The Origins of Irish Convict Transportation to New South Wales

by Bob Reece

Palgrave, 2001, [First PB Edition], ISBN 0333584597, black and white photographs, paperback

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, uncreased spine (see photographs)

“After the American Revolutionary War, both the Irish and British governments attempted to re-establish the trans-Atlantic convict trade instituted in the mid-seventeenth century to Virginia and Barbados.  Burgeoning urban crime and the critical insecurity of the prisons in the 1780s meant that the Irish as well as the British desperately needed to get rid of their petty criminals.  The British quickly abandoned their efforts in the face of American disapproval and settler opposition in Honduras.  However, between 1784 and 1790 the Irish despatched no less than nine shipments of convicts to North America and the West Indies.  This persistence was due in part to the cheapness and convenience of the old system but also to the tardiness of the Home Office in allowing Ireland to join in the Botany Bay scheme.  When the British Governor of Newfoundland sent back an Irish shipment in late 1789 and others caused problems in Nova Scotia and the Leeward Islands, the Home Office had no choice but to allocate space for Irish convicts on the Third Fleet to New South Wales.  When the Queen transport finally sailed form Cork in April 1791, carrying the nucleus of Australia’s Irish population, some of those on board were veterans of the trans-Atlantic phase.  This bool throws new light on the ‘Botany Bay debate’ about Australia’s origins, on Irish crime and punishment in the late eighteenth century and on the Irish diaspora.”