What is the impact of convicts and settlers on the development of Australia as a nation?
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There is no doubt that Australians at large share a convict-style anti-authority disposition and are larrikins at heart, but historians tend to attribute these characteristics more to the settlers from the late 18th century English working class than specifically to our convicts.
However, the one Australian cultural identity that I think can be directly linked to our convict past is the way in which we have turned a prior national shame into a modern attitude of not taking ourselves (or anything for that matter) too seriously, as this Australian cartoon so aptly portrays.
While Australia also attracted free settlers from day one, for the first century of our nation's development we were recognised the world over as a convict settlement where the worst of England's society were sent. You can imagine 'the stain' this had on the way Australians at the time viewed themselves and the impact that it had on their plight to be taken seriously as a people and to be accepted in a world that was so dominantly British.
However, the one Australian cultural identity that I think can be directly linked to our convict past is the way in which we have turned a prior national shame into a modern attitude of not taking ourselves (or anything for that matter) too seriously, as this Australian cartoon so aptly portrays.
While Australia also attracted free settlers from day one, for the first century of our nation's development we were recognised the world over as a convict settlement where the worst of England's society were sent. You can imagine 'the stain' this had on the way Australians at the time viewed themselves and the impact that it had on their plight to be taken seriously as a people and to be accepted in a world that was so dominantly British.
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