Anti-Slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land? (Empire and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000)

Synopsis

Bringing the histories of British anti-slavery and Australian colonization together changes our view of both. This book explores the anti-slavery movement in imperial scope, arguing that colonization in Australasia facilitated emancipation in the Caribbean, even as abolition powerfully shaped the Settler Revolution. The anti-slavery campaign was deeply entwined with the administration of the empire and its diverse peoples, as well as the radical changes demanded by industrialization and rapid social change in Britain. Abolition posed problems to which colonial expansion provided the answer, intimately linking the end of slavery to systematic colonization and Indigenous dispossession. By defining slavery in the Caribbean as the opposite of freedom, a lasting impact of abolition was to relegate other forms of oppression to lesser status, or to deny them. Through the shared concerns of abolitionists, slave-owners, and colonizers, a plastic ideology of ‘free labour’ was embedded within post-emancipation imperialist geopolitics, justifying the proliferation of new forms of unfree labour and defining new racial categories. The celebration of abolition has overshadowed post-emancipation continuities and transformations of slavery that continue to shape the modern world.

Copyright:

2021

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

232 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780429817335

Related ISBNs:

9780429445187, 9781138334724, 9780367740238

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

03/23/21

Copyrighted By:

Jane Lydon, The right of Jane Lydon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Australiana

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.