Talk:Blackbirding

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Initial message[edit]

This is a term of Australian English and an important part of our history, and should eventually have an article of its own. Information that could form an adequate stub is already in the White Australia policy article, but the redirect is IMO more useful than a stub for the moment. Andrewa 06:12, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Article created[edit]

s.o. redirected back to WAP article, so better this with wls Paul foord 6 July 2005 11:15 (UTC)

Suggest mentioning that slavery was a crime[edit]

Perhaps the article should mention that slavery was illegal in the British Empire at the time, to explain why the blackbirders tended to claim that their recruits had voluntarily signed up as contract labourers.


The article does mention that slavery was illegal. It doesn't however make it clear that there is a real conflict of evidence as to whether the indentured labour was forced or not. Furthermore, even if not voluntary it wasn't slavery, but a form of civil conscription, as the labourers were paid.JohnC (talk) 06:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Historically, many slaves were given a monetary allowance. Being "paid" a trivial amount of money for their labor --- for work they did not consent to do --- when they are not allowed to refuse to work nor to leave their "employment" nor travel freely nor reside where they want is the very essence of slavery.
If I hauled you from your home at gunpoint, locked you in a dog kennel at night, and made you tend my backyard under the threat of a beating for not doing a satisfactory job... Would you claim that this was a matter of "civil conscription" so long as I tossed you a few small coins on Friday? Or would you be howling for the police and demanding criminal charges be lodged against me for multiple felony crimes, including enslavement?
Your legalistic nonsense is exactly the sort of excuses that were used at the time --- and in the present --- to excuse the practice of blackbirding and attempt to claim that it was something less than slavery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.178.166.3 (talk) 03:39, 16 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Non legalistic at all. A solid point. Unlike slavery in Nth America it was never actually legal in Australia. Indeed, the early victims just left their employers to seek work elsewhere. Queensland was a blot on this, but being technically illegal is quite different from being legal, and it should indeed be mentioned up front. Tuntable (talk) 23:19, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of term?[edit]

I didn't see any mention of why this activity is referred to as 'blackbirding'. Would be an important addition to the article. --Clay Collier 21:49, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a section on the etymology. -- Avenue 23:48, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Contradiction with Guano[edit]

This article claims: "From the 1860s, blackbirding ships in the Pacific sought workers to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands in Peru." It cites: H.E. Maude, Slavers in Paradise, Institute of Pacific Studies (1981)

The page on Guano claims: "There is no documentary evidence that enslaved Pacific Islanders participated in guano mining." It cites: Méndez, Cecilia (1987). Los trabajadores guaneros del Perú, 1840–1879. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

Logically, one of these claims must be false. 97.83.179.39 (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Robert Towns[edit]

Are there any actual sources that confirm Robert Towns engaged in blackbirding (kidnapping)? There's no question he brought Pacific Island people to work in the cotton fields etc. It seems very likely that kidnapping probably did occur in the recruitment of Pacific Island labour to Queensland. But did Towns engage in the practice of kidnapping? The sources in this section do not appear to support the claims of blackbirding being made. For example, "Towns specifically wanted adolescent males recruited and kidnapping was reportedly employed in obtaining these boys." [18] asks if they were kidnapped "like the Peruvian vessels" and Colonial Secretary states he looked into the matter and found they had come on one-year contracts and were to be returned". [19] is Towns's rebuttal of the accusation which includes a letter he claims were his instructions to the ship captain, which sought to recruit "a useful class of men, lads and active boys" so it's also unclear to me how this supports the claim that Towns specifically wanted adolescents? Similarly "Towns paid his Kanaka labourers in trinkets instead of cash at the end of their working terms. He claimed that blackbirded labourers were savages who did not know the use of money and therefore did not deserve cash wages". Again this is not what citation [21] says. It says one of Town's agents did that and said that, not Towns himself. Maybe the agent did on Town's instructions? If so, citation needed. Maybe the agent simply wanted to keep the money himself by fobbing off the workers with some junk. I raise it here because I have seen the same issue in the Robert Towns article. Nobody seems to put forward a reliable source that he was engaging in kidnapping. I don't know if Towns was a good guy or a bad guy but on the basis of the citations misrepresented here, he did not engage in kidnapping. Kerry (talk) 04:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Article needs improvement[edit]

This is a rather poor listing of events with pretty much no information given about attempts to regulate blackbirding before it was banned, or how blackbirding was often rather fuzzier than "kidnapping". --Eldomtom2 (talk) 15:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Slavery[edit]

This is an important article.

The obvious question for many readers will be "how does this differ from slavery?" However, there seems only a rather vague discussion of the historical facts, and that is well into the article. I suggest that the word slavery should be mentioned in the introduction. If the topic is too complex to address at that point, there should be a section which specifically covers a modern reassessment of blackbirding versus slavery. Humphrey Tribble (talk) 05:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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