Anti-Slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land?

This book explores how the anti-slavery movement in Britain and Australia shaped the Settler Revolution and colonization in Australasia, arguing that abolition posed problems to which colonial expansion provided the answer. It also highlights how the shared concerns of abolitionists, slave-owners, and colonizers embedded a plastic ideology of 'free labor' within post-emancipation imperialist geopolitics, justifying the proliferation of new forms of unfree labor and defining new racial categories.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 232 pages
\n Publication date: 16 March 2021
\n Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
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Bringing the histories of British anti-slavery and Australian colonization together offers a fresh perspective on both. This book delves into the anti-slavery movement on an imperial scale, contending that colonization in Australasia played a crucial role in emancipating enslaved people in the Caribbean, while the Settler Revolution was significantly shaped by abolition. The anti-slavery campaign was intricately linked to the administration of the empire and its diverse populations, as well as the radical transformations necessitated by industrialization and rapid social change in Britain. Abolition presented challenges that colonial expansion sought to address, closely linking the end of slavery to systematic colonization and the displacement of Indigenous peoples. By defining slavery in the Caribbean as the antithesis of freedom, abolition had a lasting impact by relegating other forms of oppression to lesser status or denying them altogether. Through the shared concerns of abolitionists, slave owners, and colonizers, a flexible ideology of "free labor" was embedded within post-emancipation imperialist geopolitics, justifying the proliferation of new forms of unfree labor and creating new racial categories. The celebration of abolition has overshadowed the continuities and transformations of slavery that continue to shape the modern world.

\n Weight: 468g\n
Dimension: 160 x 241 x 19 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781138334724\n \n