Description:
This book examines how convicts played a key role in the development of capitalism in Australia and how their active resistance shaped both workplace relations and institutions. It highlights the contribution of convicts to worker mobilization and political descent, forcing a rethink of Australia's foundational story. It is a book that will appeal to an international audience, as well as the many hundreds of thousands of Australians who can trace descent from convicts. It will enable the latter to make sense of the experience of their ancestors, equipping them with the necessary tools to understand convict and court records. It will also provide a valuable undergraduate and postgraduate teaching tool and reference for those studying unfree labour and worker history, social history, colonization and global migration in a digital age.
Review Quotes:
"Unfree Workers draws out the implications of recent convict historiography, built on the foundations of the influential project to understand convicts as workers. ... this is a significant intervention in convict studies with wider implications. Unfree Workers connects convict Australia to a bigger story of imperial capitalism and the exploitation of land and labour. The unique richness of the convict archive made this book possible ... ." (Matthew Allen, The Great Circle, Vol. 46 (2), 2024)