GERMS OR RATIONS? BERIBERI AND THE JAPANESE LABOR EXPERIMENT IN COLONIAL FIJI AND QUEENSLAND

Authors

Judith A. Bennett, University of OtagoFollow

Abstract

In the early 1890s, the Colonial Sugar Refinery Company (CSR) introduced Japanese men to their sugar plantations in Fiji and Queensland because man- agement believed they would prove to be superior workers to other “coloured” labor. In Fiji, an outbreak of beriberi killed many of the Japanese. The medical establishment attributed this to an infective agent, instead of diet, so there was fear the disease could spread. CSR quickly abandoned the costly “experiment” in Fiji. In Queensland, however, the company successfully controlled a beriberi outbreak by altering the rations, though for fear of contaminated food rather than for balanced diet. By 1912, political and economic factors, not disease, brought about the cessation of Japanese immigration for the sugar industry. Had the Western medical profession not been so wedded to the powerful paradigm of disease transmitted by bacterial infection and accepted the growing body of data on dietary deficiency, the Japanese “experiment” might have succeeded and, in so doing, created a very different society in modern Fiji.

Recommended Citation

Bennett, Judith A. (2001) "GERMS OR RATIONS? BERIBERI AND THE JAPANESE LABOR EXPERIMENT IN COLONIAL FIJI AND QUEENSLAND," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 24: No. 3, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol24/iss3/1