Skip to main content

What are the similarities and differences between slaves of the Americas and convicts sent to Australia?

In both cases, the British Empire shipped thousands of people across the ocean by force and without their consent, where they ended up establishing a new population on a new continent. In both cases, the process was violent, oppressive, and dangerous to the people being transported.

But there are some vital differences between the two.

Perhaps the most important is how the people were selected.

Africans who were sold into slavery were chosen first of all for their race and skin color, and only secondarily as convicted criminals or prisoners of war (as these were the Africans that were most likely to be sold into slavery by the existing African societies).

Prisoners sent to Australia were all convicted criminals, most of them as far as we can tell given legally-valid trials in the British courts of law. (Whether these trials were fair or the laws they were based on were just is a more difficult question.) The Africans who were sold as slaves could have otherwise been free individuals; the Brits who were transported to Australia would have otherwise been imprisoned or executed in Britain.

Another key difference is what happened to them once they arrived.

Africans sold into slavery were immediately put to work, predominantly on plantations, given only the barest minimum of food and housing, and offered no pay and no chance of quitting or working anywhere else. Many were beaten. Families were forced apart and people were "bred"---that is to say, raped and their children sold---as if they were livestock animals.

Prisoners sent to Australia, on the other hand, were given surprisingly free rein; the British government apparently reasoned that once they were so far away, they could do no harm, so it was easier to simply leave them alone under minimal guard and supervision.

Many prisoners were made to work under poor conditions for low wages, but this was not so different from free workers at the time, and other prisoners even became wealthy and powerful in Australian society as business owners or political leaders. Most of the prisoners were separated from their families (as prisoners typically are), but not all; and the prisoners included both men and women, and many started new families upon arrival. Likewise, many of the soldiers sent to provide supervision brought their families along and started a new life in Australia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more