em> wrote ‘Our births have far exceeded our burials; and what is very remarkable, women who were supposed past child-bearing, and others who had not been pregnant for fifteen or sixteen years, have lately become mothers’. And marine John Nicol, from the Second Fleet, was astonished that ‘old women’ had new-born babies, ‘There was an old female convict, her hair quite grey with age, her face shrivelled, who was suckling a child she had born in the colony. Every one went to see her, and I among the rest. It was a strange sight, her hair was quite white. Her fecundity was ascribed to the sweet tea’. Of course, the stress of prison life and punishments made some convicts look prematurely old – grey or white hair was not really a gauge of age.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-90722172282190559032024-02-17T13:23:00.002-10:002024-02-17T13:23:38.676-10:00Australia's Second Fleet of Convicts<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 214-216:</p><blockquote><p>By evening, the <em>Lady Juliana</em> had safely anchored inside Port Jackson, and soon the much-needed food supplies, plus almost three-years of news and letters, were off loaded. The cargo included clothing for marines, medicine, sails and cordage, wine, blankets, bedding for the hospital, tools and agricultural equipment. There were also textiles for convict clothing. After years of stinting and salvaging, it would be possible to make new clothing. The old clothing would not be thrown away; it was be used for other purposes and children’s clothes.</p><p>The choppy harbour water prevented the female convicts on the <em>Lady Juliana</em> from disembarking until June 6th [1790]. Two days prior to this, the Royal Birthday had been a double celebration. The settlement had its first full ration for many months and news of King George III’s improved health was an added reason to celebrate. For the starving colony this was a joyous day, and, with news that other ships would soon follow, there was renewed optimism in the settlement. In keeping with the tradition for the King’s birthday, the governor pardoned gaoled prisoners and those with corporal punishment pending. Samuel Day, Anthony’s friend, who had been punished for attacking Aborigines, was freed from his fetters.</p><p>Regrettably, the food provisions from the <em>Lady Juliana</em> proved much less than expected, and the ship’s contingent had added more mouths to feed. It quickly became evident that the new food supplies would not support the colony for long, and only 1½ lb of flour was added to the weekly rations. This was disappointing, but better than nothing. On June 9th, all work was suspended so that residents could attend a commemorative church service in which Reverend Johnson gave prayers for King George’s further recovery from illness.</p><p>A week later, the outpost at South Head signalled the arrival of another ship. It was the cargo ship <em>Justinian</em> and, excitingly, its cargo comprised only foodstuffs. Phillip promptly announced that a full ration would now be issued, and the normal working hours for convicts were to be restored. The last three transport ships of the Second Fleet, the <em>Neptune,</em> the <em>Surprize</em> and the <em>Scarborough</em> arrived at the end of June. Apart from the <em>Lady Juliana,</em> on which only three women had died, the convicts aboard the Second Fleet ships had been treated terribly. Of the 1095 convicts (1006 male and 89 female) embarked on the Second Fleet in Portsmouth, 256 males and 11 females had died. This was a death rate of 24%, compared to a 2% death rate on the First Fleet. Convicts even died while being rowed ashore in Sydney; 486 convicts landed sick, and of those 124 later died. The treatment of convicts on the privately run Second Fleet was the worst recorded in the history of transportation to Australia.</p><p>David Collins was disgusted at the condition of the convicts and wrote ‘both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country’. Watkin Tench demanded that the English government act immediately to prevent any reoccurrence, stating ‘No doubt can be entertained that a humane and liberal government will interpose its authority to prevent the repetition of such flagitious conduct’.</p><p>[Governor] Phillip was appalled at the scenes of misery aboard the Second Fleet ships and protested strongly to the masters. He informed them that he would report officially to the Home Office in London about their treatment of convicts. He wrote that the main reason for the high death rate was the gross neglect of prisoners’ welfare by the private contractors, who were being paid for the number of convicts embarking, not for the number delivered alive. The ship’s contractors had previously been involved in slave transportation to America and this was abundantly evident. The transports were overcrowded with convicts chained together and rarely allowed on deck to exercise. Although the ships carried adequate food supplies, convict rations had been kept small so that the excess food could be sold in ports for profit.</p><p>Absurdly, the officers responsible for guarding the convicts had no authority over a ship’s master and could not intervene even when they saw convicts being mistreated. Phillip was furious at these reports and tried to have the ships’ owners prosecuted. When his report on the Second Fleet’s mortality rates finally reached England, the public was made aware of the horrors of the voyage. The master of the <em>Neptune</em> was charged with wilful murder but was acquitted. However, the damning reports submitted to the Home Office brought a swift response from the British government, and later fleets were more closely scrutinised.