# Talk:John Caesar

He wasn't the first black man in Australia there were 17 on the first fleet including the notable John Randall (born a slave in conneticutt (i am dyslexic) fought on the British side of the American war of independance to gain his freedom then stole a steel watch chain so transported on the Alexander in the First Fleet gamekeeper to Govener Philip and first non-Aboringinal kill an emu, it was with a gun, he owned land in sydney - so did his descendants and to this day the area is called Dixieland- he was also a policeman and he was killed by a convict in Tasmania with an axe in the head). Look at 'Black Founders' by Cassandra Pybus. I am angry as we are not recognised. Sorry that last bit was irrelevent. I am going to edit the page.Squall1991 10:57, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I was not sure, that's why I said "probably the first black man" when I wrote this article. The Pybus book's been on my reading list for a while. Hesperides 02:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The 1st and 3rd links include a statement that he was born in Madagascar. Is there any reason then to say that he was probably born in the West Indies? -- roundhouse0 (talk) 14:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The side-bar lists his cause of death as a gunshot, and that he died in 1796. There is no information in the article about his death, nor anything about him past 1789 other than the inference that he "lived happily ever after" on Garden Island, when he in fact became a bushranger after escaping from Garden Island. Given the nature of his death, and the fact an article about a bushranger doesn't actually cover his time as a bushranger, one would think that these are important omissions.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.34.248 (talk) 01:45, 1 January 2014 (UTC) 

Good catch - so are you going to fix it up?Nickm57 (talk) 13:44, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

It seems it is with a broad brush that Caesar is described as "black" or "African". He was Malagasy, and while he may have had some Bantu (Southeast African) ancestry, Madagascar is generally not considered a part of Africa, and the Malagasy peoples are ethnically and culturally more similar to Southeast Asian peoples. I feel this should be noted somewhere in the article, or the article reworded. 49.188.113.132 (talk) 12:16, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

It's 100% important to describe Caesar's race accurately as it's a factor in why he is historically significant (he was one of the only non-white/non-Aboriginal people in Australia at that time). His contemporaries definitely considered him to be "black" (administrator David Collins literally called him "Caesar the black") and presumably treated him the same way they would have treated a West African man. Even if he wouldn't be considered black by today's standards, he definitely was at the time. Therefore it seems justified to me to refer to Caesar as black.
Is there a term commonly used to refer to individuals from both Madagascar and mainland Africa? Could we say he was from "the African continent"? SkywalkerEccleston (talk) 13:47, 3 April 2025 (UTC)