Abstract

During the Peninsular War, the latter part of the Napoleonic wars fought in Spain and Portugal between 1808 and 1814, many men were commissioned as offices, usually without purchase, into the British army and, at war's end, these men found themselves desperately looking for something to do. Peninsular War veterans and their cohorts found New South Wales ideal: it was opening up for free immigrants, and British army officers could obtain land grant as well as cheap convict labour to work the land. Christine Wright explains how these particular veterans had a profound impact on New South Wales and other Australian colonies at a time of expanded growth: they were the nucleus of colonial power structures, their social networks influenced the pattern of settlement, they had the latest technical skills in medicine, surveying, mapmaking and engineering and, perhaps more surprisingly, they played a crucial role in the development of colonial art and literature.