</p><p>The arrival of Second Fleet convicts caused immediate problems for the colony. The hundreds of sick men placed a strain on the small hospital and medical resources. The ships also landed 100 convicts who, because of old age or chronic illness, could not work. Phillip later complained to the Home Office that the hulks and gaols in England seem to have retained the healthy prisoners and transported the sick. If this practise were to continue, the colony would be a burden to the mother country for years.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-70472180844223433092024-02-15T16:59:00.001-10:002024-02-15T16:59:25.253-10:00Australia's "Foundational Orgy" Myth<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 155-157:</p><blockquote><p>Paradoxically that first stormy night ashore for the females, February 6th, has been depicted in some early historical narratives as <em>a drunken orgy.</em> There is little evidence to support this description. There is no doubt that some males welcomed the females ashore, presumably, while the marine guards were sheltering in their tents from the storm. Whether these were convicts, marines or seamen, or some of each, is not known. A gathering took place and little else is reliably recorded.</p><p>A gathering took place and little else is reliably recorded. Surgeon Smyth, safe aboard the <em>Lady Penrhyn</em> in the harbour, later wrote about the female convicts on their first stormy night ashore.</p><p>...</p><p>Since Smyth was on his ship in the harbour, his account must have been second-hand scuttlebutt and is likely to be highly exaggerated. Nevertheless, some modern-day descriptions of this party, based on his diary entry, refer to it as <em>a drunken orgy with convict couples rolling around in Sydney Cove’s red mud.</em> Such accounts are bogus as there is no evidence of such behaviour, and no red mud exists anywhere near the cove. Moreover, the convict men had no access to alcohol. There were drunken sailors aboard Surgeon Smyth’s ship because they had been given extra grog to celebrate the offloading of the convicts. Significantly, no other diarist, except the remotely located Smyth, mentions bad behaviour that night. If anything as licentious as this had happened in the settlement, Ralph Clark would have recorded it. Clark’s diary entry on February 7th, details the storm and the farm animals ‘Kild six Sheep 2 Labms and one Pigg belonging to Major Ross’ but there is no mention of female misdemeanours on that day, or for several days thereafter.</p><p>Historian Grace Karskens, writing about the night of February 6th, claims ‘the orgy never happened’ and debunks the orgy myth:</p><blockquote><p>… it turns out that the orgy story dates, not from 1788, but from 1963, when the historian Manning Clark included it as ‘a drunken spree’ fuelled by ‘extra rations of rum’ in his <em>Short History of Australia.</em> After he re-read the sources properly, he quickly recanted. But it was too late, the story was out. …… And with every retelling it just got raunchier. Robert Hughes was the originator of the modern version of the legend, for in <em>The Fatal Shore</em> (1987) he sites the action in the Rocks, with the lightning of a ferocious Sydney storm revealing couples bestially ‘rutting’ in the ‘red clay’ (there is no red clay in Sydney Cove). And in Hughes’s version the sex wasn’t consensual: ‘the women floundered to and fro, draggled as muddy chickens under a pump, pursued by male convicts intent on raping them’.</p></blockquote><p>Karskens points out that the Zoologist Tim Flannery retells the orgy myth in his book <em>The Birth of Sydney</em> and Peter FitzSimons gives it another spin in the <em>Sydney Magazine</em> in 2005. Many histories of Sydney and early colonial Australia routinely include the orgy story. It has even been re-enacted for television as the documentary drama <em>The Floating Brothel,</em> and as a collection of comically shaking tents at the Botanic Gardens in <em>Tony Robertson Explores Australia.</em></p><p>The “foundational orgy” claim has no credibility, and it is absurdly unjust to label women as promiscuous sluts and men as rapists, when there is no written evidence of non-consensual sex. Only one aspect of that stormy night is certain: those who met up were celebrating their first taste of freedom in months and had probably sought out each other’s company. This would have been a natural thing to do. It is demeaning and absurdly high-handed to assume that the convicts were disrespectful of each other, or that they were unaware of social norms.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-46344150810604839982024-02-14T06:13:00.000-10:002024-02-14T06:13:05.422-10:00First Fleet Commander & Governor<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 72-75:</p><blockquote><p>In early September 1786, Captain Arthur Phillip was officially commissioned to become the governor of the colony in New South Wales. This would prove to be an excellent choice; Phillip was a veteran mariner with vision and humility and had enlightened views on equality. Support for Phillip’s appointment had not been unanimous. On 3 Sep 1787, Lord Howe wrote to Lord Sydney ‘I cannot say the little knowledge I have of Captain Philips [<em>sic</em>] would have led me to select him for a service of this complicated nature’. Arthur Phillip is certainly not the focus of this story but his importance to the ultimate success of the First Fleet and the New South Wales settlement cannot be overstated. Because of this, a short overview of his career is warranted.