“No Taxation Without Representation”

In the Thir­teen Amer­i­can colonies, ten years pri­or to the Rev­o­lu­tion, there was what was known as the Stamp Act cri­sis, which, in Boston in par­tic­u­lar, brought forth that icon­ic cry.

By rep­re­sen­ta­tion it was meant there was no Amer­i­can seat­ed in the British Parliament.

“But,” accord­ing to his­to­ri­an Bri­an Dem­ing, “the idea nev­er gained trac­tion in Britain.” As one British crit­ic of the time wrote: “Shall we live to see the spawn of our Trans­ports occu­py the high­est seats in our Com­mon­wealth? Degen­er­ate Britons! How can ye enter­tain the humil­i­at­ing thought!”

The key word here is “Trans­port.” It ref­er­ences the many thou­sands of trans­port­ed felons who had been shipped to the colonies for forced labor by way of pun­ish­ment in the 18th Century.

Dur­ing the 18th Cen­tu­ry, Eng­land became a cen­ter of great wealth and mass pover­ty. Crime against prop­er­ty became com­mon­place. In reac­tion, the British gov­ern­ment enact­ed harsh laws to pun­ish minor and major offenders—a col­lec­tion of laws that col­lec­tive­ly came to be known as “The Bloody Codes.” One major pun­ish­ment was trans­porta­tion, by which chil­dren, women, and men were sent to British Amer­i­can colonies and sold into forced labor.

At the time of the Rev­o­lu­tion there was a colo­nial pop­u­la­tion of two mil­lion. Some fifty thou­sand were (or had been) these trans­port­ed felons. (Hence the quote cit­ed above.) It had become a busi­ness. It was 1619 when the first Africans were brought to Amer­i­ca as slaves. There was a time when enslaved whites and blacks labored together.

This is the con­text in which my new­ly pub­lished The End of the World and Beyond takes place. In book one (of this two part series) The Unex­pect­ed Life of Oliv­er Cromwell Pitts, my epony­mous hero becomes entan­gled in crime and British Law. The sequel tells the sto­ry of what hap­pened to Oliv­er when he was is trans­port­ed to Mary­land and sold.

Book­list reviewed the book thus: “Though dark­er than its pre­de­ces­sor, this sequel is equal­ly fine. The plot­ting is alto­geth­er laud­able, the set­ting beau­ti­ful­ly real­ized, and the char­ac­ters high­ly empa­thet­ic. Espe­cial­ly good is the voice Avi has con­jured for Oliv­er, just antique enough to evoke eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry dic­tion and syn­tax. One thing is cer­tain: it may be the end of the world but there is no end to the plea­sure Avi’s lat­est evokes.”