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THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC· FALL 1994

Pacific Islands History: Journeys andTransformations, edited by Brij V. Lal.Canberra: Journal of Pacific History,Research School of Pacific Studies,Australian National University, 1992.ISBN 0-9595477-6-2, xiii + 256 pp,illustrations, notes, bibliography,index. Paper, A$15, US$20.

Despite recent postmodern pressures inthe humanities toward reflexivity andauthorial self-consciousness, it remainsuncommon for scholars to exploretheir personal intellectual orientationspublicly. A workshop held at the Aus­tralian National University in Can­berra late in 1991 offered a number ofwell-established Pacific historians theopportunity to do just this: to interro­gate their subject choices and historicalpractices, and to position their workwithin the changing historiography ofthe region. In this volume, PacificIslands History: Journeys and Trans­formations, Brij Lal, himself a Pacificscholar of high standing, has presentedfourteen of the papers in a collectionthat is consistently interesting and, inplaces, illuminating and clarifying.

The majority of the contributorsentered advanced studies keen to estab­lish their engagement in the orbit of the"island-oriented" history advocated byJim Davidson, founding professor ofPacific history at the AustralianNational University. Gone were thedays of viewing Pacific pasts throughthe lenses of British imperial or colo­nial history. The validity of indigenouspeoples' own preexisting cultures andsocieties, and their own perceptions ofand responses to western intruders,were the starting point for the islandnarratives that came into print and

proliferated through the 1960s and1970s. This innovation has been fol­lowed in turn by the inevitable reap­praisal.

The contributors here explore theirown sense of where Pacific history hasheaded since that time, and where intheir opinion it should go. Of the area'sshortcomings a few refer to the selec­tivity of islands chosen by Australiansfor examination: the northern Pacific,the French Pacific, and Maori liveshave been left to the Americans, theFrench, and the New Zealandersrespectively. Some contributors havebecome impatient with microstudies,and instead support a spirited effort totreat Pacific peoples' experienceswithin wider comparative frameworksacross the region, and globally acrossother sites of comparable historicalexperiences. Many confess to begin­ning research with some detachmentfrom indigenous peoples, few of whomthey knew or whose islands they hadvisited. In the course of their careersthey have, however, developed a closerengagement with Pacific peoples, andin addition a sensitivity to postcolonialcritiques of white western scholarship.In all, Pacific Islands History offersscholars a richness of fresh ideas, andentry to understanding issues at thecutting edge of this area of the disci­pline. It is difficult to cover all the writ­ers' work individually in a brief review,and I address a selection of chapters tooffer a further sense of the quality ofthe publication.

Both Clive Moore and JacquelineLeckie address issues of labor, bringingindigenous peoples' and migrant peo­ples' experiences into comparativeframeworks drawn from their broad

BOOK REVIEWS

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and generous historical engagementswith these areas. Clive Moore's chapteris particularly useful, because he wentbeyond his brief to present a substan­tial resume of Pacific labor in the con­text of western intercolonial flows oflabor. His own current research,inspired by an oral history projectamong descendants of Melanesiansugar plantation laborers in northernQueensland, promises to be excitingand significant.

Peter Hempenstall's and RobertAldrich's chapters point us to their ownand others' work on German andFrench colonial possessions in thePacific, showing confident mastery oftheir fields. Hempenstall's initiationinto Pacific studies was facilitated byOxford-based specialists includingColin Newbury. He turned, he said, tothe question of islanders' resistance tocolonial rule as "a certain subalternresponse" to traditional Oxford con­cerns and styles: he was "a colonialQueenslander from a militantly defen­sive, minority Catholic subculture... straining against the easy, confi­dent assumptions of intellectual andpolitical superiority" emanating fromthe university's elite. But for him theBritish emphasis on a comparativeapproach has remained a significantimperative in his work on Melanesia,although theoretically he urges thedecolonization of the ways historiansrepresent the Pacific past: "Images ofthe Pacific still suffer from the Orienta­list virus." Robert Aldrich came to hisresearch on French possessions in thePacific through his specialism at a Syd­ney university in the history of modernFrance during a decade of enormousc~nflict between settlers and indigenes.

