While it is rare to find such a direct statement of a slave past as that of James Brown, it is safe to presume for the majority experience for black convicts transported between 1788-1820 their formative experience had been of slavery, be it in North America, or the West Indies, or the slave
ships intercepted. After 1820 the penal colonies VDL and NSW began to receive a new kind of African convict: chattel slaves transported directly from Mauritius and the Caribbean.

Bruce, a slave who arrived in NSW in 1821 had been sentenced to life in St Vincent in the West Indies. Bruce was unusual in that the slave status of convicts sent from British colonies was rarely stated on the official documentation, a reflection of some kind of official squeamishness about being complicit in the slaving business. Bruce was transported at some considerable cost, since his master would have been compensated for the loss of his property. In those cases where slave owners had not managed to get their property returned, I would guess that the offence was an act of retaliation or rebellion. Certainly that was the case for Sophie, a Malagasy slave from Mauritius who had set fire to her mistress’ barn. She was found guilty of a breach of her mistress’ trust — an interesting concept in a master-slave relationship — and sentenced to death. Transportation to NSW was a condition of her pardon. Her owner was compensated for the
worth of Sophie, and her compensation included the worth of the baby that Sophie had given birth to while in prison. There is no record of the child arriving in NSW. Likewise the slave Theresa, a native of Madagascar, was transported from Mauritius in the same year, guilty of assault on her master and child. She went to strike the child with a hoe and when her master tried to stop her she had seized his testicles and squeezed so hard that he fainted. She admitted her violence was retaliation for the brutal treatment she had received. Her owner was well-compensated for the loss of his troublesome property.

Attempting to kill one’s master was not an uncommon capital offence. Two child slaves, Constance, aged eight, and Elizabeth, aged twelve, were found guilty of trying to poison their mistress and transported to NSW for life. Poison was a favourite weapon of rebellious slaves. Over 50% of attempted murder and murder cases involved poison. Yet Maria, a slave from the remote mahogany-cutting British settlements around Belize on the Bay of Honduras, used a knife.

At first there was only an occasional trickle of slaves from the colonies, but this traffic dramatically increased as the anti-slavery movement in Britain grew louder and more persistent. Although the slave trade had ended in 1808, the complete abolition of slavery in the British colonies did not finally come until 1838. After 1830, the slave colonies, notably those in the West Indies, sought transportation as a means to control a dangerously restive slave population excited by rumours of impending emancipation.

Between 1830 and 1838 at least eighteen slave colonies were able to transport hundreds of their troublesome black chattel to Australia.

Violence broke out as several hundred people demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night against the sizeable community of African immigrants in the city, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

The media reported that people shouted xenophobic slogans, such as “blacks out,” and chided the “bleeding heart leftists” who defend immigrants.

Over the years, an estimated 60,000 Africans, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, have slipped over the border into Israel from Egypt.

Israel is building a wall along its border with Egypt and a detention center in the southern Negev desert.