tary settlements has often been noted but seldom stressed by historians. It can be argued that, in contrast to the Romans who built much of their empire by such means, Britain's peopling of North America, Australasia, and parts of Africa was largely a civilian process. Them were, nevertheless, occasions when London resorted to military settlement echniques reminiscent of those used by Rome, sometimes augmenting the voluntary flow of emigrants by planting military colonies designed to strengthen imperial defences and to serve purposes which private settlers could not or would not consider. Halifax, the first major example, • was followed by the location of Loyalists in Canada and Nova Scotia at the close of the American Revolution and by the efforts of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe to build Roman 'coloniae' in Upper Canada? From I8• 5 to I87O the imperial government established several types of military settlements in British North America, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and chewhere. Yet most of these projects, if measured against their original aims, were not successful. Hence, even though military settlements sometimes made unforeseen contributions to colonial development, historians have not judged them favourably. All of these colonization schemes had the aim of cheap or cheaper imperial security, but otherwise differed widely. After • 8 I5, for example, the government established military settlements in British North America and South Africa to improve colonial defences by utilizing either superfluous