Australian imperialism and the New Hebrides, 1862-1922

Abstract

Australians first became aware that the New Hebrides were an important group of islands when news of sandalwood discoveries, in the 1840s, encouraged Australian merchants to risk losing ships and crews on uncharted reefs or at the hands of fierce New Hebrideans for the handsome profits to be made from the sale of sandalwood in China. At the time a decline in supply and demand closed this trade, in the 1860s, one of its leading entrepreneurs, Robert Towns, successfully experimented in harnessing the energy of New Hebrideans for plantation work in Queensland. This prompted other Australians to engage in a labour trade between Australia and the group; during the next 40 years over half the Pacific islands labourers brought to Queensland came from

the New Hebrides. At the same time, in the late 1860s, a handful of Australians took the plantation system to the group, where they found other Europeans who, since 1862, had been receiving money from Australia to preach the Presbyterian version of the Christian Gospel.