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Excerpt from The South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade: A Record of Voyages and Experiences in the Western Pacific, From 1875 to 1891 The author of this volume being now in Australia, and so not available for immediate reference, it has been deemed desirable to preface his work with a few explanatory remarks. These are more particularly addressed to English readers. Among political controversies in the Colony of Queensland, the "Kanaka Question" held a prominent place for many years, becoming at length of almost supreme importance. Along the coast, more especially of Northern Queensland, there stretches a belt of country adapted for the cultivation of tropical products, chief among them being the sugar-cane. To develop the resources of this region it was necessary to find a class of labourers better able to endure the climate than Europeans, as well as to work at a cheaper rate. Thus arose the demand for labourers brought from the various island groups of the Western Pacific - Papuans and Polynesians, loosely termed "Kanakas." Captain Wawn was engaged in recruiting such labourers, from 1875, when they were first introduced, down to 1891, when the Queensland Government legislated against the importation of Kanakas into the Colony, and their employment there. His narrative is that of a practical man, than whom none could be better acquainted with the subject he treats of. He has recorded much that is interesting relative to numerous little-known islands, and the tale he has to tell may well be regarded as a valuable contribution to the history of Queensland and the Western Pacific. It was while the labour controversy was at its height in Queensland, that Captain Wawn sent his manuscript to England for publication. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Today, increases of so-called ‘low-skilled’ and temporary labour migrations of Pacific Islanders to Australia occur alongside calls for Indigenous people to ‘orbit’ from remote communities in search of employment opportunities. These trends reflect the persistent neoliberalism within contemporary Australia, as well as the effects of structural dynamics within the global agriculture and resource extractive industries. They also unfold within the context of long and troubled histories of Australian colonialism, and of complexes of race, labour and mobility that reverberate through that history and into the present. The contemporary labour of Pacific Islanders in the horticultural industry has sinister historical echoes in the ‘blackbirding’ of South Sea Islanders to work on sugar plantations in New South Wales and Queensland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as in wider patterns of labour, trade and colonisation across the Pacific region. The antecedents of contemporary Indigenous labour mobility, meanwhile, include forms of unwaged and highly exploitative labouring on government settlements, missions, pastoral stations and in the pearling industry. For both Pacific Islanders and Indigenous people, though, labour mobilities past and present also include agentive and purposeful migrations, reflective of rich cultures and histories of mobility, as well as of forces that compel both movement and immobility. Drawing together historians, anthropologists, sociologists and geographers, this book critically explores experiences of labour mobility by Indigenous peoples and Pacific Islanders, including Māori, within Australia. Locating these new expressions of labour mobility within historical patterns of movement, contributors interrogate the contours and continuities of Australian coloniality in its diverse and interconnected expressions.