Recent research has revealed the myriad connections – encompassing people, capital, labour practices and ideologies – between Australia’s colonisation and chattel slavery in the Atlantic World. People who had benefitted from owning enslaved people or investing in the slave economy, or who had themselves been enslaved, became equally entangled in colonisation in the Australian colonies.
This history is intriguing and important, but also challenges received understandings of Australia’s past – which rightly focus on the impact of colonisation on the Indigenous peoples of Australia, but do not always recognise the role of slavery, whether in the Atlantic world or on this continent. In this seminar, Professors Lydon and Laidlaw discuss how they have opened up important historical themes by tracing individuals and cohorts between the Atlantic World and Australia’s colonies and reflect on the challenges of communicating their findings to the public and applying them to contemporary conversations about heritage, identity and citizenship.