A Natural Hulk: Australia’s Carceral Islands in the Colonial Period, 1788–1901

Roscoe, Katherine ORCID: 0000-0003-0964-0541 (2018) A Natural Hulk: Australia’s Carceral Islands in the Colonial Period, 1788–1901. International Review of Social History, 63 (S26). pp. 45-63.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020859018000214

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>During the British colonial period, at least eleven islands off the coast of Australia were used as sites of “punitive relocation” for transported European convicts and Indigenous Australians. This article traces the networks of correspondence between the officials and the Colonial Office in London as they debated the merits of various offshore islands to incarcerate different populations. It identifies three roles that carceral islands served for colonial governance and economic expansion. First, the use of convicts as colonizers of strategic islands for territorial and commercial expansion. Second, to punish transported convicts found guilty of “misconduct” to maintain order in colonial society. Third, to expel Indigenous Australians who resisted colonization from their homeland. It explores how, as “colonial peripheries”, islands were part of a colonial system of punishment based around mobility and distance, which mirrored in microcosm convict flows between the metropole and the Australian colonies.</jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	17 Jun 2019 10:39
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 00:39
DOI:	10.1017/s0020859018000214
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3046241