Along with British and Irish convicts, 627 free men, women and children were transported to the 19th-century penal colonies of Van Diemen’s Land. Their stories, mostly forgotten, are moving.
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Articles on Convict history
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Long regarded as guardians of morality, women who swore were often policed and punished. But whether protesting or parodying, they have used bad language in creative ways.
We may think tattooing is a modern phenomenon, but the reasons for its popularity are not dissimilar to those seen in the prisons and convict ships of the Victorian era.
Without due process, archeological digs turn into into expensive and directionless treasure hunts from which little research value can be extracted.
Wooredy and his second wife Truganini set off into the Tasmanian wilderness with settler George Robinson in 1830, on a “conciliatory” mission to find other original Tasmanians. Their stories bear witness to a psychological and cultural transition without parallel in modern colonialism.
Early colonial New Zealand had no room for reprobates and was at war with Maori resisters. So between 1843 and 1853, it shipped the worst offenders across the Tasman Sea.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor in History, University of Tasmania
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Lecturer, 19th-Century History and Digital Humanities, University of Liverpool
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Adjunct Professor in History, University of Tasmania
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Research Fellow, University of New England
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Director, Australian National Dictionary Centre, Australian National University
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Professor of 18th-Century British History, University of Sheffield
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Lecturer in Criminology, University of Tasmania
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Professor of Australian Archaeology, University of New England
