GIRMIT AND ITS AUSTRALIAN CONNECTIONS NOT JUST CSR
HANNAH DUDLEY WENT AS A MISSIONARY TO INDIA. SHE LEARNT HINDI BEFORE SETTING UP ORPHANAGES, EDUCATION IN FIJI. AND HIGHLIGHTING PLIGHT OF WOMEN
Dr William McGregor, the Chief Medical Officer, took control of the measles epidemic in 1875 and set up quarantine arrangements for the first girmit ship Leonidas which arrived at Levuka in 1879 with many cases of cholera. During the tragic wreck of the girmit ship Syria in 1884 on Naselai reef he headed a major rescue effort and saved many girmitiya lives at the shipwreck.
In this article Utkat Naiker, former managing director of Fiji’s Housing Authority and retired senior executive at the United Nations HABITAT headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, tells of the involvement of Australian corporations and individuals who played key roles in Fiji’s history.
May 14 this year marks the 137th anniversary of Girmit.
The Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) of Sydney was the dominant player in Fiji’s economy during and after the Girmit period and had strong influence on the colonial government throughout its presence in Fiji from 1882 to 1973. However, there were other Australians involved in Fiji in influential ways before, during and after the Girmit and this article briefly describes their roles: the early traders and planters, the two Australian Governors of Fiji, the settlers from Melbourne, the medical officer, the lady missionary, the big businessmen, the gold miner and the research school.
The early Australian traders
The indenture of Indians to work in Fiji’s plantations commenced in 1879 but the Australian connection with Fiji started from around 1805 when Australians made deals with local chiefs in Bua to harvest stands of sandalwood. They shipped the sandalwood to Sydney for transhipping to Hong Kong where it was highly valued for its oil. When the sandalwood stands were exhausted by 1820 traders switched to collecting beche de mer (sea cucumbers) for export to China. In the following decades Australian and American whalers operating in South Pacific waters found a sheltered harbour at Levuka. Their use of the harbour attracted traders, craftsmen and planters, mostly from Australia, who provided goods and services required by the shipping ventures.
Australian planters
During the 1860s more planters came from Australia to cultivate cotton for its high price caused by the disruption to cotton production during the American Civil War. The price bubble soon burst and by 1870 many Australians planters switched to producing sugar by establishing plantations in large tracts of flat land purchased from the local chiefs in the fertile valleys of the Rewa, Ba and Sigatoka rivers and along the coastal areas of Viti Levu, the southern coast of Vanua Levu and in Taveuni. Of these planters the name of philanthropist JP Bailey lives to this day through the Bailey Clinic. Planters used Fijian labour but this considerably disturbed the structured village life. From 1862 Australian entrepreneurs commenced blackbirding - capturing villagers in Vanuatu and Solomon Islands and transporting them for plantation labour in Queensland. After 1868 the blackbirders expanded to Fiji where there was a labour shortage but no laws regulating recruitment. By 1877 a few thousand blackbirded Pacific islanders were brought to Fiji where they worked under difficult conditions in plantations. About half of these labourers died during their time in Fiji. In 1874 Britain introduced laws to prohibit this inhumane trade. Thus the supply of labourers reduced considerably, causing economic misery to the planters. By 1871 the Planters recognised Ratu Cakobau as Tui Viti but constantly pressed him for more land and native labour. John Bates Thurston, a Taveuni copra planter became the King’s main adviser and revived the previously unsuccessful unconditional offer of Fiji to Britain. London sent Commodore Goodenough, senior British Navy officer in Australia, to investigate. He recommended positively. The two Australian Governors of Fiji Sir Hercules Robinson the Governor of NSW was sent by London to negotiate the unconditional surrender of Fiji to Britain. He, together with the NSW Attorney General the Hon G.L. Innes, negotiated the Deed of Session with the chiefs on behalf of the British Government. A provisional government of Fiji was declared with Sir Hercules Robinson as the head and Layard, the ex-British Consul as administrator. A four-member Executive Council, comprising local Australian residents was set up to assist the administrator, consisting of Thurston as Colonial Secretary and three others as Colonial Treasurer, Attorney General and Secretary for Native Affairs. The laws operating in New South Wales were adopted, subject to local proclamations issued by the new Executive Council.
Thurston took responsibility for land matters and appointed an Australian land surveyor to head a Department of Lands and Immigration which later negotiated with the Government of British India the formal arrangements for the importation of indentured Indians. Another Australian Surveyor was appointed as Commissioner of Lands, responsible for the implementation of the land clauses in the Deed of Cession. He introduced
to Fiji the Torrens system of land registration, initially devised in South Australia, to create freehold titles in the colony’s emerging land tenure system, to provide security over lands purchased by the planters.
