What is “blackbirding”?
Elles Houwelingon, January 21, 2019, New Historian
Everyone has heard shocking stories about the transatlantic slave trade,
but this was hardly the only type of slavery in which Europeans were
engaged. The Pacific slave trade involved the forceful enslavement of
Pacific islanders from the mid 19thcentury to
the 20thcentury. This particular type of slavery is often referred to
as “blackbirding”.
The primary focus of “blackbirding” was to supply cheap labor to
sugar-cane plantations on Pacific plantations, particularly in
Queensland, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoan Islands. This was mainly
achieved through trickery and kidnapping. They were frequently
deceived about the length of time for which they were “contracted” and
the nature of their “contract”. If all this failed, the islanders were
simply loaded onto slave ships at gunpoint.
The captured islanders were collectively known as Kanakas, which means
Person or Man in Hawaiian. These workers were essentially treated as
slaves, but officially they were referred to as “indentured labourers”.
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Think so?
absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption
Think about this
“Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”
– William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”
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