Vogel’s public works and immigration scheme
- When
- 1870–1880
- Reach
- Nationwide
Julius Vogel borrowed £10 million in London to build railways, roads and telegraph lines, and to bring 100,000 assisted migrants.
It was an enormous gamble for a colony of 250,000 people — borrowing roughly forty times the annual revenue. It worked, in the sense that it built the trunk railway, opened the interior and doubled the population in a decade. It also left debt that turned the 1880s into a long depression when wool and grain prices fell, and the roads and rail it built accelerated land purchase in districts that had been beyond reach.
Regions affected
Sources
Written for this project from these references rather than copied from them. Follow a link to check the account against the original.
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