Early Australian Convict Transportation - Revision history

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 ''Gary L. Sturgess holds the New South Wales Premier's Chair of Public Service Delivery at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and the University of New South Wales. He is also Professor of Public Service Innovation at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He is a leading international authority on the design and management of public service markets, and brings to the study of convict transportation a practical understanding of the design and management of effective public service contracts. He is the former Director General of the NSW Cabinet Office and was awarded the Order of Australia in 2005 for services to government.''
-''His great, great grandfather, James Sturgess, was sent to Australia in 1847 for stealing books. Three of his ancestors - two convicts and a marine - sailed to Australia with the First Fleet.''
+''His great, great grandfather, James Sturgess, was sent to Australia in 1847 for stealing books.''
 Gary Sturgess can be contacted at '''gary@sturgess.org'''

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 == What I'm Reading ==
-'''Paul A. Van Dyke, 'Merchants of Canton and Macao, Vol. 2: Success and Failure in Eighteenth Century Chinese Trade', Hong Kong University Press, 2016.'''
+'''Erica Charters, 'Disease, War and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces during the Seven Years' War', University of Chicago Press, 2014.'''
-For more than a decade, Paul Van Dyke has been writing the story of the small group of Chinese merchants which had a monopoly on dealing with the European merchants who traded with Canton from the early 18th century until the middle of the 19th century. None of their records have survived, but Paul has been reconstructing the history of the various houses by trawling through the papers of the European East India Companies, which have survived, in vast quantities.
+One of the reasons why Australian convict transportation is worthy of study by a wider community of scholars, is that this was one of the earliest examples of the state becoming involved in public health management. The surgeon superintendents who were appointed to manage the convicts throughout the voyage from 1815, were responsible for ensuring that the convicts cleaned themselves and their berths, and that they regularly changed their clothes, and not merely for attending to them when they were ill. Prior to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, former naval surgeons could not be spared for this service, but from the turn of the century, the Home Office and the Transport Board issued instructions to the ships' surgeons, and scrutinised their conduct upon arrival in the colony. So successful was this scheme, that it was later adopted on emigrant ships, and on vessels carrying indentured servants from India to the West Indies and Africa.
-This is the final book in a series which began with 'The Canton Trade' in 2005; the first volume of 'Merchants of Canton and Macao' was published in 2011, and for the most part dealt with Hong merchants who had retired, went bankrupt, or died by the 1780s. In this long-awaited volume, Van Dyke deals with give of the Hong families, and less well-known figures who played a significant role in the porcelain and silk trades.
+Public health regulations were issued on some troop ships throughout late 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly on voyages to and from the East Indies, but there is (as yet) no evidence that it was routinely done. Erica Charters provides us with yet another precedent. It is understandable that military commanders would be concerned about the physical wellbeing of their men: what was not clear to me until I recently read her book, was that this involved them in supervising their dietary and sanitary arrangements.
-Around a half of the convict transports and storeships that sailed to New South Wales in the decade and a half prior to 1800, returned via China, taking home a cargo of tea on behalf of the East India Company, so the significance of his work for our understanding of the Botany Bay trade is considerable.
+Once again we find ourselves in the seemingly mundane world of resource management and logistics. Charters belongs to that tradition of naval studies which is concerned with bureaucracy and administration. This movement was launched by Ian Christie at University College London in the 1960s and 1970s, and subsequently pursued by his students Mary Condon, David Syrett, Norman Baker, Roger Knight and Roger Morriss. It was, in a sense, an outgrowth of John Brewer's work on the fiscal-military state, paying close attention to how public resources were spent, as Brewer had been concerned about their collection.
-In this volume, for example, Van Dyke provides detailed accounts of the only three Co-hong families that survived into the 1790s:
+Inevitably, this led the members of this school, most notably Syrett, Baker and Knight, to study the role of contracting in the repeated success of the British military throughout the long 18th century. Even the American War of Independence, the one war which the British did not win, was remarkable in the logistical support that was provided for an army operating four thousand miles from home.
-That of Monqua, who acted as security merchant for the Surprize (1790), the Bellona (1793), the Indispensable (1794), and the Prince of Wales (1797).
