Reviewed by Ian Hamilton
It would be an interesting exercise to ask one hundred randomly selected Australians this question: “Has Australia ever been a participant in the slave trade?”
If the interviewees had any knowledge of Ryan Butta’s book, then they would answer, hopefully with regret, “yes”.
Butta writes a helpfully succinct paragraph towards the end of the book:
“The volte-face* performed by Samuel Griffith in 1892 placed the Islanders once again in the battle between the two lies of those for and against the presence of Pacific Islanders in Queensland. On the side of the abolitionists the lie was that they opposed slavery, and on the side of the planters the lie was that only black men could work in the tropics. One side was driven by the thirst for cheap labour, the other by a racial prejudice determined to keep the colony white.” p278
(* As Premier of Queensland Griffith had announced the end of Blackbirding by 1890. By 1892, he had repealed his own legislation and the trade was allowed to continue.)
This text is a fine example of academic writing because the author has drawn upon a wide range of primary sources and, for the most part, drawn objective conclusions about events and their significance. Not surprisingly, the vocabulary is precise and structure (chronological) apposite. The dramatis personae is quite extensive, although many names will be familiar to readers: for instance, there is a Ben Boyd Road in Neutral Bay, Robert Towns name was given to Townsville and Samuel Griffith has a Brisbane University named after him.
While the main activity of the slave trade involved “recruiting” South Sea Islanders for cotton, then sugar, plantations in Queensland, there were men (the decision makers are white men of education, wealth and social standing) in Sydney financing and facilitating the slave trade. Well- known Australian companies such as CSR and BurnsPhilp exercise commercial power, apparently without any concern for the welfare of the Islanders.
Butta also alerts his readers to the global context of Blackbirding. In 1857 French fortune seekers gathered Islanders and sent them as unpaid labourers to Reunion Island and in 1862 one Joseph Byrnes took a shipment to Peru. As Peru had abolished slavery in 1854, this transgression met with opposition from French and British authorities and the trade was terminated. Some of those involved looked for new opportunities.
The other global context Butta mentions is the situation in the United States, in particular that (as noted in the quotation above) some Australian abolitionists real purpose was the White Australia Policy, which linked abolition to the deportation of the Islanders. This was contrasted to the continued residence of freed slaves in the US, whose presence was seen as “polluting” white purity.
Ben Boyd, Robert Towns et al are portrayed as ruthless and greedy. Butta certainly defends such a portrait with historical evidence, however, one of his themes is that blackbirding is but one example of our nation’s tendency to deny the sins of the past, indeed, to erase the historical record from our collective consciousness. While he may well have a valid point, some of his sentences are editorial in tone:
“The project*, like ourselves in this country of induced amnesia, was engineered to forget.” p89.
(* Robert Towns’ adoption of the modus operandi of the Peruvian slave raids when he took the ship the Don Juan to the Pacific Islands and returned with men to work on his cotton plantation.)
Other men took the opportunity to “persuade” Islanders of the benefits of working in Queensland, using contracts in English (which the Islanders could not understand). There is little evidence of impartial advice, fair trading or translation services. Instead, the promises made were mostly broken due to harsh working conditions, withheld wages, poor food and medical neglect. This book leaves no doubt that this trade was a form of slavery. The Islanders were merely a commodity, expendable if they didn’t add to their masters’ wealth. Underpinning this was the assumption that these people were sub-human savages. While there were critics of the trade, they appear to have had little regard for the islanders. Their anxiety was that black people should not be allowed to have permanent homes in Australia. Butta does make passing reference to several missionaries, whose concern for the Islanders appears to have been more genuinely compassionate. They may have been guilty of culturally insensitive proselytising but do seem to have been one of the few groups to see the humanity and dignity of these exploited people.
This is not to forget some acts of violence committed by the Islanders, including reports of cannibalism. Nonetheless, these people were protecting their families and territory; arguably acts of self-defence.
Butta also introduces us to the role of governments in this tale. He is none too complimentary about Imperial or Colonial parliaments, which appear to have been quite happy to formulate legislation and then ignore its implications. In the case of the Queensland Government Butta is blunt: most of the parliamentarians benefitted, either directly or indirectly, from the profits generated by the Islander labour. Despite various inquiries, commissions, petitions and newspaper articles little seem to have impeded the trade.
The morality of the situation is further complicated by Butta’s view that opponents of the trade, such as Robert Short, were more concerned about ensuring the racial purity of Australia than the welfare of the Islanders.
The politics of the Federation movement mark the final chapter. Figures like Parkes, Barton and Deakin appear anti-slavery, although this does not necessarily arise from pure motives. To be fair to Federalists they face threats from the planters, including their unsuccessful appeals to the Crown to establish a colony of Far North Queensland, which almost certainly would not have wanted to federate.
Arguably, the most disturbing section of the book refers to our current rules regarding the “Pacific Australia Labour Mobility” Act (2024) and concerns about underpayment of workers.
This is an important book based on scholarly research. It has extensive end notes but no index.
Its insights into Australian history deserve our discerning attention.
Blackbirding
[2026]
by Ryan Butta
Affirm Press
ISBN: 978 1 9231 3570 3
$36.99; 368pp