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International Engagement Learning Circle Talks: Conviction Politics; the convict routes of Australian democracy
A Multimedia international research investigation
Conviction Politic: the convict routes of Australian democracy is an international digital multimedia history project funded by the Australian Research Council exploring the impact of radicals and rebels transported as political convicts to Australia on their place of exile, and the patterns of collective resistance by the mass of 160,000 unfree convict men and women to the exploitation of their forced labour. Harnessing the latest data mapping technologies, Conviction Politics reveals how from the earliest days of settlement, Australia’s first (involuntary) work force resisted exploitation through inventive solidarity in the face of coercion, while a vanguard of transported rebels, liberal pamphleteers, Luddites, industrial protesters, trade unionists, Chartists, Irish independence fighters, and radical agitators changed the political direction of the colonies. Led by Monash University and partnering with a documentary production house and universities, museums, archives and trade unions from Australia, the UK and Ireland, the project has produced 100 short screen documentaries, data visualisations, songs, an online curatorial Hub and travelling exhibition Unshackled: the True Convict Story, to mobilise history to speak to our present moment. engaging communities in Australia, the UK and Ireland
Taking a transnational approach, Conviction Politics re-conceptualises convict transportation as one of the great forced global labour migrations of the nineteenth century, complimentary to and continuous with the slave trade, used to build settler capitalist colonies in Australia. From 1788 to 1868, over 160,000 convict men, women and children contributed two-million, eight thousand years of labour to the colonial state and private employers. But Conviction Politics flips the narrative of a down-trodden criminal class conventionally depicted in our history by demonstrating the agency of the unfree workforce in collectively resisting this system. Big data investigation of Australia’s convict records reveals for the first time the inventive collective resistance such as strikes, sabotage, forming union-like combinations, together with media and legal activism by convict workers. This includes 11,000 acts of collective resistance, including 1,756 strikes. At the same time our focus on the transported political prisoners reveals Australian colonies vitally connected to the revolutions, ideas, movements and media innovations sweeping the Atlantic world. Few Australians and Britons realise approximately 3600 rebels, radicals and protesters were transported as political prisoners in the late 18th and 19th centuries for advocating democratic reform, media freedom, the right to strike and waging anti-colonial revolution, many of whom had significant political impact advancing political democracy, including manhood suffrage achieved in the eastern colonies in the 1850s and 60s.
The project is working with partners to fund an Unshackled exhibition tour in the UK and Ireland 2027-28.
Historian and media studies scholar Professor Tony Moore is Lead Chief Investigator, based in the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University.
About Professor Tony Moore
Dr Tony Moore is a Professor in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, where he leads major Australian Research Council Linkage Projects Conviction Politics: the Convict Routes of Australian Democracy’ and ‘Comedy Country: Australian Performance Comedy as an Agent of Change’ and a Chief Investigator on another CI on Making Crime Pay. Tony is author of Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia 1788-1868, (2010) adapted as an Australian- Irish television documentary of the same name (ABC 2015), Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia’s Bohemians since 1860 (2012), and The Barry McKenzie Movies (Australian Screen Classics series, 2005). Tony has had previous careers as a documentary maker at ABC Television and in book publishing as Academic Commissioning Editor for Cambridge University Press (Australia) and Publisher of Pluto Press Australia. At Monash Tony has served as Head, Communications and Media Studies and Director, National Centre for Australian Studies. His latest co-authored book is Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries (Bloomsbury Academic 2024)
Relevant Links:
- https://www.murdochbooks.com/browse/book/Tony-Moore-Death-or-Liberty-9781741961409
- https://www.roarfilm.com.au/projects/death-or-liberty
- https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/fringe-to-famous-9781501334894/
Links to Key Project Media:
- Conviction Politics video trailer
- Conviction Politics online Hub that curates and disseminates our 100 short documentaries, long and short reads, songs, animations
- The Unshackled touring exhibition trailer
- Unshackled web apps that exhibition visitors upload to their phones via QR codes
- Recently launched; Conviction Politics YouTube channel, where we are release short documentaries each week
- Official Monash website with info about Conviction Politics and its partners