American Citizens, British Slaves: Yankee Political Prisoners in an Australian Penal Colony 1839-1850

In 1840, eighty-two Americans were transported from Canada to a life of penal servitude half a world away in Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. As members of the Patriot Army that had conducted border raids into the colony of Upper Canada in 1838, they saw themselves as courageous republican activists, impelled by a moral duty to liberate their northern neighbors from British oppression. Instead of heroic liberators, they became political prisoners of Her Majesty's government. Sent to Van Die...