ABSTRACT
An influential historical interpretation has demonstrated the function of the anti-slavery movement for Britain's ruling classes concerned to maintain the British social order against the transformations of industrial capitalism. At the intersection of humanitarianism and transnational histories and their insights into global networks, a growing concern with the relationship between British anti-slavery and settler colonial histories has recently emerged. In Australia, recent work has begun to investigate the longevity of anti-slavery discourse and, in particular, the ways that the advocacy of anti-slavery has been invoked despite the absence of a formal history of 'slavery'. This chapter explores Phillip's society and its views regarding the nascent anti-slavery movement, including the opposition established at this time between enslaved African and British poor - and expands Davis's analysis of the relationship between anti-slavery and industrial capitalism to consider global processes of emigration and settler colonialism.
