REVIEWER: Graham Seal

Valerie Fitch has produced a valuable contribution to a relatively little-known chapter of Western Australia's early European history. As she writes in the Preface, her book 'is a social history concerning the emigration of a large and diverse group of persons to the Swan River Colony, between the foundation years of 1829-1832.'

Those persons were indentured labourers from all over Britain, though principally from the southern counties. Fitch calculates from often-incomplete records, that there were approximately 900 such indentured workers and 92 'masters' who migrated to the colony. She also points out that the Swan River was the only Australian colony where indentured white workers were imported in large numbers to form the basis of the colony's labour force.

The book focuses on the nature of the Indenture system, an adaptation of written agreements relating to apprenticeship, 'and the social composition, circumstances and origins of the early workforce'. Important though this topic is from a historical perspective, it obviously runs the risk of being a dry read. The author has avoided this by weaving the stories of a number of the indentured workers through the text, providing a human aspect to the bare facts and figures.

The hard times that dogged England after the winning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, combined with industrialism and urbanisation, created a vast number of labouring poor. The ancient system of parish relief was adapted and augmented with the dreaded workhouses in which paupers were provided with minimal means of subsistence.

As the numbers 'on the parish' increased, so did alarm among the wealthier respectable classes and the government about the cost of all this welfare. When the Swan River Colony was promoted throughout England in 1829 a number of 'entrepreneurs – early examples of a type still familiar in WA - saw a chance to make or increase their fortunes by killing two birds with the one stone. The excess labour in England could be profitably shipped to the Swan to provide the much-needed workforce for the fledgling colony. Prominent among such entrepreneurs was Thomas Peel, whose enormous land grant was the basis of the modern Peel region.

The real attraction for these entrepreneurs was that they were to be given grants of land proportional to the number of labourers they brought to the colony. The contracts between the entrepreneurs and the workers were a variation of the medieval indenture agreements and bound men, and often wives and children, to five or seven years of service to their 'master' in WA.

The considerable opportunities for exploitation and other forms of rorting opened up by such a system, which required only a witness and a mark from the indentured male, are examined. The other side of the story is also addressed. Its seems that some indentured workers were inclined not to work too hard when they discovered how great was the demand for labour in the colony. A number of the entrepreneurs went broke and even Peel ended his days in relative poverty compared with his English wealth and status.

Due to these and other problems documented in the book, the indentured migration system was phased out in 1831. By then many indentured servants had been freed from their contracts, though quite a few (it is not possible to tell exactly how many due to loss of many records) of the migrants had still to work out their time before they could have their chance to participate in the colony's growing prosperity. The fates and fortunes of a number of the indentured migrants are followed through in the latter part of the book, including those of the Gallop family, forebears of the current Premier who has contributed a Foreword to this book.