South Sea Islanders in the context of "Indentured servitude"

Today the term South Seas, or South Sea, most commonly refers to the portion of the Pacific Ocean south of the equator. The term South Sea may also be used synonymously for Oceania, or even more narrowly for Polynesia or the Polynesian Triangle, an area bounded by the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand and Easter Island. Pacific Islanders are commonly referred to as South Sea Islanders, particularly in Australia.

The term was coined as Mar de Sur, or "South Sea",  by Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 as he it encountered on the southern coast of the Isthmus of Panama and it was applied to the entirety today's Pacific Ocean. In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan named the same ocean the Pacific Ocean, and over time Magellan's name became more well-known.

Polynesia (UK: /ˌpɒlɪˈniːziə/ POL-in-EE-zee-ə, US: /-ˈniːʒə/ -⁠EE-zhə) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including linguistic relations, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs.

The term Polynésie was first used in 1756 by the French writer Charles de Brosses, who originally applied it to all the islands of the Pacific. In 1831, Jules Dumont d'Urville proposed a narrower definition during a lecture at the Société de Géographie of Paris. By tradition, the islands located in the southern Pacific have also often been called the South Sea Islands, and their inhabitants have been called South Sea Islanders. The Hawaiian Islands have often been considered to be part of the South Sea Islands because of their relative proximity to the southern Pacific islands, even though they are in fact located in the North Pacific. Another term in use, which avoids this inconsistency, is "the Polynesian Triangle" (from the shape created by the layout of the islands in the Pacific Ocean). This term makes clear that the grouping includes the Hawaiian Islands, which are located at the northern vertex of the referenced "triangle".

Blackbirding was the trade in indentured labourers from the Pacific in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is often described as a form of slavery, despite the Slave Trade Act 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, including Australia. The trade frequently relied on coercion, deception, and kidnapping to transport tens of thousands of indigenous people from islands in the Pacific Ocean to Australia and other European colonies, often to work on plantations in conditions similar to the Atlantic slave trade. These blackbirded people, known as Kanakas or South Sea Islanders, were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, amongst others.

The owners, captains, and crews of the ships involved in the acquisition of these labourers were termed blackbirders. Blackbirding ships began operations in the Pacific from the 1840s and continued, in some cases, into the 1930s. The demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from sugar cane, cotton, and coffee plantations in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti, and Hawaii. In Auckland, a small group of South Sea Islanders worked in flax mills. Examples of blackbirding outside the South Pacific include the early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at Nickol Bay and Broome, where Aboriginal Australians were blackbirded from the surrounding areas. In Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the Americas, blackbirders sought workers for their haciendas and to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands.

Bundaberg (/ˈbʌndəbɜːrɡ/ BUN-də-BERG) is the major regional city in the Wide Bay-Burnett region of the state of Queensland, Australia. It is the ninth largest city in the state. The Bundaberg central business district is situated along the southern bank of the Burnett River about 20 km (12 mi) from its mouth at Burnett Heads, where it flows into the Coral Sea. The city is sited on a rich coastal plain, supporting one of the nation's most productive agricultural regions. The area of Bundaberg is the home of the Taribelang-Bunda, Goreng Goreng, Gurang, and Bailai peoples. The common nickname for Bundaberg is "Bundy", although its history as a major sugar producing region means it is often referenced as the "Rum City" or "Sugar City". The residents of the city are referred to colloquially as 'Bundabergians'. In the 2021 census, the Bundaberg urban area had a population of 73,747 people.

The district surveyor, John Thompson Charlton designed the city layout in 1868, which planned for uniform square blocks with wide main streets, and named it ‘Bundaberg’. An early influence on the development of Bundaberg came with the 1868 Land Act, which was a famous Queensland via media, that aimed to create a class of Australian yeoman. Large sugarcane plantations were established throughout the 1880s, with industries of sugar mills, refineries, and rum distilleries that delivered prosperity to Bundaberg. These plantations used South Sea Islanders as indentured labourers, many of whom were blackbirded, a practice considered a form of slavery. The trade was outlawed in 1904, with most South Sea Islanders deported by 1906. Major floods in 1942 and 1954 damaged the river, ending Bundaberg's role as a river port and led to a new port at the mouth of the Burnett river. In the post-war era, Bundaberg continued to grow with its wealth tied to its sugar industry. In 2013, Bundaberg experienced record flooding from Cyclone Oswald, which was the worst disaster in the city's history.

The White Australia policy was a set of racial policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origins – Asians (primarily Chinese) and Pacific Islanders – from immigrating to Australia, in order to create a "White/British" ideal focused on Anglo-Celtic peoples, but not exclusively. Pre-Federation, the Australian colonies passed many anti-Chinese immigration laws mainly using Poll Taxes. With Federation in 1901 came discrimination based on the Dictation Test, which effectively gave power to immigration officials to racially discriminate without mentioning race. The policy also affected immigrants from Germany, Italy, and other European countries, especially in wartime. Governments progressively dismantled such policies between 1949 and 1973, when the Whitlam government removed the last racial elements of Australia's immigration laws.

Competition in the gold fields between European and Chinese miners, and labour union opposition to the importation of Pacific Islanders (primarily South Sea Islanders) into the sugar plantations of Queensland, reinforced demands to eliminate or minimize low-wage immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands. From the 1850s colonial governments imposed restrictions on Chinese arrivals, including poll taxes and tonnage restrictions. The colonial authorities levied a special tax on Chinese immigrants which other immigrants did not have to pay. Towards the end of the 19th century, labour unions pushed to stop Chinese immigrants from working in the furniture and market garden industries. Some laws were passed regarding the labelling of Chinese made furniture in Victoria and Western Australia but not in New South Wales. Chinese people dominated market gardening until their numbers declined as departures were not replaced.