‘And All My Great Hardships Endured”? Irish Convicts in Van Diemen’s Land’

All colonisation processes are transnational events in that they necessarily involve the movement of ideas, peoples, commodities and practices across national boundaries. Convict transportation is no different. It was a common practice in Western Europe: the Spanish, Portuguese, French and British all made substantial use of convict labour in the establishment of overseas colonies in the period from 1415 when the Portuguese captured the Moroccan city of Ceuta, to 1954 when the French penal colony in Guiana closed. Within the British Empire at least 376,000 convicts were transported between 1615 and 1940. 1 Less than 50 percent of these were sentenced in English, Welsh and Scottish courts to overseas labour. As the majority of convicts shipped on British vessels were moved from one colony to another, penal transportation involved the crossing of many boundaries.