Blackbirding in Fiji

The blackbirding era began in Fiji in 1864 when the first New Hebridean and Solomon Island labourers arrived in Fiji to work on cotton plantations. Cotton had become a profitable business because of the cession of supplies from the United States because of the civil war. Since, Fijians were not interested in regular sustained labour, the thousands of European planters who flocked to Fiji, sought labour from the Melanesian islands.

Attempts were made by the British and Queensland Governments to regulate this transportation of labour.

• Melanesian labourers were to be recruited for three years, paid three pounds per year, issued with basic clothing and had access to the company store for supplies.
• Despite this, most Melanesians were recruited by deceit, usually being enticed abroad ships with gifts and then locked up.
• The living and working conditions in Fiji were even worse than those suffered by the later Indian indentured labourers.
• In 1875, the chief medical officer in fiji, Sir William MacGregor, listed a mortality rate of 540 out of every 1000 labourers.
• After the expiry of the three-year contract, the labourers were required to be transported back to their villages but most ship captains dropped them off at the first island they sighted off the Fiji waters.
• The British sent warships to enforce the law (Pacific Islanders' Protection Act of 1872) but only a small proportion of the culprits were prosecuted.
• With the arrival of Indian identured labourers in Fiji from 1879, the number of Melanesian labourers decreased but they were still being recruited and employed, off the plantations in sugar mills and ports, until the start of the First World War.
• Most of the Melanesians recruited were males and after the recruitment ended, those who chose to stay in Fiji, took Fijian wives and settled in areas around Suva. Their descents still remain a distinct community but their language and culture cannot be distinguished from native Fijians.
• Descendants of Solomon Islanders living at Tamavua-i-Wai in Fiji received a High Court verdict in their favour on 1 February 2007. The court refused a claim by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to force the islanders to vacate the land on which they had been living for seventy years.[5].

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