Includes bibliographical references (pages 256-302) and index.

Preamble / Jacqueline Leckie -- Pre-Capitalist labour in the South Pacific / Jacqueline Leckie -- An overview of the Pacific labour reserve / Jacqueline Leckie -- The origins of labourers in the South Pacific : commentary and statistics / Doug Munro -- Company strategies -- colonial policies / Doug Munro and Stewart Firth -- Workers in colonial Papua New guinea : 1884-1975 / Clive Moore -- Workers in colonial Fijii : 1870-1970 / Jacqueline Leckie -- Women workers in Samoa and Tonga in the early twentieth century / Caroline Ralston -- Asian workers in the Pacific / Margaret Willson, Clive Moore and Doug Munro -- Workers in colonial New Caledonia to 1945 / Donna Winslow.

Mortality and workers / Ralph Shlomowitz -- The last wave : Fillipino lavour migration to the Pacific -- John Connell -- Wallis and Futuna workers in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides / John Connell -- Plantation labour in Vanuatu / Ron Adams -- Pacific islanders in nineteenth century Queensland / Clive Moore -- Girmitiya women in Fijii : work, resistance and survival / Shaista Shameem -- Polynesian immigrant workers in New Zealand / Paul Spoonley -- Free labour in colonial Pohnpei / Glenn Peterson -- The caucasian worker in Hawaii, 1778-1941 / Edward D. Beechert -- Labour migration from the atolls : Kirbati and Tuvalu / Doug Munro and Richard Bedford -- Plantations in the atolls : the cas of Nukulaelae / Doug Munro and Niko Besnier -- Binandere forced labour and village coconut plantations : Papua New Guinea / John Waiko -- Roro and Mekeo labour for Government work : Papua New Guinea / Michael Monsell-Davis.

Solomon Islands labour history and Maasina rule / Ian Frazer -- Problems of establishing labour parties in communal societies / Ralph Premdas -- Controlling a workforce : the development of industrial labour in Papua New Guinea / Michael Hess -- The develpment of a trade unionism in Hawaii / Noel Kent -- Class, communalism and the 1947 Fiji mineworkers strike / 'Atu Bain -- From localisation to politicisation : the Fiji public service association / Jacqueline Leckie -- The development of class analysis in the South Pacific / Vijay Naidu and Jacqueline Leckie.