Sugarcane and Racism in 1880s Australia

Rushcourt71

"Introduced in the 1860s, the [Sugarcane] crop subtly undermined the racial ideas of British colonists [in Australia, then a UK colony], when farmers planning a system along the lines of the Southern United States, employed Solomon Islanders- Kanakas- to work the plantations.

Though only indentured a few years, and theoretically given wages and passage home when their term expired, Kanakas on plantations suffered greatly from unfamiliar diseases, while the recruiting methods used by 'Blackbirder' traders were at best dubious and often slipped into wholesale kidnapping.

Growing White unemployment and nationalism throughout the 1880s, rather than any humanitarian considerations, eventually forced the government to ban blackbirding and repatriate the islanders."

(Source: Australia, The Rough Guide,  4th Edition, 1999, P415)     

dushazmi

Racism is historical truth, but truth of present too. See trump

Rushcourt71

Racism is an ever present reality and a future truth as well. As long as states camouflage its historicity and current existence, call it by other means, defend the guilty, do not condemn the actions, systems, administrations and anything else that sanctioned it, it will not go away for generations to come.