The Fatal Shore: The epic of Australia's Founding

Australia/US connection

This book was purchased for preparation for our only trip to Australia. The travel guide book we have talks about visiting prison/ museum and this sparked my interest in learning more about the history. The Aboriginal story of Australia is pretty well documented, but I knew very little about the English penal colony history.
The connection that threw me a loop, is after 1776, and the Revolutionary war, the US refused to have any more English convicts brought to her shores (In History class, all I remember is the Mayflower...) among other reasons, because 47,000 slaves were coming to our shores yearly from the African continent, greater numbers than England could send for cheap labor.
England had chosen to not build or repair their prisons, so kept sending them to off-shore countries, and Australia was that far-off colony that could be easily forgotten about.
I am only into chapter 3, and appreciate the amount of information Robert Hughes has that is not included in school history books. I think the trip to Australia will be much more interesting for having read this book, and from today's economic wows, I also see historically, Americans, as well as other Western cultures, are addiction to cheap labor (whether it is on our shores, or in developing/under developed countries).

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

An Aussie 'Must Read'

A vast, absorbing tale of Australia's beginnings. It was a wonderful introduction before our trip Down Under, but by itself the book is a fascinating history. How does a great country arise from a penal colony? This book answers the question.

Boring

I could not finish this book. How mistreated and destitute the convicts were is overstated and reiterated throughout not only the book or each chapter, but on almost every page.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.