Accounting for Australia: calculation and reason in early colonial management

This thesis examines the role played by accounting in the development and operation of a discourse in disciplinary punishment that emerged in late eighteenth century England. In particular, it investigates the use of accounting as a strategy by the state to effect a change in discourse from a public and physical punishment to one that focused on an economic reform and improvement of the individual. It also analyses the application and transformations of disciplinary punishment and accounting by the state in its two projects: the hulks and the penal colony at New South Wales.