Frederick Douglass escapes enslavement

A party led by Governor James Stirling attacked a Bindjareb Noongar camp at Pinjarra. Calling the event a “battle” obscured the unequal violence inflicted on the community. Colonial control of land...

African Muslims, including enslaved and free people, organized an uprising in Salvador. Religious networks and literacy supported their mobilization. Its suppression intensified controls over...

Northern Māori rangatira signed He Whakaputanga, asserting independent authority and collective government. It provides a record of Indigenous political agency before the Treaty of Waitangi. The...

Armed men killed at least twenty-eight Wirrayaraay people, many of them women and children, at Myall Creek. The massacre reveals the violence of settler expansion. The later prosecution was unusual,...

The compulsory apprenticeship system ended early following resistance, criticism, and political pressure. Ending it removed a major restriction on formerly enslaved people’s work. Plantation power...

Seven men were convicted after a second trial concerning the Myall Creek killings. Testimony and renewed prosecution overcame an earlier acquittal. The result challenged the practical impunity of...

Seven men convicted of killing Wirrayaraay people at Myall Creek were hanged. The rare punishment shows a limited breach in the tolerance of colonial violence. It did not end dispossession or the...

Māori leaders signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi alongside Crown representatives. The Māori and English texts differed in important understandings of authority. Later struggles drew on promises of protection...

The United States Supreme Court recognized the freedom of Africans who had been illegally transported and had resisted aboard the Amistad. Their own revolt and testimony were essential to the case....

A confrontation followed settlers’ attempts to assert control over disputed land at Wairau. Ngāti Toa leaders contested the claimed sale. The deaths and subsequent controversy showed that settler...