Penal colony in the context of "Dreyfus Affair"

Adelaide (/ˈædɪleɪd/ AD-il-ayd; Kaurna: Tarndanya [ˈd̪̥aɳɖaɲa]) is the capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre; the demonym Adelaidean is used to denote the city and the residents of Adelaide. The traditional owners of the Adelaide region are the Kaurna, with the name Tarndanya referring to the area of the city centre and surrounding Park Lands, in the Kaurna language. Adelaide is situated on the Adelaide Plains north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, between the Gulf St Vincent in the west and the Mount Lofty Ranges in the east. Its metropolitan area encompasses over 430 suburbs, extending 96 km (60 mi) from Gawler in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south and 20 km (12 mi) from the western coast to the eastern foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges.

Named in honour of Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of King William IV, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for the only freely settled British province in Australia, distinguishing it from Australia's penal colonies. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's founding fathers, designed the city centre and chose its location close to the River Torrens. Light's design, now listed as national heritage, set out the city centre in a grid layout known as "Light's Vision", interspaced by wide boulevards and large public squares, and entirely surrounded by park lands. Colonial Adelaide was noted for its leading examples of religious freedom and progressive political reforms and became known as the "City of Churches" due to its diversity of faiths. It was Australia's third-most populous city until the postwar era.

Sydney is the capital city of the state of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about 80 km (50 mi) from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Blue Mountains in the west, and about 80 km (50 mi) from Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and the Hawkesbury River in the north and north-west, to the Royal National Park and Macarthur in the south and south-west. Greater Sydney consists of 658 suburbs, spread across 33 local government areas. Residents of the city are colloquially known as "Sydneysiders". The estimated population in June 2024 was 5,557,233, which is about 66% of the state's population. The city's nicknames include the Emerald City and the Harbour City.

There is evidence that Aboriginal Australians inhabited the Greater Sydney region at least 30,000 years ago, and their engravings and cultural sites are common. The traditional custodians of the land on which modern Sydney stands are the clans of the Darug, Dharawal and Eora. During his first Pacific voyage in 1770, James Cook charted the eastern coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay. In 1788, the First Fleet of convicts, led by Arthur Phillip, founded Sydney as a British penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. After World War II, Sydney experienced mass migration and by 2021 over 40 per cent of the population was born overseas. Foreign countries of birth with the greatest representation are mainland China, India, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and the Philippines.

New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south, and South Australia to the west. Its coast borders the Coral and Tasman Seas to the east. The Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay Territory are enclaves within the state. New South Wales' state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia's most populous city. In December 2024, the population of New South Wales was over 8.5 million, making it Australia's most populous state. Almost two-thirds of the state's population, 5.3 million, live in the Greater Sydney area.

The Colony of New South Wales was founded as a British penal colony in 1788. It originally comprised more than half of the Australian mainland with its western boundary set at 129th meridian east in 1825. The colony then also included the island territories of Van Diemen's Land, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island. During the 19th century, most of the colony's area was detached to form separate British colonies that eventually became the various states and territories of Australia. The Swan River Colony (later called the Colony of Western Australia) was never administered as part of New South Wales.

Norfolk Island (/ˈnɔːrfək/ NOR-fək, locally /ˈnɔːrfoʊk/ NOR-fohk; Norf'k Ailen) is an external territory of Australia located in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and New Caledonia, 1,412 kilometres (877 mi) directly east of Australia's Evans Head and about 900 kilometres (560 mi) from Lord Howe Island. Together with the neighbouring Phillip Island and Nepean Island, the three islands collectively form the Territory of Norfolk Island. At the 2021 census, it had 2,188 inhabitants living on a total area of about 35 km (14 sq mi). Its capital is Kingston.

East Polynesians were the first to settle Norfolk Island, but they had already departed when Great Britain settled it as part of its 1788 colonisation of Australia. The island served as a convict penal settlement from 6 March 1788 until 5 May 1855, except for an 11-year hiatus between 15 February 1814 and 6 June 1825, when it lay abandoned. On 8 June 1856, permanent civilian residence on the island began when descendants of the Bounty mutineers were relocated from Pitcairn Island. In 1914, the UK handed Norfolk Island over to Australia, but did not Annex it to Australia, requiring it to only manage its requirements, not own it, as an external territory.

A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts work — legally or illegally — on a farm (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining. In the United States, such forced labor is made legal by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution; however, some other parts of the world have made penal labor illegal. The concepts of prison farm and labor camp overlap, with the idea that the prisoners are forced to work. The historical equivalent on a very large scale was called a penal colony.

The agricultural goods produced by prison farms are generally used primarily to feed the prisoners themselves and other wards of the state (residents of orphanages, asylums, etc.), and secondarily, to be sold for whatever profit the state may be able to obtain.

The First Fleet were eleven British ships which transported a group of settlers to mainland Australia, marking the beginning of the European colonisation of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessels, three storeships and six convict transports under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. On 13 May 1787, the ships, with over 1,400 convicts, marines, sailors, colonial officials and free settlers onboard, left Portsmouth and travelled over 24,000 kilometres (15,000 mi; 13,000 nmi) and over 250 days before arriving in Botany Bay on 18 January 1788. Governor Arthur Phillip rejected Botany Bay choosing instead Port Jackson, to the north, as the site for the new colony; they arrived there on 26 January 1788, establishing the colony of New South Wales, as a penal colony which would become the first British settlement in Australia.

The Dreyfus affair (French: affaire Dreyfus, pronounced [afɛːʁ dʁɛfys]) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The scandal began in December 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent, was wrongfully convicted of treason for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent overseas to the penal colony on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent the following five years imprisoned in very harsh conditions.

In 1896, evidence came to light—primarily through the investigations of Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage—that identified the real culprit as a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. High-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, and a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army laid additional charges against Dreyfus, based on forged documents. Subsequently, writer Émile Zola's open letter "J'Accuse...!" in the newspaper L'Aurore stoked a growing movement of political support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on the government to reopen the case.

"J'Accuse...!" (French pronunciation: [ʒakyz]; "I Accuse...!") is an open letter, written by Émile Zola in response to the events of the Dreyfus affair, that was published on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore. Zola addressed the president of France, Félix Faure, and accused his government of antisemitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army General Staff officer who was sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage, and sent to the penal colony on Devil's Island in French Guiana. Zola pointed out judicial errors and lack of serious evidence during Dreyfus' trial. The letter was printed on the front page of the newspaper, and caused a stir in France and abroad. Zola was prosecuted for libel and found guilty on 23 February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.

Other pamphlets proclaiming Dreyfus's innocence include Bernard Lazare's A Miscarriage of Justice: The Truth about the Dreyfus Affair (November 1896).As a result of the popularity of the letter, even in the English-speaking world, J'accuse! has become a common expression of outrage and accusation against someone powerful, whatever the merits of the accusation.