Transportation or penal transportation is the sending of convicted criminals or other persons regarded as undesirable to a penal colony. For example, France transported convicts to Devil's Island and New Caledonia and England transported convicts, political prisoners and prisoners of war from Scotland and Ireland to its colonies in the Americas (from the 1610s until the American Revolution in the 1770s) and Australia (1788–1868), the practice becoming available in Scotland consequent to the Union of 1707 but used less than in England.