School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications

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    Australia’s deep connection with enslavement
    Arnott, G ( 2020-06-16)
    What is sometimes forgotten in discussions of slavery in the British Empire is that the British Parliament paid out £20 million in restitution after it finally abolished slavery in 1833. That is around £300 billion ($546 billion) in today’s money, and it represented about 40 per cent of treasury’s annual income. Before the GFC bank bailouts, it was Britain's largest transfer of public wealth into private hands. It shows what can be done. People harmed in the name of private enterprise can be compensated on a large scale, and economies are not crippled. In fact, like the GFC bailouts, the £20 million had a stimulatory effect, turbo-charging a range of capital works in the private sector, such as railways.
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    James Stirling (1791-1865), enslavement and Western Australia
    Arnott, G (Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery | https://lbsatucl.wordpress.com/, 2022)
    Since 2020, the Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery project, in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, has been examining the role of British slavery in the 1829 colonisation of Australia’s western third. The project was stimulated by the LBS database and the work of historians showing the importance of slavery networks, capital, commerce, and ideas to imperial endeavour across the Indian and Pacific oceans in the early nineteenth century. One of the expectations of the project was that researchers would identify further individuals linking British slavery to Western Australia. How many slave-owners relocated from the Caribbean to Australia’s first privately funded colony in the emancipation period? To date, a search for ‘Western Australia’ under ‘Notes’ in the LBS database produces fifteen individuals.
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    Lachlan Macquarie was a slave owner and he wasn't the only one: It's time to update the history books
    Arnott, G (ABC News, 2021-12-15)
    Many Australians accept that history is contested and constantly evolving.  A quick glance at a 1950s Australian history book shows how far we have come. Those books tended to say more about Britain's royal family than Australia's First Nations. Today, the reverse is true in Australian schools. In September 2021, then Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge declared curriculums were "downplaying modern Australia, downplaying Western civilisation, downplaying our liberal democracy, which has created so much wealth and opportunity". Proposed changes to the national curriculum reflect an "overly negative view of Australia".