A Melanesia Bibliography
Author: Terence A. Wesley-Smith
Publisher:
Published: 1984
Total Pages: 102
ISBN-13:
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Pacific Forest
Author: Judith Bennett
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2021-10-25
Total Pages: 528
ISBN-13: 9004475850
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book addresses the contending views of the uses of Solomon Island forest. Ranging from an examination of the interaction between the first settlers and their forest, the book goes on to analyse the attitudes of the British administrators, planters, and missionaries. The colonial government sought to protect the resource, but neglected to consider the wishes of the forest’s inhabitants in planning for its future economic use. The independent governments failed to protect the dwindling forest on customary land in the face of accelerating demands from their own people and of Asian-based logging companies, while non-governmental organisations and aid-donors have tried to invoke a more conservative regime of forest use.
Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Pacific Islands
Author: Max Quanchi
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2005-10-18
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 0810865289
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe South Seas, as this region used to be called, conjured up images of adventure, belles and savages, romance and fabulous fortunes, but the long voyages of discovery and exploration of the vast Pacific Ocean were really an exercise in amazing logistics, navigation, hard grit, shipwreck and pure luck. The motivations were scientific and geographic, but at the same time nationalistic and materialistic. A series on global exploration and discovery would not be complete without this book by Quanchi and Robson. It is ambitious and informative and includes the familiar names of Laperouse, Bougainville, Cook and Dampier, as well as the intriguing stories of the Bounty Mutiny, scurvy, and the mysterious Northwest Passage, Terra Australis Ignotia and Davis Land. There are entries on first contacts, ships, navigational instruments, mapping, and botany. The scene is carefully set in the introduction, the chronology spans several centuries, and the extensive bibliography offers a guide to further reading. There are more than just dry facts in this book. It has a whiff of salt air, the clash of empires, cross-cultural beach encounters and personal adventure.
Naturalist Histories
Author: Jamon Alex Halvaksz
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2024-03-31
Total Pages: 297
ISBN-13: 0824888790
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom early explorers to contemporary scientists, naturalists have examined island flora and fauna of Oceania, discovering new species, carefully documenting the lives of animals, and creating work central to the image of Oceania. These “discoveries” and exploratory moves have had profound local and global impacts. Often, however, local knowledge and communities are silent in the ethologies and histories that naturalists produce. This volume analyzes the ways that Indigenous and non-Indigenous naturalists have made island natures visible to a wider audience, their relationship with the communities where they work, as well as the unique natures that they explore and help make. In staking out an area of naturalist histories, each contributor addresses the relationship between naturalists and Oceanic communities, how these histories shaped past and present place and practices, the influence on conservations and development projects, and the relationship between scientific and indigenous knowledge. The essays span across colonial and postcolonial frames, tracing shifts in biological practice from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century focus on taxonomy and discovery to the twentieth-century disciplinary restructurings and new collecting strategies, and contemporary concerns with biodiversity loss, conservation, and knowledge formation. The production of scientific knowledge is typically seen in ethnographic accounts as oppositional, contrasting Indigenous and western, local and global, objective and subjective. Such dichotomous views reinforce differences and further exaggerate inequities in the production of knowledge. More dangerously, value distinctions become embedded in discussions of Indigenous identity, rights, and sovereignty. Contributors acknowledge that these dichotomous narratives have dominated the approach of the scientific community while informing how social scientists have understood the contributions of Pacific communities. The essays offer a nuanced gradient as historical narratives of scientific investigation, in dialogue with local histories, and reveal greater levels of participation in the creation of knowledge. The volume highlights how power infuses the scientific endeavor and offers a distinct and diverse view of knowledge production in Oceania. Combining senior and emerging international scholars, the collection will be of interest to researchers in the social sciences, history, as well as biology and allied fields.
Thirty Years in the South Seas
Author: Richard Parkinson
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 418
ISBN-13: 1920899634
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRichard Parkinson's Thirty Years in the South Seas was first published in 1907. In this 900-page work, Parkinson drew together and expanded on the scientific and popular papers he had been publishing since 1887, creating in the process a landmark ethnography of the Bismarck Archipelago. Parkinson moved to New Britain in 1879, only seven years after the first trader had established himself in the area. Over the next thirty years, he employed many local people on the family's expanding plantations, and travelled widely in the area, trading for produce (especially coconuts), observing traditional life, and buying artefacts for museums in Europe, USA and Australia. His travels covered the islands now known as New Britain, New Ireland, New Hanover, Manus, Buka and Bougainville, but he also collected information about the mainland of New Guinea (Kaiser Wilhelmsland). His observations covered a wide range of topics, from religious life and ceremonies to artefacts and language. It is clear he talked extensively with people - though mostly with a translator - and compared accounts. He also took many photographs, some 200 of which were included in the volume. Given the period, all his human subjects had to be posed, but the range of associated detail, probably unconsciously included, is substantial. What is particularly important about this work is the period in which it was written. While Parkinson may never have been the first contact of any local people, he was clearly among the first, and observed many societies before they were extensively incorporated into the Western economy, or missionised. Thirty Years in the South Seas is unparalleled in the literature of the Bismarck Archipelago. It is an incomparable picture of a time and place now long past.
