J T Arundel and Company, and Pacific Islands Company Ltd, Australian Office : Correspondence files

Presscopy letter books of outward letters from George C Ellis, A F Ellis, H E Denson and J T Arundel of the Australian Office of J T Arundel and Company and the Pacific Islands Company Ltd to business associates, mainly in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. The correspondence documents the early corporate history that led to the environmental devastation of both islands, the diaspora of Banabans to Rabi in Fiji and eslewhere, and the near-bankruptcy of Nauru.

Source of title - Transcribed

Relationship complexity - See also Micro-MS-Coll-08-1175 and 1176 for further papers of the Pacific Islands Company, and Micro-MS-Coll-08-0480-0495, 0497-0498 for diarie, correspondence and further papers of J T Arundel and A F Ellis.

Arrangement: Some books indexed by subject and addressee. All arranged chronologically.

John T Arundel, son of a LMS official, worked for a London firm with interests in guano, which took him into the Pacific. In 1892 Arundel formed his own company, J T Arundel and Company, which acquired concessions enabling it to make and market copra and phosphate. The Pacific Islands Company was formed in 1897 and in 1898 took over the assets of Henderson & McFarlane Ltd in the Mid-Pacific. Lord Stanmore (Sir Arthur Gordon, formerly Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of the Western Pacific) was chairman of the PIC, with Arundel as its vice-chairman. In 1902 the PIC divested itself of non-phosphate interests and merged with the Jaluit Gesellschaft of Hamburg to form the Pacific Phosphate Company Ltd, with exclusive rights to the exploitation of phosphate in Banaba and Nauru.

Quantity: 8 microfilm reel(s).

Finding Aids: Inventory avilable.

Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB, 2002