A double exile: Filipino settlers in the outer Torres Strait islands, 1870s–1940s

Abstract

'Exile' denotes prolonged absence from one's native land or former community; it may connote forceful expulsion, nostalgia or regret but this is not its core definition, otherwise one could not refer to 'voluntary exile' for economic, political, social, religious, artistic, even financial reasons (witness the wealthy United Kingdom 'tax-exiles' of the 1970s).By contrast, the Japanese increased their participation to the point where, in 1906, they completely dominated the industry and continued to do so until the Second World War.6 As marine industry profitability rose and fell and the Filipinos' finances, physical capacities and family circumstances changed, they alternated between the more capital-intensive pearling industry and the less capital-intensive beche-de-mer (trepang), trochus and tortoiseshell industries.In response to these well-documented abuses and the disease and violent reprisals that followed, the government implemented a series of laws and regulations to constrain the activities of 'coloured men', including blameless Filipinos who fished from their small cutters along the coast of Cape York with their wives and children, taking on their affinal kinfolk as seasonal labour.Marriages The marriage and naturalisation patterns of early Filipinos (and to some extent Indonesians) in Torres Strait are unique among its Asian communities, in that they contracted many stable unions with local Indigenous women and were encouraged to become naturalised by the then government resident, John Douglas, who wrote approvingly that they were 'the only Asiatic people who have become thoroughly domesticated among us.