Our third treasure is one of the few Pacific Islander immigration records known to have survived the ravages of time. From the Library Archives comes the Register of Pacific Islanders Employed at Pioneer Sugar Mill.
Emeritus Professor Clive Moore answers the question "why is this significant?"
The Queensland labour trade from Melanesia was based around indentured labour contracts. It was often accused of being a continuation of, or a new form of the British ‘slave trade’ from Africa to the Americas, which was outlawed in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Although the largely illiterate Pacific Islanders could not have understood the legal contracts that bound them, many of them (about 25 percent in the 1890s) came to Queensland more than once. It is hard to believe that they had no idea of the conditions on the ships that crossed the Coral Sea or on plantations and farms and pastoral properties in Queensland.
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| Register of Pacific Islanders. Photo by Michael Marzik. |
Just as the sugar industry was part of the agricultural frontier moving north through the colony, so too the labour frontier in the islands moved from south to north. The recruitment of labour began in the Loyalty Islands (now part of New Caledonia) and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in the 1860s, entered Solomon Islands in the early 1870s and finally extended to the archipelagoes off eastern New Guinea. Once protectorates were proclaimed in German New Guinea and British New Guinea in 1884, and there were proven allegations of kidnapping in these island groups, the Queensland Government limited the labour trade to the Solomons and the New Hebrides. The majority of the labourers in the 1890s and 1900s were from Solomon Islands. The Pioneer plantation register shows this clearly, with the majority from the island of Malaita in the Solomons.
The register contains the names of 782 Pacific Islanders, more usually known as South Sea Islanders, who worked on the Drysdale brothers’ Pioneer Plantation in the Burdekin district in north Queensland. It is a government register kept by the local Inspector of Pacific Islanders and his deputies—officials of the Queensland Immigration Department. The Drysdale brothers began the plantation in 1883 at the peak of the sugar boom. One of the largest on the Burdekin River, Pioneer Plantation introduced irrigation to the Burdekin region and leased land to European and Chinese farmers, and late in the century to a few Islander farmers. The register is a record for the plantation’s entire indentured Islander workforce from 1895 to 1906, showing Islander names, the ships on which they arrived and the dates of their initial and subsequent contracts, different levels of payment of wages, deaths, imprisonment, and other occasional pieces of information. Only two of the entries are for women.
The Islanders employed on Pioneer arrived in Queensland between 1881 and 1903. Pacific Islanders were brought to New South Wales (only in 1847) and Queensland (1860–1904) as indentured labourers to work in the pastoral and maritime and sugar-cane industries. There were 62 000 contracts issued but only about 50 000 individuals (because a significant number came more than once) of whom over 95 percent were men and youths. Similar labour registers must once have been common on the large sugar-cane plantations, although this register seems to be the only one to have survived. Overall the register confirms many aspects of the labour trade already known. Wages were paid every month in front of the Inspectors, who kept the register up to date. The Islanders also received a clothing allowance and sometimes had money advanced to them ahead of their regular six-monthly wage payments.
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| Pioneer Sugar Mill factory, Ayr district. North Queensland Photographic Collection, NQID16049 |
The Islanders received wages based on their levels of experience. They were were divided into first-indenture labourers on £6 a year, those reengaging from the islands (usually on £8 a year), labourers reengaging from Queensland who had already served one or more three year contracts (over 60 percent in the register years), and the 835 ticket-holders—all who arrived before September 1879 and had none of the work restrictions placed on later Islanders. The workers also received accommodation and limited medical care. It is not clear if any ticket-holders are recorded in the register, although some of the Pioneer Islander farmers are likely to have been in this category. The long-term labourers were paid up to £31 a year at the end of the labour trade, but more usually between £20 and £26 a year. Twenty-three served terms in prison from between two weeks and four months, two were declared insane and returned to their islands, and 24 died while employed on Pioneer. The Queensland-wide death rate over the entire labour trade was much higher than this—around one quarter. After 1884, the wages of deceased Islanders were transferred to the Immigration Department’s Pacific Islanders Fund, supposedly to be paid to their families, although this only occurred in 16 percent of cases. The return passage money for each labourer was also held in the Fund and seems to have remained at £5 a head for the entire period. Another typical feature of the labour trade made clear by the ship arrival details shown in the register is that the Islanders moved between districts.
The belief that the Islanders were treated ‘like slaves’ will continue to be argued for by descendants, although the register does not provide sufficient information to judge allegations that many of the Islanders were tricked or forced into recruiting. However, on each visit the Inspectors recorded “all happy and contented”, which was clearly not always the case.
Over the course of 2020, JCU Library's Special Collections will be unveiling 50 Treasures from the collections to celebrate 50 years of James Cook University.
Bibliography
Connolly, Roy, John Drysdale and the Burdekin, with a foreword by the Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur Fadden, G.C.M.G., and including Burdekin River Sketchbook by Russell Drysdale. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1964.
Moore, Clive, Kanaka: A History of Melanesian Mackay. Port Moresby: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and University of Papua New Guinea Press, 1985.
Moore, Clive, “The Pacific Islanders’ Fund and the Misappropriation of the Wages of Deceased Pacific Islanders by the Queensland Government.” Journal of Pacific History 61, no. 1 (2015): 1–18.
Shlomowitz, Ralph. "Markets for Indentured and Time-Expired Melanesian Labour in Queensland, 1863–1906." Journal of Pacific History 16, no. 2 (1981): 70-91.
Shlomowitz, Ralph. "Time-Expired Melanesian Labor in Queensland: An Investigation of Job Turnover 1884-1906." Pacific Studies 8, no. 2 (1985): 25–44.
Shlomowitz, Ralph. "Mortality and the Pacific Labour Trade." Journal of Pacific History 22, no. 1 (1987): 34–55.
Biography
Clive Moore graduated from JCU with an Honours degree (1973) and a PhD (1981) in history. He is now an Emeritus Professor at University of Queensland, where he worked for 28 years, retiring as McCaughey Professor of Pacific and Australian history in 2015. In 2005, he received a Cross of Solomon Islands for historical work on Malaita Island. He was inaugural president of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies (2006–10) and was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2010. He has written extensively on Australian South Sea Islanders, New Guinea and Solomon Islands.
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