Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the lives of 142 convict men and boys who were assigned to the Tocal estate in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. The study is based on a detailed reconstruction of their assignment and punishment records that were destroyed in the nineteenth century, complemented by other, personal information. The study tests the findings of previous, broader studies of New South Wales convicts against the data collected for the Tocal estate, develops an in-depth understanding of the day-to-day operation of the estate’s nearly all-convict workforce, and demonstrates how changes in policies of colonial convict administration impacted on the individual lives of Tocal’s convicts and on the estate itself. Case studies and micro-narratives reveal a picture of the lives of the convict men and boys assigned to Tocal and provide a window through which to glimpse their inner, personal worlds, to listen for the faint echoes of their voices and to appreciate their individual responses to their bondage, their heartbreaks and hopes, joys and fears, pleasures and pain as they served their time at Tocal. The thesis exposes the dynamics of assignment in action, explores convict working conditions, lifestyle and interaction with Aborigines at Tocal. It reveals the complex web of power relations between master and convict servants, the nature and extent of secondary punishment, the struggle for many to achieve emancipation and their fate once free. The level of local detail and analysis provided is uncommon among studies of convicts in New South Wales, enabling a closer examination of some of the more contentious and problematic claims of convict historiography, and in the process, partly supporting and partly disputing some revisionist interpretations. The thesis proposes that the complex and diverse individual experiences of Tocal's convicts are best understood, not by sweeping generalisations, but by a conceptual framework encompassing a series of dualisms or dichotomies that include paternalism and punishment, domination and resistance, deference and defiance, mateship and collaboration, trust and betrayal, freedoms and restraints, and cruelty and comfort.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/222145 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Walsh, Brian Patrick |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright 2008 Brian Patrick Walsh |
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