Colonising Australia 1788-1901

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Season 1
When the British invaded the Australian continent in 1788, it ended a way of life that had existed for more than fifty thousand years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Using primary sources to describe the conditions and interactions between settlers and Indigenous people, this episode explores the free settler colony founded in Melbourne in 1835.
Citing many primary sources, this episode describes conditions in the first British colony in Australia after the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay in January 1788.
Citing many primary sources, this episode explores the terrible conditions and experiences of the convicts and free settlers on board the ships of the First and Second Fleets to Australia.
Today, transportation seems a brutal way to punish criminals, but there were a number of factors, including the Agricultural Revolution and a demand for natural resources, that made it appealing in 18th century Britain.
Colonisation was not only about taking land and resources for imperial powers, but also about seeking to convert, or 'civilise', indigenous people to European ways of thinking.
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