Irish Republicanism and the Colonial Australian Bushranger Narrative

Abstract

This article examines a range of colonial Australian Irish bushranger narratives in terms of their investments in revolutionary republicanism, arguing that these become increasingly contested and compromised over time. Beginning with the anonymously published novel Rebel Convicts (1858), it looks at how the fate of transported Irish revolutionaries is imagined in relation to colonial settlement and the convict system. It then turns to Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter (c. 1879), highlighting Kelly’s rhetoric of resistance and mapping his affinities with Irish American republicanism. John Boyle O’Reilly was a Fenian activist, transported to Western Australia in 1867. His novel Moondyne (1878, 187..