Tasmania's Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society

摘要

Alison Alexander examines the experience of convicts sent to Van Diemen's Land between 1803 and 1853 and, more importantly, what happened to them afterwards. She focuses on both the individual experience and the reaction of Tasma-nian society to the history of the island as a penal colony. At least half the convicts left Tasmania either during the convict era or in the years after. There were more convicts and ex-convicts in Victoria than in Tasmania, which might come as a surprise to some Victorians. Alexander also concludes that the majority (perhaps three-quarters) of Tasmania's present-day population has convict ancestors. In recent decades this has become a matter of pride and celebration among Tasmanian families, or at least among the younger generation, but for many years it was a legacy that the island community colluded to suppress and forget. Alexander explores in some detail how remarkably successful Tasmanian society in general was at doing this, within a context where similar attitudes were evident in other colonies/states.