In her new book,
Cleansing the Colony: Transporting Convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen's Land (Otago University Press, 2017),
Kristyn Harman, a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Tasmania, explores the little-known story of 110 convicts transported from New Zealand to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in the 1840s. Harman argues that the story of these cross-Tasman convict laborers sheds light on the efforts of colonial New Zealand to "cleanse" itself from its burgeoning criminal underclass during a time of political change.