James Boyce

James Boyce is multi-award winning historian who is the author of five books. His first book, Van Diemen’s Land, was seen by Richard Flanagan to be ‘the most significant colonial history since the Fatal Shore’ and for Tim Flannery it was ‘a must-read for anyone interested in how land shapes people.’ Boyce’s follow-up work, 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia, was the Age newspaper Book of the Year. Van Diemen’s and 1835 won or were short listed in many Australian literary prizes including the Prime Ministers Literary Awards, the Tasmanian Book Prize, and the Victorian, Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

His third tome, Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World, was described by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post as ‘a brilliant and exhilarating work of popular scholarship.’ The Starred Review in the Publishers Weekly recommended Born Bad as an ‘exceptional.. work, innovative and creative in surprising ways’. Boyce then returned to documenting the history of his island home.

Losing Streak: How Tasmania was Gamed by the Gambling Industry had a major influence on local politics, was long-listed in the Walkley Book Awards, short-listed in the Ashurst Business Literature Prize and won the People Choice Award in the Tasmanian Book Prizes.

Boyce’s most recent book, Imperial Mud: the Fight for the Fens, saw his focus shift to the home of his ancestors – the once vast wetlands of Eastern England. Using approaches honed on the colonial frontier, Boyce documents the resistance to the drainage and enclosure of the Fens by indigenous custodians fighting their country’s conquest and destruction by a centralized state.