The patriote convicts : a study of the 1838 rebellion in Lower Canada and the transportation of some participants to New South Wales
Date
1977
Authors
Boissery, Beverley Dawn
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Abstract
The patriote convicts were transported from Lower Canada to New
South Wales after their participation in the 1838 Rebellion. It is
contended in this thesis that a prosopographical study, both literary
and statistical, of these convicts - a limited but representative
group - reveals the motivation of the rebels better than a demographical
study of all participants. Many of those taking up arms in the parishes
south of Montreal in November 1838 were motivated by a deeply felt sense
of injustice. Some were angered by the savage suppression of their
compatriots after the failure of the 1837 Rebellion. For others who saw
the gradual breakdown of their habitant, traditional life (in Beauharnois
particularly), the 1838 Rebellion should be more accurately termed a
social riot. This study also brings to light many other aspects of the
Rebellion period usually ignored in the standard texts. The prosopographical
microscope reveals, for example, the political manipulation
which lay behind the subsequent Courts Martial.
The study of the patriote convicts' experiences and perceptions
of life in New South Wales reveals a great deal about the convict
period. Pain, which is an integral part of human life, has been a
curiously ignored subject for social historians - particularly that
felt by the convict settlers of early Australia. While it is well
recognised that there was an excessive amount of flogging, for example,
few have worried about the effects such brutality had on the lives and
values of the convicts and the possible legacies to Australian identity
from such men and women. The patriote convicts felt intense agony
when forcibly dislocated from their loved families and country. This
thesis documents that pain and the efforts made by the convicts from
Lower Canada to remain unaffected by the brutality in early Sydney and it raises questions about the legacy of pain on the emerging Australian
character.
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