Islands of Incarceration and Empire Building in Colonial Australia

Roscoe, Katherine ORCID: 0000-0003-0964-0541 (2021) Islands of Incarceration and Empire Building in Colonial Australia. In: Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail. Oxford University Press,Oxford, pp. 172-191.

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Abstract

<p>This chapter examines the key roles played by Australia’s offshore prison islands in the British Empire. It begins with the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay in 1788, and ends in 1868, when the last Antipodean colony, Western Australia, stopped accepting convicts. It builds on the volume’s focus on islands as integral to the imperial project, but foregrounds the specific role played by prison labourers. Paradoxically, islands embodied both isolation and connection, prison islands especially so. The British government strategically deployed isolation, by exiling populations resistant to frontier expansion to islands, and connection, by exploiting convict labour on islands to tap into imperial networks of communication and commerce. The Australian colonies were Britain’s most remote imperial possessions, with sailing ships journeying several months to reach their shores. The position of islands enabled them to act as prisons, trading outposts, Aboriginal ‘reserves’, hubs of infrastructure, and natural laboratories.</p>

Item Type:	Book Section
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2020 07:59
Last Modified:	02 Apr 2024 15:14
DOI:	10.1093/oso/9780198847229.003.0010
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3101420