In this spirited history of the remarkable first four years of the convict settlement of Australia, Thomas Keneally offers us a human view of a fascinating piece of history. Combining the authority of a renowned historian with a brilliant narrative flair, Keneally gives us an inside view of this unprecedented experiment from the perspective of the new colony’s governor, Arthur Phillips. Using personal journals and documents, Keneally re-creates the hellish overseas voyage and the challenges Phillips faced upon arrival: unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, bewildered and hostile natives, food shortages, and disease. He also offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines and of convict settlers who were determined to begin their lives anew. A Commonwealth of Thieves immerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up the thrills and hardships of those first four improbable years.
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ONE
If, in the New Year of 1788, the eye of God had strayed from the main games of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, and idled over the huge vacancy of sea to the south-east of Africa, it would have been surprised in this empty zone to see not one, but all of eleven ships being driven east on the screaming band of westerlies. This was many times more than the number that had ever been seen here, in a sea so huge and vacant that in today’s conventional atlases no one map represents it. The people on the eleven ships were lost to the world. They had celebrated their New Year at 44 degrees South latitude with “hard salt beef and a few musty pancakes.” Their passage was in waters turbulent with gales, roiling from an awful collision between melted ice from the Antarctic coast and warm currents from the Indian Ocean behind them, and the Pacific ahead. High and irregular seas broke over the decks continuously, knocking the cattle in their pens off their legs. The travelers knew they were past the rocks of sub-Antarctic Kerguelen Island and were reaching for the dangerous southern capes of Van Diemen’s Land, which they intended to round on their way to their destination.
What would have intrigued the divine eye was the number of vessels–though they travelled in two sections, each division separated from the other by a few hundred miles. So far in the history of Europe, only six ships had come into this area named the Southern Ocean, which lay between the uncharted south coast of New Holland (later to be known as Australia) and Antarctica’s massive ice pack. In 1642, a Dutchman, Abel Tasman, a vigorous captain of the Dutch East India Company, had crossed this stretch to discover the island he would name Van Diemen’s Land after his Viceroy in Batavia (now Jakarta), but which would in the end be named Tasmania to honour him.
His ships, a high-sterned, long-bowed yacht named Heemskerck and a round-sterned vessel of the variety called a flute, the Zeehaean, were of such minuscule tonnage as to be overshadowed by HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure’s roughly 400 ton each. These last two, still tiny vessels by modern standards, less than one-third a football field in length, came through the Southern Ocean in 1774 under the overall command of the Yorkshireman James Cook. The Resolution travelled well to the south near the Antarctic ice mass, and rendezvoused with Adventure at the islands Tasman had named New Zealand. Then in 1776, the Resolution and the HMS Discovery, again under Cook, could have been seen in these waters. And that was all.
What were these eleven ships that in 1788 followed the path of Cook and Tasman to the southern capes of Van Diemen’s Land? One might expect them to be full of Georgian conquistadors, or a task force of scientists to suit the enlightened age. If not that, then they must have carried robust dissenters from the political or religious establishment of their day.
The startling fact was they carried prisoners, and the guardians of prisoners. They were the degraded of Britain’s overstretched penal system, and the obscure guardians of the degraded. Any concepts of commerce and science on these ships were secondary to the ordained penal purpose. Few aboard had commercial capacities, though a number of the gentlemen were part-time scientists. Their destination was to be not a home of the chosen, or even a chosen home, but a place imposed by authority and devised specifically with its remoteness in mind. The chief order of business for all of them, prisoners and guardians, was to apply themselves to a unique penal experiment.
The merchant ships of the fleet were to return to Britain after discharging their felons, picking up cargoes of cotton and tea in China and India on the return journey. But because this outward cargo was debased, some in Britain expected never to hear again from the fleet’s passengers. It was believed they would become a cannibal kingdom on the coast they were bound for, and–one way or another–devour each other.
