The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War

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University of Hawaii Press, May 31, 2007 - History - 264 pages

Worldwide supplies of sugar and cotton were impacted dramatically as the U.S. Civil War dragged on. New areas of production entered these lucrative markets, particularly in the South Pacific, and plantation agriculture grew substantially in disparate areas such as Australia, Fiji, and Hawaii. The increase in production required an increase in labor; in the rush to fill the vacuum, freebooters and other unsavory characters began a slave trade in Melanesians and Polynesians that continued into the twentieth century.

The White Pacific ranges over the broad expanse of Oceania to reconstruct the history of "blackbirding" (slave trading) in the region. It examines the role of U.S. citizens (many of them ex-slaveholders and ex-confederates) in the trade and its roots in Civil War dislocations. What unfolds is a dramatic tale of unfree labor, conflicts between formal and informal empire, white supremacy, threats to sovereignty in Hawaii, the origins of a White Australian policy, and the rise of Japan as a Pacific power and putative protector. It also pieces together a wonderfully suggestive history of the African American presence in the Pacific.

Based on deft archival research in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, the United States, and Great Britain, The White Pacific uncovers a heretofore hidden story of race, labor, war, and intrigue that contributes significantly to the emerging intersectional histories of race and ethnicity.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Toward a White Pacic 17
33
Bully
48
Fiji
63
The KKK in the Pacic
77
Hawaiian Supremacy?
92
Hawaii Conquered
110
A Black Pacic?
129
Toward a White Australia
146
Toward Pearl Harborand Beyond
161
Notes
179
Index
239
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston.

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