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Name
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Apia
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Type of carceral site
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Blackbirding
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Dates of use
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1847 – 1906
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Quote
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In 1885 the Upolu returned to Apia from an-other cruise with recruits who, it was discovered, had been inveigled aboard by Proctor, made drunk and carried off before they recovered.
Pacific History.
Scarr, Deryck. "Recruits and recruiters: A portrait of the pacific islands labour trade." The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 2, 1967, pp. 5-24: p. 21.
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At the height of the labour trade in the early 1880s, 30 ships or more were making two to three round trips each season to recruit labourers for the plantations of Queensland and Fiji, which by then had turned from cotton to sugar production. In addition, two, three or four ships normally sailed from New Caledonia, recruiting mainly for the nickel mines; two ships sailed from Apia, seeking labourers for the coconut plantations of the Deutsche Handels-und Plantagen-Gesellschaft; and several small vessels were at work in the New Hebrides, recruiting for the maize, coffee, banana and coconut plantations of Efate and for copra-makers in the northern islands of the group. When recruiting for Queensland ended in 1906, some 60,819 islanders, on a rough calculation, had been brought into the colony since 1869.
Pacific History.
Scarr, Deryck. "Recruits and recruiters: A portrait of the pacific islands labour trade." The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 2, 1967, pp. 5-24: p. 5.
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The plantations were at the commencement worked with Samoan and Nine Islanders, but when the cotton prices rapidly began to fall, this expensive labour had to be abandoned and cheaper workmen employed. The Kingsmill or Gilbert Islands, at that time densely peopled, was a good recruiting field. The Germans then carried on an extensive trade in these parts, and their vessels when running through the group, taking away copra from the various islands, also carried off a living freight in the shape of natives engaged for the Samoa plantations.
Newspaper article.
"The Germans in Samoa," The Daily Telegraph [Sydney], 8 May 1885, p. 5. Trove.
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We don't have land, we are the land.
We don't have ocean, we are the ocean.
We don't have relationship, we are relationship.
Rooted, connected
Fixed, yet fluid.
Poetry.
Vaai, Upolu Lumā, 2017, qtd. in Vaai, Upolu Lumā. "'We Are Therefore We Live' Pacific Eco-Relational Spirituality and Changing the Climate Change Story." Toda Peace Institute, Policy Brief No. 56, 2019, p. 1.
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Authority
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Polynesian Labourers Act 1868 (Qld); Pacific Islanders Protection Act 1872 (also known as the Kidnapping Act, UK)
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Archives and sources
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National Archives of Samoa (Apia, trading records of J.C. Godeffroy).
National Library of Australia.
Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (ANU, Canberra).
Public Records Office (London), FO58/128 (Rothery Report).
Scarr, Deryck. "Recruits and recruiters: A portrait of the pacific islands labour trade." The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 2, 1967, pp. 5-24.
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Contact
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Jerry/Kieren
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identifier
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SITE-AP