Freed slave settlement in Aust

[Melvin Loh]

Would it be feasible to project an ATL where freed slaves from America, and other parts of the New World if desired, are able to establish a colony somewhere in Aust ? Would such a free black settlement necessarily have developed like Liberia OTL, with the establishment of an Americo upper class vs the indigenous tribes ? Would British colonial authorities have consented to such a development ?

OTL, there were a few African-Americans who played a significant role in Aust hist, esp when large nos., mostly seamen who jumped ship, came to Victoria during the 1850s Gold Rush. Some prominent individual blacks included John Joseph, a Georgia-born ex-slave from NY who played a key role in the 1854 Eureka Stockade uprising at Ballarat, being tried and acquitted for the murder of 1 army officer IIRC during the authorities' storming of the diggings, and the 1st Aborigine commissioned as an officer in the Aust Army during WWII, Lt Reg Saunders (who eventually rose to the rank of Capt after service in Greece, Crete, the Mideast, and New Guinea, and commanded a coy of 3RAR in Korea), actually was descended from a Negro sailor originally from North Carolina who jumped ship during the goldrush and settled in country Victoria. Could there possibly be a POD for a colony of American blacks in Aust based on the contribution of such individuals ? Also, towards the end of WWII, there were many white Australians who, based on the general experience of interacting with African-American soldiers sent to Aust and treating them as equals to a greater extent than in Jim Crow America, wouldn't have minded black ex-servicemen, settling in the country (although this was totally against the Aust govt's White Aust Policy).

 

[wkwillis]

Freed slave colonies

1. The initial settlement would tend to set the pattern because the people that didn't want to settle next to the first group tend to settle someplace else.
2. Disease rules. Australian aborigines were not disease resistent. They were never going to make slaves because until modern times and medicine, they just died if you mistreated them.
3. Somebody was going to settle Australia before 1800. The French were looking and surveying before Botany Bay was settled and sailed into the harbor and were surprised to see the settlement there. France needed new stomping grounds too, since Haiti had revolted and taken out a big chunk of their sugar production.
4. Colonies are settled because somebody with money wants to start one. It's expensive to settle a colony. That means convicts dumped in a jail without expensive guards, slaves on islands where you can keep them from running away, or with enemy Indians that will enslave runaways, or trading posts like New York and Quebec near a good trading river like the Hudson or the St. Laurence, or religious nuts like Massachusetts and Utah. Gold rushes work, too.

 

[raharris1973]

Perhaps New Zealand could be a more likely place - In a TL where the UK kept control of America through most of the 19th century. New Zealand might be chosen over back to Africa schemes because there's less of a disease problem.

There is an issue with Maoris of course.

Of course the Cape Colony or Madagfascar could be another place where the disease situation would not be as bad for African-Americans as West Africa was.

 

[wkwillis]

Australia vs New Zealand

Perhaps New Zealand could be a more likely place - In a TL where the UK kept control of America through most of the 19th century. New Zealand might be chosen over back to Africa schemes because there's less of a disease problem.

There is an issue with Maoris of course.

Of course the Cape Colony or Madagfascar could be another place where the disease situation would not be as bad for African-Americans as West Africa was.

Australian natives were much less disease resistent than Maori, and much less dangerous. Madagascar is malaria ridden, but the Cape Colony is very safe.

 

[Michael E Johnson]

If this caught on as a better and more equitable existence perhaps it would reduce the African-American presence in Dixie upwards of 50% or more. What would the white South have done without its prennial whipping boys?

 

[MerryPrankster]

"What would the white South have done without its prennial whipping boys?"

Michael,

Assuming the POD doesn't have effects TOO radical (like no US), we might have the Populists winning in the South and, as a result, possibly in the whole US (McKinley's victory over Bryan was REALLY CLOSE). Supposedly the moneyed classes in the South used racism to undercut agrarian movements with biracial membership.

Also, Tom Watson never becomes corrupted; a Jewish girl I know (in an argument about Pat Buchanan) once shouted, "Do you know how anti-Semitic the Populists were!" No corruption of Tom Watson means none of this and probably no Leo Frank lynching too--he was stirring the pot on that one.