A Merciless Place
Author: Emma Christopher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-07
Total Pages: 454
ISBN-13: 0199782555
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"First published in Australia in 2010 by Allen & Unwin"--T.p. verso.
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A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain's Convict Disaster in Africa
Author: Emma Christopher
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2011-08-11
Total Pages: 454
ISBN-13: 0191623520
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 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.
A Merciless Place
Author: Emma Christopher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-07-01
Total Pages: 520
ISBN-13: 0199843759
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSince Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore, the fate of British convicts has burned brightly in the popular imagination. Incredibly, their larger story is even more dramatic--the saga of forgotten men and women scattered to the farthest corners of the British empire, driven by the winds of the American Revolution and the currents of the African slave trade. In A Merciless Place, Emma Christopher brilliantly captures this previously unknown story of poverty, punishment, and transportation. The story begins with the American War of Independence, until which many British convicts were shipped across the Atlantic. The Revolution interrupted this flow and inspired two entrepreneurs to organize the criminals into military units to fight for the crown. The felon soldiers went to West Africa's slave-trading posts just as the war ended; these forts became the new destination for England's rapidly multiplying convicts. The move was a disaster. Christopher writes that "before the scheme was abandoned, it would have run the gamut of piracy, treachery, mutiny, starvation, poisonings, allegations of white women forced to prostitute themselves to African men, and not least several cases of murder." To end the scandal, the British government chose a new destination, as far away as possible: Australia. Christopher here captures the gritty lives of Britain's convicts: victims of London's underworld, rife with brutal crime and sometimes even more brutal punishments. Equally fascinating are the portraits of Fante people of West Africa, forced to undergo dramatic changes in their role as intermediaries with Europeans in the slave trade. Here, too, are the aboriginal Australians, coping with the transformation of their native land. They all inhabit A Merciless Place: a tour de force and historical narrative at its finest.
A Merciless Place
Author: Emma Christopher
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 470
ISBN-13: 1742372279
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this book, the author has found the 'missing link' between the American Revolution and The Fatal Shore, and tells the extraordinary story - lost for two centuries - of how a failed British attempt to establish a penal colony in West Africa led to their eventual decision to abandon their African plans and establish a new colony in the recently discovered colony known as New South Wales.
The Merciless I and II
Author: Danielle Vega
Publisher: Razorbill
Published: 2018
Total Pages: 610
ISBN-13: 1984836188
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"First published in the United States of America by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2014"--Title page verso.
The Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction
Author: Barbara Pezzotti
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 223
ISBN-13: 161147552X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn analysis of the relationship between detective fiction and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last 20 years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country.
Memorandoms by James Martin
Author: Tim Causer
Publisher: UCL Press
Published: 2017-06-07
Total Pages: 206
ISBN-13: 1911576828
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAmong the vast body of manuscripts composed and collected by the philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), held by UCL Library’s Special Collections, is the earliest Australian convict narrative, Memorandoms by James Martin. This document also happens to be the only extant first-hand account of the most well-known, and most mythologized, escape from Australia by transported convicts. On the night of 28 March 1791, James Martin, William and Mary Bryant and their two infant children, and six other male convicts, stole the colony’s fishing boat and sailed out of Sydney Harbour. Within ten weeks they had reached Kupang in West Timor, having, in an amazing feat of endurance, travelled over 3,000 miles (c. 5,000) kilometres) in an open boat. There they passed themselves off as the survivors of a shipwreck, a ruse which—initially, at least—fooled their Dutch hosts. This new edition of the Memorandoms includes full colour reproductions of the original manuscripts, making available for the first time this hugely important document, alongside a transcript with commentary describing the events and key characters. The book also features a scholarly introduction which examines their escape and early convict absconding in New South Wales more generally, and, drawing on primary records, presents new research which sheds light on the fate of the escapees after they reached Kupang. The introduction also assesses the voluminous literature on this most famous escape, and critically examines the myths and fictions created around it and the escapees, myths which have gone unchallenged for far too long. Finally, the introduction briefly discusses Jeremy Bentham’s views on convict transportation and their enduring impact.
