About Keeping People is Wrong

This book examines the nature of forced or compulsory service, and the name stems from an 1852 newspaper description of an Aboriginal man as “belonging to Mr Andrews”. The language of slavery and being a boss tend to merge into each other, all too easily. Among family and friends, I call this work Bog-snorkelling in a cesspool, due to the loathsome creatures encountered.

Starting with a quick look at classical and plantation (sugar/cotton) slavery, we look at slavery’s poor cousin, indentured servitude in North America, and how indentured worked for apprentices. Then we move onto compulsory labour in Australia (the convict era), and how ‘servants’ were managed, usually badly. This was not slavery, but close, and the trained eye will discern the seeds of slavery.

As an example, apprenticeship and indentures were often a sham.

Australia’s first slaves were sent home in 1819, by Governor Macquarie, who by an odd quirk, had owned slaves, briefly, and freed the lot. Repression came from various Masters and Servants laws. By the 1830s, Australia was importing trainee servants and serfs: indentured Irish, German and Indian workers. The exploitation of youngsters is followed down to Fairbridge and stolen generations, all trained as domestic servants.

More on importing Chinese and Indians, Ben Boyd’s first South Sea Islanders. Using M&S laws to stop people rushing to the goldfields. The rise of the unions, railways and shearer’s strikes, and how ‘Afghans’ came in, far better protected, to work camels.

Some vignettes on blackbirding, some of the more violent blackbirders: this was definitely close to slavery at times. (One case of an islander with a ‘brand’, later cleared.) Real slaves came in from the Sulu sultanate (Philippines) to fish for pearls, and some of the Aborigines involved may have been enslaved.

Some of the workers that you see above were probably slaves, but as pearl divers, they were paid, and some of them earned enough to buy their freedom.

On the cattle stations: how Aborigines were treated as property, cases of violence and murder, remarkably slaver-like behaviour, stockmen in the 1960s, Vincent Lingiari has a win. Finally, a 2020 conviction for slavery in New Zealand. Slavery still happens!

This looks at all of the potentially enslavable groups in Australia, either prisoners or under indentures: convicts; Irish and other orphans or teenagers; Indians; Germans; Chinese; apprentices and unionists; south sea islanders and Indigenous workers. There are common themes in the methods used to oppress and control, and that brings us to the Fairbridge kids and the Stolen Generations.

Most of the studies I can identify look only at one group, and that means we miss the common themes. Three groups provided undeniable slaves: Indians in Sydney in 1816; Sulu pearl fishers in the 1880s; and Aborigines in the pearl fisheries and cattle stations of WA, some of whom were bashed and murdered.

A few books have looked at the plight of the south sea islanders in the hands of the blackbirders, but this work provides a synoptic view of how the people traffickers worked, and the facile lies they told. The alternative title (Involuntary Belonging) comes from that1852 SMH news report of a Wiradjuri hero as “belonging to Mr. Andrews”!

This book reveals where the bodies are buried, and who buried them, right across Australia’s history. Nobody else has done that, and this is a hot topic, right now.

Chapter breakdown:

1. Defining slavery: Valuing freedom, slavery in ancient times, Egypt, Greece and Rome, sugar slavery, the Somerset and Knight cases outlaw slavery in Britain, the emancipation movements in Britain.

2. Apprentices and indentures, apprentice teachers, indentured servants in America (some of them undoubtedly kidnapped, and it was coerced labour), then a surprise that I may how slavery may have made us human.

3. Convicts to Australia as a way of cleansing Britain on the model of indentured servants: some case studies, how they were shipped, compulsory labour, management and works done, road gangs, the challenge of keeping wages as low as possible.

4. Justice and convict management: tickets of leave, pardons, some of the bad and bent judges, because unsympathetic judges helped keep manual labourers (and wages) under control.

5. Punishment of convicts and others, the life in the Female Factory, Sudds and Thompson, a wicked Archdeacon, the Bushranging Act, some of the system’s victims. This was nothing to what happened in the late 19^th century, but the seeds were sown here.

6. Masters and servants: how the underclass, even when ‘free’ were constrained, how people were blocked from gold hunting, how the gold rush really started, how young people were tamed, indentable colleens who frightened off pirates, Stolen Generations, the Fairbridge failure, runaway servants. How the Masters and Servants laws operated.

7. The end of transportation and changes in the labour supply meant we needed to cast around for other supplies of menial labour, and lots of it, to keep wages low. Giving Australia its name, an innocent convict, colonial rivalry, the Catalpa rescue, the side issues of the convict era.

8. Finding foreigners who might be biddable, including the Irish and the Germans: enough hungry paupers would force wages down. Squatters and how to spot them. The first Australian owner of slaves (Macquarie briefly owned 300!) and the first Australian slaves (chapter 10, sent home by Macquarie!).

9. The wool trade and managing the shepherds and the sheep, on to the shearers’ strikes, and the rise of the unions. Workers standing up for their own rights would become important when they looked at the welfare of their darker-skinned siblings.

10. Indian imports, starting with some slaves in 1816, then Indian labourers for a short while, largely unsuccessful, and replaced by Chinese, then Afghans to work camels after Harry the Camel shot his owner.

11. Chinese servants before the ‘coolies’, their travails, a court case in Goulburn, Chinese reaching Australia to hunt for gold, anti-Chinese riots, free Chinese in Australia.

Kanakas on a pineapple plantation.

12. South Sea Islanders, how Ben Boyd started the trade, and was stopped, the villainous blackbirders. There were other less villainous ones, but there was definitely something close to slavery going on here, with slaughter, kidnapping, beating and more. The mindset of the farmers was close to slavery.

Quelling an attempted break-out by kidnapped 'blackbirds' on the brig Carl. This was murder.

13. The pearl fishers, how the trade began and was managed, slaves from the Philippines, the likelihood of exploited or enslaved Aborigines, the treatment of convicted Aborigines, Tjandamurra fights back.

14. Two Wiradjuri heroes. On the cattle stations: how Aborigines were treated: some cases of violence and murder, remarkably slaver-like behaviour, on to stockmen in the 1960s, Vincent Lingiari has a win. Finally, a 2020 conviction for slavery in New Zealand. Slavery is still out there.

Nobody else has done this, according to an Australian emeritus professor of Southeast Asian Modern History (name available if you are a publisher). He wrote:

The subject matter of your manuscript numbering 95,000 words is both timely and important Slavery or servitude in all its manifest form and variation in Australia has not been tackled yet in a single volume. 

It actually grew to 106,000 words after that. If you believe in this book, badger a publisher to pick it up. You, or the publisher, can get a sense of my work here.

For a sample from this work, read about the earliest Australian slaves here.