Condemned, Graham Seal
Condemned, Graham Seal
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Condemned
The Transported Men, Women and Children Who Built Britain's Empire

Author: Graham Seal

Narrator: Nigel Patterson

Unabridged: 10 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/18/2021


Synopsis

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.

About Graham Seal

Graham Seal is emeritus professor of folklore at Curtin University. He is the author of numerous books of biography and cultural history, including These Few Lines, which won a National Biography Award, and The Savage Shore. He lives in Mount Hawthorn, Western Australia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lady Clementina on June 12, 2021

My thanks to Yale University Press, London and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. Condemned is an account, as its subtitle pretty much reveals, of the men, women and children who were ‘transported’ in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (also of ‘migrant’ children sent ostensibly for better opp......more

Goodreads review by Sarah Blaney on January 28, 2024

Read this over Invasion Day long weekend and really made pause to think who the 26th is even for. Marking the beginning of a genocide or the beginning of brutal penal servitude? 'Australia day’ does not symbolise the establishment of a nation but glorifies a system of oppression by the British empir......more

Goodreads review by Jean-Luc on April 21, 2021

An engrossing and at times very sad look at the highly controversial policies set up by the sucessive British governments from the 17th century onwards to forcefully move their citizens throughout their vast colonial empire. With the help of a large number of primary sources, the author give us a de......more

Goodreads review by Greg on May 04, 2023

Very interesting. I knew about adult convicts being transported from the UK to Australia since 1788 and to America before 1788 but I had no idea about all the other convicts that were transported aground the British Empire to places like Singapore, the Andaman, India, Ceylon, etc. I knew of the chil......more

Goodreads review by ALAN on July 02, 2021

Loved this book. Amazing read.......more