Book Review

Oceania and the Pacific Islands

The history of the transportation of convicts remains an ongoing source of fascination to Australian historians. This is a colorful and intriguing past of individual and collective endurance, heroism, tragedy and social mobility. The tales of travel during the eighteenth century are characterized by the glamor of visiting faraway and exotic places, but under horrendous and life-threatening conditions that saw many lose their lives at sea. In more recent times, the experiences of convicts themselves have been spotlighted by historians as the class, gender, and occupational profile of the men and women sent to exile has come under scrutiny. Bob Reece's meticulous and significant study of Irish transportation to New South Wales is situated within both earlier and more recent debates in this field. In considering the discussions of the press, judiciary, and Parliament that took place for and against Irish transportation, Reece engages with ongoing debate about the reasons for convict transportation to New South Wales. But this is not a dry political history, and Reece's accounts of the personal experiences in the stories he conveys enliven the text and engage the reader.

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Reece is right in his claims that Irish transportation has been largely overlooked by Australian scholars and Irish historians alike. Little consideration has been given to Irish transatlantic transportation, or to the ways in which it was a controversial social and political issue in Ireland during the late eighteenth century. Reece aims to address this absence by documenting a history of Irish transatlantic transportation during the period and considering the ways in which New South Wales was a destination for the Irish.

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