Death Valley and the Amargosa
Author: Richard E. Lingenfelter
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 1986
Total Pages: 698
ISBN-13: 0520063562
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is the history of Death Valley, where that bitter stream the Amargosa dies. It embraces the whole basin of the Amargosa from the Panamints to the Spring Mountains, from the Palmettos to the Avawatz. And it spans a century from the earliest recollections and the oldest records to that day in 1933 when much of the valley was finally set aside as a National Monument. This is the story of an illusory land, of the people it attracted and of the dreams and delusions they pursued-the story of the metals in its mountains and the salts in its sinks, of its desiccating heat and its revitalizing springs, and of all the riches of its scenery and lore-the story of Indians and horse thieves, lost argonauts and lost mine hunters, prospectors and promoters, miners and millionaires, stockholders and stock sharps, homesteaders and hermits, writers and tourists. But mostly this is the story of the illusions-the illusions of a shortcut to the gold diggings that lured the forty-niners, of inescapable deadliness that hung in the name they left behind, of lost bonanzas that grew out of the few nuggets they found, of immeasurable riches spread by hopeful prospectors and calculating con men, and of impenetrable mysteries concocted by the likes of Scotty. These and many lesser illusions are the heart of its history.
TO THE MOUNTAIN TOPS
Author: Harold Mason Young
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Published: 2013-08-26
Total Pages: 513
ISBN-13: 1483628949
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is a report about the Lahu people, more precisely, the Lahu Na divisions of the several ethnic Lahuspeaking tribal groups. During the period of this report written by Harold Mason Young, most of the Lahu Na lived in northeastern Burma,in the Kengtung Shan State of Burma and the bordering province of Yunnan, China. Harold's focus on the Lahu Na arose from the unusual experience of having been born of missionary parents (1901, Kengtung, Burma) and not only growing up among the Lahu, but working with them as a missionary during his young adult years in Banna, China. Naturally Harold would learn to speak Shan and Lahu, and more important, to become united with this unique culture. Harold accumulated knowledge and appreciation for their ways as few other foreigners from the outside world would accomplish during this time of history. Harold considered the Lahu Na as unique, and while similar to other Lahu hill people, they were distinct in their own ways. In this book he carefully details the people, their history as passed down from generation to generation, their customs, beliefs and rituals, and most notable, their wonderful knowledge of nature. Harold's report of the Lahu Na during this period of history is extraordinary as the Lahu people did not write or document any of these cultural points of interest, and the fact that he made the effort to write this book makes available to all a piece of history that is almost now lost to the modern world. This book is not intended to be a formal work on the cultural anthropology of the Lahu people, yet considerable information has been offered here to students of disappearing cultures. It is intended that this collection will expand information that students of social sciences might seek, and if that is realized, then the efforts of publishing Harold's writing, with its detailed and sincere reporting, will have been sufficiently rewarded. The Gordon Young Family
Condemned
Author: Graham Seal
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2021-05-18
Total Pages: 309
ISBN-13: 0300256221
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA powerful account of how coerced migration built the British Empire In the early seventeenth century, Britain took ruthless steps to deal with its unwanted citizens, forcibly removing men, women, and children from their homelands and sending them to far-flung corners of the empire to be sold off to colonial masters. This oppressive regime grew into a brutal system of human bondage which would continue into the twentieth century. Drawing on firsthand accounts, letters, and official documents, Graham Seal uncovers the traumatic struggles of those shipped around the empire. He shows how the earliest large-scale kidnapping and transportation of children to the American colonies were quickly bolstered with shipments of the poor, criminal, and rebellious to different continents, including Australia. From Asia to Africa, this global trade in forced labor allowed Britain to build its colonies while turning a considerable profit. Incisive and moving, this account brings to light the true extent of a cruel strand in the history of the British Empire.
