Labouring for the settler: Jane Lydon,’”Forced Free Labour’: Connecting the Abolition of Slavery and Settler Colonisation in the Thought of Henry George Grey’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Labouring for the settler: Jane Lydon,'”Forced Free Labour’: Connecting the Abolition of Slavery and Settler Colonisation in the Thought of Henry George Grey’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2025

20Sep25

Abstract: This article investigates the connections between emancipation in Britain’s slave colonies and settler colonisation through the policies of Henry George Grey, 3rd Earl Grey (styled Viscount Howick 1807–1845). When Grey became Under- Secretary for the Colonies in his father’s administration in late 1830, he turned his attention to emigration, colonial land administration, and slavery. As an adherent of the new principles of colonisation – promoted over the previous eighteen months by Edward Gibbon Wakefield – Grey furthered policies to commodify and appropriate colonial land, compelling the landless to labour for them. Notably, between 1831–1833, in dialogue with Colonial Office staff, Grey applied these principles to a radical slavery amelioration Order in Council, and subsequently to a scheme for abolishing slavery in the Caribbean, aiming to compel emancipated slaves to continue to work. Disappointingly for Grey, this plan was dropped at the last minute in favour of a compromise with the West Indies interest. However as Grey later pointed out, its principles remained a blueprint for colonial policy over following decades, including issues of free labour, imperial land policy, colonisation, and labour emigration. This article re-examines the shared principles within Grey’s vision for the amelioration, abolition and aftermath of slavery and their application to numerous post- emancipation contexts beyond the new settler colonies of Australasia, to demonstrate the ways in which achieving the abolition of slavery and expanding territory through conquest were interrelated, not separate, processes. These principles map the emergence of new forms of labour coercion within the development of a global free labour market, and reveal the ways in which the process of privatising Indigenous Country was foundational to racial capitalism.

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