The first British governor of Fiji Sir Arthur Gordon arrived in September 1875 and pursued a policy of preservation of native culture, established a Council of Chiefs to assist in the administration of native affairs and stopped the use of Fijian labour on the plantations. It is estimated that between 1860 and 1873 the Fijian population declined from 200,000 to 170, 000 due to the harsh working conditions in the plantations. Gordon solved the planters’ labour dilemma through the importation of Indian indentured labour.
Sir John Bates Thurston, the other Australian who was Governor of Fiji, was a British Naval Officer but became an Australian sheep farmer at Namoi, NSW before entering the NSW Government service. He joined the Botanical expedition to South Sea Islands but was shipwrecked in Samoa in 1864 and for 18 months learnt much about native customs and the matai system. A Wesleyan missionary ship took him to Fiji where he settled as a cotton planter in Taveuni. In 1869 Thurston was employed by the British Consul and in 1871 was appointed Britain’s Honorary Consul. As Premier to King Cakobau he attempted to settle the constant conflicts between the King and the planters who clamoured for labour and in 1872 Thurston revived the King’s unconditional offer of Fiji to Britain and drafted parts of the Deed of Cession. He went to Sydney in 1880 to encourage the CSR Company to establish in Fiji and later facilitated the transfer of large tracts of land to the Company in the Nausori area. Thurston served as Governor from 1888 to 1897. As Acting Governor, Thurston declined requests of girmitiyas for improved labour conditions and removal of the task system which was not part of the girmit agreement and introduced an Ordinance in 1886 prohibiting assembly of five or more immigrants. As Governor he was adamant in preserving the task system applied in the plantations and provided incomplete reports to London by downplaying the decreasing level of girmitiya earnings and the increasing rates of child mortality. He was rebuked by the Colonial Office on his hard line on the task system and warned that if matters did not improve in the working conditions in the plantations the supply of Indian labour would be terminated. He died while in office in 1897 and was buried in Melbourne.
Melbourne settlers establish Suva
In Victoria after the end of the gold rush Melbournians W.K. Renwick and S. Thompson formed the Polynesia Company in 1868 to plant cotton in Fiji. The Company offered to pay off King Cakobau’s debt of $40,000 to the Americans in return for land, trading and banking rights. The King agreed and granted a large area around Suva Harbour and in the areas adjoining the Navua and Rewa Rivers. In 1870 the SS Alhambra left Melbourne carrying 170 passengers for Fiji of which 40 were connected with the Polynesia Company, including Brewster and Joske. The settlers set up cotton and sugar farms in the Suva Peninsula but had to abandon this venture due to the wet climatic conditions and the weakness of the thin topsoil. Renwick and Thompson bought up land in Suva from the Company in 1879 and subdivided it according to a layout prepared by Colonels Pratt and Stewart of the Royal Engineers. The Australians purchased commercial land in the flat areas and residential land in the adjoining high area which they named Toorak, after the Melbourne suburb. The spot where land sales were held is marked by a plaque in a triangular park at the corner of Renwick Road and Thomson Street. Many of the streets in downtown Suva and Toorak are named after the Melbournians. Renwick and Thompson offered a large area to the Government which could not expand its operations in Levuka due to the mountainous terrain. The deep harbour and the potential for future land subdivision encouraged the relocation of the capital to Suva in 1882, to the area east of Gordon St where many streets were named after British Governors. With the establishment of government administration services, post office, customs and police many entrepreneurs were attracted to set up commercial ventures. Many ex-girmitiyas found employment in the Government’s public works projects and settled in Vatuwaqa and Samabula and Suva gained municipal status in 1910.
Dr William McGregor and Syria
Dr William McGregor, the Chief Medical Officer, took control of the measles epidemic in 1875 and set up quarantine arrangements for the first girmit ship Leonidas which arrived at Levuka in 1879 with many cases of cholera. He later set up a quarantine station at Nukulau island for all subsequent girmit ships. During the tragic wreck of the girmit ship Syria in 1884 on Naselai reef he headed a major rescue effort and saved many girmitiya lives at the shipwreck. There were 497 persons on the ship and 56 died, including 31 men, 15 women, and 10 children. Dr. McGregor rose to become Colonial Secretary of Fiji and from 1909-14 was Governor of Queensland where he was influential in establishing the University of Queensland. The upmarket suburb of McGregor beside Garden City, a major regional centre at southern Brisbane, is named after him.
Dr William McGregor, the Chief Medical Officer, took control of the measles epidemic in 1875 and set up quarantine arrangements for the first girmit ship Leonidas which arrived at Levuka in 1879 with many cases of cholera. During the tragic wreck of the girmit ship Syria in 1884 on Naselai reef he headed a major rescue effort and saved many girmitiya lives at the shipwreck.
