Public Lecture: "Writing history, making race: slave-owners and their stories," Melbourne, 16th April

How did ideas about race develop across Britain and Australia in the early nineteenth century? Much attention has been paid to the movement for abolition and emancipation, less to the pro-slavers who made sustained efforts, with some considerable success, to defend 'their' property and their interests. In this lecture I will make the argument that the interventions of British and Caribbean slave-owners in the debates over the slave trade and slavery between the 1770s and the 1830s were critical to the ways in which race came to be understood in Britain. I will then explore some connections between these slave-owners and their descendants and the white settlers who made Australia their home in the early nineteenth century.

Thursday 16th April 2015
6.00pm – 7.00pm