How convict labour forged empires

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Think about the transportation of convicts, and your mind probably goes to the arrival of the first fleet. In Australia. But as today's expert guest reveals, the history of convict transportation is actually a much wider historical phenomenon. From the spice plantations of Indonesia to dockyards in Bermuda, convicts were sent to the farthest reaches of empire and often worked under brutal conditions, building roads,

reclaiming land, even participating in scientific experiments. Claire Anderson, professor of history at the University of Leicester, is the author of a new book, Convicts a Global History, and she joined Eleanor Evans to explain more. The idea of transportation, of the mobility of convicts, of penal mobility, in Britain at least, is often bound up with the idea of transportation to Australia in the late 18th and into the 19th century. Claire, I wondered if we could start by hearing from you about the broader scope of this history that you're you're looking at with this book, the time that we're looking at, and the geographical span as well.

Yeah, thanks so much, Eleanor, and thanks so much for having me on this show today. You're right, when we think about penal transportation and whenever I mention my work, the first thing people want to talk about is New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land. less often, but sometimes also Western Australia, and as you rightly say, the book is rather about something else. It might be useful just to talk a little bit about how I came to this topic, because it sort of helps to explain my answer to your question. So I began work on Mauritius.

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