Historical Information Sheet No 2: Modern Slavery and Historical Slavery.

‘Slavery’ is a slippery but emotive word that means different things to different people. About 12.5 million Africans were imported to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries through the slave trade. At least one million Africans died on the long voyages. They were ‘chattel slaves’, which has a specific legal meaning—that the individuals involved were purchased and owned, and could be sold, that they were not paid, and that their children were under similar restrictions. At least one million died on the long voyages to the Americas. Around 472,000 were brought to North America, nearly three-quarters of them before the start of the American Revolution (1775–83). British legislation prohibiting British ships from carrying slaves came into force in 1807 and onwards from 1808 no slave could be landed in a British colony. Further legislation passed in 1811 made the trafficking of slaves a felony. The final Bill passed through parliament in 1833 and manumission of the entire British slave population occurred in 1834, although the full rights of employers of ex-slaves over their labour continued. Ex-slaves were compelled to provide 45-hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters for four to six years after supposedly being liberated. Further agitation cut short ‘apprenticeships’ in 1838. Britain had made its ex-slaves pay for their own manumission and gave financial compensation to the ex-slave owners, yet did not compensate or assist the ex-slaves.

France was reluctant to follow Britain, particularly after a failed experiment between 1794 and 1800s, but relented in 1848. Spain followed in the 1850s. The slave trade was abolished worldwide, at least officially by European nations, in 1851, although it continued in many localised instances, such as the Dutch East Indies right through the nineteenth century. Slavery became illegal in the United States of America after the Civil War (1861-65), in Cuba in 1883 and in Brazil in 1888. Legal termination of slavery was one thing: changing the related socio-economic and concomitant juro-political structure of an ex-slave society was another. When slaves, granted their freedom, continued living side-by-side with the owners of the land, capital and means of producing a mono-culture, little of real importance actually altered. Legal servitude was replaced by socio-economic servitude with the labourers working, sometimes under indenture, for their ex-owners.

Even Captain James Cook seems to have had a slave on the Endeavour (who died in South America before the ship reached Australia) and there were ex-West Indies and North American colonists in Australia who had owned slaves, or their family money came from slavery. Colonists in Australia could have imported slaves until the first decades of the 19th century, although there is no evidence that this occurred.

The Melanesian labour trade operated on the cusp between slavery and totally free labour. Nineteenth-century indenture contracts, widely used to employ Pacific Islander sugar, pastoral and maritime labourers in Queensland, have been describe as a new form of slavery and recently as the illegitimate child of slavery. Another term used is Blackbirding, meaning to steal people from Pacific Islands. The word is often applied to the entire forty years of the Pacific labour trade. However, indenture comes in the form of a contract for a specific time period and a wage, and the children of indentured labourers are not bound by indenture. Certainly, the early Pacific recruiting practices involved kidnapping, but over the decades this did not continue, although the whole practice has been called ‘cultural kidnapping’. Early on they did not understand the indenture agreements, and the governments had little control over the process. The Pacific labour trade dates back to 1847 in NSW and continued in Queensland between 1860 and 1904, into the Federal years. It involved 62,000 contracts and around 50,000 individuals, overwhelming male, brought to Queensland until early 1904. Federation brought the White Australia Policy and the enforced deportation of several thousand South Sea Islanders.

I have always argued that Pacific indenture was an unsavoury practice but was not the same as slavery. To use the word slavery loosely is emotive and inaccurate. Similarly, I seldom use the word Blackbirding as it has different meanings to different people. To some it means to kidnap labourers in the Pacific, while others use it to describe the entire 40 years of the Queensland labour trade. It is too imprecise to be used as a standard term.

Its a fraught area of history. The Australian, New South Wales and Queensland governments have acknowledged that the Pacific labour trade was unsavoury at best and slave-like at its worst, and all three governments have apologised to the descendants. Australian South Sea Islanders believe that indenture was slavery by a different name. However, historians are careful to differentiate between illegality and willing enlistment, which they believe was actually the situation for the majority.

Add to all this First Nation Australians who were held against their wills and not paid for work, or paid in rations, and once more we hit up against definitions of what is slavery. First Nation Australians were forced into various slave-like forms of unfree labour. This applied particularly in pastoral areas and domestic service. The introduction of ‘Protection’ legislation, Christian mission and government reserves in the later decades of the nineteenth century, which continued to operate until the 1970s and 1980s, can be viewed as legalising slave-like practices, similar to indenture. Undoing the rort of ‘wages held in trust’ has been a long battle.

In today’s usage the meaning of the word ‘slavery’ is changing and is now sometimes called ‘modern slavery’. The terms ‘slave’ and ‘slavery’ are often used as moral judgements quite free of the nineteenth century meaning. In 2018 the Australian Government passed a Modern Slavery Act, acknowledgement that ‘modern slavery’ exists—forms of human exploitation which have new meanings quite different from those in the nineteenth century. Alongside this resurgence there has been constant pressure from the media, which blithely ignores the differences and elides the several meanings of ‘slavery’. The precedents cited for the 2018 legislation all relate to chattel slavery elsewhere and not to Pacific Islanders or First Nation Australians. Many of the victims of ‘modern slavery’ in Australia are disadvantaged recent migrants, both legal and illegal. Some of them are Pacific Islanders in Australia on tourist visas but working illegally, which has echoes back to Blackbirding.

Two more terms have recently entered the Australian vocabulary: ‘cancel culture’ and ‘woke politics’. ‘Cancel culture’ first entered the Macquarie Dictionary in 2019. It means to ostracise a person from social or professional circles, usually in the form of online shaming. They are ‘cancelled’ or have their views boycotted. It makes individuals less likely to speak out for what they feel is right. ‘Woke politics’ means a perceived awareness of issues concerning social and racial justice. The word ‘woke’ has been ‘weaponised’ against what are seen as conservative views based on historical precedent and law. Upholders of the differences between slavery and indenture, particularly when they apply to non-Caucasians are beginning to be attacked under new categories. I have recently been told by a leading Australian South Sea Islander that it is “Most annoying being told that we are not slaves…”. “We are in an era of truth-telling…” “History is subjective in relation to the person writing it and their privileges. “Language truly is an interesting art form and I won’t be bullied.” There are elements of ‘Woke Politics’ in all of this.