Convict Labour Extraction and Transportation from Britain and Ireland, 1615–1870

chapter 6 Convict Labour Extraction and Transportation from Britain and Ireland, 1615–1870

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart

Introduction

In 2010 unesco inscribed eleven Australian convict sites onto the World Heritage Register. These sites were chosen as illustrative examples of the insti- tutional arrangements put in place to regulate the lives of the 166,000 men, woman and children transported as convicts to the Australian penal colonies between 1787 and 1868. The listing endorsed two arguments put forward by the Australian government. The first was that convict transportation was part and parcel of a wider global mobilisation of unfree labour. Since previous listings had recognised the role that slavery and indenture had played in shaping the modern world, the Commonwealth of Australia argued that it was only proper that similar recognition should be extended to convict transportation. The sec- ond argument was that Australia represented the most important penal desti- nation, both in terms of the number of convicts received, and the range of experiences to which they were subjected. It is true that in the popular imagination Australia is often portrayed as the convict colony par excellence. Thus, many are surprised to hear that Britain transported more convicts than were ever sent to Australia to other destinations and that these other flows both pre and post-date transportation to Australia (see Table 6.1). In order to understand Britain’s Antipodean convict experiment it is necessary to chart its Atlantic roots. This chapter will explore the manner in which English (later British) transportation policy used existing mechanisms designed to secure cheap labour for overseas colonial development as a means of putting the bodies of convicted criminals to effective use. By the late eigh- teenth century changes in Atlantic labour markets had forced the British to consider alternative penal destinations, turning eventually to Botany Bay. Transportation to Australia can itself be split into three phases. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars it remained small scale. The increase in convictions that followed in the wake of post-war demobilisation necessitated a rethink in the way convict labour was deployed. The resultant reorganisa- tion was designed to supply cheap labour to the private sector. Following

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Table 6.1 Number of convicts transported in the British empire 1615–1937.

Caribbean (Barbados only) 1615–1699 4000 American Colonies 1615–1718 4500 American Colonies 1718–1775 50000 American Colonies 1776–1800 1000 West Africa 1775–1781 1000 Military transports 1790–1820 5000 Mauritius 1815–1853 1500 Bencoolen 1787–1825 4000 Straits Settlements 1790–1860 20000 Tenasserim Provinces 1849–1873 5000 Andaman Islands 1858–1937 70000 New South Wales 1788–1840 80000 Van Diemen’s Land 1803–1853 72000 Port Phillip 1846–1850 3000 Western Australia 1850–1868 9700 Bermuda 1824–1863 9000 Gibraltar 1842–1875 9000 Total 348700

Sources: Hilary Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 5–23; C. Herrup, “Punishing Pardon: Some thoughts on the Origins of Penal Transportation,” in Penal Practice and Culture, 1500–1900: Punishing the English, ed. S. Devereaux, (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2004), 120; A.S. Fogelman, “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution,” The Journal of American History, 85, 1 (1998),:43–76; R. Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies 1718–1775, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); B. Reece, The Origins of Irish Convict Transportation to New South Wales (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001); R. Chartrand, British Forces in the West Indies 1793–1815 (London, Osprey, 1996); C. Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South East Asia to Mauritius, 1815–53 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 6; S. Nicholas and P. Shergold, “Transportation as Global Migration,” in Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past ed. S. Nicholas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 30 and J.L. Gillin, Criminology and Penology, volume 2 (Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2007), 383.

substantial criticism of a system many regarded as akin to slavery, a series of measures designed to bring transportation in line with metropolitan penal practice were implemented in the years after 1839. These proved to be largely unpopular and transportation to Eastern Australia was abolished in 1853 in the wake of concerted colonial pressure. Convicts continued to be shipped to