Everything about Blackbirding totally explained
Blackbirding refers to the recruitment of people through trickery and
kidnappings to work on plantations, particularly the
sugar cane plantations of
Queensland (
Australia) and
Fiji. The practice occurred primarily between the 1860s and 1901. Those 'blackbirded' were recruited from the indigenous populations of nearby Pacific islands or northern Queensland. In the early days of the pearling industry in
Broome, local Aboriginal people were blackbirded from the surrounding areas, including aboriginal people from desert areas.
Etymology
The term may have been formed directly as a contraction of
blackbird catching;
blackbird was a slang term for the local indigenous people. It might also have derived from an earlier phrase,
blackbird shooting, which referred to recreational hunting of
Australian Aboriginal people by early European settlers.
Blackbirding in Australia
Queensland was a self-governing
British colony in northeastern Australia until
1901 when it became a state of the
Commonwealth of Australia. Over a period of 40 years, from the mid-
19th century to the early
20th century, native non-European labourers for the sugar cane fields of
Queensland, were "recruited" from
Vanuatu,
Papua New Guinea, the
Solomon Islands and the
Loyalty Islands of
New Caledonia. The "recruitment" process almost always included an element of coercive recruitment (not unlike the
press-gangs once employed by the
Royal Navy in England) and
indentured servitude. Some 62,000
South Sea Islanders were taken to Australia.
These people were referred to as Kanakas (the
French equivalent Canaques still applies to the autochthonous
Melanesians in
New Caledonia) and came from the
Western Pacific islands: from
Melanesia, mainly the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, with a small number from the
Polynesian and
Micronesian islands such as
Samoa,
Kiribati,
Tuvalu and
Loyalty Islands. Many of the workers were effectively slaves, but since the
Slavery Abolition Act made slavery illegal, they were officially called "indentured labourers" or the like. Some
Australian Aboriginal people, especially from
Cape York Peninsula, were also kidnapped and transported south to work on the farms.
The methods of blackbirding varied. Some labourers were willing to be taken to Australia to work, while others were tricked or even forced. In some cases blackbirding ships (which made huge profits) would entice entire villages by luring them on board for trade or a religious service, and then setting sail. Many died during the voyage due to unsanitary conditions, and also in the fields due to the hard manual labour.
The question of how many Islanders were actually kidnapped or "blackbirded" is unknown and remains controversial. Official documents and accounts from the period often conflict with the oral tradition passed down to the descendants of workers. Stories of blatantly violent kidnapping tended to relate to the first 10–15 years of the trade. The majority of those abducted to Australia were repatriated between 1906-08 under the provisions of the
Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901; but there are ~20,000 descendants of the blackbirded labourers living in Queensland coastal towns.
Blackbirding in Fiji
The blackbirding era began in
Fiji in
1864 when the first
New Hebridean and
Solomon Island labourers arrived in Fiji to work on
cotton plantations. Cotton had become a profitable business because of the cession of supplies from the
United States because of the
civil war. Since
Fijians were not interested in regular sustained labour, the thousands of
European planters who flocked to Fiji sought labour from the
Melanesian islands.
Attempts were made by the
British and
Queensland Governments to regulate this transportation of labour. Melanesian labourers were to be recruited for three years, paid three pounds per year, issued with basic clothing and given access to the company store for supplies. Despite this, most Melanesians were recruited by deceit, usually being enticed abroad ships with gifts and then locked up. The living and working conditions in Fiji were even worse than those suffered by the later
Indian indentured labourers. In
1875, the chief medical officer in Fiji, Sir
William MacGregor, listed a mortality rate of 540 out of every 1000 labourers. After the expiry of the three-year contract, the labourers were required to be transported back to their villages but most ship captains dropped them off at the first island they sighted off the Fiji waters. The British sent warships to enforce the law (Pacific Islanders' Protection Act of 1872) but only a small proportion of the culprits were prosecuted.
With the arrival of
Indian indentured labourers in Fiji from
1879, the number of Melanesian labourers decreased but they were still being recruited and employed, off the plantations in sugar mills and ports, until the start of the
First World War. Most of the Melanesians recruited were males and after the recruitment ended, those who chose to stay in Fiji took Fijian wives and settled in areas around
Suva. Their descendants still remain a distinct community but their language and culture can't be distinguished from native Fijians.
Descendants of Solomon Islanders living at
Tamavua-i-Wai in Fiji received a
High Court verdict in their favour on
1 February 2007. The court refused a claim by the
Seventh-day Adventist Church to force the islanders to vacate the land on which they'd been living for seventy years...
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