The idea of expelling convicts to distant places was not new. It had occurred to European powers from the fifteenth century onwards, once they began acquiring huge and distant spaces in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. As a policy, it could solve many problems at the one time, including the problem which in modern days would be designated NIMBY, Not In My Backyard. But the chief difference of opinion soon emerged. As early as 1584, Hakluyt’s Discourse for Western Planting proposed that “sturdy vagabonds” should be sent away to the colonies so that “the fry of the wandering beggars of England that grow up idly and burden us to this realm may there be unladen, better bred up, and may people waste countries.” Francis Bacon, however, debated the wisdom of unloading miscreants on far-off dominions in his essay Of Plantations. “It is a shameful and unblessed thing, to take the scum of people, and wicked and condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant.”
In reality, Hakluyt would win the debate with Bacon. It was “the scum of people, and wicked and condemned men”–and women–who made up the cargo of the criminal transports found in the Southern Ocean in the New Year of 1788. It would not have consoled the condemned on those wind-tossed mornings as they stirred and complained in their 18 inches of space on the convict decks that, uniquely placed as they were, they were also part of a long European tradition of transporting the unfortunate and the fallen, beginning with Cromwell’s transportation of many Irish peasants, sent as labour to the plantations of the West Indies, and progressing to the 1656 order of the Council of State that lewd and dangerous persons should be hunted down “for transporting them to the English plantations in America.”
In Britain, colonial penal arrangements were recourses governments thought of regularly. When prisoners were landed in the American colonies throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, settlers would buy a prisoner’s labour–generally for seven years–at the auction block. The master took over the prisoner and troubled the authorities only in the case of escape or major unruliness. Between 1650 and 1775, some tens of thousands of prisoners were sent on these terms to America, perhaps as many as 120,000. Sometimes vagrants and the poor–“idle person lurking in parts of London”–would voluntarily let themselves be transported and sold with the criminals.
The trade in convict or indentured servants was attractive to the British government because, unlike the prison system, it cost them little. Merchants would transport them cheaply, sometimes for nothing, in return for what could be earned through selling the convicts’ labour. In fact, merchants often found this trade in white servants cheaper than that in African slaves. Between 1729 and 1745 the two chief contractors in London sent to America an average of 280 prisoners a year each, up towards 600 a year in total. Based on auction prices in Baltimore between 1767 and 1775, a convict’s labour cost between £10 and £25, and it was possible for an affluent convict to bid for himself and do his time as, effectively, a free agent. But very few transported convicts could afford to buy their own labour or return home from Virginia, Maryland, or Georgia, even if they survived the “seasoning period,” the first few years of malaria and other diseases which killed two out of five inhabitants of Virginia; and so the convict engaged in field labour was likely to find an early grave in American soil.
In extolling the benefits of transportation for the home nation, the British government gave little attention to the impact it had on the region that received the felons. One North American colonist was left to complain that “America has been made the very common sewer and dung yard to Britain.” “Very surprising, one would think,” wrote another American colonist in 1756, “that thieves, burglars, pickpockets and cutpurses, and a herd of the most flagitious banditti upon earth, should be sent as agreeable companions to us!” Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was faced with the same problem of postcolonial denial as later generations of Australians, and wrote unreliably that he did not think the entire number of convicts sent out to the American colonies would amount to 2,000, and “being principally men eaten up with disease, they married seldom and propagated little.”
The men and women surviving on flapjacks and desiccated salted beef and pease–a porridge of compacted peas–in the great Southern Ocean convict flotilla in 1788 owed their location to the pressure on British prison populations. A new Transportation Act in 1780 had sought to make transportation more obligatory than it had been up to that point.
The offences for which a prisoner could be transported under the accumulated Transportation Acts of Britain made up an exotic catalogue. Quakers could be transported for denying any oath to be lawful, or assembling themselves together under pretence of joining in religious worship. Notorious thieves and takers of spoil in the borderlands of Northumberland and Cumberland, commonly called “moss-troopers” and “reivers,” were also subject to transportation; similarly, persons found guilty of stealing cloth from the rack, or embezzling His Majesty’s stores to the value of twenty shillings; persons convicted of wilfully burning ricks of corn, hay, or barns in the nighttime (crimes generally associated with peasant protest against a landlord); persons convicted of larceny and other offences; persons imprisoned for exporting wool and not paying the excise on it; persons convicted of entering into any park and killi...
