This is a story lost to history for over two hundred years; a dirty secret of failure, fatal misjudgement and desperate measures which the British Empire chose to forget almost as soon as it was over. In the wake of its most crushing defeat, the America War of Independence, the British Government began shipping its criminals to West Africa. Some were transported aboard ships going to pick up their other human cargo: African slaves. When they arrived at their destination, soldiers and even convicts were forced to work in the region's slave-trading forts guarding the human merchandise. In a few short years the scheme brought death, wholesale desertions, mutiny, piracy and even murder. Some of the most egregious crimes were not committed by the exported criminals but by those sent out to guard them. Acts of wanton desperation added to rash transgressions as those whom society had already thrown out realised that they had nothing left to lose. As jail and prison hulks overflowed, and as every other alternative settlement proved unsuitable, the British Government gambled and decided to send its criminals as far away as possible, to the great south land sighted years before by Captain James Cook. Out of the embers of the African debacle came the modern nation of Australia. The extraordinary tale is now being told for the first time - how a small band of good-for-nothing members of the British Empire spanned the world from America, to Africa, and on to Australia, profoundly if utterly unwittingly changing history.

About the Author
Emma Christopher holds two Australia Research Council fellowships and is on the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Sydney. She gained her PhD from University College London in 2002 and has received grants and fellowships from the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, Harvard University's Atlantic World Center, and Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center. She has also been a Mellon Fellow at the Huntington Library in California, a Caird Fellow at the National Maritime Museum in London and a Paul Cuffe Fellow at Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut. She is the author of Slave Ship Sailors and their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1808, and the co-editor of Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World.

Reviews
riveting account ... fascinating book * Times Higher Education Supplement *
a beautifully crafted endeavor...excellent writing...Thoroughly researched, brilliantly written, deeply humane * H-Net *
well worth an afternoon or two of your time * The Spectator *
the most remarkable story, and she should be commended...for bringing it out of the archives and into the light.' * Sunday Times *


Awards
Winner of Joint winner of the 2011 Ernest Scott Prize for Australian History.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199695935
Author Emma Christopher
Format Hardback
Page Count 448
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 815g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 153mm * 40mm