"John Williams was not the first London Missionary Society missionary to Polynesia, but his passion to conquer the whole Pacific region, and resolute belief that he knew better than the Directors in London how this vision might be achieved marked him out as an ambitious and aggressive man. Samoa, the setting of thses journals, was the last island group where Williams' personally introduced the gospel before he was murdered at Eromanga... Of the several journals kept by Williams during his pan-Polynesian travels, the two relating to his visits to Samoa in 1830 and 1832 are the most comprehensive and illuminating. In the course of both journeys Williams also visited Tonga, and provided graphic eye-witness accounts of contemporary Tongan and European life..."--Book jacket.
David Hilliard's God's Gentlemen, originally published in 1978, remains the only detached and detailed historical analysis of the work of the Melanesian Mission. Starting with its New Zealand beginnings and its Norfolk Island years (1867-1920), the work follows the Mission's shift of headquarters to the Solomon Islands and on until the beginning of the Second World War. The Mission, which grew out of the personal vision of the first Church of England Bishop of New Zealand, George Selwyn, formally defined its field of work as 'the Islands of Melanesia' although its activities were confined almo.