Wellington's Men in Australia: Peninsular War Veterans and the Making of Empire c. 1820-40

During the Peninsular War, the latter part of the Napoleonic wars fought in Spain and Portugal between 1808 and 1814, many men wre commissioned as officers, 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 emigrants, and British army officers could obtain land grants as well as cheap convict labour to work the land. Christine Wright explores 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 patten 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.