Unfree Workers Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788-1860

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.

Section 1: Incarceration—Convicts, unfree labour and colonial capitalism.- Chapter 1: Unfree labour, Dissent, Convict-transportation and the building of colonial capital.- Chapter 2: Approaches, Sources and Methods.- Chapter 3: Convict Eastern Australia: Labour Bureaucracy or Police State?.- Chapter 4: Battling the Bench.- Section 2: Excarceration—Patterns of resistance and collective action.- Chapter 5: Shipboard mutinies.- Chapter 6: Issuing Demands, Appeals and Threats.- Chapter 7: Go-slows, Strikes and Effort Bargaining.- Chapter 8: Absenteeism, Absconding and Escape.- Chapter 9: Sabotage, Assault and Theft.- Chapter 10: Riots, Bushranging and Revolt.- Chapter 11: Nothing to lose but their chains?.

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a professor of heritage and digital history at the University of New England, Australia. He has researched and published extensively on the history of convict transportation including its connections with slavery and other unfree labour systems.

Michael Quinlan is emeritus professor of industrial relations at UNSW, Australia, as well as holding posts at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and Middlesex University, UK. He has researched and published extensively on the history and regulation of work (including occupational health and safety) and worker organisation.