Australia Purchase

The Australia Purchase (French: Achat de l'Australie) was the Haitian acquisition of Australia from the British Empire in 17 November 1825 in the Treaty of Sydney, as ratified by the Parliament of the United Kingdom and Estates General of Haiti, and signed by George IV and the Emperor Jacques I. The purchase took place during the height of the Panic of 1825, when six of London's banks and sixty county banks in the United Kingdom closed, and the Bank of England was threatened with closure as well, as the British economy slide into an economic depression. The Haitian merchants in the United Kingdom approached the British government and offered to provide the funds necessary for an infusion into the economy to forestall a potential national bankruptcy, doing so by purchasing the colony of New South Wales as the medium. The acquisition of the British colony would be the first step by Haiti in stepping into the Age of Imperialism as one of its major players.

The imperial government in Port-au-Prince did not sanction this action, as the empire had just secured its position in the Americas, and feared the potential reprisals by the French against the Haitian monarchy through a blockade. However, the popular support for the plan had pushed Jacques I to concede to the colonial acquisition, after the British agreed to a deal negotiated by Blaise Genest of the Haitian-Briton Company, who cited numerous issues with British control of the colony as reasons to release it into Haitian authority. Many Haitian nobles and politicians referred to the purchase as La grande folie, or "The Great Madness", after the price for the land acquisition had been released to the public by Chancellor Germaine Le Sueur, 3rd Duchess of Valverde in 1826. The purchase initially weakened the Supremacist movement in Haiti, though when senior politicians such as Jean-Pierre Boyer, 1st Duke of Port-de-Paix openly supported the move, the Haitian people rallied behind Le Sueur's government.

Today, the purchase of Australia is widely credited with having enhanced the influence of Haiti on the world stage, and helping to weaken British and Dutch dominion in the region by providing a counterbalance to their rising power in the region. The colony of New Haiti is today the largest constituent nation of the Empire of Haiti, and its most economically productive territory. Admitted into the empire in 1871 as an equal peer of the imperial realm, New Haiti grew quickly over the decades following the purchase, with a population of more than three and a half million by the turn of the 19th century. More than XX million Haitians reside in the country as of the current period, and New Haitian industrial sector is one of the largest in the modern world.

Background

At the time of the purchase of Australia by Haiti, Britain was undergoing a major economic downward spiral known as the Panic of 1825. After waging a two decade long conflict on the mainland against the French under Napoleon, the British economy was in shambles. Though the Industrial Revolution brought economic opportunities and high financial growth on the individual level, the banking sector had failed to change with the rapid developments in British society. All the loans withdrawn during the course of the French Revolutionary Wars had crippled the banking system in England, and many merchants had not been repaid for their efforts in the conflict, bankrupting a great many of them, and costing those who relied on the trade with the merchants their jobs. England had suspended the gold standard in the country with the aim of printing currency to make up for the shortfall in cash flow, a short-term action that had serious long-term implications that would damage the economy negatively.

The economy contracted under the measures taken by the British government, and when the gold standard was reintroduced in 1821, the Bank of England raised interest rates, amassed a large stock of gold, and recalled all currency that had been in circulation. This resulted in widespread deflation, but permitted full convertibility by the Bank of England. Numerous failures on the government's part were only exacerbated by the actions of the Bank of England, and the massive debt accumulated by the British during the wars of the last two decades, including the war debt from the American Revolution, had forced the British to seek out alternative funding methods, all of which only drove potential investors from the island. Ultimately, the economy hit a wall, and banks throughout England began to shut down as citizens rushed to withdraw their money before others did the same. By 1825, seventy banks across England had been closed, including five banks in London, and nearly the Bank of England itself.

The Haitian merchants of the Haitian-Briton Company (French: Société Haïti Britannique; SHB) in London led by chief manager Adolphe Chaufourier, had been keen to keep their funds stored away in banks run by the company, thus keeping them safe from the island-wide depression. The merchants had received word from a trustworthy source that there existed rich veins of gold on the continent, though they had yet to determine the exact location of the gold ore in New South Wales. With two earlier gold rushes in the colony, the Haitians were sure that there would be future rushes given the vast size of the colony. Banking everything on a single shot, Chaufourier sent a delegation from the SHB led by Blaise Genest to request an audience with King George IV, offering to provide the funding necessary to alleviate depression Britain was suffering from. With the Bank of England in threat of collapse, the audience was granted by the monarch, and met with the His Majesty's Privy Council under Prime Minister Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.

Genest and his delegation presented their offer as a purchase of the New South Wales colony in Australia from the British crown, an offer that was initially rejected by the British. However, Genest persisted, citing numerous reasons such a purchase would be in the best interests of the British. He pointed out that the penal colonies set up in the colony were prone to rebellion, as evidenced by the Castle Hill convict rebellion, Rum Rebellion, and constant rebellions on Norfolk Island, and these were killing hundreds of British subjects who were mostly not interested in remaining as also evidenced by the incredibly low population of the colony, no more than 20,000 at the time of the negotiations. Likewise, Genest stated that the Aboriginal population was in no way going to release their claim to their lands, and would continue murdering British settlers across the colony in a war that only the Haitians knew by heart and how to win. The frontier wars were killing hundreds of settlers as they attempted to move inland, and the aboriginals appeared to be unfazed by the conflict.

