An `Injurious' Population
Caribbean-Australian Penal Transportation and Imperial Racial PoliticsAuthor: Paton, Diana1
Source: Cultural and Social History, Volume 5, Number 4, December 2008 , pp. 449-464(16)
Publisher: Berg Publishers
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Abstract:
Before the 1820s, enslaved people in many of Britain's Caribbean colonies were regularly sentenced to the punishment of `transportation', which meant being sold into the slave trade within the Americas. For a short period ending in 1837 people sentenced to transportation in the Caribbean were sent to Australia via Britain. This article examines these successive systems of transportation and addresses the Colonial Office decision of 1837 to end transportation from the West Indies to Australia. It highlights the significance of an emerging racial and spatial politics of empire that coded Australia white and the Caribbean black, and tried to ensure that the two did not mix.Keywords: CARIBBEAN; AUSTRALIA; PUNISHMENT; PENAL TRANSPORTATION; RACISM
Document Type: Research article
DOI: 10.2752/147800408X341659
Affiliations: 1: School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU;, Email: diana.paton@ncl.ac.uk
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