Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Plantation owners who purchased the labor of convict servants also acquired complete legal control over them. They could rent the service of the convicts out to another plantation owner. They could transfer ownership of the convict servants to someone else [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Convict transportation raised important issues of identity and freedom for the convict, the plantation owner, and the other servants. Once on the plantation, convicts had to renegotiate their social position. They suddenly found themselves bound to a fellow Englishman who [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Most of the transported convicts who ended up in Virginia lived north of the York River, mainly in the Northern Neck between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers. About three quarters of Maryland’s convict population lived in four of the [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. While the American press criticized the practice of British convict transportation, Daniel Defoe enthusiastically supported it in his novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Moll Flanders is the most well-known character in literature to have been [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. That the British policy of transporting convicts to America was not well received by colonists should come as no surprise to anyone. American colonists complained that Britain was using their land as a dumping ground for their undesirables in the [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Convicts from Great Britain made up the largest number of forced immigrants from Europe to America in the eighteenth century, with kidnapping victims and forced political exiles trailing far behind. One of the ideas behind the creation of convict transportation [...]
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Once transported convicts arrived in America and were prepared for sale, prospective buyers were invited on board to enjoy some rum punch and inspect them. The Sale Potential buyers examined the convicts in the same way as they did slaves: [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. At the end of their voyages across the Atlantic, most convict ships entered the Chesapeake Bay and headed for a port in Virginia or Maryland. The captain then sent for the factor, an American representative of the convict merchant, who [...]
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Once the convict merchant was ready to make the trip to America, the convicts were released from prison and loaded onto the ship, along with dry goods and perhaps a few indentured servants. Convict voyages were generally timed to leave [...]
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Jonathan Forward, after being appointed “Contractor for Transports to the Government,” ran his new business out of his house on Fenchurch Street in Cheapside. He now deployed his fleet of slave and merchant ships–many of which he named after himself–to [...]
Read my new book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America, an Amazon.com bestseller! Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.
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