Convict transportation in Early Modern England and America: surplus persons and fallen souls

Cox, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9939-078X and Sweeney, S. (2025) Convict transportation in Early Modern England and America: surplus persons and fallen souls. Journal of Historical Criminology. ISSN 3066-991X (In Press)

Abstract/Summary

This article highlights the significance of religion in the historiography of convict transportation to early modern America. Drawing from seventeenth and eighteenth-century archival sources, pamphlets, and treatises, we examine how religious ideas about idleness, sin, and redemption framed the lives of convict transportees. We argue that religious elites justified transportation as an opportunity for redemption, yet transportees experienced "contingent redeemability"—granted mercy in England but reduced to expendable labor in colonial America. By bringing religion ‘back in’ to historical criminological analyses, we demonstrate how Protestant theology and economic imperatives jointly structured this punishment system, offering insights into the genealogy of Anglo-American penal institutions.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127614
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Law Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > History
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item