The First Taint Of Civilization

“Hezel writes clearly and with erudition and commands an impressive body of information. His book is a tour de force.... Not only will it be read eagerly by Pacific scholars, but it should find a wide audience among well-educated Micronesians hungry for greater understanding of how their islands have become ensnared in world geopolitics.” —Ethnohistory

“Hezel writes clearly and with erudition and commands an impressive body of information. His book is a tour de force.... Not only will it be read eagerly by Pacific scholars, but it should find a wide audience among well-educated Micronesians hungry for greater understanding of how their islands have become ensnared in world geopolitics.” —Ethnohistory

"Hezel has written an authoritative and engaging narrative of [a] succession of colonial regimes, drawing upon a broad range of published and archival sources as well as his own considerable knowledge of the region. This is a ‘conventional’ history, and a very good one, focused mostly on political and economic developments. Hezel demonstrates a fine understanding of the complicated relations between administrators, missionaries, traders, chiefs and commoners, in a wide range of social and historical settings." —Pacific Affairs "The tale [of Strangers in Their Own Land] is one of interplay between four sequential colonial regimes (Spain Germany, Japan, and the United States) and the diverse island cultures they governed. It is also a tale of relationships among islands whose inhabitants did not always see eye-to-eye and among individuals who fought private and public battles in those islands. Hezel conveys both the unity of purpose exerted by a colonial government and the subversion of that purpose by administrators, teachers, islands, and visitors.... [The] history is thoroughly supported by archival materials, first-person testimonies, and secondary sources. Hezel acknowledges the power of the visual when he ends his book by describing the distinctive flags that now replace Spanish, German, Japanese, and American symbols of rule. the scene epitomizes a theme of the book: global political and economic forces, whether colonial or post-colonial, cannot erode the distinctiveness each island claims."—American Historical Review

This study addresses the neglected history of the people of the Federated States of Micronesia’s (FSM) engagement with the outside world. Situated in the northwest Pacific, FSM’s strategic location has led to four colonial rulers. Histories of FSM to date have been largely written by sympathetic outsiders. Indigenous perspectives of FSM history have been largely absent from the main corpus of historical literature. A new generation of Micronesian scholars are starting to write their own history from Micronesian perspectives and using Micronesian forms of history. This book argues that Micronesians have been dealing successfully with the outside world throughout the colonial era in ways colonial authorities were often unaware of. This argument is sustained by examination of oral histories, secondary sources, interviews, field research and the personal experience of a person raised in the Mortlock Islands of Chuuk State. It reconstructs how Micronesian internal processes for social stability and mutual support endured, rather than succumbing to the different waves of colonisation. This study argues that colonisation did not destroy Micronesian cultures and identities, but that Micronesians recontextualised the changing conditions to suit their own circumstances. Their success rested on the indigenous doctrines of adaptation, assimilation and accommodation deeply rooted in the kinship doctrine of eaea fengen (sharing) and alilis fengen (assisting each other). These values pervade the Constitution of the FSM, which formally defines the modern identity of its indigenous peoples, reasserting and perpetuating Micronesian values and future continuity.

Texts and Contexts is concerned with the development of Pacific Islands history as a specialization in its own right. Specifically, this volume examines the foundational texts that pioneered and consolidated the new subdiscipline and served as the building blocks and stepping stone for further developments in the field. Thirty-five texts, all of which represent defining points in the development of Pacific Islands historiography, are examined. Much more than retrospective appraisals of the foundational texts, the individual chapters consider a text or complimentary texts within the context of the time of writing and gauge what ongoing influence they exerted. In some cases they suggest how a particular text has been superseded by subsequent work that breaks new conceptual ground in the ongoing process of revisionism. Contributors: Chris Ballard on Gavin Souter; Ivan Brady on Greg Dening; I. C. Campbell on Norma McArthur; Bronwen Douglas and Doug Munro on H. E. Maude and Dorothy Shineberg; Michael Goldsmith on Marshall Sahlins; David Hanlon on Francis X. Hezel; K. R. Howe on Andrew Sharp and David Lewis; Brij V.Lal on K. L. Gillion and Peter Corris; Hugh Laracy on Niel Gunson and Ta‘unga; Lamont Lindstrom on Peter Worsley and Peter Lawrence; Doug Munro on Douglas L. Oliver, R. P. Gilson, J. W. Davidson, and K. R. Howe; Vincent O’Malley on Keith Sinclair and Alan Ward; Jon Osorio on Ralph Kuykendall and Gavan Daws; Tom Ryan on Bernard Smith; Jane Samson on W. P. Morrell and Deryck Scarr; Francis West on Francis West and Gavan Daws; Glyndwr Williams on O. H. K. Spate.

Many have viewed Kaiser Wilhelm II as having personally ruled Germany, dominating its politics, and choreographing its ambitious leap to global power. But how accurate is this picture? As The Kaiser and the Colonies shows, Wilhelm II was a constitutional monarch like many other crowned heads of Europe. Rather than an expression of Wilhelm II's personal rule, Germany's global empire and its Weltpolitik had their origins in the political and economic changes undergone by the nation as German commerce and industry strained to globalise alongside other European nations. More central to Germany's imperial processes than an emperor who reigned but did not rule were the numerous monarchs around the world with whom the German Empire came into contact. In Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, kings, sultans and other paramount leaders both resisted and accommodated Germany's ambitions as they charted their own course through the era of European imperialism. The result was often violent suppression, but also complex diplomatic negotiation, attempts at manipulation, and even mutual cooperation. In vivid detail drawn from archival holdings, The Kaiser and the Colonies examines the surprisingly muted role played by Wilhelm II in the German Empire and contrasts it to the lively, varied, and innovative responses to German imperialism from monarchs around the world.

This essay deals with the missionary work of the Society of Jesus in today’s Micronesia from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Although the Jesuit missionaries wanted to reach Japan and other Pacific islands, such as the Palau and Caroline archipelagos, the crown encouraged them to stay in the Marianas until 1769 (when the Society of Jesus was expelled from the Philippines) to evangelize the native Chamorros as well as to reinforce the Spanish presence on the fringes of the Pacific empire. In 1859, a group of Jesuit missionaries returned to the Philippines, but they never officially set foot on the Marianas during the nineteenth century. It was not until the twentieth century that they went back to Micronesia, taking charge of the mission on the Northern Marianas along with the Caroline and Marshall Islands, thus returning to one of the cradles of Jesuit martyrdom in Oceania.

The story of the people from the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and the Solomon Islands who left their homes to work in the French colony of New Caledonia has long remained a missing piece of Pacific Islands history. Now Dorothy Shineberg has brought these laboreres to life by painstakingly assembling fragments from a wide variety of scattered records and documents. She tells the story of their recruitment, then sketches the workers’ lives in New Caledonia, describing the contractual arrangements, the kinds of work they did, their living conditions, how they spent their free time, the large numbers who sickened and died, and the choice at the end of the contract to remain in the colony as free workers or to return home. Throughout the book she throws light on the controversy about the recruiting of the Islanders: were they kidnapped? Or did they choose to leave home? If so, what motivated them? Evidently the Islanders’ cheap labor contributed to the development of the French colony, but how did the episode affect them and their homeland? The People Trade offers readers a revealing new picture of a long neglected side of the Pacific Islands labor trade.