Talk:Burns Philp

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The use of the term Slave Trading is inaccurate for Burns Philp

The term slave is accurately used for people who servitude is involuntary, has no time expiration and is heritable. Burns Philp recruited laborers through compensating tribal leaders, the length of servitude was defined and the children of the laborers were not required to become laborers for the enterprise their parent worked for.

Blackbirding content

Currently there are claims of blackbirding in the lede, not discussed elsewhere in the article. For that reason, I moved that content into a section of the article as per MOS:LEAD and was reverted with the comment that I was "removing material with multiple reasonable sources". I did not remove anything. I moved it into the body of the article in a new subsection retaining the citation and rather resent having my edit misrepresented in that way. I placed the contents in a subsection called Blackbirding allegations. I use the term "alleged" because this is an issue that occurs across multiple Wikipedia articles in relation to blackbirding as sources generally do not provide evidence merely allegation.

Almost all sources that mention specific individuals or companies as being blackbirders do not supply any historical evidence to support it. There is also the problem that many people use the "blackbirding" in relation to any involvement in the recruitment of Pacific Island workers when the term refers to this recruitment not being of free will but by kidnapping or other coercion. The recruitment of Pacific Island workers was regulated by the Queensland Government and there was a system of inspectors etc, so just bringing Pacific Island workers to Australia or owning or operating ships that did this does not make anyone a "blackbirder". To use that term there needs to be some evidence that was kidnapping etc. Now I think it is realistic to believe that kidnapping etc did occur as part of this recruitment, as descendants of the islanders tell these stories. And if a ship that was supposed to return full of labourers wasn't full, one can imagine that those onboard may have decided that the easiest way to fill the ship was by blackbirding. Obviously the only people who could directly engage in kidnapping etc were the people on the ship, yet the allegations are often made about the ship owners or those who chartered the ship or employed the labourers (who were usually not onboard). So even where there is evidence that a particular ship was engaging in blackbirding, to demonstrate the ship owner was involved, there needs to be evidence that they directed the ship's captain (or someone on board) to engage in kidnapping etc or were well aware it was occuring. The reality is more likely the ship owner knew/suspected kidnapping etc did occur on their ships but chose not to ask any questions ("don't ask, don't tell"), just as occurs in organisations today where those at the top prefer "not to know" what their subordinates might be up to so long as the misbehaviour was profitable (see our recent royal commission into banking as a good example of this). The people at the top of these organisations generally have "plausible deniability" and the same is true for ship owners of these recruiting ships.

In the case of Burns Philp, it is believed that Philp was more keen to engage in the recruitment of Pacific Islander labour and that Burns was not so keen and when it was revealed that their ship Hopeful was involved in blackbirding, Burns pressured Philp to end their involvement in recruiting, or so says Burns' biography [1] So it's quite reasonable to add information about the Hopeful into the article, but it still remains difficult to know what Burns or Philp authorised, approved of, were aware of, ... etc. We do know they withdrew from recruiting but did they do it because they were "caught in the act" or because they were genuinely shocked to discover what was going on. Unless someone has evidence they did no, I don't think we can say more than "alleged" about the individuals. For these reasons I wish to reinstate the changes I made or something along similar lines. Kerry (talk) 01:34, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]