Historical Information Sheet No 3: Indentured Labour Migration in the Pacific Islands, 1840s-1940s

Australian South Sea Islanders usually see themselves as a distinct Australian ethnic group, the descendants of around 50,000 Pacific Islanders on 62,000 indentured labour contracts first brought to New South Wales in 1847 (122), but mainly to Queensland between 1860 and 1904. Today, the majority of their descendants live along the Australian east coast between North Queensland and northern New South Wales, with a significant community also in Sydney. They seldom think of themselves as part of much larger migrations of labour world-wide, millions of slaves, and millions of indentured labourers bound by indenture agreements under Masters and Servants Acts that favoured the masters and not the servants. Selling slaves was abolished in all British territories in the 1800s, slavery was abolished in all British colonies and possessions in 1833, and no British subject could possess or trade in slaves after 1843. However, slavery continued to be legal in other European jurisdictions well into the 1890s.

Indenture was used during the 17th and 18th centuries as a labour system to bind millions of European immigrants in the Americas. Initially the indenture system was used to bind European servants and labourers, then once slavery ended it became used to bind non-European workers. It was the labour system that replaced slavery; indeed it has been called a new form of slavery. In the Pacific, conservatively, almost one million Pacific Islanders and half a million Asians entered into indenture contracts between the 1840s and the 1940s. This Pacific indentured labour trade overlapped with slavery in the United States, and when Polynesians and Micronesians were taken to work as slaves in Peru, 1862-1864. The early years of the Queensland and Fiji indentured labour trade involved very dubious practices including kidnapping and violence. Allegations that indenture was just a new form of slavery continued until the 1900s. Masters and Servants Acts continued to be used to bind some Australian workers until the 1910s and in the Pacific Islands until the 1940s.

South Sea Islanders need to see their history in relation to the movement of this large number of labourers around the Pacific, and be aware that other much smaller residual communities of Melanesians from Solomon Islands and Vanuatu exist today in Fiji (often called the Solomoni), in Samoa (O Tama Uli or ‘black boys’) and in New Caledonia where they are now blended into the Kanak population. Australian South Sea Islanders have indentured ancestry from Vanuatu (previously the New Hebrides), Solomon Islands, the islands of eastern Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia (only from the Loyalty Islands), Fiji (only from Rotuma) and Kiribati and Tuvalu. Other Rotumans came to work as indentured labourers in Torres Strait, and other Pacific Islanders arrived as ship’s crews to Sydney and Brisbane and have linked into the original indentured ASSIs. Indenture Pacific labour also entered Torres Strait via Sydney, which, until the Queensland border was moved further north to include the whole Strait, was administered from New South Wales.

These connections need to be recorded and the links fostered. Today, more than 300,000 Pacific Islanders live in Australia, the majority more recent migrants from Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands and Niue, as well as a large Maori community from New Zealand who have Polynesian origins. Significant numbers of Indo-Fijians, the descendants of Indian indentured labourers taken to Fiji also live in Australia. There are cultural and political advantages for ASSI to see themselves as Australian immigrants with a mixed Pacific, European, Asian, Aboriginal and Torres Strait heritage.

There is also a worldwide movement for people descended from enslaved peoples to unite in seeking reparations. Heads of fifteen Caribbean nations have opened an international dialogue demanding slavery reparations from European nations. The same situation applies to Pacific slavery and indenture. Unity of purpose and discourse is needed to achieve reparations from Pacific and ex-colonial governments like Britain and France, and from Australia. However, the history is a complex one and indenture cannot just be equated with slavery. Nevertheless, all ASSI should be aware that they share a heritage with other descendants of indentured labourers and of slaves, indigenous and Asian, throughout the Pacific and the world.

Ni-Vauatu and Solomon Islander Indentured Labourers:

Ni-Vanuatu

New South Wales and Queensland (40,000)

Fiji (1865-1907) (14,198)

Samoa (1878-1913) (c.10,000 New Hebrideans and Solomon Islanders, not differentiated)

New Caledonia (1867-1922) (10,000-13,000)

New Hebrides (1908-1941) (54,110)

Solomon Islanders

Queensland (1871-1904) (18,217)

Fiji (1870-1911) (8,228)

Samoa (1878-1913) (c. 10,000 Solomon Islanders and New Hebrideans, not differentiated)

New Caledonia (?) (up to 1,000)

Reunion (Indian Ocean, 1857) (14)

Solomon Islands (1913-1940) (37,871)

Graphs of Indentured Labour Movements

There are eight pie graphs below: the first one is a summary of the other seven, six of which relate to a single colony, and one to Asian indenture. The proportions in the graphs show the number of indentured labourers form any one area that entered a colony.

References

Halapua, Winston, Living in the Fringe: Melanesian in Fiji, Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, 2001.

Lal, Brij V., Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians, Canberra: The Journal of Pacific History, 1983.

Maude, H.E., Slavers in Paradise: The Peruvian Labour Trade in Polynesia, 1862-1864, Canberra: Australian National University, 1981.

Meleisea, Malama, O Tama Uli: Melanesians in Samoa, Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, 1980.

Munro, Doug, ‘The Origins of Labourers in the South Pacific’, in Clive Moore, Jacqueline Leckie, and Doug Munro (eds), Labour in the South Pacific, Townsville: Department of History and Politics and the Center for Melanesian Studies, James Cook University, James Cook University of North Queensland, 1990, pp. xxxix-li.

Moore, Clive, Jacqui Leckie and Doug Munro (eds), Labour in the South Pacific, Townsville: Department of History and Politics, and the Melanesian Studies Centre, James Cook University, 1990.

Clive Moore, ‘Labour, Indenture and Historiography in the Pacific’, in Brij V. Lal (ed.), Pacific Islands History: Journeys and Transformations, Canberra: The Journal of Pacific History, 1992, pp. 129-148.

Shineberg, Dorothy, The People Trade: Pacific Island Laborers and New Caledonia, 1865-1930, Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 1999.