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The “Vile Commodity”: Convict Servitude, Authority, And The Rise Of Humanitarianism In The Anglo-American World, 1718-1809, Nicole Kayla Dressler

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role that British convict transportation and penal servitude in America played in the early history of humanitarianism. During the eighteenth century, Britons and American’s ideas about moral obligations and suffering changed drastically toward traditionally detested people, including transported convicts, African slaves, sailors, and the poor. Many histories of humanitarianism and human rights have glazed over the subject’s early modern roots; however, more recently scholars have challenged the unilinear and inevitably triumphal narrative of human rights cultures and launched new investigations into the historical foundations of the movement. This study argues that emerging ideas of punishment, morality, …