Penal Colony - British Empire

British Empire

The British used North America as a penal colony through a system of indentured servitude. Convicts would be transported by merchants and auctioned off to plantation owners upon arrival in the colonies. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America, representing perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the 18th century. The British also would often ship Irish and Scots to the Americas whenever there were rebellions in Ireland or Scotland, and they would be treated similar to the convicts, except that this also included women and children.

When that avenue closed in the 1780s after the American Revolution, Britain began using parts of what is now known in Australia as penal settlements. Some of these included 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.. Without the allocation of the available convict labor to farmers, pastoral squatters and Government projects such as roadbuilding, colonisation of Australia would not have been possible, especially considering the considerable drain on non-convict labor caused by several goldrushes that took place in the 19th century.

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.