Penal colony

More than two-thirds of these felons were transported to the Chesapeake to work for Southern landowners; in Maryland, during the thirty years before 1776, convicts composed more than one-quarter of all immigrants.

Oglethorpe referred to them as "the worthy poor" in a philanthropic effort to create a rehabilitative colony where prisoners could earn a second chance at life, learning trades and working off their debts.

[9] When routes to the Americas closed after the outbreak of American Revolutionary War in 1776, British prisons started to become overcrowded.

[citation needed] Since immediate stopgap measures proved themselves ineffective, in 1785 Britain decided to use parts of what is now known as Australia as de jure penal settlements, becoming the first colonies in the British Empire founded solely to house convicts.

[citation needed] France sent criminals to tropical penal colonies including Louisiana in the early 18th century.

New Caledonia and its Isle of Pines in Melanesia (in the South Sea) received transported dissidents like the Communards, Kabyles rebels and convicted criminals between the 1860s and 1897.