The People Trade: Pacific Island Laborers and New Caledonia, 1865-1930 (Pacific Islands Monograph Series)

Shineberg, Dorothy

ISBN 10: 0824821017 ISBN 13: 9780824821012

Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996

Synopsis

This text presents the story of the people of the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and the Solomon islands, who left their homes to work in the French colony of New Caledonia has long remained a missing piece of Pacific island history. The author brings these labourers to life by painstakingly assembling the fragments from a wide variety of scattered records and documents. She sketches the workers' lives during and after recruitment, describing the contractual agreements, the kinds of work they did, their living conditions, how they spent their free time, the large numbers who sickened and died, and the difficult choice at the end of the contract to remain in the colony as a free worker or to return home.

About this title

Review:

"Shineberg's work joins an important historical literature on the Pacific Islands that addresses a primary effect of colonialism on the shaping of the diversity of contemporary populations among Pacific nation-states. Her monograph is perhaps the most detailed study in this literature and is the result of impressive scholarship."

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0824821017
• ISBN 13: 9780824821012
• Binding: VHS Tape
• Number of pages: 332