</p><p>Excellent biographies of Arthur Phillip’s life have been published. Michael Pembroke writes ‘He was a man with a good head, a good heart, lots of pluck, and plenty of common sense. To those qualities he brought an uncommon amount of integrity, intelligence and persistence’. As an experienced sea captain, Phillip appreciated the dangers of the voyage ahead and from his time as a farmer he knew that establishing a new settlement would be challenging. He had progressed through the ranks of the Royal Navy from Ordinary Seaman to Post Captain mostly by merit and had held numerous important commands during his long naval career.</p><p>Like the great maritime navigator and explorer James Cook, Arthur Phillip had risen to some eminence from quite unprivileged beginnings.</p><p>...</p><p>In April 1787, Captain Phillip received details of his commission as Governor of New South Wales. They included the authority to establish a new settlement at Botany Bay. Somewhat controversially Phillip was ordered to govern the colony alone, without a council. Much later, during the establishment of the settlement, some officers questioned the extent of the powers granted to Phillip. Arthur Bowes Smyth, the Fleet Surgeon, observed that Phillip’s commission was ‘a more unlimited one than was ever before granted to any Governor under the British Crown’. This concern was understandable. Although the governor was subject to the rule of British law, he had been given the power to appoint justices and officers of the law, to raise an army, to erect fortifications and to exercise sovereign naval powers. Phillip also had full authority to pardon and reprieve, either absolutely or conditionally, according to the seriousness of the crimes, and, most importantly, to make land grants to emancipated convicts. Matters of particular concern for Phillip with his commission were the rights and official status of transportees. He had been appalled by the slavery he had seen in South America and Africa, and he was determined that New South Wales not be another convict slave colony.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-40536366242456272022024-02-13T05:48:00.001-10:002024-02-13T05:48:15.997-10:00Who Were the First Fleet Convicts<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 26-27:</p><blockquote><p>The majority of convicts transported on the First Fleet were poor illiterate males, younger than 30, and a high proportion of these came from the rural areas of England. It was here that poverty and unemployment was rampant, and, in the absence of any form of social or government support, men stole to keep themselves and their families alive. In the countryside, part-time magistrates, who were mostly landed gentry, sentenced the rural youth to death, prison and transportation for trivial offences – even for leaving their workplace without permission wearing servants’ clothing. Not all offenders were rural, but many of the crimes committed in London (Middlesex) districts were country youths who had migrated there in search of work and food. The enclosure laws and the industrial manufacture of textiles had destroyed the livelihoods of the small farmers, agricultural labourers and many others in small villages. It was here that the full impact of land aggregation and industrialisation was most severely felt. Without work or social support, these people were destitute. The brutal reality of the mid to late 18th century was that starving workers with no prospect of employment had no other choice but to become a felon.</p><p>This story explores the lives of young men and women who were transported to Australia for relatively petty felonies. In particular it will trace the history of two young rural workers, Anthony Rope and Elizabeth Pulley, who lived through these tumultuous times. We shall see that their punishment for stealing was incarceration and, eventually, transportation as convicts on the First Fleet. Both came from small villages in Norfolk, but they did not know each other until they reached New South Wales. The story is not specifically about them however, their lives are typical of the convicts sent to establish a new colony on the continent that would eventually become Australia. Their individual stories replicate, in so many ways, those of mostly illiterate and underprivileged workers who were transported to the Ends of the Earth for stealing to prevent starvation.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-36810934591402696272024-02-12T05:46:00.001-10:002024-02-12T05:46:26.638-10:00New Sites for Convict Colonies<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 63-67:</p><blockquote><p>Between 1783 and 1786, three different sites for convict colonies were under consideration – in Senegal, on the Gold Coast of Africa and in New South Wales on the east coast of New Holland. In December 1784, an exploratory expedition to transport convicts to Lemain Island, 700 km up the river Gambia in Senegal, was put forward. Following strong public and parliamentary criticism, the Lemain project was abandoned because of the region’s unsuitable climate. In May 1785, James Matra once again testified before a committee enquiring specifically into the suitability of Botany Bay as a penal colony. Even at this late stage, the committee was not prepared to rule out the free colonisation of this site. Despite much testimony in favour of a New Holland location, the majority of the committee believed that an African site would be more practical. In parallel with committee’s enquiries, the government was independently exploring various settlement options. The Home Office was increasingly anxious at the burgeoning number of transportees in prisons and Lord Sydney and Evan Nepean, thought that closer sites in Africa could be settled sooner.