The evolution of 'Malay' labour activism, 1870-1947: protest among pearling crews in Dutch East Indies-Australian waters

The history of Indonesian labour activism as seen from an Australian

perspective is best known in the context of World War Two when the presence

of Asian seamen in Australia sparked a flourish of internationalism and anticolonial

protest under the umbrella organization of the Seamen's Union of

Australia. But the story of Malay maritime worker protest has a deeper history,

reaching back to the early years of the pearl-shelling and trepang industries

when Malay workers from the Dutch East Indies were brought to work off the

northern Australian coast. Before the advent of a seamen's union, these workers

faced harsh working conditions and had little recourse to legal forms of protest.

Their refusal to accept poor conditions was met with reprisals which included

physical punishment, gaol sentences and detention on board ships without shore

leave. There is evidence that in the late nineteenth century the most common

form of protest was mutiny, with Malay crews seizing vessels and sailing to the

Dutch East Indies. By the twentieth century there was more scope for

negotiation, with increasing support from Australian unions and improved

government regulation. The milder forms of more recent protests and the

willingness of Indonesians to take their cue from Australian unionists has

somewhat obscured the nature of early Malay protest. This paper takes a longer

view of worker activism in order to highlight the deep roots of maritime protest

in the Indian Ocean region.