Morpeth, NSW, served as a teacher before joining the British Methodist Missionary Society as a mission sister in India where she learnt Hindi. In 1897 the Australian Methodist Mission sent her to Fiji where she was immediately struck by the social fallout from the Girmit. She influenced the Church to build an orphanage for children of the girmitiyas at Davuilevu in 1904. As the Government had no programs for education of the children of the girmit she established the first school for Indian children in Suva on her verandah. She taught Hindi and English to 40 children and also held night classes for adult ex-girmitiyas. The Methodist Church erected two bure school buildings at Davuilevu near Nausori, and a wooden church in 1901 at the site of the present Dudley High School in Suva. Travelling into the Rewa Valley heartland she witnessed the real plight of the Indian indentured women working in the CSR plantations. Women had to be in the field before sunrise to complete their daily task set at impossibly high levels. There was harsh, sadistic physical punishment and withholding of pay for noncompletion of tasks in time. The pay for work was less than the daily rate stipulated in the Agreement. They lived in the labour lines where each room was occupied by three persons leading to overcrowding, and there was no furniture or privacy. Rent for the accommodation was deducted from the weekly wage. Hannah Dudley came to fully appreciate the level of exploitation of fellow human beings, which was a shock to her Christian beliefs. She wrote articles in the local paper and sent letters to London where they were widely published in church bulletins. This information mobilised public opinion in England against the indenture system and supplemented the information assembled by the Government of British India which terminated the Indenture system in 1916.
The traders from Sydney and Queensland
The major sugar mill towns of Nausori, Labasa, Ba and Lautoka were commenced by the traders from Sydney and Queensland. Close to each of the sugar mills the nucleus of a future urban centre took shape with the establishment of the Australian commercial houses of the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac) and either one or both of Morris Hedstrom Ltd and Burns Philp South Seas Co Ltd. They were followed by a string of hotels, owned by Northern Hotels Ltd, another Australian concern. Morris Hedstrom Ltd, established as a trading shop in Levuka by Percy Morris and Maynard Hedstrom in 1878, opened a branch in Suva after 1882 and set up near each CSR Company mill. In the1920s it merged with other major importers Henry Marks & Co and Walter Horne. It also set up in non-mill towns of Tavua, Nadi and Sigatoka. James Burns and Robert Philips were enterprising storekeepers in Townsville and Cairns that supplied gold mining camps in North Queensland. James Burns came to Fiji to manage the operations of the Australian Steam Navigation Company (AUSN) and bought out the Levuka storekeeper and ship owner Robbie Kadd & Co. The company Burns Philip & Co (South Seas) Pty Ltd was registered in Fiji in 1920 and became active in importing, wholesaling and retailing, plantations, shipping, motor car supplies, insurance, manufacturing and industry and later into hotels and tourism. William Randolph Carpenter founded W.R. Carpenter & Co Ltd in Sydney in 1914 and moved to Fiji to manage Robbie Kaad and Co Ltd. He acquired a controlling interest in Brown and Joske Ltd in Suva in 1936 and bought out Morris Hedstrom Ltd in 1956. Carpenters diversified and with participation by Australian commercial concerns, created a central role in the non-sugar related economic development of Fiji. Its achievements include trading stations, a coconut oil mill, light manufacturing industries, brewing, shipping services, car sales and insurance. Many items of building materials used for Fiji’s development were either imported from Australia or produced in Fiji by subsidiaries of Carpenters and BP.
Goldminer from Queensland
A Queenslander named Ted Theodore brought Australian capital and mining expertise in 1934 to establish the Emperor Gold Mines at Vatukoula and a wharf at Vatia, some 18 kilometres away. Theodore had been a prominent mining entrepreneur in North Queensland where a town has been named after him. He was Premier of Queensland (1919-1925), a member of the Federal House of Representatives (1927-31) and Federal Treasurer (192930) under Prime Minister James Scullin. After political changes he went into business and with James Packer and ventured into gold mining in Fiji. ANU The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra established the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies in 1946. Among the ANU researchers on girmit related subjects are Adrian Mayer, Ken Gillion, Michael Moynagh, Ahmed Ali and Brij Lal. Researchers on other subjects related to Fiji’s development include Gerard Ward and Jim Whitelaw. Major advisory reports to the Fiji Government were prepared by Professor Spate in 1959 and Dr. Fisk in 1970 on Fiji’s national development but, like the Burns Commission enquiry of 1959, most of the recommendations that required thinking outside the box, were left alone, leading to the upheavals of 1987 to 2006.