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This entry explores the intersecting histories of British slavery and the anti-slavery movement and the colonization of Australia. Focusing on the crucial period between the American Revolution and the French and Caribbean revolutions (1776–1793), I review the ways that debates about slavery, penal discipline, and transportation map changing ideas about race, labor, and rights. This history reveals the role of the anti-slavery movement within imperialism and its imbrication with the apparatus of colonial government. The celebration of British abolition of Caribbean slavery has tended to obscure the impact of slavery on the development of a global labor system in two related ways: First, the prominence of transatlantic slavery has masked the long-term, global story of the role of coercive labor in imperial expansion, including its...
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Lydon, J. (2019). British Slavery and Australian Colonization. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_156-2
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