Genest ended on a point that the British took to home very clearly. Australia had yet to produce a positive net surplus on its entire history, absorbing countless lives, ships, soldiers, resources, livestock, and equipment, for a meager return of wool and beef that could have otherwise been produced on the British Isles for a fraction of the cost and none of the losses in lives. New South Wales was an otherwise unnecessary expense that most Britons had no desire in migrating to, which was an endless pit that the empire threw money into, and which possessed few resources of notable worth. However, when questioned as to why Haiti would be willing to endure these new burdens, Genest retorted "If not to your allies, then to whom? The French?" With the point of the Haitian delegation made poignantly clear, the British agreed to the selling of Australia, though this required gaining the consent of the Haitian imperial government, who had been mysteriously absent in the process of the negotiations. Indeed, the Haitian government was unaware of the discussions being held in London by the SHB, and had not consented to such actions.

The imperial government in Port-au-Prince heard of the discussions in September of 1825, and the response was that of outrage. Emperor Jacques I was enraged that such negotiations had taken place behind his back under the watch of commoners, and demanded to know what a private company in Haiti would dare provide Europeans with vast sums of wealth without his permission. Chancellor Germaine Le Sueur, 3rd Duchess of Valverde was quick to seize hold of the opportunity this provided to Haiti as a nation. Though Le Sueur no doubt understood that the SHB had engaged in talks with the British government for financial gain, she understood also the political possibilities acquiring a colony would present to Haiti, lifting it to the status of a major power in the eyes of its European adversaries. Le Sueur convinced Jacques I to concede to the negotiations, and so as to force his hand in her favor, publicized the talks to the general population with the hope of gaining popular support. Many Haitians believed the talks to be of considerable pride for the nation, as it would put them in name if not in act, on the same level as those European powers they disdained.

Jacques I offered the United Kingdom a sum of $15 million dollars for the purchase of Australia, a sum regarded as too low for the colony by the British. They instead demanded $70 million in exchange for the colony, though Genest was able to lower the sum considerably by arguing that much of the colony remained undeveloped and was still infested with hostile natives. Rather, with the advising of Chaufourier and Chancellor Le Sueur, Genest offered to purchase New South Wales from the British for $0.03 per acre of arid land west of the 139°E meridian, and $0.06 per acre of fertile land east of the 139°E meridian, coming to a total sum of $58,226,945.65 ($1.437 billion in 2017 dollars). The British agreed to the amount offered by Haiti, which would pay the amount in installments of $11,645,389.13 over the next five years. Though outraged at the sum, Jacques I relented and agreed to the deal, signing the Treaty of Sydney in 17 November 1825. The colony of New South Wales was transferred to the Haitian control on 1 January 1826, while the first infusion of cash from Haiti, supplemented by the gold transfers from the Banque de France, aided the United Kingdom in coming out of the Panic of 1825.

Aftermath

Following the acquisition of New South Wales and thus the majority of the Australian continent in the process, the British slowly began withdrawing their assets from the region, leaving many of the fleetingly colonist settlements to fend for themselves. The island of Tasmania, originally known as Van Diemen's Land, was ultimately ceded to the Haitians, as the colonists failed to dislodge the aboriginal population from their hilly dwellings on the western half of the island, which permitted them to raid the white settlements and prevent much of their growth. These settlers were transferred back home to Britain where they were recompensed for their efforts by the British government with Haitian support. Likewise, the island territory of New Zealand, then under the administration of New South Wales at the time of the purchase, never grew to prominence under Britist rule. The native Māori people had proven nearly impossible to defeat at the time the British encountered them, and with more than 500,000 of them on the North Island alone, the understanding at the time in London was that there was little chance that the tiny European population would ever pose a threat to them. As with the settlers on Van Diemen's Land, the British colonists withdrew from the island, and the land was claimed by Haiti.

British influence in the region of Oceania had disappeared altogether by 1830, as the final elements of the Royal Navy had returned to neighboring European colonies in the region of Southeast Asia, where the British were preparing for a conflict with the Burmese. With the British gone in the area, the remaining portion of New Holland west of New South Wales was claimed by Haiti, bringing the entirety of Australia under Haitian rule. The 20,000 white settlers already present on the continent had either returned to the United Kingdom, or remained under the new Haitian government in Sydney, as they had few other options for migration. There was considerable celebration back in Haiti, as the Haitian people understood that not only were they the first black nation in the New World to gain their independence, but also the second colony to successfully defeat a European power on their own terms and the first to establish for themselves a colonial empire with the recent acquisition of not just Australia, but Tasmamia and New Zealand as well. The Haitian-Briton Company was permitted the right to explore for valuable resources on the Australian mainland, though for their attempt to push the expense of the acquisition onto the imperial government, 75% of all wealth on the island extracted by the company was to be handed over to the crown as "compensation".

The political career of the Duchess of Valverde took a heavy blow from the acquisition of Australia, as in aristocratic circles, she was viewed as having wasted vast sums of money on a continent that by her own reports was deemed to lack anything of value, and was nothing more than a ploy on her part to boost her prestige and secure her legacy. As a result of this blow, Valverde's political party, the Supremacists, took a major hit in the patronage realm, robbing them of seats in the Estates General. However, Jean-Pierre Boyer, 1st Duke of Port-de-Paix, a powerful politic figure in Haitian politics, publicly endorsed the actions of Valverde and her Supremacists as noble and securing the future of the Haitian people and nation. By acquiring a territory far from reach of the British and the French, Haiti had a virgin land that would serve well as a second home for the people of Haiti should that time come. Most of the lands in the region had been ignored by the Europeans, and New Zealand hadn't even been colonized formally at the time by Britain, who had only planned a colony there as a response to the possible colonization of it by the French. Indeed, his words sparked a renewed interest in the party and its goals, and many Haitians took up migrating to the new colony so as to help fulfill that pledge.