Here's some material that you, or perhaps another Google researcher,
may find useful:
1863 "The first systematic recruiting of Pacific islands labor for
Queensland and Fiji. Subsequently, most of the major Pacific islands
were involved, with wide social and political ramifications for
imperial and local politics. By 1918, some 280,000 Pacific islanders
and another 186,000 Asians had been pressed into some form of
indentured labor."
1879 "The first group of 60,000 Indian indentured laborers arrived
in Fiji on five-year contracts. After the indenture system was
abolished on Jan. 1, 1920, most laborers and their descendants decided
to stay in Fiji."
Encyclopedia of World History
http://www.bartleby.com/67/1477.html
"Historians estimate that between 1863 and 1906 around 100,000
Melanesians, mostly young males, became the original ‘kanakas’ in what
was known as the ‘blackbirding’ trade. They became indentured labour
on sugar, cocoa and cotton plantations in Queensland, Fiji and Samoa
and in mines in New Caledonia."
Sad relics of Pacific slavery still suffering century on
http://203.97.34.63/regional3.htm
"Between 1871 and 1903, around 9000 men were recruited from Malaita to
work in the sugar cane plantations of Queensland, Australia. Some of
these men were excited by the opportunity to travel abroad and hoped
to gain some of the wealth and possessions they had seen amongst white
people. Others were tricked or kidnapped in a process that became
known as ‘blackbirding.'"
Slavery and Sugar Cane in the Malaita Province, Solomon Islands
http://www.globetrekkertv.co.uk/destination_guide/pacific/pacific_islands/malatia_province.php
"Between 1830 and 1920, about 1.5 million indentured laborers were
recruited from India, one million from Japan, and half a million from
China. Tens of thousands of free Africans and Pacific Islanders also
served as indentured workers. The first Indian indentured laborers
were imported into Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, in 1830.
Following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, tens
of thousands of Indians, Chinese, and Africans were brought to the
British Caribbean. After France abolished slavery in 1848, its
colonies imported 80,000 Indian laborers and 19,000 Africans. Also
ending slavery in 1848, Dutch Guiana recruited 57,000 Asian workers
for its plantations. Although slavery was not abolished in Cuba until
1886, the rising costs of slaves led plantations to recruit 138,000
indentured laborers from China between 1847 and 1873. Areas that had
never relied on slave labor also imported indentured workers. After
1850, American planters in Hawaii recruited labor from China and
Japan. British planters in Natal in southern African recruited Indian
laborers and those in Queensland in northeastern Australia imported
laborers from neighboring South Pacific islands. Other indentured
laborers toiled in East Africa, on Pacific Islands such as Fiji, and
in Chile, where they gathered bird droppings known as guano for
fertilizer."
Contract Labor 1880-1920
http://www.gliah.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=416
"Indentured workers, also known more derogatively as 'coolies' came
chiefly from China and India but also from the Pacific. From about
1830 onwards they went to British colonies in North America, Africa
and Asia, as well as to French, German and Dutch colonies around the
world. They also went to the United States and to the newly
independent countries of Latin America. The total number of men, women
and children sent abroad may have been as many as 37 million."
Indentured labour and the coolie system
http://pstalker.com/migration/mg_history_2.htm |
