Nothing to Lose but Your Chains

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart () and Michael Quinlan ()
Additional contact information
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart: University of New England
Michael Quinlan: UNSW Sydney

Chapter Chapter 11 in Unfree Workers, 2022, pp 287-316 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter places the role of unfree workers in Australia’s economic development and their resistance to labour exploitation in wider perspective. It includes an assessment of the scale of protest actions that followed the changes made to the management of convict labour in the early 1820s. Comparisons are also made with the mobilisation of free workers (both informal and through unions) during the period to the creation of the Australian Commonwealth in 1901. It demonstrates that the resistance mounted by convict workers remained unmatched in Australian history until the titanic strikes of the early 1890s. The chapter highlights how convict resistance secured a number of important victories and shaped later industrial struggles. It also demonstrates how ex-convicts were integral to building unions and labour movement developments after 1850.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-981-16-7558-4_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9789811675584

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-7558-4_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().