If, in the New Year of 1788, the eye of God had strayed from the main games of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, and idled over the huge vacancy of sea to the south-east of Africa, it would have been surprised in this empty zone to see not one, but all of eleven ships being driven east on the screaming band of westerlies. This was many times more than the number that had ever been seen here, in a sea so huge and vacant that in today’s conventional atlases no one map represents it. The people on the eleven ships were lost to the world. They had celebrated their New Year at 44 degrees South latitude with “hard salt beef and a few musty pancakes.” Their passage was in waters turbulent with gales, roiling from an awful collision between melted ice from the Antarctic coast and warm currents from the Indian Ocean behind them, and the Pacific ahead. High and irregular seas broke over the decks continuously, knocking the cattle in their pens off their legs. The travelers knew they were past the rocks of sub-Antarctic Kerguelen Island and were reaching for the dangerous southern capes of Van Diemen’s Land, which they intended to round on their way to their destination.
What would have intrigued the divine eye was the number of vessels–though they travelled in two sections, each division separated from the other by a few hundred miles. So far in the history of Europe, only six ships had come into this area named the Southern Ocean, which lay between the uncharted south coast of New Holland (later to be known as Australia) and Antarctica’s massive ice pack. In 1642, a Dutchman, Abel Tasman, a vigorous captain of the Dutch East India Company, had crossed this stretch to discover the island he would name Van Diemen’s Land after his Viceroy in Batavia (now Jakarta), but which would in the end be named Tasmania to honour him.
His ships, a high-sterned, long-bowed yacht named Heemskerck and a round-sterned vessel of the variety called a flute, the Zeehaean, were of such minuscule tonnage as to be overshadowed by HMS Resolution and HMS Adventure’s roughly 400 ton each. These last two, still tiny vessels by modern standards, less than one-third a football field in length, came through the Southern Ocean in 1774 under the overall command of the Yorkshireman James Cook. The Resolution travelled well to the south near the Antarctic ice mass, and rendezvoused with Adventure at the islands Tasman had named New Zealand. Then in 1776, the Resolution and the HMS Discovery, again under Cook, could have been seen in these waters. And that was all.
What were these eleven ships that in 1788 followed the path of Cook and Tasman to the southern capes of Van Diemen’s Land? One might expect them to be full of Georgian conquistadors, or a task force of scientists to suit the enlightened age. If not that, then they must have carried robust dissenters from the political or religious establishment of their day.
The startling fact was they carried prisoners, and the guardians of prisoners. They were the degraded of Britain’s overstretched penal system, and the obscure guardians of the degraded. Any concepts of commerce and science on these ships were secondary to the ordained penal purpose. Few aboard had commercial capacities, though a number of the gentlemen were part-time scientists. Their destination was to be not a home of the chosen, or even a chosen home, but a place imposed by authority and devised specifically with its remoteness in mind. The chief order of business for all of them, prisoners and guardians, was to apply themselves to a unique penal experiment.
The merchant ships of the fleet were to return to Britain after discharging their felons, picking up cargoes of cotton and tea in China and India on the return journey. But because this outward cargo was debased, some in Britain expected never to hear again from the fleet’s passengers. It was believed they would become a cannibal kingdom on the coast they were bound for, and–one way or another–devour each other.
The idea of expelling convicts to distant places was not new. It had occurred to European powers from the fifteenth century onwards, once they began acquiring huge and distant spaces in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. As a policy, it could solve many problems at the one time, including the problem which in modern days would be designated NIMBY, Not In My Backyard. But the chief difference of opinion soon emerged. As early as 1584, Hakluyt’s Discourse for Western Planting proposed that “sturdy vagabonds” should be sent away to the colonies so that “the fry of the wandering beggars of England that grow up idly and burden us to this realm may there be unladen, better bred up, and may people waste countries.” Francis Bacon, however, debated the wisdom of unloading miscreants on far-off dominions in his essay Of Plantations. “It is a shameful and unblessed thing, to take the scum of people, and wicked and condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant.”
