Ralph Darling

Sir Ralph Darling

Sir Ralph Darling (* 1772 ; † April 2, 1858 in Brighton , England ) was the seventh British colonial governor in New South Wales from 1825 to 1831 and before that also temporarily governor of Mauritius . He was a soldier who rose to the rank of general .

Early life

Little is known about Darling's life. Ralph Darling was the eldest son of Christopher Darling, an officer. Ralph Darling joined the British Army in 1793, was promoted to captain in 1796, major in 1800 and lieutenant colonel in 1802 . He commanded a regiment at the Battle of La Coruña and was subsequently promoted to colonel in 1810 and major general in 1813 . On October 13, 1817, he married Elizabeth Dumaresq in Macau . He had three sons and four daughters. Ralph Darling was made a Knight Bachelor in 1835 and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Guelph Order . In 1841 he was appointed general.

Mauritius

In the period from 1819 to 1824 Darling commanded the British troops on the island of Mauritius , where he took over the post of governor from February 6, 1819 to July 6, 1820 in the absence of Robert Farquhar . When he came back and later gave up the governorship, he was reappointed governor from May 20 to June 12, 1823. The colonists in Mauritius were French and they employed 70,000 black slaves on the sugar cane plantations . The British had conquered the island a long time ago and Darling wanted to end French slavery. This made him very unpopular with the French in Mauritius.

New South Wales

Ralph Darling was appointed Governor of New South Wales in 1825 based on his experience in Mauritius. He changed the former colonial borders of Australia and redefined the borders between Western Australia and South Australia , which are still valid today , and he separated Tasmania as an independent British colony.

He had to carry out a financial and banking reform in the colony of New South Wales on behalf of the British government, because the British Treasury wanted to replace the Australian dollar with British coins. During his tenure, the income of the colonial administration doubled and without a tax increase he was able to pay the costs of the civilian colonial government of New South Wales. He reorganized the administration and initiated an Executive Council and a Legislative Council .

Darling supported and sponsored numerous expeditions in Australia, such as that of Charles Sturt , which led to the Western River , Murrumbidgee and Murray River . The botanist Allan Cunningham went further north to discover other rivers and came to Darling Downs , the Richmond River and the Macpherson Range . James Stirling came as far as the Swan River and founded a settlement there, which, however, soon had to be abandoned. He also explored the Western Port and the King George Sound .

Ralph Darling had convicts build roads like the Great North Road from Newcastle to Hawkesbury to the Hunter Valley . Darling was controversial despite its successes.

When soldiers Josoph Sudds and Patrik Thompson broke military rules, he punished them by transferring them to road construction. Sudds died while serving his sentence. Justice Commissioner Francis Forbes demonstrated that the soldiers' transfer was illegal. Because of this incident, Darling was massively attacked by English newspapers and the Australian , including a. by William Wentworth and Robert Wardell . The Australian was the first independent newspaper in Australia, before that there was only state-run. It was published by Wardell and because of his criticism of him and the colonial government he initiated a law on newspaper tax , which provided four pence per newspaper sold. Forbes revoked this tax law as illegitimate.

Honors

In Australia, the following were named in memory of Ralph Darling:

• Darling River
• Darling Harbor
• Darling Downs
• Darling Scarp
• Darlinghurst and Darling Point , Sydney suburbs
• Darling Street in Balmain , a suburb of Sydney

Web links

• Darling's Certificate of Appointment as Governor of New South Wales
• Family tree

Individual evidence

1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 336.
2. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 1, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 435.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Darling Ralph (1772-1858) on Australian Dictionary of Biopgraphy , accessed May 16, 2010
4. ^ Reprint of an exchange of letters from Francis Forbes in the State Library New South Wales ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on May 16, 2010 
5. ^ Wardell, Robert (1793-1834) on online edition of the Australian Dictionary of Biography , accessed May 16, 2010