Blackbirding by Ryan Butta

An important reckoning with Australia’s unspoken history of slavery.

From the author of the bestselling books The Ballad of Abdul Wade and The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli

As Australia becomes more willing to confront the violence and trauma of its colonial past, one chapter has remained largely hidden: the Australian slave trade known as blackbirding.

Between 1860 and 1906, more than 60,000 Pacific Islanders were brought to Australia to work the Queensland sugarcane fields. Men, women and children were taken from their homelands through coercion, deception or outright abduction. Forced into contracts they could not read, unpaid until the end of their service and denied basic rights, they endured brutal working conditions that led to the deaths of nearly 15,000 people.

In this immersive and meticulously researched work of narrative nonfiction, Ryan Butta confronts one of the least acknowledged episodes in Australian history. Exposing a deliberate ‘engineered forgetting’ that has kept these stories out of the national memory, this book brings the hidden history of blackbirding into the light and reckons with the enduring legacy of Australia’s forgotten slave trade.

An important reckoning with Australia’s unspoken history of slavery.

About the Author:

Ryan Butta is an Australian author of narrative nonfiction that blends original research, history and literary storytelling. He is the author of The Ballad of Abdul Wade, shortlisted for the South Australian Premier’s Awards Non-fiction Book of the Year 2024, and The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli. His books focus on overlooked lives and the hidden histories that shape Australia. He lives and works on Dharawal country on the New South Wales south coast.

28 Jul 2026
 

Blackbirding: A reckoning with the Australian slave trade by Ryan Butta ISBN 9781923135703