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Dear AL TRAV,

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You wrote :

« The real majority of the first 'white' Australians were criminals … Aussie's have criminal blood in them »
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That’s the official version, AL TRAV, but the reality is a little more complex. From the 17th century until well into the 19th century, transportation to the colonies as a criminal or an indentured servant served as punishment for both major and petty crimes in the UK. Famine was still rife and slavery was not abolished throughout the British Empire until 1833.

They could best be described as “convict-slaves”, deported from their homeland as free labour to develop the new colony. Most had been condemned for petty crimes.

Pursuant to the so-called "Bloody Code", by the 1770s there were 222 crimes in Britain that carried the death penalty. These included offences such as stealing of goods worth over 5 shillings, cutting down a tree, theft of an animal, even theft of a rabbit from a rabbit warren.

The Industrial Revolution led to an increase in petty crime due to the economic displacement of much of the population, building pressure on the government to find an alternative to confinement in overcrowded jails. The situation was so dire that hulks left over from the Seven Years' War were used as makeshift floating prisons. Eight out of every 10 prisoners were in jail for theft.

According to one study, three convicts out of four first offenders had stolen grain, rabbits and fowl which suggest they stole out of hunger and not for greed. Most did not reoffend at the completion of serving their sentence.

Your statement that “Aussie's have criminal blood in them” - whatever that means - does not appear to be justified. For the most part, they do not appear to constitute a criminal class, per se. On the contrary, the evidence tends to indicate that they were more the victims of adverse social and economic circumstances.
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As for your comment on Aboriginality, the legal definition is based on three criteria: descent, self-identification and community recognition :

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0203/03Cib10

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Alt Rav & Banjo,

With a plethora of convict ancestors, I have to believe that criminality is not genetic. On the other hand, to the extent that it is connected to stupidity, it may have a tenuous link: one of my gr-gr-gr-grandmothers stole an expensive bolt of cloth and was nabbed up the street trying to sell it. Another ancestor was transported twice. Nor, perhaps, were the offences all that minor: another of my revered ancestors was caught trying to smuggle a hundred sheep across the Scottish border. On the other hand, another ancestor, one of Wellington's soldiers, was lumbered for stealing a silver spoon in the Netherlands.

Alt Rav, would it be okay if Aboriginal people declared that they're of Aboriginal descent ? If you can claim as an Eyetie or a dago of a wog (terms that I find wholly reprehensible), i.e. that you are of Italian descent, what's the problem ?

Joe

Loudmouth, you find words like dago, wog or eyetie, 'wholly reprehensible'. Please don't, it's OK.

When I was younger it was said in anger, we understood why, even though we attempted to explain that we were not in favour of the war and we in fact, from memory were out of it before we knew what was going on.

As we grew up we were slowly accepted and the name calling became more of a term of endearment. Soon you would clearly and loudly hear someone call out 'Hey you wog bastard, where ya bin'?

I am of Italian descent because both my mother and father were pure blood Italians going back as far as the records show.

Where-as the wannabe's, as they were referred to by an Elder, are not of abo descent because their blood line was or has been broken by anyone of the wannabe's previous ancestors not being an abo.

They are therefore Aussies! They cannot call themselves abo's.

Sure they can say they have abo blood in them, but they can't choose who they wannabe? They are Australian. That's it!

As to the convict reference. I am aware of the minor infractions that caused a person to be classified as a thief or worse.

I was not focusing on the criminality of their incarceration, but the fact that they were classified as criminals and I maintain that most of them were, by the laws and standards of the day.

My point is that Australia started from convict beginnings. They all pretty much took up with settlers who were not convicts, but the offspring of that union was now tainted with convict blood.

From that moment on that blood line is tainted. It is not unusual today to hear some younger Aussies proudly announce that they are a descendant of a convict as if it were a title of honour.

What is typically disgraceful of those claiming such titles, with pride, is that they have discarded all the ancestors that came after that first union, in favour of being perceived cool.

Again, like the abo's.

To answer you're question ALTRAV, I'm not actually in Australia. Though I do have a late night schedule and sometimes do post at 2 in the morning (my time). The real reason is that you guys are 17 hours ahead of me. Sorry if this doesn't settle well with anyone. A friend who is Aussie directed a few of us to an issue that was brought up in these forums and blogs. I looked into it and have stayed since.

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Dear AL TRAV,

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You wrote :

« My point is that Australia started from convict beginnings. They all pretty much took up with settlers who were not convicts, but the offspring of that union was now tainted with convict blood »
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That’s a theory that sounds familiar, AL TRAV. It’s called “original sin” or “the doctrine of ancestral fault”. It was posited by a Jewish rabbi and theologian called Saul of Tarsus, in about the year 57 AD, and goes like this :

« Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned » (Romans 5:12, KJV)

The concept that all humans are born guilty was sublimated and elevated as a new religion (Christianity) by the tortured and ecstatic Saul of Tarsus. It culminated in the symbolic sacrifice on the cross of the mythical figure of Jesus of Nazareth and his own martyrdom by decapitation under the reign of Nero in the year 67 AD.

I sincerely hope you do not suffer the same fate as your illustrious predecessor, AL TRAV, but you had better keep your head down, just in case. The same causes produce the same effects, so they say.

Another unfortunate matter concerning Saul, of course, is that while many consider him to be the founder and principal promotor of Christianity (having written most of the New Testament with the help of his side-kick, Saint Luke) he has never actually been officially canonised. Saint Paul is just a customary title.

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(Continued …)

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Saul of Tarsus had a long history of religious fanaticism. He participated in the stoning to death of the first Christian martyr, Etienne, then became a rabbi before having an illumination and seeing Jesus as the Messiah. He was a tent maker by profession. His life was marked by physical violence, pain, illness and self-flagellation – to such an extent that he seemed to have masochistic tendencies, detesting himself and the human condition, while glorifying the virtues of obedience and submission. Perhaps he was a man in the closet.

For Saul of Tarsus, religion appears to have been the sublimation of the death impulse which haunted him all his life. It obsessed him and consumed him. Nero put him out of his misery by decapitating him in Rome in the year 67.

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