A sense of entitlement: society, status and anxiety in Van Diemen’s Land 1820-1840

Submission note: Thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Humanities, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

During the 1820s and 1830s a group of British migrants settled in what was then known as Van Diemen's Land (later to be renamed Tasmania). This group of people were mostly of the middle rank, relatively wealthy but lacking the land and status they craved. Despite Van Diemen's Land’s role as a convict colony, they were attracted by the Colonial Government’s promise of free grants of land there and the hope that they might there by become colonial landed gentry in what they saw as a Little England that just happened to be on the other side of the world. As masters of convict servants they hoped to build their fortunes and establish a vast landed estate, and enjoy the prestige of being the First Rankin this new society. However, this thesis argues that their presumptions and expectations were to be thwarted in many ways. They were to discover that their new home was not a Little England, and the environment and politico-social world they encountered there would come to irrevocably and distinctively shape the way this particular colonial society was to develop over the nineteenth century, and arguably until today. It would also impact on the way this group of people would come to be singled out by successive generations as the villains of the Australian colonial story.