The coolie labour crisis in colonial Queensland
Article
Article Title | The coolie labour crisis in colonial Queensland |
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ERA Journal ID | 34266 |
Article Category | Article |
Authors | |
Author | Griffiths, Phil |
Journal Title | Labour History: a journal of labour and social history |
Number of Pages | 26 |
Year | 2017 |
Publisher | Liverpool University Press |
Place of Publication | Haymarket, NSW, Australia |
ISSN | 0023-6942 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.5263/labourhistory.113.0053 |
Web Address (URL) | https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/article/57620 |
Abstract | The conflict over 'coolie labour' was of great importance in colonial Australia. Like the debates and conflicts over Chinese immigration and Pacific Islander labour, the outcome helped shape dominant national strategies around labour, immigration and nationalism, summed up in the idea of a White Australia. Unlike the issue of Chinese immigration, it drove major capitalist interests into a prolonged and bitter conflict with each other. Sugar planters in Queensland demanded the government facilitate the large-scale recruitment of indentured labourers from British India, and liberal obstruction of this led the planters and their allies to campaign for separation from Queensland. This article describes this conflict, the divisions and rival perspectives within the ruling class that shaped it and the reasons that almost the entire southern establishment, Conservative as well as Liberal, galvanised against the planters. It outlines the role played by British anti-slavery thought, and the belief that such a plantation colony in the north would develop a radically different social and political structure, one that was a threat to the free-labour economy. |
Keywords | White Australia, indentured labour, coolie, Queensland, North Queensland Separation movement, Griffith, McIlwraith, Macrossan, slavery, sugar industry, liberalism |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 430302. Australian history |
Public Notes | © 2017 Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. Permanent restricted access to Published version, in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. |
Byline Affiliations | School of Commerce |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q4822/the-coolie-labour-crisis-in-colonial-queensland
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