We closed Part 1 of our blog on Cassim, with details of his penal transportation from Mauritius to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). From there, he was transferred to Moreton Bay (modern Brisbane) and sent to the Limestone Hills (modern Ipswich) to look after government livestock. Here, we note that during Continue Reading
Genealogies of Enslavement and Convictism in the British Empire
In a former blog, I wrote about the enslaved girl Constance Couronne, who in 1834 with her cousin Elizabeth Verloppe was transported from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to the penal colony of New South Wales. The two children had been convicted of attempting to poison their mistress. Constance lived Continue Reading
‘Cassim’: an extraordinary life – Part I
One of the graves that can be found in Minjeribah (North Stradbroke Island)’s Dunwich Cemetery in the Australian state of Queensland bears the name of John Vincent Cassim and his wife Mary (Figure 1). I recently returned to the grave site with my friend and fellow historian Tamsin O’Connor, who Continue Reading
Constance Couronne: from enslaved child in Mauritius to emancipated convict grandmother in New South Wales
On 23 August 2022, I was hugely honoured to be invited to present findings from our Leverhulme Trust funded project at the “International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition”, held at the Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture on the island of Mauritius, in the Continue Reading
Remembering Indian Convicts in Southeast Asia
From the end of the eighteenth century up to the early 1860s, the East India Company transported c. 25,000 convicts to penal settlements across Southeast Asia. Most came from British India (including Burma), with smaller numbers from the Crown Colony of Sri Lanka. The earliest destinations were Bencoolen and the Continue Reading
Shifting The Gaze on Histories of Penal Transportation
In some of our recent writing (available freely here and here) and in some of our recent talks we have been arguing in favour of approaches to the history of convict transportation that started in the receiving destinations: the penal colonies. Our ambition was to move the focus of our Continue Reading