Blackbirding

Uncommon card · No. 121359

Blackbirding was the trade in indentured labourers from the Pacific Islands in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is often described as a form of slavery, despite the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, including Australia. The trade frequently relied on coercion, deception and kidnapping to transport tens of thousands of indigenous people from islands in the Pacific Ocean to Australia, other European colonies, and independent countries of the Pacific and Central and South America, often to work on plantations in conditions similar to the Atlantic slave trade. These blackbirded people, known in Australia as Kanakas or South Sea Islanders, were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, amongst others. The owners, captains, and crews of the ships involved in the acquisition of these labourers...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Samuel Calvert (1828-1913) and Oswald Rose Campbell (1820-1887), Public domain