Slavers of the South Seas

by Thomas Dunbabin

Angus and Robertson, 1935, [First Edition], hardcover

Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, institute stamps to front and back endpapers and title page, sticker to back cover and spine, sticker to inside front cover, foxing to fore edges, introductory pages and others, discolouration to spine and covers, markings to covers (see photographs)

“A few “blackbirds” linger still in odd corners of Australia as living memorials of the days when thousands of Pacific Islanders, cajoled, bought, or kidnapped, were brought to Queensland to labour in the sugar fields… before many years have passed there will be hardly a single survivor of the 60,000 kanakas brough to Australia by the blackbirders…
Blackbirding was full of horrors, of brutalities, of tragedies as was the African slave-trade – and fuller of romance, heroism, and of self-sacrifice.
…the blackbirding trade of the Pacific was a purely sporadic affair till after the middle of the nineteenth century.  Not till then was there a strong and steady demand for the “blackbirds.”  That demand came from the sugar fields of Australia, the mines, guano islands and cotton fields of Peru, and from plantations established in Fiji and in other islands of the South Seas… ”