Slavery was outlawed in the British Empire, including Australia, by 1833. Unambiguous legislation consolidating these Acts of Parliament and prohibiting slavery was passed in 1873. Australia also ratified the Slavery Convention in 1926 and again in 1953 when the Convention was amended.
Slavery has been illegal in the (former) British Empire since the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade of 1807, and certainly since 1833. Slavery practices emerged in Australia in the 19th century and in some places endured until the 1950s.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
The colonial governments tried to regulate the trade, and the British navy was active in pursuing the worst of the blackbirders. With the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, the law that underpinned the White Australia policy, such overseas indentured labour practices came to end.
When was slavery abolished in Australia? Under pressure from the British anti-slavery movement, the newly formed Australian government banned slavery in 1901 and ordered islanders to be repatriated.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who made the suggestion of the name we use today.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as New Holland, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland ) and subsequently anglicised.
Genetics. Genetic studies have revealed that Aboriginal Australians largely descended from an Eastern Eurasian population wave, and are most closely related to other Oceanians, such as Melanesians.
Examples of blackbirding outside the South Pacific include the early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at Nickol Bay and Broome, where aboriginal Australians were blackbirded from the surrounding areas. Practices similar to blackbirding continue to the present day.
Blackbirding died out only in 1904 as a result of a law, enacted in 1901 by the Australian commonwealth, calling for the deportation of all Kanakas after 1906. This article was most recently revised and updated by Letricia Dixon.
The 1967 referendum was held and overwhelmingly approved to amend the Constitution, removing discriminatory references and giving the national parliament the power to legislate specifically for Indigenous Australians.
The date of 26 January 1788 marks the proclamation of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia. Records of celebrations on 26 January date back to 1808, with the first official celebration of the formation of New South Wales held in 1818.