Swan River Colony
The Swan River Colony was a British colony on the Swan River in Western Australia , which both the private investor Thomas Peel and the military James Stirling wanted to build on the continent of Australia . The name was pars pro toto for Western Australia, as the colony was not officially renamed Western Australia until 1832, when James Stirling was belatedly appointed first governor . Nevertheless, the name Swan River Colony was in use for many years.
European discovery
The first Europeans to sight the land near Perth were probably Dutch sailors, because the first European to reach the Swan River area was the Dutch Frederick de Houtman on July 19, 1619 with the ships Dordrecht and Amsterdam . His report mentions that he reached the coast of Western Australia at latitude 32 ° 20 ', roughly level with or just south of Rottnest Island . He could not land because of the heavy breakers and so he sailed further north without further investigation.
On April 28, 1656, the Vergulde Draeck ( gilded dragon ) sank on the way to Batavia , today's Jakarta, 107 km north of the Swan River near Ledge Point . The ship had 193 men on board, of which only 75 were able to escape to the coast. A small dinghy that did not go down with the ship sailed to Batavia for help, but when the rescue ship arrived it did not find any survivors. The shipwreck was rediscovered in 1963.
In 1658 three ships came looking , among other things, in the region for the missing Vergulde Draeck . The Waekende Boey with Captain S. Volckertszoon, the Elburg with Captain J. Peereboom and the Emeloort with Captain A. Joncke sighted Rottnest Island , but they too could not land there because of the numerous reefs . They then sailed further north and discovered the wreck, but no survivors, and gave up their job because of the dangerous reefs in the area.
The Dutch Captain Willem de Vlamingh , who commanded three ships, the Geelvink , Nyptangh and Wezeltje , was the next European to come to this area. He landed and named Rottnest Island on December 29, 1696, and on January 10, 1697, he discovered a river he named the Swan River . His ships could not sail upriver as this was prevented by a sandbank in front of the estuary. So he sent out a boat that had to be towed across the sandbar. The boat crew sailed through the Wattschlick to the former Watt where Heirisson Island is today. They saw some Aborigines but did not meet with them. Vlamingh was not impressed by the area and this was certainly one of the reasons why there was no further Dutch expedition to the area.
In 1801 the French ships Geographe under the command of Nicolas Baudin and the Naturaliste came from the south on the Baudin expedition to the area of the later Swan River Colony , which was led by Emmanuel Hamelin . While the Geographe sailed further north, the Naturalist stayed in the Swan River area for a few weeks . A small expedition with large dinghies penetrated the sandbar into the Swan River and explored it. They too gave an unfavorable description of the area, that it had no potential for settlement and too many non-navigable rivers with tidal flats. The sandbar wasn't removed until the 1890s when Charles O'Connor built the port in Fremantle .
Later in March 1803 the Geographe came to Rottnest Island on another ship, the Casuarina , presumably on their way back to France , but they stayed there no more than a day or two.
The next stay of a white man in the region was made by Australian-born explorer Phillip Parker King in 1822 on the Bathurst . King was the son of former Governor Philip Gidley King of New South Wales . But even King was not convinced of this area as a settlement area.
Colony establishment
The founding father of modern Western Australia was James Stirling, who explored the Swan River area with the HMS Success in 1827 and was the first European to land on Rottnest Island and later in Cockburn Sound . With him came Charles Frazer from New South Wales , who, based on his assessment of the area as a botanist, was decisive for a settlement.
The first discovery of the colony began on March 8th with a cutter and his crew, which went ashore on March 13th. In late March, the HMS Success sailed back to Sydney and arrived there on April 15th. Stirling then traveled to Great Britain, where he arrived in July 1828 to demonstrate the agricultural potential of a Swan River Colony . His main concern was to promote free settlement, not the establishment of a colony like that of New South Wales , Port Arthur and Norfolk Island by convicts, but the establishment of a colony in the Swan River area with him as governor. The result of these reports and the rumor in London about the establishment of a colony by France in the western areas of Australia, possibly on Shark Bay , the Colonial Office (the British colonial government) voted to change and approved his proposal in mid-October 1828.
In December 1828, the Secretary of State of the Colonial Government , George Murray , reserved land for the Crown, for administration, for educational purposes and reserved government land on the coast: “The most cursory exploration had preceded the British decision to found a colony at the Swan River; the most makeshift arrangements were to govern its initial establishment and the granting of land; and the most sketchy surveys were to be made before the grants were actually occupied. A set of regulations were worked out for distributing land to settlers on the basis of land grants ”.
Negotiations for private settlement of the colony by a consortium of four people have also begun, including Potter McQueen , a Member of Parliament who already owned land in New South Wales , and Thomas Peel . The consortium withdrew when the colonial government refused to consent to the development of the colony by independent settlers in selected lands. Thomas Peel accepted the demand of the colonial government and received the promise of over 2,000 km² of land on the condition that he had to arrive there with 400 settlers by November 1, 1829. He came with only 300 settlers and about six weeks late, but still got 1,000 km² of land.
