ABSTRACT
Ned Kelly is perhaps Australia's most famous criminal but many know little about him beyond his striking homemade armour and his general reputation as a rebel against authority. This chapter places Kelly in his social context, showing how his life and death drew together many threads of Australian history: the long shadow of convictism, age-old enmities between the English and Irish, Australians’ self-image as a rural people in the face of increasing concentration of population in urban areas during Kelly's lifetime and the struggle of the Aussie battler against the elites. While Kelly and his associates could be understood as a rural criminal underworld, it will be suggested that he is best understood as one of Eric Hobsbawm's social bandits, with parallels in many other countries, from Robin Hood to Pancho Villa to Billy the Kid, all of whom acted against authorities which were widely viewed as oppressive. This role helps to explain why this career criminal and murderer became and remains an Australian icon.
