Sydney’s sugar rush: how the colony’s most powerful profited from Australia’s slave trade

Australia likes to think its history is untainted by slavery but a new book traces how a who’s who in the NSW capital profited from the capture and sale of ‘blackbirded’ Pacific Islanders Emelda Davis is a former Sydney city councillor, community advocate and second-generation descendant of blackbirded South Sea Islanders . Otherwise known as enslaved people. Australia has often sought to reassure itself that at least the nation is untainted, unlike Britain and the US, by a heinous history of slavery. But “the evidence of the Australian slave trade through blackbirding is everywhere – it hides in plain sight”, Davis says. Continue reading...
2026-08-09 15:00:18