The depolution of the new hebrides and other parts of Melanesia

Abstract
6. SUMMARY The people of the New Hebrides and, indeed, of Melanesia in general, are dying out. To some extent this is due to the constant wars, the belief in magic, the bad housing, the unsuitable feeding of infants, the treatment of women, the practise of abortion and other customs, all of which prevailed in the old days, and still prevail to a large extent in most parts of the group. But though one must hear the existence of all these facts in mind, one cannot regard them as directly responsible for the depopulation (which has set in during the last century), because the customs have prevailed from time immemorial. The majority of the Europeans who were in the group during the nineteenth century, were trading, either in sandal-wood or in human beings. They are directly responsible for a great number of kidnappings, and deaths, and they brought with them epidemics which sometimes carried off as much as a third of the population of an island in a few weeks. The credit of stopping this, and rousing the public conscience in England and the British Dominions responsible for the dying out of the people because they rapidly destroyed place of what they had destroyed; this was pointed out by Rivers several years ago, but what he wrote does not appear to have affected the policy of this mission. The fact that the government is a Condominium, makes administration very slow, and uncertain, so that it is at present difficult to suppress the sale of alcohol to natives, and illegal recruiting; there was at the time of my visit, no free medical assistance of any sort provided by the Condominium for the native race, the system of recruiting is a compromise, perhaps necessary, between the interests of natives and planters; I believe that it could be abolished if indentured labour were introduced. Among the endemic diseases, malaria and yaws are of major importance, because they render the race unhealthy and liable to succumb to introduced epidemics. They must only be regarded as two among many factors, all of which affect the question of depopulation; malaria is entirely absent from one island, but the population of that island has declined rapidly from other causes. Of the introduced diseases, dysentery and the pulmonary diseases are of very great importance. Apart from all the factors which I have mentioned, I have discovered two very disquieting facts. The rate of decline of the population of most islands is no less now that it was half a century ago; the race continues to die out, irrespective of the abolition of the “black-birding,” and of the reduction in the severity of the epidemics. Moreover it appears that in all parts of the group about 118 males are born per hundred females, and this disproportion persists through life. This continued decline, and this excessive production of males, would almost warrant one in saying that the eventual extinction of many of the races now living in the New Hebrides is inevitable.

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