Investigating the history of vagrants in colonial Australia and New Zealand, this book provides insights into the histories and identities of marginalised peoples in the British Pacific Empire. Showing how their experiences were produced, shaped and transformed through laws and institutions, it reveals how the most vulnerable people in colonial society were regulated, marginalised and criminalised in the imperial world.
Studying the language of vagrancy prosecution, narratives of mobility and welfare, vagrant families, gender and mobility and the political, social and cultural interpretations of vagrancy, this book sets out a conceptual framework of mobility as a field of inquiry for legal and historical studies. Defining ‘mobility’ as population movement and the occupation of new social and physical space, it offers an entry point to the related histories of penal colonies and new ‘settler’ societies. It provides insights into shared histories of vagrancy across New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand, and explores how different jurisdictions regulated mobility within the temporal and geographical space of the British Pacific Empire.
By:
Catharine Coleborne
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781350252691
ISBN 10: 1350252697
Series: Empire’s Other Histories
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 02 May 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Table of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements 1. Approaching the colonial histories of vagrancy: an introduction 2. Vagrancy laws in the colonial world 3. The policing and prosecution of vagrants 4. The everyday lives of vagrants 5. Worlds of vulnerability 6. Adventure, wandering, or predation? Regulating mobility 7. Epilogue: The precarious present Annotated guide to data and digital sources Bibliography Index
Catharine Coleborne is Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where she is also the Head of School of Humanities and Social Science. Her research interests include historical understandings of mobility, mental illness, institutions, medicine, law and health in colonial Australia and New Zealand.
Reviews for Vagrant Lives in Colonial Australasia: Regulating Mobility, 1840-1910
A deeply researched, commanding account of an important but neglected area of history. Coleborne applies her magisterial expertise in law, society and mental health to analyse the colonial dispossessed and disenfranchised. Sensitive storytelling places humanity at the forefront. An essential contribution to the study of mobility in precarious times. -- Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
