Unfreedom, Voices, Redress: Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific

Our international team of scholars and curators aims to mobilise new cultural and creative approaches to examine the hidden histories and legacies of Anglo and German plantations of the Western Pacific in Queensland, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Sāmoa.

Responding to urgent demands for truth-telling, redress and commemoration of the violence of the plantation system, the project examines indenture, slavery, blackbirding(kidnapping) and other forms of unfreedom, with a focus on gender and mixed-race relationships.

Foregrounding Pacific voices, especially of women, and drawing together new archives in English and German for the first time with testimony, art and material culture, the study brings the Pacific into conversation with larger transnational and new imperial histories.