Blackbirding

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Blackbirding is the coercion and/or deception of people or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant from their native land. The practice took place on a large scale with the taking of people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries. These blackbirded people were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders. They were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago amongst others.

The owners, captains, and crews of the ships involved in the acquisition of these labourers were termed blackbirders. The demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from European colonists in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand, as well as plantations in Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala. Labouring on sugar cane, cotton, and coffee plantations in these lands was the main usage of blackbirded labour, but they were also exploited in other industries. Blackbirding ships began operations in the Pacific from the 1840s which continued into the 1930s. Blackbirders from the Americas sought workers for their haciendas and to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands,^[2] while the blackbirding trade organised by colonists in places like Queensland, Fiji, and New Caledonia used the labourers at plantations, particularly those producing sugar cane.^[3][4]

Examples of blackbirding outside the South Pacific include the early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at Nickol Bay and Broome, where Aboriginal Australians were blackbirded from the surrounding areas.^[5] Chinese men were blackbirded from Amoy in the 1840s and 50s to work as unskilled labourers in the pearling, gold and farming industries.^[6][7]

Practices similar to blackbirding continue to the present day. One example is the kidnapping and coercion, often at gunpoint, of indigenous peoples in Central America to work as plantation labourers in the region. They are subjected to poor living conditions, are exposed to heavy pesticide loads, and do hard labour for very little pay.^[8]