BOOK: Van Diemen's Land
Date: 01 March 2008
Van Diemen’s Land
James Boyce
Published by Black Inc.
RRP $49.95
Almost
half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen’s Land.
There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo
economy and a new way of life.
James Boyce shows how the convicts were changed by the natural world they encountered. Escaping authority, they soon settled away from the towns, dressing in kangaroo-skin and living off the land. Behind the official attempt to create a Little England was another story of adaptation, in which the poor, the exiled and the criminal made a new home in a strange land. This is their story, the story of Van Diemen’s Land.
This is a landmark history of Tasmania. It breaks new ground in the controversial landscape of Australian hisstory. It explores ' ... the tension produced by siting the principle gaol of the empire in what proved to be a remarkably benevolent land.' Boyce argues that this paraadox is not only at the heart ofTasmaman history but has radical implications for the nation as a whole.
Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen's Land. Boyce claims these convicts found 'a veritable Eden'. A place where from the earliest settlement 'the health of the population was far superior to that of the labouring classes of England.' According to Boyce, in previous histories of Australian settlement this bounty has gone unexamined.
This is a book filled with new facts and new ideas about one of the most dramatic episodes in British coloniallism. It tells of changing relations between bushrangers and lieutenant governors, convicts and Aborigines, and of the growth of a unique society.
THE AUTHOR
James Boyce lives in Tasmania. His essay "Fantasy Island" was the central contribution to Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2004. Boyce is also the author of God's Own Country? The Anglican Church and Tasmanian Aborigines.
THE CRITIC
“The most significant colonial history since The Fatal Shore. In re-imagining Australia’s past, it invents a new future.” – Richard Flanagan
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