Christine Kenneally: I was thrilled to find out I'm a convict princess

Amateur genealogists are always thrilled when they discover a notable or dignified ancestor in their family tree. But for the Melbourne journalist Christine Kenneally – and, indeed, for any Australian – the real pleasure in digging up the past is the possibility one may chance upon a bit of villainy in the form of a convict.

“When I first found out my great-great-grandfather was a convict in Tasmania, I was thrilled as I got to be a convict princess,” Kenneally says from New York, where she is doing the publicity rounds for her latest book, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures, which has received a glowing front-page review in the New York Times’ Book Review section.

“When I was in high school it was just starting to become cool to be of convict stock.”

Before it became cool it was downright shameful. Australia’s convict descendants went to great lengths to slough off the penal colony stain.

Such heavy historical millstones have long fascinated 46-year-old Kenneally. The Invisible History of the Human Race explores how we inherit not only DNA but the cultural weight of our family histories – the attitudes and beliefs we assume we form on our own.

“I am interested in all this stuff that is passed down that we are not able to see,” says Kenneally, who has a PhD in linguistics from Cambridge University and is a contributing editor for Buzzfeed News.

“It’s about the human stories and how people’s lives can be affected by events that happened many years ago.”

Kenneally points out in the book that the convict shame infiltrated Tasmanian society to such an extent that the island of criminals transformed themselves into one of the most law-abiding places on Earth.

“I think it is safe to assume that 30 years after transportation ended and there were no homicides that it was a sign that everyone was trying to play it straight,” she says.

Kenneally also unpacks a study by the economists Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon, which looks at how mistrust has been passed down in west Africa.

“It showed that the areas that lost the most people to slavers – we are talking many generations in the past – still have the greatest issue with trust to this day,” she notes.

Kenneally concludes that it is empowering for people to understand how history has shaped them. “The book was about making the invisible stuff visible because I think once we understand our past we are better able to make choices.”

Kenneally’s fascination with genealogy was sparked by her family’s steadfast refusal to talk about their ancestors.

She recalls bringing home a primary school project that involved creating a family tree and was surprised by her parents’ response. “They felt like it was an invasion of our privacy,” she says.

She was awed by the ability of a school project to rattle her parents and the beginnings of her curiosity were stoked.

It wasn’t until she was in her early 20s that Kenneally’s father revealed he had been raised by his grandfather after his own father absconded.

“I realised about a year into writing the book that I needed to seek his blessing to include his story, which he gave me,” she says. “This was something that he didn’t want to tell his own children, so it was incredibly generous of him.”

The book moves fluidly between the science of DNA research and the personal stories of people – like Kenneally – who are trying to find out where they come from.

“I did a lot of thinking regarding the personal aspects of the book and I had to really reach down and challenge myself,” Kenneally says. “I consciously wanted to find a way for readers to connect in the same way I do with the science, to find the emotional core of the work.”

Kenneally spent a year formulating the ancestral questions she wanted to tackle and three more writing and gathering material.

“Scientists are not generally drawn to these stories,” she says. “It is not so much that they are anathema to science, but they are not necessarily the object.”

Much to Kenneally’s chagrin, there has been a backlash among many historians against the popularity of genealogy.

“The anti-genealogical movement is quite oppressive; this is just data after all,” Kenneally says. “Many modern historians have actually defined themselves in opposition to it, but this is not just an idle hobby.”

History is full of examples of the evil that can manifest when genetics is used to service hateful ideologies. Kenneally shows up the ridiculous views of late 19th-century American eugenicist Madison Grant, who advocated sterilisation as a way of weeding out the “weaklings”.

Eugenics movements weren’t confined to Nazi Germany, Kenneally notes, but were adopted in some form by Norway, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Russia, France, Mexico, Brazil and Japan in the early part of the 20th century.

“If we do lose sight of that history we will run the risk of going down that path again,” Kenneally says.

While the field of genetics has been abused in the past by governments and ideologues, there is much to celebrate these days and Kenneally can see a future where “the next generation will have major genomic literacy, and not just in maths and English”.

As far as Kenneally’s own ancestral project goes, it has come full circle. Not only did she uncover that all-important convict, but she found out the name of her father’s father and has begun research into whether he has any other descendants.

The “thick mist” that shrouded her family tree has lifted. “It was very much a personal journey and it answered a lot of my questions,” she says. “The book was a way of having a conversation with my Dad.”

• The Invisible History of the Human Race by Christine Kenneally is published by Black Inc and is on sale now