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One should be shocked at the black birders. Once one was. But after the behaviour of those Australian debutantes who declined to be “presented to a black man” in the form of an Australian Senator, one asks, “Have attitudes so little changed in the last 100 years then?” and forgives the blackbirders for kidnap ping Pacific Islanders on the grounds that people like them were not sup posed in the 1860 s to have the refine ment of intellect which goes with debutantes in the latter half of the 20th century.

It was a time when fortunes were made hard by hard men. And they, like the debutantes, did not regard black people as having much in the way of feelings.

Kidnapping in the South Seas by George Palmer was first published in 1871, and has now been re published in facsimile by Penguin Colonial Facsimiles. It is a first-hand account of the conspiracy between Sydney merchants, Queensland plant ers and the notorious blackbirders to kidnap Pacific Islanders for work on the sugar plantations of north-east ern Australia.

George Palmer wrote readably and interestingly, and if his account is full of digressions about animals on board his ship Rosario, food pro vided by Frenchmen who entertained him along the way, and descriptions of native ceremonies, it must be remembered that was the style of the times, and I think the book gains rather than loses by those digressions.

Like many of the books written by people like Palmer, men of experience in the Pacific and of good intention, the book is valuable as an indication of the attitude of educated men to the Pacific Islanders in those times.

Palmer writes of them as though

they were human beings, and although there were many people like the notorious blackbirders of his book, one wonders what happened that later the attitude of many expatriates in the Pacific grew to be more like that of the blackbirders.

Perhaps it was that the activities of the blackbirders caused Pacific Islanders to believe that everyone with a white skin was of evil inten tion. From some of the events described by Palmer in Kidnapping in the South Seas, it is little wonder that the Islanders began to show open hostility to the white intruders.

George Palmer was capable of some very descriptive passages, and not only gives some living descrip tions of the terrain but of the living conditions of both the Islanders and the expatriates at that time. He was a trained observer, and describes objects and incidents with a fine eye for detail. His book takes its place as a record of more than the cruelty and wickedness of the blackbirders, or the decency and compassion of those who did all they could to stamp them out: it is a picture of the times in the Pacific. Even when he deals with the reports of the activities of the kidnappers he does so with detachment, not confusing his own reactions with the account he is recording.

Penguin are to be congratulated on producing this series, and it is hoped that they will continue to re print books like this one. It is to be hoped that Kidnapping in the South Seas will be read not only by Euro peans but by Melanesians and Poly nesians, who, from such reading, will learn much of their own history.—

Peter Livingston.

(Kidnapping In The South Seas.

By George Palmer. Penguin Colonial Facsimiles. Recommended price $1.50).