He remains convinced of the utility ofstudying the history of the metropolisalongside the colonial frontier, and ofPacific scholars extending their skills toread historians working outside theEnglish language.

When historians work on smallpopulations, especially those locatedgeographically on the margins of theworld's political power, they have diffi­culty attracting attention outside theirimmediate areas. The chapters ofDavid Hanlon, Bronwen Douglas, andCaroline Ralston in particular deservea wider airing, because they addresskey historiographical or theoreticalproblems shared across the disciplineas a whole. David Hanlon talks specifi­cally of the intellectual divide that canseparate American, European, andAustralian historians from island histo­rians, with their own historical memo­ries. Indigenous peoples' notions oflinear narrative and causality oftendiffer sharply from western paradigms.Hanlon discusses a case study, from theisland of Pohnpei in the FederatedStates of Micronesia, of local histori­ans' use of sorcery as an explanatorymodel for judging the outcomes of twowars. He concludes that the writing ofthe history of peoples with such beliefsimpels western historians to a perspec­tive that is "inclusive or considerate ofsorcery," if they want "a more vernacu­larly tolerant, sensitive and differentway of doing history in the Pacific."Bronwen Douglas addresses the criticalchallenge of postmodernism to history,in positive terms, sharing her "ongoingpersonal journey from unreflectiveempiricism to reflexive pluralism." Sheurges Pacific historians to understandand engage with new critical theory as

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47° THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC· FALL 1994

PATRICIA GRIMSHAW

University ofMelbourne

a means to enrich their reading of textsand their interpretation of cultures.Caroline Ralston in turn emphasizesthe need for women's specificities to betaken into consideration in all histori­cal situations, as she traces her ownrecognition of the utility of genderanalysis through an important studyof Maori women.

Finally, Sione Latukefu's chapter,"The Making of the First Tongan-bornProfessional Historian," makes com­pelling reading for understanding theintellectual journey of a scholar whosekin and community background arerepresentative of the objects of Pacifichistorians' inquiry. In particular, heconfronts his readers with their secularassumptions about the impact of Chris­tian faith and practices on indigenousPacific peoples, a corrective echoingsome of David Hanlon's concerns.With all the constructive writing thecollection contains, this insightful con­tribution from a Polynesian islandscholar looks distinctly solitary. Noone should deny any historian the rightto research subjects across ethnic orracial divides, but one would feel morecomfortable if white voices were heardamid those of a comparable number ofPacific peoples. That must be an urgentagenda for the politics of research andpublication on the Pacific over the nextdecade.

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Footsteps in the Sea: Christianity inOceania to World War II, by JohnGarrett. Geneva: World Council ofChurches; Suva: Institute of PacificStudies, University of the SouthPacific, 1992. ISBN 982-02-0068-7,xvi + 514 pp, maps, photographs,glossary, notes, bibliography, index.US$15; F$8.

Until the 1970s, books about mission­aries in Oceania were usually of an"inspirational" kind. The regularappearance of such books caused noreaction other than surprise at therebeing purchasers who would enjoyreading them enough to want to buythem. In the meantime, during theSouth Pacific's educational boom yearsbefore independence, a host of imagesabout missionaries arose among aca­demic newcomers confronting Pacificsocieties that had long since yielded toChristianity. There was much criticismof the alleged lack of missionaryrespect for traditional cultures. Thehabit of mind, during an age of reli­gious decline in the sixties, was todownplay theological depth, preferringthe portrayal of missionary religion asa kind of metaphor for European polit­ical or economic domination and littleelse.

In 1978 Kenelm Burridge's bitingessay, "Missionary Occasions," blastedfield anthropologists for an ignoranceof, and prejudice against, Pacific mis­sionaries (in Boutilier, Mission,Church, and Sect in Oceania). Sincethen, an adjustment seems to haveoccurred in the thinking of those previ­ously inclined to equate all missionaryendeavor with a philistine chauvinismtoward the cultures of other races.