Trading Firms & Traders
The Sydney firms of Robert Towns and Company, J. C. Malcolm and Company, and Macdonald, Smith and Company, pioneered the coconut-oil trade in Tuvalu. In 1865 a trading captain acting on behalf of the German firm of J.C. Godeffroy und Sohn obtained a 25-year lease to the eastern islet of Niuoku of Nukulaelae Atoll. For many years the islanders and the Germans argued over the lease, including its the terms and the importation of labourers, however the Germans remained until the lease expired in 1890. By the 1870s J. C. Godeffroy und Sohn of Hamburg (operating out of Samoa) began to dominate the Tuvalu copra trade, which company was in 1879 taken over by Handels-und Plantagen-Gesellschaft der Südsee-Inseln zu Hamburg (DHPG). Competition came from H. M. Ruge and Company, and from Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, New Zealand. These trading companies engaged palagi traders who lived on the islands, some islands would have competing traders with dryer islands only have a single trader.
Changes occurred with steamships replacing sailing vessels. Over time the number of competing trading companies diminished, beginning with Ruge’s bankruptcy in 1888 followed by the withdrawal of the DHPG from trading in Tuvalu in 1889/90. Henderson and Macfarlane then dominated the copra trade, operating their vessel SS Archer to call on islands in Fiji, Tuvalu, and Kiribati. New competition came from Burns Philp, operating from what is now Kiribati, with competition from Levers Pacific Plantations from 1903 and from Captain E. F. H. Allen of the Samoa Shipping and Trading Company from 1911. The numbers of palagi traders declined with the supercargo of each ship dealing directly with Tuvaluans so that by 1909 there were no resident palagi traders representing the trading firms. Tuvaluans became responsible for operating trading stores on each island. In 1892 Captain Davis of the HMS Royalist, reported on trading activities and traders on each of the islands visited. Captain Davis identified the following traders in the Ellice Group: Edmund Duffy (Nanumea); Jack Buckland (Niutao); Harry Nitz (Vaitupu); John (also known as Jack) O'Brien (Funafuti); Alfred Restieaux and Fenisot (Nukufetau); and Martin Kleis (Nui). This was the time at which the greatest number of palagi traders lived on the atolls, acting as agents for the trading companies.
In the later 1890s and into first decade of the 20th century, structural changes occurred in the operation of the Pacific trading companies, with the trading companies moving from a practice of having traders resident on each island to trade with the islanders to a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship would visit an island. From 1900 the numbers of palagi traders in Tuvalu declined, with the last of the palagi traders being Fred Whibley on Niutao and Alfred Restieaux on Nukufetau. However, by 1909 there were no resident palagi traders representing the trading companies, although both Fred Whibley and Alfred Restieaux remained in the islands until their deaths.
Read more about this topic: History Of Tuvalu
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