Australian History/British Colonial History/Penal Studies
Book Details

American Citizens, British Slaves

Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony, 1839–1850

Cassandra Pybus and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart

This book tells the strange story of almost a hundred United States citizens who were transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1839–40.

Opinion

‘American Citizens, British Slaves . . . is a detailed and enlightening study of this relatively unexplored part of Australia’s convict history.’ (Campus Review, December 2002)

'a beautifully vivid story, in which bombast and tragedy are strangely mixed.' (The International History Review, September 2003)

About this Title

We hardly had our feet on the soil, when almost the first objects that greeted our vision were gibbets, and men toiling in the most abject misery, looking more degraded even than so many dumb beasts. Such sights, and the supposition that such might be our fate, served to sink the iron still deeper in our souls.

This book tells the strange story of almost a hundred United States citizens who were transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1839–40.

As members of the Patriot Army that had conducted border raids into the colony of Upper Canada in 1838, they saw themselves as courageous republican activists, impelled by a moral duty to liberate their northern neighbours from British oppression. Instead of heroic liberators, they became political prisoners of Her Majesty’s government.

Sent to Van Diemen’s Land by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur—in the hope of deterring any more Yankees from exporting their abhorrent ideology to the Queen’s domain—the Patriot exiles endured years of harsh treatment before they were eventually pardoned. Not being British subjects, their transportation was almost certainly illegal.

Eleven of the Patriots wrote narratives about their time in Van Diemen’s Land. From these interlocking accounts, Cassandra Pybus and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart have constructed a compelling story of the Patriots’ experiences as convicts, drawing also on unpublished letters, newspaper reports and government archives.

This vivid and intimate story of political exile and punishment provides a window into the everyday life of the many thousands of forgotten men and women who endured the calculated cruelties of penal transportation.

Virtually unknown until brought to life in this remarkable book, the story of the Patriots also considers the political and legal issues of penal transportation as a tool of political repression.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Authors’ Note
Conversions

Introduction
1 Patriot Hunters
2 Theatre in the Short Hills
3 Mr Capper’s Discretion
4 Great Hunt in the North Woods
5 The Caprice of the Mercenaries of Royalty
6 Bound for the Fatal Shore
7 Mysteries of a Penal Colony
8 Ben Franklin’s Nephew
9 The Land of Nod
10 The Poor Children of Israel
11 Scourge of the Old World
12 Lovely Banks
13 Green Ponds
14 Among the Thieves at Jerusalem
15 Sir John’s Indulgence
16 Hopes Again Blasted
17 ‘I could not blame the Rangers’
18 Free Pardon
Afterword

Appendix: Biographies of the Patriot Exiles
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Cassandra Pybus is ARC Senior Fellow in History and Classics at the University of Tasmania. Her previous books include Community of Thieves; Gross Moral Turpitude; White Rajah: A Dynastic Intrigue; Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree; The Devil and James McAuley (which won the 2000 Adelaide Festival Award for non-fiction), and Raven Road. During 2002 Pybus will be a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a lecturer in the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania. He has published many influential articles on convict history and is a contributor to Written on the Body, Convict Love Tokens and Representing Convicts. With Lucy Frost he edited Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives (MUP 2001).

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978-0-522-85027-7