- Author
- Book reviewer
- Subjects
- History - general, Book reviews, History - pre-Federation, Royal Navy
- Tags
- None noted.
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- September 2004 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
The Global Reach of Empire
By Alan Frost
The Miegunyah Press
the University of Melbourne, 2003.
ISBN 0 522 85050 2 rrp $59.95.
Reviewed by Bob Nicholls
This is a book for the enquiring reader. The author states that globalisation, (which we regard as a recent phenomenon) really started during the second half of the eighteenth century. And who led the way? – the British of course, through their grasp of maritime affairs. Now, we all know of the voyages of Cook et al, but in general we don’t seem to have done the follow-up on the achievements of these explorers. We never seem to read about the ‘what happened next’ part of the story.
Alan Frost, who holds a personal chair of history at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, draws on the consequences of the voyages of exploration in the period from 1740 to 1780 to develop this theme. He builds his story on the fact that, for the first time in history, the discoveries these explorers made led to the acquisition of sufficient knowledge of the world for it to be conceived as a whole. It fell to a group of British politicians to utilise this knowledge with the aim of creating a trans- Pacific trading empire linking Europe, Asia and the Americas. And it is the steps they caused to be taken that led, in a remarkably short space of time, to a string of successes (and a few defeats) which culminated in the founding of a British Empire.
The second theme, of particular relevance to us, concerns the part that the Cook discoveries along the eastern Australian coast played in this truly global scheme. We all learned at school that Australia was established as a dumping ground for convicts. The reason has always been given that it was necessary to find a place to move these felons once the North American market was no longer available at the conclusion of the American Revolution. According to the author, this explanation isn’t strictly correct. Firstly, the transportation of about 50,000 convicts across the Atlantic in the period 1710 to 1776 was essentially a private operation. Contractors were paid to undertake the moving of these people across the Atlantic and then made their profit from the sale of the convicts’ labour for the balance of their sentences. (A precursor of privatisation perhaps?). The colonists using this cheap labour lived in British possessions and were British citizens. (A few of the worst felons were sent to the Africa Company’s forts on the west coast of that continent. Here the mortality rate was very high). At the conclusion of the war in 1783 this outlet was obviously no longer available, so the problem of what to do with convicts re-emerged. The government’s first reaction was to employ them on constructing Britain’s harbours and inland waterways. At the same time the practice of accommodating convicts in disused ships (hulks) developed. These ships have, according to the author, received a bad press from other historians, who have wrongly seen them in terms of the scandalously-run county and municipal gaols. In fact, from 1788 onwards, they were not too badly run, with improved food rations, health and the early release of those who showed contrition. When the numbers in the hulks started to rise, the problem of what to do with the increased numbers emerged once more.
The passage of a Transportation Act provided for the resumption of convict transport overseas, and proposals for a number of areas emerged. These included The Gambia, the area of Walvis Bay in South West Africa, islands in the Bay of Bengal and, finally, a part of the coastal region of New South Wales. As we know, the latter won out, and the discussion of how this came about forms a fascinating and revealing part of Professor Frost’s work. It should be noted however, that the eventual decision to send convicts was made only after a proposal to colonise New South Wales by ‘free’ settlers had been dropped.
Another fascinating piece of historical trivia is that the cost of landing one First Fleet convict in Sydney and of maintaining him there was £63 a year, as against the £23 it was costing to keep him in a hulk moored in the Thames. These are, however, incidentals to the broader picture painted in The Global Reach of Empire. It is nowadays often asserted that, in the twenty-first century, the Pacific Rim countries will become the world’s most important economic area. This book examines the historical reasons behind this view and places the British and their politicians firmly in the driver’s seat in this regard.
Not a book for light reading, but highly recommended for anyone who wishes to understand the reasoning behind the European entry into the lands bordering on the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the pre-eminence of Britain and its Navy in this development.