Trouble on the Roads: Using Digital Techniques to Explore Convict Protest in Van Diemen’s Land

It is now known that convicts engaged in widespread work-related dissent in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, and that dissent climaxed in 1833–34 undermining penal transportation as a system of labour exploitation. This article explores resistance patterns within a particular road party, Notman’s Gang in Northern Tasmania between 1831 and 1834. An important aim is to demonstrate how quantitative data can be used to place qualitative observations within a wider context. Using a range of digital techniques in conjunction with qualitative analysis, we demonstrate the gang operated as a de facto penal station marked by levels of punishment surpassing those meted out at the notorious settlement at Macquarie Harbour. We also chart the extraordinary level of collective resistance in this gang, identifying their origins, the key activists and the administrative impacts of that resistance. We show the inter-linkages between different modes of protest and the relations and networks that developed between groups and individuals, using these to provide new insights into patterns of convict dissent.