The initial contact that Captain Cook’s expeditions had made with land in the Southern hemisphere had created huge excitement in England. For the European nations, empire was an exertion of power and a status symbol in Europe, as well as an economic opportunity. British expeditions began with John Cabot’s 1497 expedition under Elizabeth I in response to the growing Spanish presence in South America, but found that they could not make any gains in the face of Spanish naval and commercial superiority, so turned their attention to as yet undiscovered territory. When Cook discovered islands on his first voyage (1768-71), therefore, there was a determination to establish an equally lucrative trade to that which England’s great rival Spain enjoyed from their colonies. As it quickly became evident that the islands were not rich in the precious natural resources prized in Europe, attention turned to the people inhabiting them instead. Having seen the huge success of the triangular slave trade from Africa, a similar model was employed with islanders known as ‘blackbirding’, in which workers were either legitimately transported or kidnapped to work three-year terms. The labour trade was in demand in Crown colonies, both in South America for mining and in Queensland, Australia to support the labour-intensive sugar plantations that were developing there. An estimated 62,500 Islanders were brought to Queensland between 1863 and 1904. (3) An entire industry was created around the South Pacific labour trade, prompting huge debate in England, as the trading of slaves had been banned in England in 1807, which rose to the Supreme Court. Some, such as Charles Lilley QC (later Chief Justice), saw the trade as an extension of England’s civilising mission, claiming that native Epinese men kidnapped in the 1871 case of The Jason had been ‘saved’, as they were landed as free men in a British colony and under the protection of English law.

“The moment these islanders touched the deck of an English vessel they were free, and had a right to habeas corpus. They were landed at Maryborough and allowed to land free ….” (4). The British colonisers took a ‘paternalistic’ view based on European images of Melanesia as backward and brutal, purporting that, irrespective of how Melanesians were brought to the colonies, “the labour traffic as now carried on is the best means of civilising and Christianising the Natives of the Solomon Islands and other islands in the Western Pacific” (5), and that the adoption of these European qualities would in themselves ‘civilise’ them, in a clear lack of respect for local custom.