‘We had seen with our own eyes’: A cultural history of humanitarian and Australian feminist responses to the social and moral conditions of indentured Indian labour in Fiji, 1910s

In 1916, Christian missionaries Charles Freer Andrews and William Winstanley Pearson published a report that investigated the conditions of indentured labour in Fiji. Their report garnered significant attention in Australia, particularly among humanitarian and feminist organisations. In response to their report, Florence Garnham, on behalf of combined women’s organisations across Australia and New Zealand, conducted an inquiry in Fiji and published A Report on the Social and Moral Conditions in Fiji in 1918. By focusing on how Andrews and Pearson were oriented towards the problem of indenture and how their report engaged an Australian feminist response, this thesis explores how different humanitarian sensibilities were oriented towards the problem of indentured Indian labour in Fiji during the 1910s.