From Slavery to Colonisation: Land and Labour

Across Tuesday 29 November and Wednesday 30 November 2022, this symposium explored the connections between colonisation and slavery.

Online event: Click to view program

Recent interest in the legacies of British slavery has focused on the movement of people, capital, ideas and practices from the Caribbean to the newer settler colonies of Australasia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. The costs for Britain of the momentous decision to abolish slavery in the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape Colony by passing the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ​were offset by the opportunities offered by its new colonies.

This symposium seeks to bring slavery and settler colonisation into a shared analytic frame by exploring the transition from one to the other. We see emancipation in the Caribbean as a transitional moment rather than a turning-point and seek to identify continuities between these imperial systems. Presenters consider connections focused on land and labour, such as Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s program of ‘systematic colonisation’, company colonisation and investment, reproduction, labour regimes, punishment, and the expropriation of Indigenous land.

- Slavery to Colonisation Day 1
→ View seminar recording here

- Slavery to Colonisation Day 2
→ View seminar recording here