In reality, Hakluyt would win the debate with Bacon. It was “the scum of people, and wicked and condemned men”–and women–who made up the cargo of the criminal transports found in the Southern Ocean in the New Year of 1788. It would not have consoled the condemned on those wind-tossed mornings as they stirred and complained in their 18 inches of space on the convict decks that, uniquely placed as they were, they were also part of a long European tradition of transporting the unfortunate and the fallen, beginning with Cromwell’s transportation of many Irish peasants, sent as labour to the plantations of the West Indies, and progressing to the 1656 order of the Council of State that lewd and dangerous persons should be hunted down “for transporting them to the English plantations in America.”
In Britain, colonial penal arrangements were recourses governments thought of regularly. When prisoners were landed in the American colonies throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, settlers would buy a prisoner’s labour–generally for seven years–at the auction block. The master took over the prisoner and troubled the authorities only in the case of escape or major unruliness. Between 1650 and 1775, some tens of thousands of prisoners were sent on these terms to America, perhaps as many as 120,000. Sometimes vagrants and the poor–“idle person lurking in parts of London”–would voluntarily let themselves be transported and sold with the criminals.
The trade in convict or indentured servants was attractive to the British government because, unlike the prison system, it cost them little. Merchants would transport them cheaply, sometimes for nothing, in return for what could be earned through selling the convicts’ labour. In fact, merchants often found this trade in white servants cheaper than that in African slaves. Between 1729 and 1745 the two chief contractors in London sent to America an average of 280 prisoners a year each, up towards 600 a year in total. Based on auction prices in Baltimore between 1767 and 1775, a convict’s labour cost between £10 and £25, and it was possible for an affluent convict to bid for himself and do his time as, effectively, a free agent. But very few transported convicts could afford to buy their own labour or return home from Virginia, Maryland, or Georgia, even if they survived the “seasoning period,” the first few years of malaria and other diseases which killed two out of five inhabitants of Virginia; and so the convict engaged in field labour was likely to find an early grave in American soil.
In extolling the benefits of transportation for the home nation, the British government gave little attention to the impact it had on the region that received the felons. One North American colonist was left to complain that “America has been made the very common sewer and dung yard to Britain.” “Very surprising, one would think,” wrote another American colonist in 1756, “that thieves, burglars, pickpockets and cutpurses, and a herd of the most flagitious banditti upon earth, should be sent as agreeable companions to us!” Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was faced with the same problem of postcolonial denial as later generations of Australians, and wrote unreliably that he did not think the entire number of convicts sent out to the American colonies would amount to 2,000, and “being principally men eaten up with disease, they married seldom and propagated little.”
The men and women surviving on flapjacks and desiccated salted beef and pease–a porridge of compacted peas–in the great Southern Ocean convict flotilla in 1788 owed their location to the pressure on British prison populations. A new Transportation Act in 1780 had sought to make transportation more obligatory than it had been up to that point.
The offences for which a prisoner could be transported under the accumulated Transportation Acts of Britain made up an exotic catalogue. Quakers could be transported for denying any oath to be lawful, or assembling themselves together under pretence of joining in religious worship. Notorious thieves and takers of spoil in the borderlands of Northumberland and Cumberland, commonly called “moss-troopers” and “reivers,” were also subject to transportation; similarly, persons found guilty of stealing cloth from the rack, or embezzling His Majesty’s stores to the value of twenty shillings; persons convicted of wilfully burning ricks of corn, hay, or barns in the nighttime (crimes generally associated with peasant protest against a landlord); persons convicted of larceny and other offences; persons imprisoned for exporting wool and not paying the excise on it; persons convicted of entering into any park and killi...
Revue de presse
"A readable, anecdote-packed account of a tragic colonial experiment." —Boston Globe"Superb. . . . Keneally uses his novelist's skill to construct a lively mosaic from contemporary accounts." —Financial Times"Evocative. . . . Weaving together many individual stories, Keneally paints an impressionistic picture of a society in the making." —The Washington Post Book World“Keneally deploys his skills as a novelist to give depth to his work as an historian.” —The Economist
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A "European experiment"
4 novembre 2006
Par Stephen A. Haines
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié
The founding of European Australia has suffered [and survived] a wide variety of accounts. Why should another be necessary? Chiefly, because few of those histories approach the level of human interest given that event in this book. The most famous of the other narratives, Hughes' "The Fatal Shore", flogged the inhumanity of the British prison system almost as sternly as colonial commanders did the felons. Keneally's story is far more balanced, since he understands better the situation of the times. He makes no excuses for the British prison system at a time when its major colonial effort was breaking away. For him, it is the human stories he wishes to relate, and with his writing background to help, he succeeds admirably.
