Convict labour and the Western empires, 1415–1954
Year: 2013

Between 1415, when the Portuguese first used convict labour in the capture of the Moroccan city of Ceuta, and 1954, when the French penal colony in Guiana closed, the European powers transported hundreds of thousands of convicts, and employed them as unfree labour in overseas colonies. Because convict transportation has either been framed historiographically within the history of crime and punishment, or viewed as part of the history of one nation or empire, there has been a general failure to u