Empire of Hell
Religion and the Campaign to End Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1788–1875

Challenges preconceptions of convict transportation from Britain and Ireland, penal colonies and religion.

Hilary M. Carey (Author)

9781108716802, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 March 2021

371 pages
15 x 23 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'… Carey's book makes for indispensable reading. It is an outstanding examination of the subject of convict transportation and comes highly recommended.' C. Brad Faught, Anglican and Episcopal History

This revisionist history of convict transportation from Britain and Ireland will challenge much that you thought you knew about religion and penal colonies. Based on original archival sources, it examines arguments by elites in favour and against the practice of transportation and considers why they thought it could be reformed, and, later, why it should be abolished. In this, the first religious history of the anti-transportation campaign, Hilary M. Carey addresses all the colonies and denominations engaged in the debate. Without minimising the individual horror of transportation, she demonstrates the wide variety of reformist experiments conducted in the Australian penal colonies, as well as the hulks, Bermuda and Gibraltar. She showcases the idealists who fought for more humane conditions for prisoners, as well as the 'political parsons', who lobbied to bring transportation to an end. The complex arguments about convict transportation, which were engaged in by bishops, judges, priests, politicians and intellectuals, crossed continents and divided an empire.

List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. Introduction: 'Empire of Hell'
2. Saints, Whigs and penal colonies, 1788–1822
3. 'Hell upon earth': Sir George Arthur in Van Diemen's land, 1823–1837
4. Quakers and convict concerns
5. Christian utilitarianism and Archbishop Richard Whately
6. Catholics, Protestants and the 'horrors of transportation'
7. 'Ocean hell': Captain Maconochie and Norfolk Island, 1837–1844
8. Probation in Van Diemen's land, 1840–1849
9. 'Political parsons' and the anti-transportation movement, 1847–1854
10. 'Floating hells': Bermuda, Gibraltar and the Hulks, 1850–1875
11. 'Reformatory colony': Western Australia, 1850–1868
12. Conclusion: 'this great scheme of human redemption'
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM], European history [HBJD]