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Gubert and Ellice Islanders on Queensland Canefields, 1894-1899

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Gubert and Ellice Islanders on Queensland Canefields, 1894-1899 449 GUbert and Ellice Islanders on Queensland Canefields, 1894-1899 by Doug Munro Presented at a meeting of the Society 26 September 1991 During the mid-1890s the arrival of a labour recruiting vessel at a Queensland port would have caused no great excitement in the normal course of events. By then the labour trade in indentured Pacific Island or 'Kanaka' workers (overwhelmingly Melanesians) had been in progress for over thirty years involving more than 650 recruiting voyages; during that time some 50,000 three-year contracts of indenture had been entered into by Pacific Islanders, who formed the mainstay of the Queensland canefields labour force.' The vast majority were prevented by legislation from working in any capacity other than unskilled field labour in the sugar industry, and were supplemented by Asian labourers. Even the problem of labour turnover and finding replacements for the workers whose three-year contracts had expired was to some extent overcome by the numbers who opted to stay on and serve out further contracts. Known as time- expired workers, they comprised between one-half and two-thirds of the Pacific Islander population for most of the 1890s.and formed a sort of Kanaka "aristocracy of labour".^ Why, then, did the arrival of the three-masted schooner May at Bundaberg in January 1895 with a mere 74 labour recruits from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands arouse such widespread interest? On the face of it the sugar industry had all the labourers it needed, and an additional 74 labourers would make no appreciable difference to the 8,000 or so Pacific Island labourers were already in the colony. It may seem that the sugar industry had all the labour it was ever likely to require, but not so. Competition from planters in Fiji, Samoa, New Caledonia and the New Hebrides made labour more difficult and expensive to obtain; old recruiting grounds such as the northern Solomons and the Bismarck Archipelago were now out of bounds for various reasons; the prohibition on British recruiters supplying firearms and ammunition to Pacific Islanders worked to the direct advantage of French and German recruiters whose goveriunents imposed no such restrictions.' There was no guarantee that numbers would hold up and there had already been attempts to ban the further importation of Pacific Island workers. In the circumstances it was Dr Doug Munro is Reader in History/Politics at the University of the South Pacific. 450 widely feared that uncertainty of supply would lead to an actual labour shortage at a time when world sugar prices were depressed. There was, moreover, no prospect at that stage of Pacific Islanders being replaced by a white sugar workforce. "• Continued supplies of field labour were therefore a worrying prospect for an industry beleaguered on several fronts, and there would certainly have been an actual labour crisis by the 1890s were it not for that large pool of time-expired workers. For all these reasons the arrival of the May with the first contingent of Gilbert and EUice Islanders attracted unusual attention. It is not the 74 newly recruited labourers in themselves that caused excitement but rather the reports that their home islands constituted a recruiting ground of 'practically unlimited' potential. A solution to the sugar industry's problems of labour supply was at last in sight, or so it seemed.^ TAPPING THE NEW SOURCE OF LABOUR The Gilbert and Ellice Islands comprise 25 coral atolls and reef islands in the equatorial Pacific, lying directly north of Fiji and far away from Queensland's traditional recruiting grounds in Melanesia. In 1892 Britain declared separate protectorates over these two island groups, but for administrative convenience they were governed as a single entity. The tiny Ellice Islands with their small populations (an aggregate of 2,000-2,500 spread over nine islands) offered little inducement to labour recruiters, and although raids by Peruvian slavers severely depleted the populations of two of the atolls, recruiters otherwise by-passed the place almost entirely for the more populous Gilberts. The Gilbert Islands, indeed, were a significant source of labour during the nineteenth century for plantation systems elsewhere in the Pacific and an estimated 11,000 Gilbertese enlisted for places as far apart as Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, southern Mexico and Guatemala. Given that the total population of the Gilberts at this time ranged between 30,000-35,000, Gilbert Islanders were perhaps the most active labour migrants in the region on a per capita basis.