Chapter One - Unshackling the Past

Summary

Introduction

During the first quarter of a century of white settlement in Australia, the economy and society was the creation of convict workers transported from Britain and Ireland. No other period of Australian history evokes such strong images in the popular mind than the convict years. Collectively, Australians perceive their past in terms of a fatal shore, the convict stain and the shame of Botany Bay: the sombre shadows of Australia's history reveal the silhouettes of the gallows and the triangle. To a remarkable extent these images have been created from the detailed academic work on the convict period by Australian historians. For more than a generation, the received interpretation of our past has emphasised male convicts as hardened and professional criminals, females as prostitutes and convictism as a brutal and inefficient system of forced labour. This book offers a new and dramatic reinterpretation of the convict system.

As economic historians, trained in economics and quantitative techniques, we ask new and different questions about the early economic and social development of New South Wales. Our methodology is empirical and comparative. Data on 19,711 convicts transported to New South Wales between 1817 and 1840 form the quantitative basis for our analysis of the convict system. Our sample represents about one-third of the post-1817 convict inflow into New South Wales and nearly one-quarter of the total convict arrivals.