The Rural Context of Giant Clam Mariculture in Solomon Islands
Author: Edvard Hviding
Publisher: WorldFish
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 108
ISBN-13: 9718709398
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBougainville before the conflict
Author: Anthony J Regan
Publisher: ANU Press
Published: 2015-08-03
Total Pages: 607
ISBN-13: 1921934247
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOne of the most beautiful island groups of the Pacific, Bougainville has a remarkable history. Tragically, it is as the site of devastating civil conflict that Bougainville is perhaps best known. In exploring the rich environmental, cultural and social heritage of Bougainville before the conflict, this collection provides an insight into the long-term causes of the crisis. In doing so, it surveys such topics as Bougainville’s prehistory and traditional cultures, the impact of German and Australian colonialism, the attempts by disparate local cultures to find a common identity, the assertion of political autonomy in the face of coercion to integrate with Papua New Guinea, and contemporary efforts to resolve conflict and plan a viable future. A landmark collaboration between expert commentators on Bougainville and Bougainvilleans themselves, this volume provides a comprehensive picture for those seeking to understand Bougainville’s history and future directions. Bougainville before the conflict was published in association with the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project, which is supported by The Australian National University and the Commonwealth of Australia.
New Guinea
Author: Clive Moore
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2003-07-31
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0824844130
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNew Guinea, the world's largest tropical island, is a land of great contrasts, ranging from small glaciers on its highest peaks to broad mangrove swamps in its lowlands and hundreds of smaller islands and coral atolls along its coasts. Divided between two nations, the island and its neighboring archipelagos form Indonesia’s Papua Province (or Irian Jaya) and the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, both former European colonies. Most books on New Guinea have been guided by these and other divisions, separating east from west, prehistoric from historic, precontact from postcontact, colonial from postcolonial. This is the first work to consider New Guinea and its 40,000-year history in its entirety. The volume opens with a look at the Melanesian region and argues that interlocking exchange systems and associated human interchanges are the "invisible government" through which New Guinea societies operate. Succeeding chapters review the history of encounters between outsiders and New Guinea's populations. They consider the history of Malay involvement with New Guinea over the past two thousand years, demonstrating the extent to which west New Guinea in particular was incorporated into Malay trading and raiding networks prior to Western contact. The impact of colonial rule, economic and social change, World War II, decolonization, and independence are discussed in the final chapter.
The White Headhunter
Author: Nigel Randell
Publisher: Constable
Published: 2013-08-22
Total Pages: 253
ISBN-13: 1472113322
DOWNLOAD EBOOKShanghaied in San Francisco in 1868, teenage Scots sailor Jack Renton then found himself on a voyage into the heart of darkness. Escaping from his floating prison in an open whaleboat, Renton drifted for 2000 miles, only to be washed up on the shores of a Pacific island shunned by 19th-century mariners, Malaita in the Solomon Islands. There he was stripped of his clothes by headhunters and forced to 'go native' to survive. Initially a slave to their chief, Kabou, he eventually became the man's most trusted warrior and adviser. Renton's own account of his eight-year exile, published after he was rescued, remains the only authenticated account of a mental and physical ordeal that still haunts the imagination to this day. It caused a sensation at the time, though it is now clear that it airbrushed out most of the key events. Researching the Renton legend, Nigel Randell spent several years talking to the Malaitans and piecing together a very different account from Renton's sanitised version. The ultimate irony is that a man so keen to conceal his 'crimes' should have bequeathed their evidence - a necklace of 60 human teeth - to a collector who donated it to a national museum.
Tulagi
Author: Clive Moore
Publisher: ANU Press
Published: 2019-09-24
Total Pages: 501
ISBN-13: 1760463094
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTulagi was the capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate between 1897 and 1942. The British withdrawal from the island during the Pacific War, its capture by the Japanese and the American reconquest left the island’s facilities damaged beyond repair. After the war, Britain moved the capital to the American military base on Guadalcanal, which became Honiara. The Tulagi settlement was an enclave of several small islands, the permanent population of which was never more than 600: 300 foreigners—one-third of European origin and most of the remainder Chinese—and an equivalent number of Solomon Islanders. Thousands of Solomon Islander males also passed through on their way to work on plantations and as boat crews, hospital patients and prisoners. The history of the Tulagi enclave provides an understanding of the origins of modern Solomon Islands. Tulagi was also a significant outpost of the British Empire in the Pacific, which enables a close analysis of race, sex and class and the process of British colonisation and government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