Keneally has touched on the early years of the Port Jackson [Sydney] convict colony before, most notably in his novel "The Playmaker". Here, shedding fiction for fact, he describes the voyage of the First Fleet, the landing at Botany Bay and the discovery that Cook's description was inadequate and the relocation further along the coast to the "best harbour in the world". In doing so, he brings to life a man not often enough recognized, Arthur Phillip, commander of the Fleet and first Governor of the colony. Phillip's initial success, bringing the crews and convicts nearly intact across vast stretches of ocean, stands in stark contrast to later transports. The Second Fleet proved a scandal of bad planning, mismanagement and inefficiency. Far worse for the potential of the colony's success was the inadequate supply mechanisms. Instead of immediately returning to a supply port, the prison ships went to Asia for tea to return to England. The prisoners and their keepers were left to shift for themselves. Only Phillip's firm, even-handed management of resources kept Port Jackson's population alive - even if at mere survival levels.
Unlike the British "Pilgrims" in Massachussetts almost three centuries before, the indigenous peoples around Port Jackson did not step forward to aid the invaders. Keneally describes the various groups of the area, who had been there for millennia, as suspicious and hostile to the Europeans. The invasion had upset a finely balanced network of land occupation and resource allocation. When the Europeans fished or hunted in Aborigine lands, they upset that balance, reducing the Aborigine's resource base. Coupled with the incursion into supplies, the Europeans brought that dreaded scourge, smallpox, into the Australian East Coast. The Aborigines had no idea what smallpox was, nor comprehended why it had been imposed on them, but they knew well its source. Their fear and resentment was well-founded and expressed. Phillip, whose mandate was to establish "friendly and amicable relations" was challenged by forces he, too, had poor knowledge of. However, he persevered, even surviving a spearing without launching a war of retribution. Keneally's balanced approach, in which he shows Aborigines as perplexed and confused over the complexities of European life, is neither overdramatised nor "romantic" and stylised. Two groups of peoples, with little in common but their humaness, interacted in various ways. Clashes and confrontations were inevitable, but Aborigines also moved within the white world as equals. Throughout, Phillip is the key player.
As the prison colony passed through times of great deprivation and sickness, Phillip continued to strive for a self-sustaining community. Farms were attempted from the outset, but Eastern Australia's conditions weren't amenable to European methods. Few successful farms were established during Phillip's tenure, but he never ceased to encourage experiment. He was often thwarted by poor soil, Sydney's vagaries of weather and an indifferent population. Most of the prisoners were the scrubs of English cities; farming was as great a mystery to them as was Australia itself.
Farming implies permanence, another issue Phillip was forced to cope with. Many of the prisoners, "transported" for seven years to Australia, had already served time in British prisons or the infamous "hulk" ships moored in various harbours. When the time had expired, even though few had the records to prove their sentence expiries, they must be dealt with as free citizens. The number with resources available to return to the British Isles was next to nil and permanent establishments for them had to be devised. Phillip encouraged farming and struggled to arrange for "land grants" for which he had little authority. The making of urban criminals into rural pastoralists was indifferently successful at best. Yet, those people did find ways of making a living. The new settlers also entered into marriages or less formal arrangements, which Phillip turned a blind eye to in order to secure community stability. The "Currency" children, as the ensuing generation was known, established the foundation of the ongoing European Experiment which became today's Australia. Keneally recounts all these developments with consummate skill. This book should be a "first choice" for anyone wishing to learn how a European colony might be established, even if its first citizens laboured under the stigma of "convict" as their origin. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Keneally has touched on the early years of the Port Jackson [Sydney] convict colony before, most notably in his novel "The Playmaker". Here, shedding fiction for fact, he describes the voyage of the First Fleet, the landing at Botany Bay and the discovery that Cook's description was inadequate and the relocation further along the coast to the "best harbour in the world". In doing so, he brings to life a man not often enough recognized, Arthur Phillip, commander of the Fleet and first Governor of the colony. Phillip's initial success, bringing the crews and convicts nearly intact across vast stretches of ocean, stands in stark contrast to later transports. The Second Fleet proved a scandal of bad planning, mismanagement and inefficiency. Far worse for the potential of the colony's success was the inadequate supply mechanisms. Instead of immediately returning to a supply port, the prison ships went to Asia for tea to return to England. The prisoners and their keepers were left to shift for themselves. Only Phillip's firm, even-handed management of resources kept Port Jackson's population alive - even if at mere survival levels.
