White heat

KIDNAPPING natives from the Pacific Islands to use them as slave labour on plantations was common in Papua New Guinea. In his book, Black Islanders, anthropologist Douglas Oliver describes how this labour was tamed.

In 1871, a ship called The Carl destroyed a flotilla of native boats and hauled the natives in from the water "like tuna", as a contemporary account puts it. The natives were put in the hold where, soon after midnight, a commotion broke out. The crew began shooting indiscriminately into the hold and kept at it at regular intervals until the wee hours. The next morning, the 70-odd dead or badly wounded natives were tossed into the sea. The remaining 76 turned "friendly" and "obedient".

The entire exercise of catching natives was known as "blackbinding". "No wonder," says Oliver, "the Bougainvillians of that era earned reputations for hostility against whites, all whites." That hostility carries on.