Foreign Fishers and Contested Waters: Japanese Pearling in the Northern Territory and the Archaeology of the Sanyo Maru Shipwreck

Abstract

<p>This thesis examines Japanese pearling in the Northern Territory of Australia during the late 1930s within the context of an expanding Japanese industrial empire, Australian territorialism, and contact with Aboriginal peoples. It places Japanese pearling in a sequence of visitation by Asian fishers to north Australian waters. The research also serves as a case study in understanding a maritime extractive industry through archaeology and other approaches, including organisational theory, forager studies and modern fleet dynamics.</p> <p>The study primarily draws on the archaeology of the <i>Sanyo Maru</i> shipwreck, a Japanese supply ship that sank in 1937 off the coast of Arnhem Land. Australian observers at the time were alarmed by the scale of the Japanese pearling fleets working with impunity off its northern coast. Japanese pearling has mostly been ignored in favour of histories on Australian pearling, and this study provides a critical and exhaustive history to fill this gap. </p> <p>This research illustrates how Japanese pearling was part of an 'informal empire' of Japanese commercial and industrial expansion. It explains how the archaeology of the <i>Sanyo Maru</i> and its artefact assemblage illustrate aspects of this empire, and of class and identity. The ship stores provide a complex material culture-centred appraisal of this imperial project, showing a reliance on imported materials from the United States.</p> <p>This examination shows that Japanese pearling threatened Australia's maritime territorialism. Territorial waters only extended 3 nautical miles (5.5km) from the coast, and with the rich shell beds just outside, the boundary no longer captured what Australia considered its sovereign wealth. Compounding this grievance was that these foreign fleets dominated the industry, and that court proceedings challenged the validity of territorial waters and the competency of those charged to enforce it. In defiance of local ordinances, these visiting pearlers, local indentured crews and Aboriginal peoples met at sea and on land. An informal economy emerged. This further heightened Australia's unease, with official borders ignored in favour of more established cultural boundaries.</p> <p>This study also challenges past approaches in the archaeology of maritime contact in northern Australia. The shipwreck assemblage is used as a reference to re-examine coastal finds held in local collections, revealing that Japanese ceramics had been wrongly identified by past researchers as Macassan or colonial in origin.</p>