The university as a dispossessing settler colonial landlord: Joel Barnes, ‘Australian universities and Atlantic slavery’, History Australia, 2022 | settler colonial studies blog

The university as a dispossessing settler colonial landlord: Joel Barnes, ‘Australian universities and Atlantic slavery’, History Australia, 2022

05Nov22

Abstract: This article seeks to open a conversation about Australian universities and Atlantic slavery. To an extent previously unexamined, Australian universities benefited financially, administratively and intellectually from the proceeds and legacies of slavery in the Caribbean and the American South. The research follows the examples of American and British universities’ examinations of their historical links to slavery, and builds upon recent scholarship that has emphasised the significance to the growth of Australian settler colonialism of the large-scale compensation paid to slave-owners following emancipation in the British Empire in 1833. The article reports on the findings of a survey of around 1,200 benefactions to the six oldest Australian universities from 1850 to 1939; it also examines the family and financial links to slavery of educators and key administrators in Australian universities’ early histories. The Dixson family of tobacconists, donors to several universities, is considered as an extended case study. The significance of universities’ connections to slavery in the Australian context has to be understood in terms of imperial transformations and expansions of settler colonialism, and to be thought and told in relation to universities’ Indigenous histories.

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