Merze Tate

Slavery and Racism in South Pacific Annexations

European use of Pacific islanders as laborers on a large scale started in the mid-1860s when the declining sandalwood trade led some traders to turn to other activities. Native boys had been used for some years on ships, principally in the beche-de-mer2 and pearl fisheries. As early as 1847 Benjamin Boyd, a squatter, banker, and South Sea island trader, had brought about one hundred men from Tanna in the New Hebrides group to New South Wales, hoping that they might be employed usefully as shepherds on his squatting runs. 3 The prime mover of a scandalous scheme for carrying off Pacific islanders to toil on the cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of Peru was J. C. Byrne, a British subject of an unsavory character. Between fifteen and twenty ships set sail from Callao in 1862 and 1863 and removed over 2,000 islanders from Easter Island, Hivaoa in the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, the Cook Islands, Tongareva, Niue, Fakaofo in the Tokelaus, Ata in the Tonga group, and from several of the Ellice and Gilbert Islands. Tongareva suffered most, having only 88 souls left in

Canada's Interest in the Trade and the Sovereignty of Hawaii

potential commercial ties with the tropical islands. This solicitude was bound up with Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonalds national policy of expanding Canadas overseas markets and encouraging her manufacturing industries, with the world-encircling activities of the Canadian Pacific enterprise, also a part of his design for Canada, and with the prospect (ff a British Pacific able. Undoubtedly, responsible members of the Canadian government and ambitious investors were keenly interested in the tiny Polynesian kingdoras œuture, œor the enormous cost of the Canadian Pacific Railway impelled its president and managers to make consummate efforts to secure freight and passengers outside the wilderness and the sparsely populated area traversed by the road. Moreover, in the late nineteenth century powerful influences, including Canadas first prime minister, were engaged in a plan for a British cable from Vancouver to Japan and China via Honolulu, connecting with Australia, and for subsidizing commercial and mail lines of steamers on the same route. •

The Question of Development and Nationhood in New Guinea since World War II

The Territory herein referred to is the eastern moiety of the large island of New Guinea, lying beyond West Irian, the former Dutch New Guinea, or the 141 degree of east longitude. The area is comprised of the southeastern section Papua, annexed by Great Britain in 1888, after thirteen years of agitation and pressure from the Australian colonies, and administered by Queensland until the Commonwealth government assumed responsibility in 1906; the Trust Territory of New Guinea the former Kaiser Wilhelms Land; the Bismarck Archipelago; and Bougainville, the largest of the Solomon Islands, awarded to Australia as a mandate after World War I. The combined Territory covers an area of 182,700 square miles and supports a population enumerated and estimated at 2,348,751, of whom only 40,430 are non-indigenous.1