Life courses, crime and global south migrants: Intercolonial transportation in the australian historical context

Abstract

Australia's settlement history is mired in the British tradition of deporting unwanted individuals for the purposes of punishment. Although initially convicts were transported to New South Wales (NSW), soon other colonies were established to accept the over 162,000 people transported from Britain and other parts of the British Empire. Overcrowded prisons meant that deportation from the British Isles was the best perceived option for crime control at the time. While abundant scholarship exists on those deported from Britain to the colonies, there has been limited research on those free migrants or colonial-born who were sentenced from the British colonies to inter-colonial transportation.

This article utilises the CON16 Indents of Convicts Locally Convicted or Transported from Other Colonies archival records as a starting point to undertake a longitudinal life course analysis of some free migrants to Australia from the Global South who were transported to Van Diemen's Land (VDL) between 1830 and 1850. We examine their lives post-transportation to VDL, the basis on which they were transported to VDL and how life course criminology questions can be answered with historical data.