Last updated The "Arrowsmith map": an 1839 map of the land grants in the Swan River Colony, drawn by John Arrowsmith from the survey data of John Septimus Roe.
The Swan River Colony, established in June 1829, was the only Britishcolony in Australia established on the basis of land grants to settlers. Under the conditions stipulated by the Colonial Office, settlers would be granted land in proportion to the value of assets and labour that they brought to the colony. To ensure "productive" use of land, settlers were not given full title to their grants until they had been sufficiently "improved". The system of land grants continued until 1832, after which crown land was disposed of by sale at auction.
The Swan River Colony was a British colony established in 1829 on the Swan River, in Western Australia.
The United Kingdom (UK), officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.
In history, a colony is a territory under the immediate complete political control and occupied by settlers of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception.
Under the initial land grant conditions, settlers were granted 40 acres (162,000 m²) of land for every £3 of assets invested in the colony. Assessment of the value of assets was left to the discretion of the authorities, whose valuations were inaccurate and inconsistent. One settler observed a tendency to overvalue cattle while undervaluing general cargo, and Statham (1981) cites an example where two rabbits entitled a settler to a grant of 200 acres (809,000 m²).
For the purposes of assessing land entitlements, assets had to be physical capital applicable to land use; money was not assessed. In consequence, many settlers maximised their land entitlements by arriving with large amounts of expensive capital but very little cash. This gross overcapitalisation caused the financial ruin of many early emigrants, and had a lasting deleterious effect on the colony's economy. Moreover, much of the larger machinery that was imported was useless in Western Australian conditions.
An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community. As such, an economic system is a type of social system. The mode of production is a related concept. All economic systems have three basic questions to ask: what to produce, how to produce and in what quantities and who receives the output of production.
Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, and the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a total land area of 2,529,875 square kilometres, and the second-largest country subdivision in the world, surpassed only by Russia's Sakha Republic. The state has about 2.6 million inhabitants – around 11 percent of the national total – of whom the vast majority live in the south-west corner, 79 per cent of the population living in the Perth area, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated.
Settlers were also entitled to 200 acres (809,000 m²) of land for every adult introduced at their expense, with lesser entitlements for children. This condition had the effect of encouraging settlers to bring out indentured servants, and some brought out more than they were capable of employing and supporting in the long term. Indentured servants received their keep, but earned no wages until they had paid off their passage; thus the widespread use of indentured servants tended to immobilise the labour workforce and reduce the market for goods and services.
When the first settlers arrived at the colony, it was quickly discovered that the quantity of good land had been greatly exaggerated. In fact the only good farmland near the site of the colony was a narrow corridor of alluvial soil along the Swan and Canning rivers, and much of this was immediately taken up by government officials and military personnel. The vast amounts of land promised to settlers was so far out of proportion to the available good land that Stirling was obliged to limit the amount of river frontage per grant, forcing the Surveyor-GeneralJohn Septimus Roe to grant long thin "ribbon" allotments each with a small amount of river frontage. Stirling also limited the amount of land that each settler could claim near Perth, with the balance of their entitlements to be claimed further out, in areas yet to be declared available for selection.
The Swan River is a river in the south west of Western Australia. Its Aboriginal Noongar name is the Derbarl Yerrigan. The river runs through the metropolitan area of Perth, Western Australia's capital and largest city.
The Canning River is a major tributary of the Swan River in south western Western Australia.
John Septimus Roe was the first Surveyor-General of Western Australia. He was a renowned explorer, and a Member of Western Australia's legislative and executive councils for nearly 40 years.
Improvement conditions
To ensure that land holdings were used productively, and to discourage speculation, settlers were initially granted only right of occupation. Full ownership of the land, including the right to sell, was withheld until every acre had been improved by at least one shilling and six pence, through clearing, fencing, cultivation, and so on. Settlers who failed to improve at least a quarter of their grant within three years could be fined, and land not wholly improved within ten years would be resumed by the crown.
The shilling is a unit of currency formerly used in Austria, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, United States and other British Commonwealth countries. Currently the shilling is used as a currency in four east African countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Somalia. It is also the proposed currency that the east African community plans to introduce . The word shilling comes from old English "Scilling", a monetary term meaning twentieth of a pound, and from the Proto-Germanic root skiljaną meaning 'to separate, split, divide.' The word "Scilling" is mentioned in the earliest recorded Germanic law codes, those of Æthelberht of Kent.
A penny is a coin or a unit of currency in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius, it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. Presently, it is the formal name of the British penny (abbr. p) and the informal name of one American cent (abbr. ¢) as well as the informal Irish designation of 1 cent euro coin (abbr. c). It is the informal name of the cent unit of account in Canada, although one cent coins are no longer minted there. The name is also used in reference to various historical currencies also derived from the Carolingian system, such as the French denier and the German pfennig. It may also be informally used to refer to any similar smallest-denomination coin, such as the euro cent or Chinese fen.
Settlers were not permitted to average their improvements over their grant; the conditions specifically stated that every acre had to be improved by 1s 6d. This was to cause much inefficient use of capital in the early years of the colony, as settlers were forced to spread their efforts across their entire grant, rather than consolidating a smaller area first.
