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24193
380fb325eb1821aca44b1a9b0d84905a74b2fb12
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Format: Publication
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Subject
Penal colonies
Swan River Settlement
Prisoners
Archaeology
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Publications Collection
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Transforming the colony : the archaeology of convictism in Western Australia
DESCRIPTION
Author
Winter, Sean, author
Description
Between 1850 and 1868, approximately 10,000 British convicts were transported to Western Australia, in one of the final phases of global penal transportation. The arrival of these men utterly transformed the small Swan River Colony, bringing capital, labour, population influx, and contact with the outside world. Yet their contribution has been downplayed in Western Australian history, outweighed by a sense of shame that the first free Australian colony requested voluntary conversion to penal status in order to survive.This book, based on the author's PhD research in archaeology, investigates the lives of convicts transported to Western Australia, and in particular, how their presence in the colony served as a form of modernity, fundamentally transforming it in the process. It focuses on the use of the administrative category of the ticket-of-leave to allow convict labour to be used throughout the colony. As such, the text examines the impact of the convict system on regional areas of Western Australia concentrating on the Eastern District communities of Guildford, Toodyay and York, and the convicts who worked there. Using archaeological data from three convict depots, supported by a range of other data sources such as historical documents, genealogical information and oral histories, the nature of convict life in the regions is teased out. In the process, the unique nature of the Western Australian penal colony is demonstrated and the contribution of convicts to the history of the state explored.
Imprint
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.; ©2017
Collation
xiii, 352 pages : illustrations, maps, plans ; 22 cm.
Language
English
Date Published
2017
Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781443879675 (hardback); 1443879673 (hardback)
Dewey Class
994.11 WIN
Publication Format
Book
COPIES
Barcode
30118000563225
Location
Reference Collection
RELATED
Subject
Penal colonies
Swan River Settlement
Prisoners
Archaeology
History - 1788-1900
Collection
Publications Collection
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Winter, Sean, author,
Transforming the colony : the archaeology of convictism in Western Australia
. City of Fremantle Local History Centre, accessed 03/08/2026, https://history.fremantle.wa.gov.au/nodes/view/24193