* Purposeful labour recruiting in the Gilberts commenced in the late-1860s, in response to the needs of cotton plantations in Tahiti, Samoa and Fiji. The first few years of recruiting were marked with the kidnapping, violence and fraud that is typical of newly opened recruiting fields. The volatile Gilbertese fought fire with fire and soon accorded the 'men-stealing' ships a hostile reception. One of the more spectacular incidents of the Pacific-wide labour trade occurred on the high seas when a Fiji recruiter, running low on rations, transferred eighty Gilbertese recruits to a Tkhiti-bound recruiter. In a scene reminiscent of the African slave trade, the recruits broke out of the hold and went on the rampage, killing the captain and some of the crew. When the mate, in desperation, blew up a section of the ship. 451 the surviving Gilbertese jumped overboard and swam to the nearby island of Nikunau, leaving the ship to limp back to Tahiti. Not surprisingly in the the circumstances, the flow of recruits soon dried up and was only restored in the early 1870s by the onset of drought in the southern Gilbert Islands. Seeing overseas plantation work as the only escape from their 'land of heat and famine', the Gilbertese now enlisted voluntarily in their hundreds rather than face starvation at home. This drought, of several years' duration, established the relationship between recruiting and ecological disaster. Quite simply, in times of drought there was recruiting, and in times of relative plenty there was little or no recruiting. The recurrence of drought in the 1890s clearly facilitated the activities the Queensland vessel May (Captain J.P. Doig) in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The first island of call, in late-1894, was the southern Ellice atoll of Funafuti where a miserable total of three recruits were obtained, despite the schooner spending several days anchored in the lagoon and offering a wage of £ 8 a year instead of the usual £6 a year that first-indenture labourers in Queensland received.^ Thereafter the pickings were better. The northern Ellice Islands were still in the grip probably the most severe drought that its inhabitants had ever experienced,* and the May gathered a further 22 recruits. In the words of the Government Agent on board the May, it 'seemed to be taken as a matter of rejoicing than otherwise, as food is scarce, and the people were glad to see so many lusty youths provided for'.' Proceeding northwards into the Gilbert Islands, the May discovered that recruiting was unexpectedly difficult, despite drought conditions. In the first place, the drought had been in progress for several years and other recruiters had got in first. Secondly, many Gilbertese were reluctant to enlist, fearing that their destination would be Central America rather than Queensland. Earlier in the decade some 1,200 Gilbertese had recruited to work on coffee plantations in southern Mexico and Guatemala, with unhappy results. One of the recruiting vessels was lost at sea with total loss of life. News had also filtered back that the mortality rate of the other Gilbertese to Central America was extremely high, as indeed it was. Although the May was licensed to recruit 150, she returned to Bundaberg, after a four month voyage, with a mere total of 63 men and 11 women.'" Nevertheless optimism carried the day, the Government Agent expressing his certainty that if the new recruits were satisfied and sent home favourable reports, 'a very large field for recruiting will be opened up, the scope being practically unlimited'." His somewhat exaggerated forecast was never put to the test. Shortly after the return of the May, the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, Sir John Thurston, registered a strong protest with the Governor of Queensland against further recruiting in the Gilbert or 452 EUice Islands. Based in Fiji, the High Commissioner exercised jurisdiction over British subjects in the Western Pacific. Now that the GUbert and Ellice Islands were British protectorates, he had wider authority over their affairs. The Resident Commissioner of the protectorates reported to him, and he to the Colonial Office in London. Although Queensland labour vessels were within their strict legal rights to work the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Thurston ideally wanted to prevent any such extension of their activities. FaiUng that, he would formulate regulations that would place further Queensland recruiting under the close and inconvenient scrutiny of the local Resident Commissioner. Thurston argued that Gilbert and Ellice Islanders — especially the latter — were unsuited for work on sugar plantations. He also pointed out that the Ellice Islands were 'depopulated', not realising that the northern cluster of islands were, if anything, overpopulated. But these considerations were secondary to Thurston's hidden agenda, which is hinted at in his assertion that further recruiting by Queensland vessels would be 'likely to cause grave embarrassment for in the admiiustration of the
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