Bound with an Iron Chain: How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America

Most people associate convict transportation with Australia, when in reality colonial America served as the first major destination for transported British convicts. "Bound with an Iron Chain" tells the neglected story of the 50,000 convicts who were forcibly shipped to America, auctioned off like African slaves, and made to work on plantations in Maryland and Virginia during the eighteenth century. This forgotten chapter in American history is told through the lives of the government officials who invented this new form of punishment, the convict merchants who got rich off of it, the plantation owners who eagerly bought this form of cheap labor, and the convicts who were separated from their families and friends over the theft of what sometimes amounted to less than one shilling.

Learn more about convict transportation at my website, Early American Crime (www.EarlyAmericanCrime.com).