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Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 162,000 convicts were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British government.〔()〕 The British government began transporting criminals to overseas colonies in the 17th century. When transportation to the American colonies declined with the move towards American independence in the 1770s, an alternative site was needed to avoid further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. In 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. Due to the continent's isolation, it was considered ideal for a penal colony, and in 1787 the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, the first European settlement in Australia. Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), Queensland and Western Australia. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly in the following decade. The last convict ship arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868. Many of the convicts were transported for petty crimes; others were political prisoners. More serious crimes, such as rape and murder, were not transportable offences. After their prison terms were served most stayed in Australia and joined the other settlers, with some rising to prominent positions in Australian society. Approximately 20% of modern Australians are descended from transported convicts. Once deemed the "convict stain", it is now considered by many Australians to be a cause for celebration to have a convict in one's lineage. The extent to which the convict era has shaped Australia's national character has been studied by many writers and historians.〔Hirst, John (July 2008). ("An Oddity From the Start: Convicts and National Character" ), ''The Monthly''. Retrieved 4 May 2015.〕 ==Reasons for transportation== (詳細はRobert Hughes in ''The Fatal Shore'', the population of England and Wales, which had remained steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, began rising considerably after 1740. By the time of the American Revolution, London was overcrowded, filled with the unemployed, and flooded with cheap gin.〔(Gin Epidemic – 1720–1750 )〕 Poverty, social injustice, child labor, harsh and dirty living conditions and long working hours were prevalent in 19th-century Britain. Dickens' novels perhaps best illustrate this; even some government officials were horrified by what they saw. Only in 1833 and 1844 were the first general laws against child labour (the Factory Acts) passed in the United Kingdom.〔"(The Life of the Industrial Worker in Ninteenth-Century England )".〕 Crime had become a major problem and in 1784 a French observer noted that "from sunset to dawn the environs of London became the patrimony of brigands for twenty miles around."〔Highes, ibid, p. 28〕 Each parish had a watchman, but British cities did not have police forces in the modern sense. Jeremy Bentham avidly promoted the idea of a circular prison, but the penitentiary was seen by many government officials as a peculiarly American concept. Virtually all malefactors were caught by informers or denounced to the local court by their victims. Pursuant to the so-called "Bloody Code", by the 1770s there were 222 crimes in Britain which carried the death penalty,〔(Part I: History of the Death Penalty )〕 almost all of which were crimes against property. These included such offences as the stealing of goods worth over 5 shillings, the cutting down of a tree, the theft of an animal, even the theft of a rabbit from a rabbit warren. The Industrial Revolution led to an increase in petty crime due to the economic displacement of much of the population, building pressure on the government to find an alternative to confinement in overcrowded gaols. The situation was so dire that hulks left over from the Seven Years' War were used as makeshift floating prisons.〔(The Floating Prison: British Prison Hulks )〕 Eight of every 10 prisoners were in jail for theft. The Bloody Code was gradually rescinded in the 1800s because judges and juries considered its punishments too harsh. Since lawmakers still wanted punishments to deter potential criminals, they increasingly applied transportation as a more humane alternative to execution.〔(By the Gallows )〕 Transportation had been applied as a punishment for both major and petty crimes since the seventeenth century. Around 60,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Transportation to the Americas ceased following Britain's defeat in the American Revolutionary War. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Convicts in Australia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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