Unlike the British "Pilgrims" in Massachussetts almost three centuries before, the indigenous peoples around Port Jackson did not step forward to aid the invaders. Keneally describes the various groups of the area, who had been there for millennia, as suspicious and hostile to the Europeans. The invasion had upset a finely balanced network of land occupation and resource allocation. When the Europeans fished or hunted in Aborigine lands, they upset that balance, reducing the Aborigine's resource base. Coupled with the incursion into supplies, the Europeans brought that dreaded scourge, smallpox, into the Australian East Coast. The Aborigines had no idea what smallpox was, nor comprehended why it had been imposed on them, but they knew well its source. Their fear and resentment was well-founded and expressed. Phillip, whose mandate was to establish "friendly and amicable relations" was challenged by forces he, too, had poor knowledge of. However, he persevered, even surviving a spearing without launching a war of retribution. Keneally's balanced approach, in which he shows Aborigines as perplexed and confused over the complexities of European life, is neither overdramatised nor "romantic" and stylised. Two groups of peoples, with little in common but their humaness, interacted in various ways. Clashes and confrontations were inevitable, but Aborigines also moved within the white world as equals. Throughout, Phillip is the key player.
As the prison colony passed through times of great deprivation and sickness, Phillip continued to strive for a self-sustaining community. Farms were attempted from the outset, but Eastern Australia's conditions weren't amenable to European methods. Few successful farms were established during Phillip's tenure, but he never ceased to encourage experiment. He was often thwarted by poor soil, Sydney's vagaries of weather and an indifferent population. Most of the prisoners were the scrubs of English cities; farming was as great a mystery to them as was Australia itself.
Farming implies permanence, another issue Phillip was forced to cope with. Many of the prisoners, "transported" for seven years to Australia, had already served time in British prisons or the infamous "hulk" ships moored in various harbours. When the time had expired, even though few had the records to prove their sentence expiries, they must be dealt with as free citizens. The number with resources available to return to the British Isles was next to nil and permanent establishments for them had to be devised. Phillip encouraged farming and struggled to arrange for "land grants" for which he had little authority. The making of urban criminals into rural pastoralists was indifferently successful at best. Yet, those people did find ways of making a living. The new settlers also entered into marriages or less formal arrangements, which Phillip turned a blind eye to in order to secure community stability. The "Currency" children, as the ensuing generation was known, established the foundation of the ongoing European Experiment which became today's Australia. Keneally recounts all these developments with consummate skill. This book should be a "first choice" for anyone wishing to learn how a European colony might be established, even if its first citizens laboured under the stigma of "convict" as their origin. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
9 internautes sur 9 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
5.0 étoiles sur 5
Balanced And Expertly Researched
24 mars 2007
Par Dave_42
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié
"A Commonwealth of Thieves - The Improbable Birth of Australia" covers the establishment of the first English settlement in New South Wales (i.e. Australia), and the stories of the convicts, free men, and military personnel who played a role. He also has some stories of the unfortunate aboriginal population who were the first to encounter the European settlers.
The book is divided into two sections. The first section covers the decision to send the convicts, the preparation for the first fleet, the voyage of the first fleet, the evaluation of where to build the colony, and the establishment of the colony by the members of the first fleet. The second section covers additional shipments of convicts to the area, the continued growth of the colony and the interactions with the native population, and concludes with the departure of the colony's first governor, Arthur Phillip.
