Colonial History of Traders and Blackbirders
For centuries the Chinese were major consumers of the aromatic Sandalwood tree, burning it as incense and carving ornate boxes and storage cupboards from the soft wood. As much as China consumed Sandalwood, Europe, particularly the British, consumed vast quantities of tea. Thus the British traders often used Sandalwood to trade with the Chinese for tea. When sandalwood ran in short supply, the infamous opium trade offset Europe's unquenchable thirst for tea. Sandalwood was a safer trade item than opium, however by the 1820's most of the northern hemisphere sandalwood supplies had been exhausted.
When Peter Dillon, the Irish explorer-trader observed that Erromango was simply covered in Sandalwood, it created an influx of traders into the islands to collect the precious timber.
All too soon, not only Erromango was discovered to harbour the scented timber, but also Efate, Aneityum, Tanna and Santo.
Initially, a token payment such as metal, a goat or cat or dog was all that was required in exchange for an entire boatload of sandalwood. However sandalwood grows very slowly and the ni-Vanuatu became more demanding as they watched their forests depleted.
Ni-Vanuatu, with their separate islands, cultures, genetic heritage's and vastly different languages, were more or less at constant warfare with nearby villages. They took a universal stance that if a villager from elsewhere slighted or injured them in some way, then that person's entire village was responsible and vengeance was wreaked upon the entire tribe. And they viewed all white people arriving on the wooden sailing ships as one tribe.
Over the following years, villages demanded payment for the sandalwood in various forms. Guns, tobacco, rival villagers (whom they ate) or the use of cannons to level an opposition village. The traders met with violent opposition in some areas and reciprocated with violence. The crew of the vessels were not the most savory lot. They often felled sandalwood trees with absolutely no regard for the proprietal rights of traditional ownership. Traders frequently cheated villages out of their 'payment', creating even further enmity. This resulted in violent attacks the next time a white trader passed. The nett result was a welcome pretext for white traders to indulge in a systematic war of extermination.
Certainly not an isolated incident, but indicative of the cruelty by traders, one such incident resulted in thirty men women and children from Lelepa Island on North Efate being shut inside Feles Cave by brushwood, that was then set alight. Those who were not burned alive, suffocated. Essentially they were viewed as non humans, savage beasts or vermin that should be exterminated for the good of all.
When systematic warfare against the ni-Vanuatu did not have as rapid effect as first hoped, the European traders tried a far more devastating strategy, the deliberate introduction of diseases for which ni-Vanuatu had no genetic immunity. There are specific incidences cited where a Tannese was shut up on board with sailors suffering from measles. Although measles is generally a recoverable disease amongst Caucasians, it was known to be deadly amongst Polynesians and Melanesians. the nett result was over one third of the Tanna population succumbing from the deadly infection.
Erromango, where the largest tracts of sandalwood were located, faired even worse, with dysentery (1840) and measles (1861) being introduced on two separate occasions, reducing the once densely populated island to a mere 800 people.
By 1860 most of the accessible tracts of sandalwood had been depleted and untold thousands of indigenous people had been slaughtered.
With the lucrative trees no longer a source of revenue, the traders turned their attention to the people themselves.
The Australian Aborigines did not make good labourers for the Queensland sugar plantations. Fiji also required labour for their sugar plantation and New Caledonia, workers for their mines. Open season was declared on the ni-Vanuatu in a trade that became known as blackbirding. Although blackbirding was popularly referred to as indentured labouring, whereby indigenous peoples were contracted for three years work, in exchange for wages and expatriation home, in fact in most instances it was outright slavery.
For the next forty years the trade continued unabated, despite the introduction of labour laws that supposedly protected the rights of the ni-Vanutau, but in fact legitimised their horrendous treatment. Those who were in fact 'indentured' rather than outright slaves were frequently in a worse position, for if they died near the end of their contract, they neither had to be paid, nor expatriated home. Fewer than 20% were ever to see home again.
Only when Australia introduced the Pacific Islands Labour Bill in 1901, in a policy colloquially referred to as the White Australia Policy, preventing the immigration either for work or settlement of anyone other than Caucasians, did the trade finally cease.
The population of the islands radically diminished, the people were also about to lose much of their cultural heritage, as missionaries had by now entered the scene.
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