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The Pearl Frontier - Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia's Northern Trading Network (Hardcover)
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The Pearl Frontier - Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia's Northern Trading Network (Hardcover)
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Remarkable for its meticulous archival research and moving life
stories, the Pearl Frontier offers a new way of imagining
Australian historical connections with Indonesia. This compelling
view from below of maritime mobility demonstrates how, in the
colonial quest for the valuable pearl-shell, Australians came to
rely on the skill and labor of Indonesian islanders, drawing them
into their northern pearling trade empire. From the 1860s onwards
the pearl-shell industry developed alongside British colonial
conquests across Australia's northern coast and prompted the Dutch
to consolidate their hold over the Netherlands East Indies.
Inspired by tales of pirates and priceless pearls, the pearl
frontier witnessed the maritime equivalent of a gold rush; with
traders, entrepreneurs, and willing workers coming from across the
globe. But like so many other frontier zones it soon became
notorious for its reliance on slave-like conditions for Indigenous
and Indonesian workers. These allegations prompted the imposition
of a strict regime of indentured labor migration that was to last
for almost a century before giving way to international criticism
in the era of decolonization. The Peal Frontier invites the reader
to step outside the narrow confines of national boundaries, to see
seafaring peoples as a continuous population, moving and in
communication in spite of the obstacles of politics, warfare, and
language. Instead of the mythologies of racial purity, propagated
by settler colonies and European empires, this book dissects the
social and economic life of the port cities around the
Australian-Indonesian maritime zone and lays open the complex,
cosmopolitan relationships which shaped their histories and their
present situations. Julia Martinez and Adrian Vickers bring
together their expertise on Australian and Indonesian history to
challenge the isolationist view of Australia's past. This book
explores how Asian migration and the struggle against the
restrictive White Australia policy left a rich legacy of mixed
Asian-Indigenous heritage that lives on along Australia's northern
coastline. This book is an important contribution to studies of the
coastal or Pasisir culture of Southeast Asia, that situates the
local cultures in a regional context and demonstrates how
Indonesian maritime peoples became part of global migration flows
as indentured laborers. It offers a hitherto untold story of
Indonesian diaspora in Australia and reveals a degree of
Indian-Pacific interconnectedness that forces us to rethink the
construction of regional boundaries and national borders.
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