</p><p>The strain on the prison system by the end of 1785 was so great that additional naval ships had to be converted into prison hulks. The hulk <em>Fortunée</em> was moored at Portsmouth and the <em>Dunkirk</em> at Plymouth. The political and public pressure on the government was intense, and the Home Office commissioned a ship to explore possible locations on the west coast of Africa between Das Voltas (Orange River) and Angola. This expedition returned in July 1786 and reported that the soil in the Das Voltas was not suitable for cultivation. This report effectively ended any further consideration of Africa as a place for a British convict settlement.</p><p>...</p><p>The often-cited belief that Botany Bay was planned solely as a dumping ground for convicts is unsupported by available documents. It may have been the main objective, but there is clear evidence the Pitt government saw tangible benefits in establishing commercial bases in the South Pacific. At the time, Britain was embroiled in conflicts with France, Spain and America, so there were also strategic reasons for establishing a territorial claim on the continent. Nevertheless, the endless debates on whether New South Wales was suitable suggests a begrudging recognition by the Tory government that this was a good locality – <em>it was just a pity one had to go so far to dispose of the convicts, and to achieve these objectives. </em></p><p>Early assessments of the Botany Bay Scheme logistics by the Home Office appreciated that it would be quite different to sending convicts to America, which had been privately financed and organised. The Botany Bay Scheme would be administered by the government, transported by the Royal Navy and guarded by Royal Marines. This enterprise had no precedent in previous British convict transportations. The government, rather than private merchants, would be involved in convict transportation on a scale that they had never before attempted.</p><p>In August 1786, Lord Sydney informed the Admiralty of what he needed to transport 750 convicts to Botany Bay. He requested a naval warship that would escort and protect transport ships carrying the convicts and 160 marines as guards to the new settlement. The marines would be responsible to the Home Office for a term of three years.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-50818616203312221032024-02-11T06:51:00.002-10:002024-02-11T06:51:43.412-10:00Colonial American Convict Labor<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 19-21:</p><blockquote><p>A brief overview of earlier British convict transportation practices is relevant here. In 1717, the British Parliament passed the <em>Act for the Further Preventing Robbery, Burglary, and Other Felonies, and for the More Effective Transportation of Felons,</em> etc. (4 Geo. I cap. XI), which established penal transportation to America with a seven-year convict bond service for minor offenders, and a fourteen-year convict bond service for more serious crimes. Between 1718 and 1775 an estimated 50,000 convicts were transported to the British-American colonies. This represented about a quarter of all British migrants to the North American colonies at a time when they were desperately short of labour. The American colonists saw convict transportation as beneficial socially, politically and economically. It disposed of minor criminals at a cost that was less than gaoling them and a boon to the colonies by providing cheap labour. This was, in effect, and indeed in fact, a slave trade under a different guise. From its inception, transportation to the American colonies was a private business enterprise. Shipping contractors managed the movement of the convicts, obtained contracts from the sheriffs and in the colonies recouped their costs by selling the prisoners at auctions. Colonists would buy a convict as an indentured servant for the duration of their sentence. During an indenture the living and working conditions imposed on convicts differed little from those of slaves.</p><p>However, by the mid 18th century, convict labour had become less attractive to American colonialists and, moreover, in the 1770s the prospect of antislavery laws in England spelled the end of this practice. Maryland was the last colony to accept convicts and by 1775 the American Revolutionary War ended the trade of imported British goods and convicts. On 11 Jan 1776, the <em>London Gazetteer</em> reported ‘there will be no more convicts sent to America whilst the country remains unsettled.’ The article suggested that transportation would resume just as soon as peace was restored. This never took place.</p><p>With the loss of the American colonies, the systematic disposal of convicts to places <em>beyond the seas</em> came to a halt. Nevertheless, most judges consistently refused to apply capital punishment to relatively minor crimes and, where it was applied, capital sentences were often commuted to transportation. Consequently, the land gaols in the 1770s and 1780s overflowed with prisoners awaiting the imposition of a sentence that could not be enacted and, importantly, could not be altered. It was a serious judicial stalemate.