Despite the conditions, some settlers found creative ways to retain their land without working it. For example, when George Fletcher Moore arrived in the colony in 1830, he obtained half of William Lamb's grant on the Swan River, by agreeing to perform the improvements necessary to secure title to the entire grant.
George Fletcher Moore was a prominent early settler in colonial Western Australia, and "one [of] the key figures in early Western Australia's ruling elite". He conducted a number of exploring expeditions; was responsible for one of the earliest published records of the language of the Australian Aborigines of the Perth area; and was the author of Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of an Early Settler in Western Australia.
Other land grants
Although the land grants to settlers were conditional on their meeting improvement conditions, many unconditional grants were also made. A number of important officials and capitalists were granted large areas of land as reward for service; James Stirling, Charles Fremantle and Thomas Peel were all recipients of such grants. In addition, military personnel were permitted to claim land in lieu of pay, and these grants did not have conditions attached. Much of the land obtained in this way was not developed, being instead held for speculative reasons. The large amounts of good land tied up in this way was often blamed later for the slow progress of the colony.
Admiral Sir Charles Howe Fremantle GCB RN was a British Royal Navy officer. The city of Fremantle in Western Australia is named after him.
Thomas Peel (1793–1865) was one of the very early settlers of Western Australia. He was a second cousin of Sir Robert Peel.
Changes to conditions
Land grant conditions changed a number of times in the following years. In 1830, in an attempt to discourage speculation, Stirling halved the rate of land grants to 20 acres (81,000 m²) per £3 of assets plus 100 acres (404,000 m²) per adult, and reduced the time limit for improvements from ten years to four. At the end of 1830 the new settlement had granted over 1 million acres (4,000km²) to settlers, of which only 169 acres (684,000 m²) were actively being farmed.
In 1831, the Colonial Office published what became known as the Ripon Regulations, which declared that crown land in Australia would from 1832 onwards be sold rather than granted. In Western Australia, public opinion held that the abolition of land grants would end emigration to the colony. So concerned were the settlers that Stirling was sent to England to plead their case on this and other matters. He was largely unsuccessful, and the granting of crown land ceased in 1832.
Settlers who had previously been granted land continued to be bound by the grant conditions. In 1837, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Glenelg, responded to constant complaints by settlers about the strict enforcement of improvement conditions, by introducing land surrender provisions that allowed settlers to claim title to part of their grant by surrendering the remainder. Glenelg's intention was to enforce concentrated settlement in accordance with Edward Gibbon Wakefield's colonisation principles, which were in vogue at the time. However, because most settlers had elongated grants of which only a small portion was productive, the effect was to allow many settlers to secure title to their productive land by discarding the unproductive land. Being no longer obliged to improve their holdings, settlers of means could then invest their time and money in discovering and buying good land further from the settlement. Thus the effect was to further disperse the colony, and to concentrate the colony's wealth in a few hands.
Effect on indigenous people
In the framing of the land grant conditions, no provisions were made for the indigenous people of the area, who were incorrectly thought to be nomads with no claim to the land over which they travelled. Most settlers refused the indigenous people permission to camp on or even pass through their grants. As more and more land was granted and fenced off, the indigenous people were increasingly denied access to their sacred sites and traditional hunting grounds. For example, by 1832 the Beeliar group were unable to approach the Swan or Canning Rivers without danger, because land grants lined the banks.
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The All Saints Church in Henley Brook is the oldest church in Western Australia. It was built by Richard Edwards between 1838 and 1840 with the first service taking place on 10 January 1841. The site is on a small hill overlooking the Swan River and near the conjunction of the Swan and Ellen Brook. This site was where Captain James Stirling camped during his 1827 exploration of the area.
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HMS Success was an Atholl-class 28-gun sixth-rate wooden sailing ship notable for exploring Western Australia and the Swan River in 1827 as well as being one of the first ships to arrive at the fledgling Swan River Colony two years later, at which time she ran aground off Carnac Island.
Richard Gallop was among the first European settlers to arrive in the newly established Swan River Colony of Western Australia. He landed there on 6 October 1829 aboard the ship Lotus, accompanied by his brothers James and Edward. They were recruited as agricultural labourers from the English village of Sullington in West Sussex, and were indentured to work for Colonel Peter Latour for seven years.
Michael Clarkson was one of the early settlers in the Swan River Colony and the Avon region of Western Australia.
Adam Pearson Armstrong was an early European settler in the Perth suburb of Dalkeith, Western Australia. The suburb is named after Armstrong's cottage. Armstrong influenced development in the Swan River colony with properties in both Dalkeith and in his later property in Ravenswood.
References
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Appleyard, R. T. and Toby Manford (1979). The Beginning: European Discovery and Early Settlement of Swan River Western Australia. Nedlands, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press. ISBN0-85564-146-0.
Cameron, James (2000). George Fletcher Moore in Bob Reece (ed). The Irish in Western Australia. Studies in Western Australian History 20. Centre for Western Australian History, Department of History, University of Western Australia.
Statham, Pamela (1981). "Swan River Colony". In Charles Stannage (ed.). A New History of Western Australia. Nedlands, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press. ISBN0-85564-170-3.
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