Here's a thought experiment - what's the Black history of the Pacific islands? They must have one, as when the world became one in 1492, the ships sailed from one edge of the world to another. Black people were in the Royal Navy in Britain. Where the British ships of the empire went, Black people were likely to have gone there too. On these ships they were sailors, servants or enslaved.
This thought experiment was prompted by a group of Maori scholars from New Zealand, singing at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) academic conference in Toronto. It was spontaneous, but the acapella harmonies were so tight and smooth that I asked if they were a choir. One of the scholars said no, it was simply that singing was part of their cultural practice.
The song sounded familiar, like the acapella harmonies from South Africa, or the African American barbershop groups. It would take an ethno-musicologist to find out if there was a common link between these singing styles. And if that link was an outcome from missionaries who were the prayer arm of the British Empire.
The Pacific and the Caribbean islands are on opposite sides of the planet. Yet, their histories are mirrored. The Ark of the Apocalyse arrived in their world too, leaving in its wake the settler-colonial triad of Indigenous genocide, slavery and White supremacy.
These histories meet up in Jamaica. Our breadfruit came originally from Tahiti - via Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in London which sponsored the bio-prospecting voyage of Captain Blythe of Mutiny on the Bounty fame - to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Jamaica. From there breadfruit spread throughout the rest of the Caribbean, as cheap food for the enslaved working on the sugar plantations. In Jamaica, what we call the Otaheite apple also came from Tahiti.
James Cook is famous for being one of the first British captains to circumnavigate the world and for his mapping the new-to-him world of Australia in 1768. The trip was another bio-prospecting job. Among his crew was Joseph Banks, the founder of Kew Royal Botanical Gardens. Two Black men were also on the ship. Thomas Richmond and George Dorlton were servants of Joseph Banks. Dorlton was also enslaved to Captain Cook. Somehow slaves on the exploration ships always seem to be erased.
Then there were the whalers - no, not Bob Marley and the Wailers! - the whale hunters. In the 1800s whaling was a massive industry, as whale oil lit the homes, streets and factories of nations. Hundreds of American ships hunted the cetaceans pushing most species to the brink of extinction. New Zealand was a major whaling hub in the Pacific Ocean.
Whaling crews were mixed, and for some enslaved people it was an escape route from bondage. Frederick Douglass escaped slavery by pretending to be a sailor; he learned the real ropes by crewing on a whaling ship.
People from the Caribbean were part of the whaling industry. They include William T. Shorey from Barbados, who was the captain of the ship the Emma F. Herriman, and who frequently sailed the Pacific Ocean.
Black whalers show up in fiction too. In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, they include Pippin, an African American cabin boy; and Daggoo, a West African harpooner. The multicultural crew also includes Tashtego, a Native American; and Queequeg a native of the Pacific.
Going down rabbit holes can be fun! This one, of the Afro-Caribbean geographies of the Pacific islands was harder, as there was no obvious connection. The next stage would be to find people from the Caribbean who lived in New Zealand. There's got to be one!
© Jacqueline L. Scott. You can support the blog here.
Image: Jorge Royan/Wikimedia Commons.
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