My Idea = Add 'banishment' to prison sentences.

[Aliantha]

I can understand why BD suggests some people have their heads buried in the sand. From all the information available, it's quite plain that convicts were sent to America. In fact, that was a large part of the reason the country was settled in the first place. It wasn't until those pesky rebels got together and foiled that plan that they started sending their convicts here.

As to being embarrassed or not about being descended from convicts well, I'm quite happy to claim a convict heritage. In fact, my great...grandfather was transported to Australia on the first fleet and when his time had been served, he because a free man and ended up being the mayor of the town he lived in.

As I said, I just don't understand the denial of obvious facts. This idea of convicts being sent to America is part of the basic curriculum in our primary school classrooms. It's part of history and no amount of postulating about what you call your convicts changes the fact.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

As I said, I just don't understand the denial of obvious facts. This idea of convicts being sent to America is part of the basic curriculum in our primary school classrooms. It's part of history and no amount of postulating about what you call your convicts changes the fact.

Just because you were taught it in grade school doesn't make it true. They were trying to assuage the children's inferiority complexes, being the spawn of criminals and remaining pussy whipped by a Queen. :p

The "New World" was wide open and heavy competition between the European powers was developing to grab as much as they could. the didn't want land, territory, they wanted the wealth that could be milked from it.

Various wealthy people or pooled wealth groups, schemed to make a killing from the opportunity. The first Jamestown settlement, many were expecting to pick up gold on top of the ground, while somebody else did the work....they died.

Many groups came to settle, start new, to communities and prosper, rather than send wealth back to Europe. there were others, however that came, especially to the more temperate south, to amass a fortune to send or carry back to Europe. They has no intension of relocating, just take the money and run.

Some others, hired and financed, younger/bolder/poorer people to come over and make money for them. They built huge plantations on Kings grants and produced tidy chunks of wealth to send back to sponsors or family.

The only restriction on the size of the plantations and the earning potential was not land but labor. Since the owners of these plantations were rich and connected, they could gain the ear of the king.

The king could cut his expenses hanging, or worse feeding, everyone locked up for transgressions against the crown or the wealthy. Ship these undesirables to the friends plantations to grow them and their output of goods and wealth.

Why stop there? POWs, former residents of conquered lands like Ireland, religious wackos like jacobites, landless poor, women on the street after 10pm, they were all sent as labor to the "New World". "NewWorld" meaning two continents and all the surrounding islands. Those Islands growing most of the sugar and making oceans of rum.

While a few were actually criminals, most of them were just a nuisance to the crown. Regardless, they were sent to work the big plantations and farms, not settle the "New World" like the ones paying their own way.

No penal colonies.