18世紀。イギリスは、産業革命等に起因する多くの国内問題を抱えていた。
英国政府は、小さな罪でも厳罰で臨んだために、囚人の数が激増。政府は業者に依頼し、囚人を奴隷としてアメリカの地主に売りさばいた。１８世紀に英国からアメリカへ送り込まれた囚人の数は、６万人を越えた。
１７７６年７月４日、アメリカは独立を宣言する。
その結果、イギリスは囚人を奴隷としてアメリカに送ることができなくなった。
増え続ける囚人をテムズ川に浮かぶ囚人船に収容していたが、ついに収容しきれなくなった。そこで新たな流刑地として、政府が着目したのが、オーストラリアだった。
窮地に陥った政府は、オーストラリアのニュー・サウス・ウェールズ、ボタニー湾に囚人を送ることを決定。この決定を下したのが内務大臣のシドニー卿であり、これが現在のオーストラリア最大の都市‘シドニー（Sydney)’の名前の由来である。
The Industrial Revolution saw an increase in petty crime in Europe due to the displacement of much of the population, leading to pressures on the government to find an alternative to confinement in overcrowded jails. The situation in Britain was so dire in fact, that hulks were used as makeshift floating prisons.
Transportation was a common punishment handed out for both major and petty crimes in Britain from the seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth century. At the time it was seen as a more humane alternative to execution. Around 60,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
When the American Revolutionary War brought an end to that means of disposal, the British Government was forced to look elsewhere.
After James Cook's famous voyage to the South Pacific in which he visited and claimed the east coast of Australia in the name of the British Empire, he reported Botany Bay, a bay in modern day Sydney, as being the ideal place to establish a settlement.
By 1788, the First Fleet arrived and the first British colony in Australia was established.
Phillip originally named the colony "New Albion", but for some uncertain reason the colony acquired the name "Sydney", after the (then) British Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney (Baron Sydney, Viscount Sydney from 1789). This is possibly because Lord Sydney issued the charter authorizing Phillip to establish a colony.