+Roger Morriss concluded his 2011 book, 'The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendancy', with the observation: "It was the capability of the military bureaucracy which assured Britain if victory at sea and of an effective army in its land campaigns. The success of this state bureaucracy in turn depended upon reform in government, partnership with the private sector, and experience in managing support for the armed forces by sea."
-That of the Wu family, which included Geowqua, whose name was employed as security agent for the Charlotte (1788), the Scarborough (1790) and the Royal Admiral (1793), and his cousin, Puiqua, who was supposed to act for the Indispensable (1796), but seems not to have finally done so.
+Roger Knight concluded his 2010 study of naval victualling throughout the French and Napoleonic Wars: "Success in war was not only dependent upon a plentiful supply of money, but also the ability to spend it to best effect. It has long been established that the British state was more adept at tapping taxpayers' purses than its rivals, but its ability to spend that money wisely was equally important. It did so through a multitude of departments much like the Victualling Board. Their administrative acumen and their effective engagement with and management of countless contractors gave Great Britain the decisive edge in the Great Wars with France."
-And that of Poankeequa, who acted for the Justinian (1790), the Young William (1795) and the Britannia (1797).
+Erica Charters has taken a similar approach to the management of disease in the military, with particular focus on the Seven Years War, and it is thus unsurprising that it was Roger Knight who referred me to this book. Charters argues that 'Britain's fiscal-military power was necessary for victory, but it was also the conservation of manpower and the prudent use of resources that ensured global success. . . The successful fiscal-military state was a caring fiscal-military state, one that paid attention to and invested in the welfare of its armed forces'. (p.3)
-The detailed workings of the China trade were explained by Van Dyke in his earlier books, but this volume provides important detail on the decline of the porcelain trade, which had begun to lose its significance by 1788 when the first of the Botany Bay ships arrived. Some of the difficulties which the First Fleet ships experienced in finding suitable blue and white chinaware arose from the growing ambivalence among the directors of the East India Company, and the difficulty in providing the Chinese merchants with confidence in making advance orders.
+Because of the theories of disease that prevailed at the time, particularly the miasma hypothesis as to the dissemination of disease, the health of the troops was seen as a question of good management. This was particularly so with the crowding diseases, most notably typhus (known as among soldiers as camp fever, and among convicts, as gaol fever). While the vector which spread typhus would not be known fun til the early 20th century, the importance of ventilation, exercise and clean quarters was widely recognised (albeit for the wrong reasons). An outbreak of camp fever reflected very badly on the senior officers. While it was entirely misconceived, the miasma theory drove a search for systemic solutions.
-Whilst in London, I also collected a copy of Patrick Conner's 'The Hongs of Canton'. Conner is an art dealer in St James's who specialises in historical paintings related to the East India Company and the China trade. This was published in 2009, but it provides an excellent companion to Paul Van Dyke and Maria Kar-Wing Mok's 'Images of the Canton Factories', just published and recently reviewed on this page.
+It would not be until the 1930s that the role of Vitamin C in preventing scurvy would be understood, but military officers and medical practitioners of the mid-18th understood that fresh fruit and vegetables were fundamental in the fight against this disease. This was not discovered by James Lind or James Cook. The problem was that they had no way of preserving fruit and vegetables on a long ocean voyage or through the long northern winters. But this fact - the recognition of a link between diet and scurvy - meant that an outbreak of the disease in circumstances where it could have been prevented reflected very badly on the managerial capabilities of the officers in question.
-−
-- Gary L. Sturgess, 4 July 2016
+Military commanders ordered seeds from their headquarters, they planted gardens so as to have a supply of fresh vegetables in the spring and summer, and they were criticised by the press and by the general public when they presided over large mortality rates among their troops.
 == What's New ==

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 * [[A Letter of Credit for the First Fleet]]
 * [[Provisions for the First Fleet]]
 == Contents ==

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 | row 5, cell 3
 | [[Bathing]]
-| row 5, cell 5
+| [[Mutinies]]
 | row 5, cell 6
 | [[Naval Agents]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 07:19, 5 July 2016
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	* [[A Letter of Credit for the First Fleet]]		* [[A Letter of Credit for the First Fleet]]
		+	* [[Provisions for the First Fleet]]

	== Contents ==		== Contents ==

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 * [[First Fleet]]
 * [[First Fleet & the Abolition Movement]]
 * [[Counterfeit Coins]]
 * [[Lady Juliana]]

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 * [[Voyage of the Lady Penrhyn from Port Jackson to Macau]]
 * [[Transportation Contracts]]
 * [[Commodore of the Fleet]]
 * [[William Matthews]]

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 | [[Provisions]]
 | [[Legal Authority over the Convicts]]
-| row 2, cell 6
+| [[Contracts of Effectual Transportation]]
 | [[Crew]]
 |-