Van Diemen's Land was the original name used by Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to explore Tasmania. He named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt in honour of Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies who had sent Tasman on his voyage of discovery in 1642.
In 1803, the island was colonised by the British as a penal colony with the name Van Diemen's Land, and became part of the British colony of New South Wales. In 1824, Van Diemen's Land became a colony in its own right. In 1856 the colony was granted responsible self-government with its own representative parliament, and the name of the island and colony were changed to Tasmania.
From the 1830s to the abolition of penal transportation (known simply as "transportation") in 1853, Van Diemen's Land was the primary penal colony in Australia. Following the suspension of transportation to New South Wales, all transported convicts were sent to Van Diemen's Land. In total, some 75,000 convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land, or about 40% of all convicts sent to Australia.
Male convicts served their sentences as assigned labour to free settlers or in gangs assigned to public works. Only the most difficult convicts were sent to the Tasman Peninsula prison known as Port Arthur, mostly re-offenders.
Female convicts were assigned as servants in free settler households or sent to a female factory (women's workhouse prison). There were five female factories in Van Diemen's Land.
Convicts completing their sentence or earning their ticket-of-leave often promptly left Van Diemen's Land. Many settled in the new free colony of Victoria, to the disgust of the free settlers in towns such as Melbourne.
Tensions sometimes ran high between the settlers and the "Vandemonians" as they were termed, particularly during the Victorian gold rush when a flood of settlers from Van Diemen's Land rushed to the Victorian gold fields.
Complaints from Victorians about recently released convicts from Van Diemen's Land re-offending in Victoria was one of the contributing reasons for the eventual abolition of transportation to Van Diemen's Land in 1853 .
They are (the Vandemonians) united in their declaration that the cessation of the coming of convicts has been their ruin
Eventually, in order to remove the unsavoury connotations with crime associated with its name (and its homophonic connection to "demon"), in 1856 Van Diemen's Land was renamed Tasmania in honour of Abel Tasman. The last penal settlement in Tasmania at Port Arthur finally closed in 1877[2].
The term is not used much, but in a review of a new book of the era the Australian newspaper chose the title of the review as Vandemonian vanity[3]
Popular culture
Music
Van Diemen's Land is mentioned in the Australian folk song "The Wild Colonial Boy".
Van Diemen's Land is often mentioned in the works of Flogging Molly, such as in the song "Every Dog Has Its Day."
"Van Diemen's Land" is the title of the second track from the rock band U2's album Rattle and Hum. The lyrics were written and sung by The Edge. The song is dedicated to a Fenian poet named John Boyle O'Reilly, who was deported to Australia because of his poetry [4].
The chorus to the English folk song "Maggie May" says "They've sent you to Van Diemen's cruel shore."
Van Diemen's Land is the subject of the Irish song, "Back home in Derry". The music was written by Canadian song writer Gordon Lightfoot and the lyrics by the famous Irish RepublicanBobby Sands. It is most famously sung by the Irish bard Christy Moore.
Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band record a version of "Van Diemen's Land" in No Roses (1971)
Carla Bruni sings the poem 'If You Were Coming In The Fall', by Emily Dickinson on her album No Promises. The song includes a reference to Van Diemen's land "subtracting till my fingers dropped; into Van Diemen's Land".
Dropkick Murphys also mentions Van Diemen's Land in their song "Black Velvet Band" off of their album "Blackout"
Literature
Van Diemen's Land is the setting of Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan (published 2002), which tells the story of a man who is transported to the island, and runs afoul of the local (and rather insane) authorities.
In Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian, one of the characters in the Glanton Gang of scalpers in 1850s Mexico is a "Vandiemenlander" named Bathcat. Born in Wales he later went to Australia to hunt aborigines, and eventually came to Mexico, where he used those skills on the Apaches.
Van Diemen's Land is mentioned in Emily Dickinson's "If You Were Coming in the Fall"
From "The Potato Factory" by Bryce Courtenay (1995): "... subtracting till my fingers dropped; into Van Diemen's Land." This is a quote from Emily Dickinson's Poem "If You Were Coming In The Fall".
In Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726), the country of Lilliput is described as being ?to the north-west of Van Dieman's Land? [sic].
In the novel The Convicts by Iain Lawrence, young Tom Tin is sent to Van Diemen's Land on charges of murder
In the novel The Terror by Dan Simmons (2007). In this novel about the ill fated exploration by HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to discover the Northwest Passage. The ships left England in May 1846 and were never heard from again, although since then much has been discovered about the fate of the 129 officers and crew. References are made to Van Diemen's Land during the chapters devoted to Francis Crozier.
Van Dieman's Land is the setting of the novel English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (2000), which tells the story of 3 eccentric English men who in 1857 set sail for the island in search of the Garden of Eden. The story runs parallel with the narrative of a young Tasmanian who tells the struggle of the indegenous population and the desperate battle against the invading British colonists.
Read Christopher Koch's novel : "Out of Ireland" to fully grasp what being a convict in Van Dienem's Land actually meant.
Robson, L.L. (1983) A history of Tasmania. Volume 1. Van Diemen's Land from the earliest times to 1855Melbourne, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195543645.
Robson, L.L. (1991) A history of Tasmania. Volume II. Colony and state from 1856 to the 1980s Melbourne, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195530314.
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