Eager for Labour: The Swan River Indenture by Valerie Fitch

Book Description

Secondhand. Fair condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. Stamp on imprint page. Damage to title page top from date due slip removal. Now covered with blank ex libris bookplate sticker. Creasing to covers. Wear to foredges. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Body text and binding are still in good condition.

This book describes the emigration of a large and diverse group of persons - some 92 masters and approximately 900 indentured servants - to the Swan River Colony from 1829 to 1832.

It describes the widespread recruitment by some ambitious entrepreneurs, using dubious contracting procedures and the wholesale shipment of young persons to work there, i.e. the guaranteed provision of unconscionably cheap labour by using the legal controls of the indenture system and the unanticipated and eventually disastrous outcome of this practice. (publisher blurb)