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-88014247742772707712024-02-10T05:20:00.000-10:002024-02-10T05:20:15.201-10:00New Wealth in Britain, 1700s<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 13-15:</p><blockquote><p>The 18th century in England was a time of enormous social, economic and political change. There were a multitude of reasons for these upheavals, but the principal ones were the all-embracing industrial and agrarian revolutions. These dramatically altered the lives of both urban and rural working classes by eroding traditional employment opportunities, and, ultimately, decimating the cottage-based industries. These changes took place when Britain’s colonial empire, along with its African slave trade, was burgeoning, but they also occurred in a period of major military conflicts with France, Spain and the American colonies. The burgeoning growth in international trade and commodity markets at the time contributed significantly to the overall wealth of the mercantile classes but, in most respects, it reduced the opportunities and living standards of unskilled and illiterate workers.</p><p>The advent of new industrial and transportation technologies proved a major factor in Britain’s increasing mercantile success. John Kay’s invention of the flying shuttle in 1733 and the carding machine in 1754 accelerated cloth weaving and were the forerunners of innovations that ultimately led to the complete automation of textile manufacturing. James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1765; Matthew Boulton and James Watt began producing steam engines for factories in 1774. By 1780, the combination of Hargreaves’ inventions, Richard Arkwright’s water frame, and the increased access to canals linking major population centres, made Britain a world leader in the manufacture of high quality textiles.</p><p>These industrial advances increased the prosperity, sophistication and leisure pursuits of the British upper and middle classes of society and provided the intellectual environment for the appreciation of progressive social concepts, including the abolition of slavery. The mid 18th century in Britain was a time of far-reaching intellectual advances in scientific knowledge, politics and philosophy and is commonly referred to as the <em>Age of Enlightenment and Science.</em> The outspoken views of William Wilberforce, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Benjamin Franklin and many others, were discussed within literate and political circles and became catalysts for significant shifts in the social attitudes of the educated. The tolerant views of King George III cultivated a relatively liberal approach to social mobility and political change. George III suffered from bouts of porphyria during his 50-year reign but for most of this time he remained politically astute and active.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6231564.post-84496183370458445762024-02-10T04:08:00.001-10:002024-02-10T04:08:49.317-10:00Era of Petty Capital Crimes, mid 1700s<p>From <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Long-Haul-Colonial-Australia-Perspective-ebook/dp/B07MJCJ3V4/">In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts' Perspective</a>,</em> by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 17-19:</p><blockquote><p>By mid-century the fear that increasing crime rates would lead to widespread social disruption spawned new penalties intended to discourage property theft. The legal imperatives for these were bolstered by a growing concern about the civil insurrection in France, especially after the French Revolution took place in 1789. The British Parliament passed bills reclassifying many petty crimes as capital offences (to which the death sentence applies). Capital crimes now included burglary, highway-robbery, house-breaking in daytime, private stealing or picking pockets above 1 shilling, shoplifting above 5 shillings, stealing above 40 shillings, maiming or stealing a cow, horse or sheep, or breaking into a house or church. The official punishment for these offences was now the same as for murder and treason – <em>death by hanging.</em></p><p>Quite unfairly the new laws came into effect rapidly and were little understood by the poor, of whom 90% were illiterate. Consequently, the severity of the changes went largely unappreciated by the working class, which Thomas Paine – author of <em>The Rights of Man</em> – claimed was intentional to disadvantage the poor. Other enlightened members of English society, including the judiciary, strongly opposed the imposition of the new capital sentences for minor offences and this became a cause célèbre for many social reformers; the same people advocating for the abolition of the slave trade in the 1770s.</p><p>Mercifully, there were several <em>ad hoc</em> legal options available to those members of the judiciary who were inclined to avoid the imposition of a capital sentence. The legal loopholes were not recognised officially, but they were commonly applied, nonetheless. In particular, juries could be encouraged to apply <em>pious perjury</em> in assessing the severity of an offence when a prisoner was charged with a minor property or financial crime. Such actions permitted judges to assign imprisonment by transportation rather than the death sentence. For example, a court clerk could routinely understate the value of stolen property on the charge sheet in order that it was below the capital offence threshold.</p><p>In fact, the widespread application of judicial leniency in the late 1700s meant that <em>transportation beyond the seas</em> became the <em>de facto</em> sentence imposed by courts for minor crimes. Relaxation of the capital sentencing laws was tolerated because a sentence of <em>transportation</em> satisfied the political imperative of removing petty lawbreakers from decent society. Ironically, the lenient judicial practices posed a new problem for the prison system in England; where were all these transported prisoners to go? After 1775, the American Colonies no longer accepted transportees and there was no other offshore prison to send them to.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0