Reflecting and consolidating

Chapter summary
  • Between 1788 and 1868, the British government sent 162 000 convicts to Australia as punishment for their crimes. These formed the basis of white settlement of the Australian continent, which had drastic consequences for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
  • As plantation owners and industrial capitalists searched for cheap labour supplies, cheap raw materials and new markets for their manufactured goods, millions of people moved across the world – as slaves, indentured labourers, assisted migrants and free settlers.
  • Many left homes of poverty in order to seek their fortune on the goldfields or on streets they believed were paved with gold. These migrations changed the world.
  • Personal accounts of these migrants can give us fresh understandings of their experiences.
  • The spread of Europeans around the world and their colonisation of many countries made them believe that they were different from and superior to other peoples in the world, and allowed for the belief in white European superiority to flourish.
  • The spread of migrants to the Americas and Australasia led to the decimation of indigenous peoples. As settlers became prosperous and even rich, indigenous people lost their lands, and many lost their lives.
Interactive activities

Key terms

Significant individuals

Timeline

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Short-answer questions
  1. Discuss why slaves were sent to the Americas.
  2. What were the conditions of indentured labourers?
  3. Outline why the potato famine led to mass Irish migration.
  4. What happened to convicts after they were freed?
  5. Explain why Highland Scots left Scotland.
Source analysis
Source 12.23 A Chinese man is barred from entering the United States in 1882, even though political radicals and hoodlums are allowed to enter.
Source 12.23 A Chinese man is barred from entering the United States in 1882, even though political radicals and hoodlums are allowed to enter.

Study Source 12.23 and answer the following questions:

  1. Why are the words ‘industry’, ‘order’, ‘peace’ and ‘sobriety’ put around the Chinese man?
  2. Do you think the cartoonist believes that the closed gate is the ‘Golden Gate of Liberty’?
  3. What view is the cartoonist putting forward here?
Extended-response question

In what ways did the migration of people from Europe and Asia to Australia and the New World lead to the economic development of the world, and to the destruction of the way of life of many indigenous people?