Talk:Blackbirding

message: This is a term of Australian English and an important part of our history, and should eventually have an article of its own. Information that could form an adequate stub is already in the White Australia policy article, but the redirect is IMO more useful than a stub for the moment. Andrewa 06:12, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Initial message

message: I didn't see any mention of why this activity is referred to as 'blackbirding'.  Would be an important addition to the article.  --Clay Collier 21:49, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a section on the etymology. -- Avenue 23:48, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of term? 

message: This article claims: "From the 1860s, blackbirding ships in the Pacific sought workers to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands in Peru."
It cites: H.E. Maude, Slavers in Paradise, Institute of Pacific Studies (1981)
The page on Guano claims: "There is no documentary evidence that enslaved Pacific Islanders participated in guano mining."
It cites: Méndez, Cecilia (1987). Los trabajadores guaneros del Perú, 1840–1879. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
Logically, one of these claims must be false. 97.83.179.39 (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction with [[ Guano]] 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Are there any actual sources that confirm Robert Towns engaged in blackbirding (kidnapping)? There's no question he brought Pacific Island people to work in the cotton fields etc. It seems very likely that kidnapping probably did occur in the recruitment of Pacific Island labour to Queensland. But did Towns engage in the practice of kidnapping? The sources in this section  do not appear to support the claims of blackbirding being made. For example, "Towns specifically wanted adolescent males recruited and kidnapping was reportedly employed in obtaining these boys." [18] asks if they were kidnapped "like the Peruvian vessels" and Colonial Secretary states he looked into the matter and found they had come on one-year contracts and were to be returned". [19] is Towns's rebuttal of the accusation which includes a letter he claims were his instructions to the ship captain, which sought to recruit "a useful class of men, lads and active boys" so it's also unclear to me how this supports the claim that Towns specifically wanted adolescents? Similarly "Towns paid his Kanaka labourers in trinkets instead of cash at the end of their working terms. He claimed that blackbirded labourers were savages who did not know the use of money and therefore did not deserve cash wages". Again this is not what citation [21] says. It says one of Town's agents did that and said that, not Towns himself. Maybe the agent did on Town's instructions? If so, citation needed. Maybe the agent simply wanted to keep the money himself by fobbing off the workers with some junk. I raise it here because I have seen the same issue in the Robert Towns article. Nobody seems to put forward a reliable source that he was engaging in kidnapping. I don't know if Towns was a good guy or a bad guy but on the basis of the citations misrepresented here, he did not engage in kidnapping. Kerry (talk) 04:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Robert Towns

message: This is a rather poor listing of events with pretty much no information given about attempts to regulate blackbirding before it was banned, or how blackbirding was often rather fuzzier than "kidnapping". --Eldomtom2 (talk) 15:48, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needs improvement 

message: This is an important article.
The obvious question for many readers will be "how does this differ from slavery?" However, there  seems only a rather vague discussion of the historical facts, and that is well into the article. I suggest that the word slavery should be mentioned in the introduction. If the topic is too complex to address at that point, there should be a section which specifically covers a modern reassessment of blackbirding versus slavery. Humphrey Tribble (talk) 05:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slavery