Course of early settlement
| Swan River Colony: Ship landings since 1829 |
|
|---|---|
| April 25 | HMS Challenger (Charles Fremantle) |
| 31. May |
Parmelia ( Stirling ) |
| 6th of June | HMS Sulfur |
| 5th of August | Calista |
| 6th of August | Saint Leonard |
| August 23 | Marquis of Anglesea |
| September 19th | Thompson |
| 21st September | Amity |
| 5th October | Georgiana |
| 9th October | Ephemina |
| October 12th | Orelia |
| October 12th | Cumberland |
| October 12th | Caroline |
| October 7th | Governor Phillip |
| October 19th | Atwick |
| 23rd October | lotus |
| October 31 | Admiral Gifford (ship) |
| November 11th | Lion |
| 14th November | Dragon |
| November 28th | HMS Success |
| 15th December |
Gilmore Thomas Peel |
| Source: | |
The first ship to initiate the settlement of the Swan River Colony was the Challenger . After landing on Garden Island in Cockburn Sound on April 25, 1829, Captain Charles Fremantle declared the area to be the Swan River Colony on May 2, 1829 and claimed it for Great Britain.
The Parmelia arrived with Stirling and his crew on May 31st and the Sulfur on June 8th. Three merchant ships arrived shortly afterwards, the Calista on August 5th, the St Leonard on August 6th and the Marquis of Anglesea on August 23rd.
Subsequently, a number of accidents occurred that almost led to the expedition being abandoned. The Challenger and Sulfur both ran on rocks as they sailed into Cockburn Sound and could be made shipworthy again without major damage. The Parmelia, under the command of Stirling, also ran aground, losing her rudder and seriously damaging her keel, which required extensive repairs. As winter set in, the settlers were forced to land on Garden Island . Bad weather and the repairs needed meant Stirling could not reach the mainland until June 18, and the remaining settlers not until early August. Another major accident occurred in early September when the Marquis of Anglesea was about to land on the coast, was caught in a storm and was so damaged that it could not be repaired.
The first report of the establishment of a colony reached Britain in late January 1830, when the poor conditions and the land were described as unsuitable for agriculture. The report went so far as to state that the settlers were near starvation and that the colony had been abandoned, which was not true. As a result of this report, many people who were planning to emigrate decided to move to Cape Town or New South Wales .
Even so, some settlers came to the Swan River area and more supplies were sent to them. In 1832 the number of settlers was around 1,500 and Aboriginal population 15,000, although the number of Aborigines in the southeast is based on estimates. When a census of the European population in the area was made in 1850 to clarify wheat cultivation, there were only 5,886 Europeans. The European population settled at that time mainly along the south-western coastline near Bunbury , Augusta and Albany .
Due to the fatal failure of the private development of a state colony by Thomas Peel and the new early capital colony politics, Karl Marx polemicized in a dispute about modern colonization theory with the British colonial politician Edward Gibbon Wakefield in his book Das Kapital :
“First of all, Wakefield discovered in the colonies that the ownership of money, food, machines and other means of production does not yet mark a person as a capitalist if the supplement is missing, the wage worker, the other person who is forced to sell himself voluntarily. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relationship between people mediated by things. Mr. Peel, he complains to us, took food and means of production to the amount of £ 50,000 with him from England to the Swan River, New Holland. Mr. Peel was careful not to bring along 3,000 working class people, men, women and children. Once at the place of destination, "Mr. Peel stayed without a servant to make his bed or to draw water from the river for him." Unfortunate Mr. Peel, who provided for everything except the export of the English production conditions to the Swan River! "
Individual evidence
- ↑ J. Van Lohuizen: Houtman, Frederik de (1571-1627). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Center of Biography, Australian National University, 1966, accessed January 2, 2019 .
- ↑ Michael Pearson: Great Southern Land. The Maritime Exploration of Terra Australis. Department of the Environment and Heritage, Commonwealth of Australia, 2005, accessed January 2, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d Appleyard & Manford, 1979
- ^ Shipwrecks Audio Transcript: Gilt Dragins & Elephant Tusks . In: ABC online . 2003. Retrieved February 14, 2009.
- ↑ Kate Pratt: The Baudin Expedition of 1800-1804 . In: Terra Australis 2001 WA Association Inc . Archived from the original on January 16, 2009. 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. Retrieved February 14, 2009.
- ^ The Captains: Nicholas Baudin . In: abc.net.au . Archived from the original on January 4, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 14, 2009.
- ↑ Information au www.wags.org.au . Retrieved February 9, 2011
- ^ Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels - Works, Volume 23, "Das Kapital", Vol. I, Seventh Section, pp. 793/794 Dietz Verlag, Berlin / GDR 1973 Das Kapital Online at www.mlwerke.de
literature
- Appleyard, RT and Manford, Toby (1979). The Beginning: European Discovery and Early Settlement of Swan River Western Australia , University of Western Australia Press. ISBN 0-85564-146-0 .
- Fornasiero, Jean; Monteath, Peter and West-Sooby, John. Encountering Terra Australis: the Australian voyages of Nicholas Baudin and Matthew Flinders , Kent Town, South Australia, Wakefield Press, 2004. ISBN 1-86254-625-8 .
- Marchant, Leslie R. France Australe: the French search for the Southland and subsequent explorations and plans to found a penal colony and strategic base in south western Australia 1503-1826 Perth: Scott Four Color Print, c1998. ISBN 0958848718 .
- Marchant, Leslie R. French Napoleonic Placenames of the South West Coast , Greenwood, WA. RIC Publications, 2004. ISBN 1-74126-094-9 .
- Toft, Klaus The Navigators - Flinders vs Baudin , Sydney, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2002. ISBN 1-876631-60-0 .