Friday, August 25, 2006

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes is a massive book coming in at 280,000 words. It is on the history of the deportation of British criminals to Australia. Australian history has done its best to avoid discussing the issue. This book brings it back as the central idea in the founding of Australia with effects that can be shown to this day.

Along the way the author destroys various myths of transportation for instance that all female convicts were prostitutes actually none of the were and that most criminals were petty criminals who did not deserve transportation.

A superb work of scholarship. It cannot be more highly recommended. It is too bad that shipping costs are restrictive from Australia to Canada I would love to learn more about this topic.

Is available through Abebooks.

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