Introduction: free, slave, or capitalist society?

Colonial New South Wales has been characterised as a slave society and convictism as a slave labour system. While inexorably bound together, the two concepts of convictism and slavery are not identical, a point which has escaped both contemporary observers and historians. Contemporaries asserted that assignment was slavery. Governors Arthur, Darling, Gipps and Fitzroy believed that assigned convicts were slaves, all governors having had previous experience in colonies where other forms of slavery existed. Quoting Governor Bourke, Lord John Russell declared that convict and slave labour was identical, whether the convict was assigned or in government service. Even Macquarie thought that transportation, with every indulgence, was slavery. The most vehement anti-slavery document, the Molesworth Report of 1838, declared unambiguously that ‘Transportation … is much more than exile; it is slavery as well’. Contemporaries identified convicts with slaves not just because of their brutish treatment at work but because they faced restraints on their freedom of action in the labour market. Similarly, historians have identified convict punishment and the work system with slavery. Ken Macnab and Russel Ward did not differentiate between slave and convict labour and K.M. Dallas viewed convicts, particularly those on assignment, like any other slave category. The fact that convicts might gain a higher living standard than free workers spoke of the efficacy of any slave system, but did not alter the basic fact that convictism was slavery.