This is one of the balanced historical accounts on any period of history that I have ever read. Thomas Keneally does an exceptional job of relating the stories of the people and events without choosing sides. There is, of course, ample opportunity to criticize the Europeans, or to defend their actions, but Keneally stays away from that discussion, and simply relates what happened. He does offer the historical perspective of the time on the events as gathered from numerous resources. For the rest, he leaves the reader to make their own conclusions.
The research that Thomas Keneally did for this book is also superb. He draws from official historical records, as well as numerous personal journals from a fairly large number of the people involved. From these sources he builds a history which not only covers the settlement, but then blends that with biographical sketches. He provides an excellent bibliography as well.
This is an excellent book which covers the subject incredibly well. The writing is clear and concise. The only minor negative would be that the narrative can be a little dry at times. This is not a big problem though, and the book is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the early history of Australia.
The book is divided into two sections. The first section covers the decision to send the convicts, the preparation for the first fleet, the voyage of the first fleet, the evaluation of where to build the colony, and the establishment of the colony by the members of the first fleet. The second section covers additional shipments of convicts to the area, the continued growth of the colony and the interactions with the native population, and concludes with the departure of the colony's first governor, Arthur Phillip.
This is one of the balanced historical accounts on any period of history that I have ever read. Thomas Keneally does an exceptional job of relating the stories of the people and events without choosing sides. There is, of course, ample opportunity to criticize the Europeans, or to defend their actions, but Keneally stays away from that discussion, and simply relates what happened. He does offer the historical perspective of the time on the events as gathered from numerous resources. For the rest, he leaves the reader to make their own conclusions.
The research that Thomas Keneally did for this book is also superb. He draws from official historical records, as well as numerous personal journals from a fairly large number of the people involved. From these sources he builds a history which not only covers the settlement, but then blends that with biographical sketches. He provides an excellent bibliography as well.
This is an excellent book which covers the subject incredibly well. The writing is clear and concise. The only minor negative would be that the narrative can be a little dry at times. This is not a big problem though, and the book is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the early history of Australia.
11 internautes sur 13 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
4.0 étoiles sur 5
A practical solution, a social experiment, and a trip to the end of the world
9 novembre 2006
Par Sean Freeley
- Publié sur Amazon.com
Format:Relié
In the late 1700s, it was decided that Britian was overflowing with criminals, that all the good penal colony locations were dryed up, and that the best solution was to ship offenders to an unsettled wilderness on the other side of the world. Those that survived the long and often unsanitary conditions found themselves in an untamed but beautiful wilderness with little hope of ever returning home.
This book tells the story of the tough early years of the colonies in Australia, mostly through the veiwpoint of the first governer of the colony. It tells how they barely survived, the constant struggle to feed the colony, the odd relationships with the natives, and the horrible experience of being transported, often on slave ships, through a vast and difficult sea. The writer's love of the land and respect for the administrators, convicts, and Royal Marines who found themselves there. The colony seems to have just barely held together, one gets the sense that one waylaid supply ship would have been the end of it. It's a good story, and well told, although a few more maps and illustrations would have made it more cohesive, it is also difficult, at times, to keep all of the players straight at times. The overall feeling is one of desperation, but also a vision of a future that evolved into the vibrant place that Australia is today.
A great book about how those fringes of an empire nonetheless end up perpetuating it.
This book tells the story of the tough early years of the colonies in Australia, mostly through the veiwpoint of the first governer of the colony. It tells how they barely survived, the constant struggle to feed the colony, the odd relationships with the natives, and the horrible experience of being transported, often on slave ships, through a vast and difficult sea. The writer's love of the land and respect for the administrators, convicts, and Royal Marines who found themselves there. The colony seems to have just barely held together, one gets the sense that one waylaid supply ship would have been the end of it. It's a good story, and well told, although a few more maps and illustrations would have made it more cohesive, it is also difficult, at times, to keep all of the players straight at times. The overall feeling is one of desperation, but also a vision of a future that evolved into the vibrant place that Australia is today.
A great book about how those fringes of an empire nonetheless end up perpetuating it.
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