Queensland Canefield Trade a 'Myth Perpetuated'
Peter Shadbolt, The Australian, 12/6/04
Historian Keith Windschuttle has turned his critical eye on the 19th-century trade in Kanakas to work the Queensland cane fields and has concluded it is a myth.
"And it's still on the school curriculum and the ABC's website, even though it has been disproved," Mr Windschuttle said.
Contrary to oral histories about the practice known as 'blackbirding', a term borrowed from the African slave trade that referred to the press-ganging of Melanesian islanders to work the cane fields, Mr Windschuttle claims the trade in slaves was exaggerated.
"There were a small number of cases around 1860, but it ceased soon after," he said.
"The government didn't want any suggestion there was a slave trade in Australia and launched several royal commissions into it.
"In the history of the labour movement, it had to be the most bureaucratic labour trade in the history of the world."
Not content with questioning the historical accounts of the massacre of Tasmanian Aborigines, Mr Windschuttle's new thesis is unlikely to win him fans in academia or in Queensland, where the descendants of Kanaka cane workers still live.
"That bloke doesn't know what he's talking about," said president of the Australian South Sea Island United Council, Joe Leo."My grandfather was blackbirded and both my wife's grandparents were blackbirded. Call it indentured labour if you like, it was still a form of slavery."
He said oral history and documentation showed that while early arrivals from Vanuatu volunteered to become contract labourers on the cane fields, word had got back to the islands about the miserable pay and conditions in Australia.
"Some of them weren't paid in three years so when the boats came back, our people would run away and that's when blackbirding began."
Mr Leo said it was common practice to entice islanders on to ships where they would be then imprisoned in the hold.
"The stories we got from our people -- and this has been confirmed on Pentecost Island where our mob are from -- are that people would kick up a big ruckus down in the hold and then the blackbirders would kill a couple of them just to shut them up."
Mr Windschuttle's revisionist take on the history of blackbirding -- once condemned by Mark Twain in one of his travelogues -- is contained in his latest publication The White Australia Policy, to be launched today.
The book sets out to demolish the idea that the White Australia Policy, which dominated immigration policy from 1901 until 1973, was a piece of racist legislation that put Australia on a par with South Africa.
Historian Keith Windschuttle has turned his critical eye on the 19th-century trade in Kanakas to work the Queensland cane fields and has concluded it is a myth.
"And it's still on the school curriculum and the ABC's website, even though it has been disproved," Mr Windschuttle said.
Contrary to oral histories about the practice known as 'blackbirding', a term borrowed from the African slave trade that referred to the press-ganging of Melanesian islanders to work the cane fields, Mr Windschuttle claims the trade in slaves was exaggerated.
"There were a small number of cases around 1860, but it ceased soon after," he said.
"The government didn't want any suggestion there was a slave trade in Australia and launched several royal commissions into it.
"In the history of the labour movement, it had to be the most bureaucratic labour trade in the history of the world."
Not content with questioning the historical accounts of the massacre of Tasmanian Aborigines, Mr Windschuttle's new thesis is unlikely to win him fans in academia or in Queensland, where the descendants of Kanaka cane workers still live.
"That bloke doesn't know what he's talking about," said president of the Australian South Sea Island United Council, Joe Leo."My grandfather was blackbirded and both my wife's grandparents were blackbirded. Call it indentured labour if you like, it was still a form of slavery."
He said oral history and documentation showed that while early arrivals from Vanuatu volunteered to become contract labourers on the cane fields, word had got back to the islands about the miserable pay and conditions in Australia.
"Some of them weren't paid in three years so when the boats came back, our people would run away and that's when blackbirding began."
Mr Leo said it was common practice to entice islanders on to ships where they would be then imprisoned in the hold.
"The stories we got from our people -- and this has been confirmed on Pentecost Island where our mob are from -- are that people would kick up a big ruckus down in the hold and then the blackbirders would kill a couple of them just to shut them up."
Mr Windschuttle's revisionist take on the history of blackbirding -- once condemned by Mark Twain in one of his travelogues -- is contained in his latest publication The White Australia Policy, to be launched today.
The book sets out to demolish the idea that the White Australia Policy, which dominated immigration policy from 1901 until 1973, was a piece of racist legislation that put Australia on a par with South Africa.