Oct 27, 2025
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Blackbirding is the coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant from their native land. The practice took place on a large scale with the taking of people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries. These blackbirded people were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders. They were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu, Fiji, and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago amongst others.
Islands in a vast ocean, canoes and boats play a big role in Melanesian history. In Fijian folklore, kaunitoni was a canoe that carried ancestral founders to the island. The Solomon Islands were named by the Spanish, who, finding gold on their arrival in 1568, thought they had discovered the source of King Solomon’s wealth. From 1865, boats facilitated the colonial practice of ‘blackbirding’, the transport of people through deception or force for the purposes of labour. Large numbers of Solomon Islanders and Vanuatuans were taken to Fiji to work on cotton plantations.
Rhys Griffiths, ‘National Gallery: Melanesia’, History Today
The northernmost and remotest of the Cook Islands atolls, Penrhyn was named after British explorer Captain William Crofton Sever’s ship the Lady Penrhyn (penrhyn = peninsula in Welsh), which passed by the islands in 1788. The Cook Islanders themselves called Penrhyn Tongareva, but continued contact (after Russian [Estonian!] Otto von Kotzebue first stopped by), particularly with the British, including annexation by same, and subsequent annexation by New Zealand, has led to the most common English name for the atoll to be Penrhyn, one of the Cook Islands’ dependencies in free association with New Zealand. There is an intriguing historical footnote wherein the United States of America made claim specifically to Penrhyn under its self-promoting and self-declared Guano Islands Act (of 1856, enabling United States of Americans to take possession, in the name of the United States of America, of unclaimed islands containing guano deposits; if Penrhyn was uninhabited at some point since 1856, it is only because the entire population was blackbirded into slavery elsewhere and/or perished from contact with colonizers/slavers - in this case, strangely, the Peruvians). Anyway, the United States of America eventually gave up claim to Penrhyn in 1980, some fifteen years after the Cook Islands had gained internal independence from New Zealand.
Stamp details: Top left: Issued in: 1920 From: Omoka, Penrhyn MC #20
Top right: Issued on: September 27, 1974 From: Penrhyn, Cook Islands MC #57
Stamps on bottom: Issued on: December 28, 2016 From: Penrhyn, Cook Islands MC #BL121
Recognized as a sovereign state by the UN: No Claimed by: Cook Islands (which, in turn, is in Free Association with New Zealand) Member of the Universal Postal Union: No
In late August we ran a piece by Joan Druett on her new biography of 19th century sea captain William "Bully" Hayes, who roamed the Pacific and New Zealand. Michael Field was among those who were concerned that it failed to properly address Hayes's involvement in "blackbirding"; we asked him to writ
Europeans swept across the Pacific in the 19th century looking for cheap labour to work their sugar, cocoa and copra plantations. Ships were sent off to remote islands to grab workers. About 100,000 people were taken, usually coerced, tricked, or straight-out kidnapped; it was a form of migrant labour known as “blackbird catching”.
The trade stopped around 1910 but remains a deeply emotional issue for the people of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Their forebears were traded into Queensland, Fiji, Peru, and Bolivia, as well as godforsaken guano islands.
An estimated 3600 Polynesians were snatched in 1863. The haul included 253 people from Tokelau – mostly men, and 47 per cent of the population. Three men escaped in Tutuila in Samoa but the rest never returned. They disappeared without trace, lost forever. The Samoan pastor Mata visited Tokelau after the snatching, and wrote, “It is most piteous to witness the grief of these women and children. They are weeping night and day; they do not eat, there is none left to provide food for them or to climb the coconut trees.”
A large percentage of people who were blackbirded settled on the east-coast of Australia in Queensland North. I’m just saying this because it seems there is an assumption that this is history. The descendants of those stolen are still alive and yet to be acknowledged by Australians.
Many Australians are unaware that some prominent early settlers had links to British slavery. Telling these stories provides a better collec