#blackbirding

The northernmost and remotest of the Cook Islands atolls, Penrhyn was named after British explorer Captain William Crofton Sever’s ship the Lady Penrhyn (penrhyn = peninsula in Welsh), which passed by the islands in 1788.  The Cook Islanders themselves called Penrhyn Tongareva, but continued contact (after Russian [Estonian!] Otto von Kotzebue first stopped by), particularly with the British, including annexation by same, and subsequent annexation by New Zealand, has led to the most common English name for the atoll to be Penrhyn, one of the Cook Islands’ dependencies in free association with New Zealand.  There is an intriguing historical footnote wherein the United States of America made claim specifically to Penrhyn under its self-promoting and self-declared Guano Islands Act (of 1856, enabling United States of Americans to take possession, in the name of the United States of America, of unclaimed islands containing guano deposits; if Penrhyn was uninhabited at some point since 1856, it is only because the entire population was blackbirded into slavery elsewhere and/or perished from contact with colonizers/slavers - in this case, strangely, the Peruvians).  Anyway, the United States of America eventually gave up claim to Penrhyn in 1980, some fifteen years after the Cook Islands had gained internal independence from New Zealand.  

Stamp details: Top left: Issued in: 1920 From: Omoka, Penrhyn MC #20

Top right: Issued on: September 27, 1974 From: Penrhyn, Cook Islands MC #57

Stamps on bottom: Issued on: December 28, 2016 From: Penrhyn, Cook Islands MC #BL121

Europeans swept across the Pacific in the 19th century looking for cheap labour to work their sugar, cocoa and copra plantations. Ships were sent off to remote islands to grab workers. About 100,000 people were taken, usually coerced, tricked, or straight-out kidnapped; it was a form of migrant labour known as “blackbird catching”.

The trade stopped around 1910 but remains a deeply emotional issue for the people of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Their forebears were traded into Queensland, Fiji, Peru, and Bolivia, as well as godforsaken guano islands.

An estimated 3600 Polynesians were snatched in 1863. The haul included 253 people from Tokelau – mostly men, and 47 per cent of the population. Three men escaped in Tutuila in Samoa but the rest never returned. They disappeared without trace, lost forever. The Samoan pastor Mata visited Tokelau after the snatching, and wrote, “It is most piteous to witness the grief of these women and children. They are weeping night and day; they do not eat, there is none left to provide food for them or to climb the coconut trees.”