The mass of literature produced in the last few years on penal transportation in the British Empire – and to a certain extent also in the French and Dutch empires – has not been paralleled by research and publications on convict transportation in the Iberian empires. As far as the Spanish Empire is concerned, Ruth Pike's 1978 article and 1983 monographFootnote ¹ remain the most relevant (albeit in many ways incomplete) surveys of this topic, with numerous other publications containing just scattered information on specific geographical areas. In the case of the literature on the Portuguese Empire, the penal exiled (degredados) are usually mentioned only in passing and are often completely ignored in studies on crime and punishment, migration, and colonization. This state of the art has created a double distortion: on the one hand, in a manner similar to what happened with the Atlantic slave trade in relation to slavery as a whole, convict experiences in the British (and to some extent the French) empire have become the standard for convict transportation and convict labour as such; on the other hand, experts in the Spanish and Portuguese empires have largely felt justified in ignoring the topic, and have either affirmed the complete exceptionality of those empires in relation to the issue or postulated the marginality of this historical phenomenon as a whole.

There are two fundamental exceptions to this rule as far as the Portuguese empire is concerned, however, both stemming from the decades-long research of Timothy J. Coates. Before co-authoring with Geraldo Pieroni a volume (in Portuguese) on Castro Marim, an exile destination in Portugal, he first dedicated an extended study to penal exile and dowries as methods of colonization.Footnote ² Now we have another monograph under review which picks up chronologically from where that study stopped, i.e. the mid-eighteenth century. Their nature and goals, however, are considerably different. The most recent volume not only focuses exclusively on convict transportation, leaving state-sponsored migration of orphans aside, it also addresses its topic in less depth and in considerably less space. As the general editor of the book series, George Bryan Souza, repeatedly stresses in his preface that this is indeed a “brief volume” (p. xiii), and the author himself acknowledges that one of his major objectives has been “to create a ‘source book’ with sufficient primary data to assist future researchers as well as to suggest the wealth of social possibilities offered by research in this area” (p. 9).

Why this is the case, and why the reader is not offered a more comprehensive study such as that realized in Convicts and Orphans, is not explained. The choice has consequences though, the most important being a general pattern throughout the volume of briefly sketching a number of issues and then leaving them for future research. Some readers might find this somewhat disturbing and even superficial; others will appreciate the generosity of a senior scholar offering his broad knowledge of the topic, the literature, and the sources to future generations of researchers.

This is not to say, however, that no broader, and convincing, arguments are put forward, for on at least three issues extensive information is coupled with important interpretations. First, the following estimates of the number of degredados are provided: 1200–1550: 21,000; 1550–1755: 50,000; 1755–1822: 12,000; 1821–1881: 11,000; and 1881–1932: 10,000 (p. 131). No doubt, these estimates will be repeatedly contested and revised in the future, but anyone aware of the complexity of the sources from which the data are drawn will appreciate Coates's efforts. Moreover, the author is able to show the complex reality behind the numbers, especially when, in the fourth chapter, he carefully distinguishes four categories of prisoner – petty recidivists (addidos), political prisoners (deportados), vagrants (vadios), and military deportees – and provides statistics on the crimes for which they were sentenced. Furthermore, he repeatedly refers to the female convicts (degredadas) and discusses the specificity of their experiences of captivity and forced labour.

Second, the differentiated composition of the convicts is matched against the interplay of coexisting forms of punishment. The first and second chapters in particular provide a clear picture of the shifting combinations of internal exile, imprisonment, penal exile (degredo), public works, and galley servitude across the decades. This approach allows Coates not just to address traditional themes such as penal reform in nineteenth-century Portugal from a new perspective, it also shows the impact of, for instance, the phasing out or abolition of capital punishment, galleys, and public works on the one hand, and the rise of the penitentiary and overseas transportation on the other.

Third, the relationship between penal transportation and colonization is dealt with. Throughout the volume, and most significantly in the third and sixth chapters, the author provides important insights to assess the outcomes of convict transportation without resorting to monocausal explanations. Moreover, he addresses the reasons why, and the circumstances under which, convicts became agents of colonization in official discourse and practice. In the third chapter, the shifting interplay of political, military, economic, and penal motives is shown for nineteenth-century Angola and, more marginally, Mozambique. More generally, as the title of this volume suggests, the analysis of the role of convict labour in nineteenth-century Portuguese “New Imperialism” is a central feature of this monograph, the most important case study being the Luandan prison (depósito).

Besides these three broader areas of interpretation, Coates's book works as a true agenda for future research. Coates explicitly mentions the need to study vagrants, the social impact of degredo in Portuguese society, and ex-convict networks in the colonies. He points to the necessary focus on think tanks such as the Sociedade de Geographia de Lisboa and the Instituto de Investigação Cientifica Tropical, the need for “much longer and more complete studies” (p. 132) of the Depósitos in Luanda and Mozambique, and the importance of accessing local archival sources that the author has been unable to use owing to lack of time and financial resources. The centrality of the relationship between the military and convict populations surfaces repeatedly in this volume, in, for instance, the form of convicts impressed into the military, soldiers supervising convicts, and the military organization of convict labour. Studies of convictism in the Spanish Empire would equally benefit from this perspective, while other potential areas of research – political prisoners and the relationship between convict labour and the abolition of chattel slavery for instance – would allow the kind of broad cross-imperial comparisons that are much needed in order to strengthen the field.

To the author's list of merits, the fact that chapter 6 sketches a comparative analysis of convict labour in the Portuguese, British, French, and Spanish empires should be added. Lamentably though, only a few pages are devoted to this fundamental endeavour, and, while undoubtedly interesting, the overall hypothesis that the Portuguese experience was fundamentally different (pp. 124–125) is not entirely convincing. Coates rightly points to the post-punishment policy. Portugal, unlike most other imperial powers, tended to allow convicts to return home. One wonders, however, whether the “radical gender imbalance” (95 per cent male) in the convict population really constituted a Portuguese specificity, and whether the “much larger indigenous population” in the Portuguese African colonies does not so much point to differences vis-à-vis the British and French colonial settings as to similarities with the Spanish ones. Finally, the alleged absence of “the cruel and sadistic aspects of both the British and French systems”, which the author substantiates by the lack of evidence of major tensions between convicts and guards, might signal differences in the sources rather than in actual practice.

The maps, charts, illustrations, and the rich appendices included in the volume are useful, as are the index at the end of the volume and the brief portraits of “major personalities” presented in the introductory pages. Altogether, they mirror the preliminary, and yet inspiring, nature of this study, and its successful quest to set a basis for future research.