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Convict laborers

Convict laborers in Fremantle, Australia

Convict labor was a system of unfree labor which was implemented in the British Empire, most notably in Australia from 1788 to 1868. The British transported 162,000 convicts from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia over the course of eighty years, as the American Revolutionary War deprived the British of its earlier penal colonies. On 20 January 1788, the First Fleet - including eleven prison ships - arrived at Sydney in New South Wales and began the white settlement of Australia. Other penal colonies were established in Tasmania in 1803, Queensland in 1824, and Western Australia in 1850 (despite having been founded in 1829 as a free colony); South Australia and Victoria remained free colonies throughout their existence. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s, but the efforts of the Australasian Anti-Transportation League throughout the late 1840s and the early 1850s resulted in the abandonment of penal transportation to eastern Australia in 1852. In 1868, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia. Most convicts were transported for petty crimines, and 1 in 7 convicts were women. Most ex-convicts stayed in Australia after their emancipation, and 20% of modern Australians claim descent from the convict laborers.

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