Green’s Dictionary of Slang

the trade in forced labour, esp. between the Pacific Islands and the Queensland sugar plantations in Australia.

1864		H.R. Addison All at Sea 205: The next day I saw a vessel. I knew by the cut of her jibs that she' was out ' blackbirding' .
1871		Narrative of the Voyage of the Brig Carl [pamphlet] All the three methods, however, of obtaining labour in the South Seas [...] were in use the same time, and all three went by the same general slang term of ‘blackbirding,’ or ‘blackbird catching.’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Aug. 4/1: He put away from him all thought of the approaching election, all sympathy with the sugar-planters in their desire to open up fresh fields for ‘black-birding’.
1887		G. Davis Recoll. Sea-Wanderer 148: Tom Thorn, a veteran who had made many voyages to the West Coast of Africa, 'palm-oiling,' as he divined, 'blackbirding' as we strongly suspected,.
1888		W.B. Churchward Blackbirding In The South Pacific 45: This trade is called blackbirding.
1890		H. Nisbet ‘Bail Up!’ 306: A ‘blackbirding’ expedition – i.e., to lure, decoy or kidnap the islanders from their homes, wives and children.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 18: Black-birding came to be the occupation of many rotten ships and unscrupulous officers and crews.
1901		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ In Bad Company 201: In those days the ‘labour trade’ did not exist, and to ‘black-birding’ was no scale of profit attached.
1908		D. Blackburn Leaven 305: How many people at home are aware that the black labour of the mines is obtained by a system precisely identical with the ‘blackbirding’ in the Southern Seas?
1911		Worker (Brisbane) 4 Mar. 25/2: The Government winks the other eye at black-birding in New Guinea. The niggers are engaged in procuring sandalwood.
1916		(ref. to 1720s) J.G. Cruickshank Black Talk 1: It was the policy of the slave trader – as he went ‘blackbirding’ on the West Coast.
1929		K.S. Prichard Coonardoo 170: And there was black-birding too ... I’ve seen blacks brought in, in chains for the pearlers’ crews. [...] A pearler I knew black-birded.
1931		B. Lubbock Bully Hayes 102: You say Bully Hayes went blackbirding in 1863 [...] Amongst the Peruvian blackbirders were the following vessels.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 265: He went as far as Cape Nordoster, gathering converts by simply black birding them.
1949		I.L. Idriess One Wet Season 51: These the wild days of the pearl-shell rushes, before the better-hearted men in the fleets put a stop to blackbirding.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land 45: The Kanakas moved onto the Australian stage in a hideous scene called ‘blackbirding’, familiar reading once again to the American recalling the cotton-and-cane days.
1971		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Nov. 43/1: Her Majesty’s ships were still trying [...] to suppress blackbirding, which killed 10,000 out of 50,000 imported islanders in 40 years of the Australian sugar business.
1986		S. Naipaul Unfinished Journey (1988) 5: The descendants of the ‘blackbirded’ Pacific Islanders had merely become a problem associated with the perils of ‘multi-culturalism’.