Chinese Indentured Labor and the Christmas Island Phosphate Company

Christmas Island may seem like an unlikely place to study Chinese economic contributions to the colonial Asia Pacific region. The island, which became an Australian external territory in 1958, is better known since 2001 as the site of a controversial Immigration Detention Center. Yet Christmas Island was at the center of another story of regional significance. It was to this isolated outpost of the British Empire that hundreds of southern Chinese men travelled from the early 1900s to work in the thriving phosphate mining industry. Phosphate was (and continues to be) of major economic significance to the Asia Pacific region and to the world. Phosphate-based fertilizers underpinned the second agricultural revolution, resulting in massive increases in agricultural productivity, especially important for countries with poor quality natural soils like Australia.