By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the expansion of British imperialism had resulted in the establishment of settler societies on all the habitable continents. The environmental conditions that the settlers encountered were highly varied, encompassing a greater variety of soil and climatic conditions than are present in Europe. This chapter examines the fate of British settlements in Australia and (much more briefly) North America in the light of local environmental conditions.In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the prevailing view was that the colonial outposts of Australia would coalesce and grow to form a great nation.