Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Race, Justice and mission: Glasgow archival perspectives on missionary engagement and South Pacific “blackbirding”
With a nod to sea shanties and the need to decolonise history, here’s a summary of some writing I’ve just completed, and a presentation I’ll be doing at Trinity College, University of Glasgow, in a few weeks time.
Race, Justice and mission: Glasgow archival perspectives on missionary engagement and South Pacific “blackbirding”
“There once was a ship that put to sea … to bring us sugar and tea and rum.” Sea shanties make for catchy TikTok viral hits. They also make visible mercantile activity and migratory labour flows upon which empires expanded.
Historical imaginaries often begin with ships that put to sea and journey from north to south. Yet in the corners of the archives are experiences from the Pacific northward, as Indigenous peoples engaged in what they saw as reciprocity in Oceanic voyaging.
This paper analyses the work of Williamu, an Indigenous man from the islands then called the New Hebrides, who lived in Scotland between 1861 and 1862. During his time in Scotland, Williamu wrote nineteen letters. These were translated by Rev John Inglis, who in 1883 was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow for his linguistic skills.
Williamu’s letters, housed in the University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections, provide a remarkable account of the Indigenous meeting the imperial. They also contain tragedy as Williamu processes the death of his wife, Dora, from diseases carried by ships that put to sea.
This paper will examine these letters using frames of locating, initial encounter and theodicies of migration. It will document the agency of Indigenous people as initiative takers and the presence of “sugar and tea and rum” in the histories of migration and religion.
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