Convict Eastern Australia: Labour Bureaucracy or Police State?

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

Chapter Chapter 3 in Unfree Workers, 2022, pp 55-84 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Initially the convicts transported to Australia experienced surprising degrees of freedom. This chapter describes how these were eroded following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The introduction of new laws borrowed from the British Caribbean rendered any attempt by convicts to protest or speak out punishable by flogging, solitary confinement and hard labour. The main aim of these changes was to ensure that convict labour would generate profits for private sector employers. In order to further disincentivise protest, an array of government punishment stations were established. The chapter details the evolution of these sanctions and their associated systems of surveillance in the period to 1860.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-7558-4_3

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