Why was Australia settled?

Answer 1

There were a number of reasons. The Dutch explored enroute to where they traded goods in the West Indies, and came across the continent by accident. The British explored with the aim of increasing the size of their Empire. The British then sent convicts to the Australian continent because their prisons were extremely overcrowded, and the US colonies were no longer accepting British prisoners. Once initial settlement occurred, people of other cultural groups moved to Australia for a better life, or to escape religious persecution, or to make their fortune in the goldrushes.

Answer 2

The first Europeans to live in Australia were convict prisoners from the British prisons which were overcrowded. They had been sending some of the prisoners to America,but following the War of Independence they turned their attention to somewhere else to solve that problem....and decided on New South Wales. Later fleets also went to other parts of the mainland and Van Diemen's Land which is now Tasmania, a state of Australia. The logic of the day was that it was a great place to off-load criminals due to its distance from the mother country and being surrounded by miles of sea offered little chance of escape.

Not all of Australia was originally settled by the convicts-South Australia was pioneered by free settlers - British and other European peoples .Land was offered cheaply as an attraction and many of the German pioneers were escaping religious persecution in their homeland.

Not to mention the fact that there were many free settlers who arrived in other states, who took the opportunity of free land grants to escape poverty and famine in Europe.

In addition:

Besides being a convenient place to offload convicts, the British decided to colonise Australia for several other reasons:

1. To expand the British empire, and prevent the French from gaining a foothold in the Australian continent or in that part of the Pacific.

2. Australia could provide commercial and political gains to Britain.

3. Due to war, Britain needed to find an alternative supply of Flax and timber as her Baltic supply was under threat. It was believed that nearby Norfolk Island would provide this.

4. Britain needed a port in the East to promote trade with China and to extend its naval and commercial power.

The first permanent settlers arrived in Australia with the First Fleet on 26 January 1788 to set up the new penal colony.

Answer 3

The very first European settlers in Australia were a mixture of convicts, officers and marines (and their families, the only free settlers), all of whom came from England.

The convicts had no choice: they were sent to New South Wales, as the eastern half of Australia was then known. This was to solve the problem of Britain's overcrowded prisons (a consequence of the massive changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution) by establishing a new penal colony in a land which showed promise for eventually becoming self-supporting. Britain had been sending their excess prisoners to North America, but the American War of Independence put a stop to the practice. Following this, the English were no longer able to transport surplus prisoners who couldn't legally be executed to North America.

The problem, of course, was that the convicts couldn't simply be offloaded and left to their own devices. Soldiers and officers were needed to guard them and to establish the new colony under British authority. Extra incentive was offered to the marines by way of allowing them to bring their families, and offering them land in the new colony upon completion of their terms of service.

Answer 4

Australia was settled for a number of reasons, but the primary reason was that it was settled as a convict outpost for Britain's excess convicts.

The first European settlers in Australia were mainly convicts from England, together with the officers and the marines who guarded them. They arrived on the First Fleet, a fleet of eleven ships.

Australia was first settled on 26 January 1788, 18 years after James Cook had claimed the east coast for England, under the name of New South Wales.

Answer 5

The British decided to colonise Australia for several reasons:

1. To expand the British empire, and prevent the French from gaining a foothold in the Australian continent or in that part of the Pacific.

2. To solve the problem of Britain's overcrowded prisons (a consequence of the Industrial Revolution) by establishing a new penal colony in a land which showed promise for eventually becoming self-supporting. Britain had been sending their excess prisoners to North America, but the American War of Independence put a stop to the practice. After James Cook's successful voyage which involved charting the eastern coast of Australia, New South Wales was seen as a viable proposition for a convict colony. In particular, it was endorsed by Sir Joseph Banks, the influential botanist who travelled with Cook.

3. Australia could provide commercial and political gains to Britain.

4. Due to war, Britain needed to find an alternative supply of Flax and timber as her Baltic supply was under threat. It was believed that nearby Norfolk Island would provide this.

5. Britain needed a port in the East to promote trade with China and to extend its naval and commercial power.

The first permanent settlers arrived in Australia with the First Fleet on 26 January 1788 to set up the new penal colony.