This is the first major study of the convict in the Atlantic world of the eighteenth century. It concentrates on the diverse characters of the transported men, women and children, and their fate in the colonies, exploring at the local level the contrasts in sentencing, shipping and settlement of convicts in America. The central myths about transportation prevalent in the eighteenth century, particularly that most felons returned, are examined in the context of the burgeoning print culture of criminal biographies and newspaper stories. In addition, the exchange of representations between the two sides of the Atlantic, and the changing American reaction to convicts, are placed within the growing transatlantic debate on transportation before the American Revolution. Above all, the realities of escape, of convicts running away and returning to England, are subject to systematic investigation for the first time.

During the 18th century, transportation to the colonies became Britain's foremost criminal punishment. This study combines analysis with narrative to provide insights into the origins of crime and the treatment of offenders during this period in both the UK and the USA.

McLynn provides the first comprehensive view of crime and its consequences in the eighteenth century: why was England notorious for violence? Why did the death penalty prove no deterrent? Was it a crude means of redistributing wealth?

"First published in Australia in 2010 by Allen & Unwin"--T.p. verso.

McLynn provides the first comprehensive view of crime and its consequences in the eighteenth century: why was England notorious for violence? Why did the death penalty prove no deterrent? Was it a crude means of redistributing wealth?

This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

Empire of Convicts focuses on male and female Indians incarcerated in Southeast Asia for criminal and political offenses committed in colonial South Asia. From the seventeenth century onward, penal transportation was a key strategy of British imperial rule, exemplified by deportations first to the Americas and later to Australia. Case studies from the insular prisons of Bengkulu, Penang, and Singapore illuminate another carceral regime in the Indian Ocean World that brought South Asia and Southeast Asia together through a global system of forced migration and coerced labor. A major contribution to histories of crime and punishment, prisons, law, labor, transportation, migration, colonialism, and the Indian Ocean World, Empire of Convicts narrates the experiences of Indian bandwars (convicts) and shows how they exercised agency in difficult situations, fashioning their own worlds and even becoming “their own warders.” Anand A. Yang brings long journeys across kala pani (black waters) to life in a deeply researched and engrossing account that moves fluidly between local and global contexts.