Penal colony

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A penal colony is a settlement used to detain prisoners and generally use them for penal labour in an economically underdeveloped part of the state's (usually colonial) territories, and on a far larger scale than a prison farm. The British Empire used its colonies in North America as such for more than 150 years and parts of Australia for a further 75 years.

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[edit] Generalities

The prison regime was often harsh, sometimes including severe physical punishment, so even if prisoners were not sentenced for the rest of their natural lives, many died from hunger, disease, medical neglect, excessive labour, or during an escape attempt.

In the penal colony system, prisoners were sent far away to prevent escape and to discourage returning after their sentence expired. Penal colonies were often located in inhospitable frontier lands, where their unpaid labour could benefit the metropoles before immigration labor became available, or even after because they are much cheaper. In fact, some people (especially the poor, following a similar social logic as could see them domestically 'employed' in a poorhouse) were sentenced for trivial or dubious offenses to generate cheap labor.

[edit] British Empire

The British used North America as a penal colony both in the usual sense and through the system of indentured servitude. Most notably, the Province of Georgia was originally designed as a penal colony.[citation needed] Convicts would be transported by private sector merchants and auctioned off to plantation owners upon arrival in the colonies. It is generously estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America, representing perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the eighteenth century.[1]

When that avenue closed in the 1780s after the American Revolution, Britain began using parts of modern day Australia as penal colonies. Some of these early colonies were Norfolk Island, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and New South Wales. Advocates of Irish Home Rule or of Trade Unionism (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) often received sentences of deportation to these Australian colonies.[citation needed]

Bermuda, off the North American coastline, was also used during the Victorian period. Convicts housed in hulks were used to build the Royal Naval Dockyard there, and during the Second Boer War, Boer prisoners-of-war were sent to the archipelago and imprisoned on one of the smaller islands.

In colonial India, the British had made various penal colonies. Two of the most infamous ones are on the Andaman islands and Hijli. In the early days of settlement, Singapore was the recipient of Indian convicts, who were tasked with clearing the jungles for settlement and early public works.

[edit] Elsewhere

[edit] In fiction

The concept of remote and inhospitable prison planets has been employed by science fiction writers. Some famous examples include:

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ "British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies". American Historical Review 2. Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History. October 1896. http://www.dinsdoc.com/butler-1.htm. Retrieved on 2007-06-21. 
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