Sydney’s sugar rush: how the colony’s most powerful profited from Australia’s slave trade

Australia likes to think its history is untainted by slavery but a new book traces how a who’s who in the NSW capital profited from the capture and sale of ‘blackbirded’ Pacific IslandersEmelda Davis is a former Sydney city councillor, community advocate and second-generation descendant of blackbirded South Sea Islanders. Otherwise known as enslaved people.Australia has often sought to reassure itself that at least …