[1] By the end of 1827 there were two groups of European settlers on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and there was antagonism between the two settlement leaders, John Clunies Ross and Alexander Hare.

He imposed an imperialist social and political regime on the Islands and managed them as a coconut plantation using non-European labour which gave the Clunies Ross family great power.

There was a written agreement in force from 22 December 1837 that bound the families and community heads to obey rules and lawful commands or quit the Islands and move elsewhere.

[1] The original labourers who worked the plantations were brought primarily from Indonesia and the Malay Archipelago but also included Chinese, Indians, Africans and New Guineans.

It also provides evidence of the contract labour of the Cocos Malay people who developed the Islands as a coconut plantation and copra processing works from the early nineteenth century until the late 1970s.

[1] This Wikipedia article was originally based on Home Island Cemetery, entry number 105355 in the Australian Heritage Database published by the Commonwealth of Australia 2019 under CC-BY 4.0 licence, accessed on 15 May 2019.