Secondhand. Fair to good condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. Stamps on inside pages. Book has wear to book edges and corners, particularly the tail edge. Marks on foredges and some pages. Dust jacket has minor wear to edges and is now enclosed in glossy protective cover.
The first book in Michael Cannon's Australia in the Victorian Age. The book focuses on the immigration of people of widely differing types - convicts, military men, merchants, squatters, gold-seekers, and "coloured" immigrants.
The book goes on to show how these people were shaken down by circumstances into two distinct Australian classes: the exploiters and the exploited. The favoured circumstances of the governing class are depicted and contrasted with the suffering of the convict men, women and children, lower-class immigrants, unsuccessful diggers, Chinese coolies, kanakas and so on.
However, because conditions in the new country often enabled the poor to become wealthy, there was a high degree of upward and downward mobility, replacing the rigidity of the English class system. (book flap)
Some books contain terms that reflect the authors' views, or those of the period in which the item was written or created, but are not considered appropriate today. These views are not the views of The Book Merchant. These books are offensive to many and should be seen in their historical context.
