The rise and fall of the vaitupu company:An episode in the commercial history of tuvalu∗

Abstract

THE SMALLER, ECONOMICALLY UNIMPORTANT ISLAND GROUPS OF THE PACIFIC were mostly spared the more disruptive consequences of European contact. Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands) provides a case in point: alienation of land, depopulation, punitive naval action, long-term indebtedness to foreign commercial interests, sectarian bitterness, and sustained labour recruiting are not themes in the 19th century history of this group of tiny coral atolls and reef islands. This is largely because Tuvalu did not have much for the foreigner to take: its resources were limited, its land fragmented and small in area ?an ag gregate of less than 10 square miles ?and its population scattered and far from numerous. These characteristics combined to render Tuvalu unattractive to trader, planter and labour recruiter alike. There were, however, occasional ex ceptions to this pattern of isolation, as seen in the career of the Vaitupu Company. The formation of an indigenous trading and shipping company on the southern island of Vaitupu during the 1870s and its chequered career provide a Tuvaluan example of economic initiatives and responses found elsewhere in the Pacific Islands at this time and later: the European who dreams of breaking through the limitations of the island environment in his enterprise; the Islanders who enthusiastically attempt to bypass foreign traders; the clash be tween Western methods of accountancy and the Islanders' kinship economics; and the predictable accumulation of Islanders' indebtedness to a foreign trading company. Intended as a profit-making concern run on co-operative lines, the Vaitupu Company instead finished up with debts to the German trading company of H. M. Ruge & Co. totalling a massive $13,000.* Its story is complicated, involving the founder's ambitions, factional disputes among the people of Vaitupu, complaints by officials of the London Missionary Society (L.M.S.) and the intervention of British and German authorities. Vaitupuans