New Zealand and the labour traffic, 1868-1870

Abstract

Since the days of the discoverers, island people had been kidnapped. Occasionally, they served as interpreters, but principally, they provided cheap labour, and during the early years of the nineteenth century, bêche-demer traders, pearlers, and buyers of sandalwood, often trepanned natives to work their ships. But blackbirding scarcely became a trade until the ‘sixties’ and ‘seventies’, when a large scale plantation economy, essentially dependent on the availability of cheap labour, began in the Pacific. […]

Whereas most of the vessels involved were based on Australian ports, New Zealand owned and operated ships were employed in the labour traffic. New Zealanders were already trading with the islanders in goods, fruit, curios, cotton, and coffee, and few hesitated to enter a more lucrative activity, the trade in labourers. In addition, the geographical proximity of Levuka and Auckland, meant that Fiji had an especial interest for masters of New Zealand vessels. An accurate evaluation as to the extent of the participation by New Zealanders is difficult, but evidence suggests it was considerable. […] [Extract from Introduction]