ABSTRACT
Convict transportation to Australia is considered as part of the global migrations, a major feature of the last three centuries leading to the creation of new nations (Pearson 1999: 4). While convicts form only a small proportion of all migration in this period (involving less than one million convicts), their contribution to the colonisation process was disproportionately great. Australia, French Guiana, New Caledonia and Singapore could not have been developed without such a labour inflow initially, and the growth of Gibraltar, Bermuda, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Penang, Malacca, Mauritius and Siberia would have been retarded without convict labour (Nicholas 1988: 37).
