Matthew Cunneen Matthew Cunneen i(25544032 works by)
Gender: Male
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1 Fragmented Lives, Fragmentary Archives : Collective Biography in Australian Convict History Matthew Cunneen , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Biography and History , no. 7 2023; (p. 75-93) 'The transportation of convicts to Australia was a substantial bureaucratic undertaking. From 1788 to 1868, some 163,000 people were transported to its shores. Underpinning this mass movement of people were various processes for documenting individuals that amounted to what convict historians have termed a ‘paper panopticon’, so called because of the variably immense and detailed nature of the information recorded about convicts and their lives.  These data ranged from essential biographical information, such as the age, native place and occupation of convicts, to descriptions of their physical characteristics. As the historian Janet McCalman has recently written, the ‘men, women and children in the Tasmanian convict records are arguably the most carefully described and recorded ordinary people of the nineteenth- century world’.  The convicts transported to New South Wales and Western Australia were not far behind them. While the surviving archives for those colonies are in some ways less varied and detailed than their Van Diemen’s Land counterparts, they nonetheless offer promising opportunities for detailed reconstructions of individual lives. Complementing, supplementing and enriching convict records has been the ongoing digitisation of archival material—including vital life records, newspapers, gaol and immigration records—most relevant to tracing the lives of these people. What emerges from the consolidation of these sources is, in McCalman’s words, the ‘demographic contours of lives’.' (Introduction)
1 A Flawed Hero : Understanding the ‘real’ Matthew Flinders Matthew Cunneen , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 449 2022; (p. 56)
— Review of Mathew Flinders : The Man Behind the Map Gillian Dooley , 2022 single work biography 'Few names are so ubiquitous in Australian culture or hold such a significant position in its history as that of Matthew Flinders. More than one hundred sites across Australia have been named in his honour, commemorating his accomplishments as a navigator, hydrographer, cartographer, and scientist. Among them are several statues featuring Flinders with Trim, his ever-faithful pet cat and companion, as well as numerous geographic landmarks, electoral districts, and a university.' (Introduction) 
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