Judging the Macquaries: Injustice and Mercy in Colonial Australia

The Black Lives Matter movement is bringing the characters of powerful people in colonial times into sharp focus, particularly their attitudes and actions towards slavery and indigenous peoples. Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie are among those being scrutinised and reassessed. They arrived at the penal colony of NSW, a remote outpost of the British empire in 1809. The European invaders had barely survived two decades in an alien environment but, for countless millennia, home to its Aborigina...