The story of Australia’s black convicts has been erased from our history. Recovering it in this deeply researched, fascinating and richly illuminating book, Santilla Chingaipe offers a fresh understanding of this fatal shore, and shows how empire, slavery, race and memory have shaped who we are.
On the First Fleet of 1788, at least ten men of African descent were transported as convicts. By 1840 that number had risen to nearly 500. Among them was a man who became Australia’s first bushranger, and another who became the ferryman whose name was given to Sydney’s Blues Point. There was also a revered Khoi San leader from South Africa; William Cuffay, a prominent figure in the Chartist movement in the UK, who played a role in the development of the labour movement in Australia; and the man who went on to be the first person to successfully grow sugar in Australia, James Williams. The youngest black convicts to be transported were two girls from Mauritius.
But although some of these lives were often documented and their likenesses depicted (including in the National Portrait Gallery), their stories have been erased from history: even their descendants are often unaware of their ancestry.
Black Convicts recovers some of these fascinating stories, spanning Africa, the Americas, Europe and Australia. It follows the lives, conviction, transportation, and in some instances the fate of these people in exile. More profoundly, it adds another vital layer to our understanding of European settlement in Australia by placing it in its global context, showing how directly it was related to – and sustained by – the slave trade. Most of these black convicts had been enslaved, and were transported for resisting their enslavement.
Moreover, many of the goods the British empire and its colonies relied upon, such as sugar and rum, were produced by enslaved people. The whole economic model of a colony built by the labour of convicts was derived from the framework of slavery. Indeed, Australia would not have been colonised were it not for the slave trade. Black Convicts shows how Britain profited from this trade, and from the systems of labour exploitation that went beyond slavery, including the convict system, indentured servitude, racism, capitalism and patriarchy.
Black Convicts uncovers the complexities of Australian colonisation and offers new insights into convict transportation. It will change the way we view Australian history.
