Passage, port and plantation: a history of Solomon Islands labour migration, 1870 - 1914

Abstract

Until the 1820s the only Europeans encountered by the people of the Solomon Islands were explorers whose visits were brief and intermittent. In the first half of the nineteenth century whalers, shell and bech-de-mer collectors, and missionaries entered the group. Castaways lived for varying periods on some islands, and at some places, particularly at Makira Bay, San Cristobal, Mono Island and the Polynesian outliers, the islanders became accustomed to Europeans and learned to use and value their tools and tobacco. However, these pockets of acculturation were few, and the majority of Solomon Islanders were ignorant of Europeans, and little touched by European technology, when the first colonial labour recruiters arrived in the group in 1870.