Te Rii ni Banaba by Raobeia Ken Sigrah & Stacey M. King

Author:Raobeia Ken Sigrah & Stacey M. King [Sigrah; Raobeia Ken & King; Stacey M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Banaba, Banabans, Ocean Island, Colonial, culture, environment, history, mining, pacific island, oceania, phosphate, social justice, indigenous, Islanders, kiribati, fiji, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Gilbert, Ellis
Publisher: Anika Pty Ltd
Published: 2019-08-29T14:00:00+00:00

Trading or Bartering of Goods

As growing numbers of Europeans arrived for a long or short-term stay on Banaba in the nineteenth century, they influenced many aspects of Banaban life. The accounts given above mentioned some of these: loss of young men to overseas’ plantations, the introduction of western products such as guns, and some among the new generations of Banabans had European blood. In this final section, the visitor’s impact on the economy and health of Banabans is stated. With such an influx of visitors, the Banabans began to trade their food and crafts for clothing and other goods. From the late nineteenth century, their economy gradually began to change from self-sufficiency where the island provided Banabans with their every need, to an economy based on barter and exchange, in which Banabans increasingly focused on making items of value for trade with the outside world. Recalling his first visit to Banaba in 1896, Mahaffy stated that communication with Banaba and the outside world had been restricted to the occasional visit of a Sydney steamer, which called in to buy shark fins and tails for export to China. He also made some interesting first-hand observations on the goods that Banabans sought in exchange:

“I well remember the natives coming off in their canoe with bundles of shark fins, and their extreme anxiety to exchange their murderous looking spears and swords edged with shark’s teeth for glass bottles, with which I suppose they shaved themselves and cut each other’s hair.”

Banabans had discovered that they could use glass to make crude swimming goggles which would greatly assist them when diving for fish off the island’s surrounding reefs. Mahaffy also mentions that they traded beautifully crafted shark’s teeth swords, mats, hats and fans with visiting ships in exchange for European food such as rice, ships’ biscuits and knives. Unlike several other Pacific Islands, Banaba never grew enough surplus coconuts to produce oil or copra to become a commercial proposition.

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