England first transported convicts abroad to North America and the West Indies in the 17th century. However, in 1776, the Revolutionary War put a stop to the practice of transporting convicts to America. The 'new' colony of Australia was chosen as an alternative, and in 1787 the First Fleet set sail. Between 1878 and the formal end of transportation to Australia in 1868, almost 160,000 convicts were sent from Britain and Ireland, and over 1,300 from other parts of the British empire including South Asia and the Caribbean. In this seminar, we will explore why transportation was used as a punishment, including its deterring and reforming qualities, as well as exploring the experiences of those transported.

Optional intro material:

PODCAST: 'Penal Transportation to Australia: Everything you wanted to know', History Extra (October 2023)

Essential seminar reading:

Primary:

• Parliamentary Papers, Report of Commissioners on Transportation and Penal Servitude (1863). See evidence of George Everest, pp. 1-13 and Dean Powell, pp. 513-7 (Minutes of evidence are at the back of the report)
• Digital Panopticon record of William Cuffay (1848)
• Speech of Sir William Molesworth on Transportation (1840)

Secondary:

• Ian Duffield, 'From Slave Colonies to Penal Colonies: The West Indian Convict Transportees to Australia', Slavery and Abolition (1986)
• Deborah Oxley and David Merideth, 'Condemned to the Colonies. Penal Transportation as the Solution to Britain's Law and Order Problem', Leidschrift (2007)

Seminar prep questions:

• Why was transportation introduced as a punishment and why was it ended?
• Who were the convicts, and what was their experience of transportation?
• What was the reaction in the colonies to the process of transportation?
• What does transportation tell us about British imperialism?

Further reading:

Primary:

• Convict Queenslanders, British Convict Transportation Registers, 1787-1879 (example search)
• National Archives of Ireland, Ireland-Australia Transportation database (example search)
• Old Bailey Online (example: Ann Nickless)
• Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux (1819), especially Volume 1: chapters 14 and 15; Volume 2: chapter 10 (See also entry in Australian Dictionary of Biography and Old Bailey trial)
• George Barrington (principal superintendant of the convicts), A Voyage to New South Wales (1801)

Secondary:

• Clare Anderson, Christian G. De Vito, and Ulbe Bosma (eds.) 'SPECIAL ISSUE Transportation, Deportation, and Exile: Perspectives from the Colonies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries', International Review of Social History (2018).
• Clare Anderson, 'Convicts, Carcerality and Cape Colony Connections in the 19th Century', Journal of Southern African Studies, 2016
• Clare Anderson, 'Transnational Histories of Penal Transportation : Punishment, Labour and Governance in the British Imperial World, 1788–1939', Journal of Australian Studies, 2016
• Joscelyn Alexander and Clare Anderson (eds), Special issue on 'Politics, Penality and (Post)-Colonialism', Cultural and Social History, 5 (2008)
• J. M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror, especially chapter 9
• Simon Devereaux, ‘Imposing the Royal Pardon: Execution, Transportation and Convict Resistance in London, 1789’, Law and History Review, 25 (2007).
• Gregory Durston, ‘Magwitch's Forbears: Returning from Transportation in Eighteenth-Century London’, Australian Journal of Legal History, 9 (2005), pp. 137–58.
• Lisa Ford and Andrew Roberts, 'Legal Change, Convict Activism and the Reform of Penal Relocation in Colonial New South Wales : The Port Macquarie Penal Settlement, 1822–26', Australian Historical Studies, 2015
• Lisa Ford and Andrew Roberts, 'New South Wales Penal Settlements and the Transformation of Secondary Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire', Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2014
• Philip Harling, 'The Trouble with Convicts : From Transportation to Penal Servitude, 1840–67', Journal of British Studies, 2014
• Kristyn Harman and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart. "Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in Colonial Australia, 1805–1860." Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 13, no. 2 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1353/cch.2012.0023.
• John Bradley Hirst, Convict Society and its Enemies: A History of Early New South Wales
• R. Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1787-1868
• David Meredith and Deborah Oxley, 'The Convict Economy' in Cambridge Economic History of Australia ed. by Simon Ville and Glenn Withers (2014).
• Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, Eighteenth-Century Criminal Transportation: The Formation of the Criminal Atlantic
• Cameron Nunn, 'Pure Minds, Pure Bodies, Pure Lips : Religious Ideology and the Juvenile Convict Institutions at Carters' Barracks and Point Puer', Journal of Religious History, 2016
• Deborah Oxley, Convict Maids: The Forced Migration of Women to Australia
• A. G. L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies: A Study of Penal Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and Other Parts of the British Empire