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13 results

  • 9 - Australia, the Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste

  • Edited by James Cotton, University of New South Wales, Sydney, John Ravenhill, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Book:
    Australia in World Affairs 2006–2010
    Published online:
    04 May 2024, pp 127-142

  • Summary

    Australia devotes more diplomatic energy to its relations with the South Pacific states and Timor-Leste than their modest populations might seem to justify. Only Papua New Guinea (PNG) (6.6 million) and Timor-Leste (1.1 million) have populations of more than one million, followed by Fiji (840 000) and Solomon Islands (518 000), with the rest easily qualifying as microstates. The total population of the South Pacific region and Timor-Leste (fewer than ten million) is dwarfed by that of their regional neighbour Indonesia (240 million). Australia became more closely involved with this region and expended more diplomatic resources on it between 2005 and 2010 than at any time since the Pacific Island states first became independent. Australian troops were in continuous deployment to Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands, and were briefly sent to Tonga. A coup in Fiji, the fourth in 20 years, created a nagging diplomatic problem for the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments, which could not condone a Pacific dictatorship and yet sought to avoid a total breakdown in relations with a country of regional importance.

The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders
  • Donald Denoon, Malama Meleisea
  • With Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, Karen Nero
  • Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 August 1997
  • This history presents an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the experiences of Pacific islanders from their first settlement of the islands to the present day. It addresses the question of insularity and explores islanders' experiences thematically, covering such topics as early settlement, contact with Europeans, colonialism, politics, commerce, nuclear testing, tradition, ideology, and the role of women. It incorporates material on the Maori, the Irianese in western New Guinea, the settled immigrant communities in Fiji, New Caledonia and the Hawaiian monarchy and follows migrants to New Zealand, Australia and North America.

  • 10 - A Nuclear Pacific

  • from Part Two - The Pacific Since 1941
  • Donald Denoon, Australian National University, Canberra, Malama Meleisea
  • With Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, Karen Nero
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 August 1997, pp 324-358

  • Summary

    The nuclear history of the Pacific begins with two central facts. The test sites were on Islands remote from Western population, and Islanders were politically subordinated to the nuclear powers. The American tests contaminated and destroyed land, and left physical injury and psychological disturbance among groups of Marshall Islanders whose lives have revolved around the bomb since the 1940s. Towards the end of the war in the Pacific, the Americans expelled Japan from the scattered islands of Micronesia in a series of bloody battles. The United States exploded sixty-six nuclear weapons in the northern Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, including the most powerful and contaminating bombs in the history of American testing. As in Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, colonialism and nuclear testing have gone together in French Polynesia. The Conference for a Nuclear-Free Pacific in Fiji in 1975 initiated an organised movement for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific.

  • 8 - Colonial Administration and the Invention of the Native

  • from Part One - The Pacific To 1941
  • Donald Denoon, Australian National University, Canberra, Malama Meleisea
  • With Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, Karen Nero
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 August 1997, pp 253-288

  • Summary

    The accepted European view of colonial rule in the 1920s and 1930s, contested only by a few dissident anthropologists and missionaries, was that it brought immense benefits to Islanders. In international law the South Seas consisted of territories under a variety of foreign jurisdictions. To understand Islands colonialism we must recognise the limitations of colonial power. Christian missions were strong and influential, often exercising quasi-governmental powers. Missions were far more significant mediators of modernisation than most governments. The Fijian Apolosi Nawai spent much of the interwar period exiled on Rotuma for his anti-British activities. Colonialism is perhaps better seen as the interaction of many competing ethnocentrisms, with European racial prejudice forming an overlay. Ethnocentrism was compounded by the fact that Samoan and Tongan missionaries commonly thought of themselves as bringing the Christian message to inferior peoples who desperately needed uplifting. The Fiji system was devised to solve the problem of labour without sacrificing economic development or Fijians themselves.

  • 9 - The War in the Pacific

  • from Part Two - The Pacific Since 1941
  • Donald Denoon, Australian National University, Canberra, Malama Meleisea
  • With Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, Karen Nero
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    28 August 1997, pp 289-323

  • Summary

    In the Pacific Islands, World War II came first as a reverberation of distant events. The French Resident in the New Hebrides, a hybrid colony administered jointly by France and Britain, quickly opted for the Allies, but for months the governors of French territories prevaricated. Australia and New Zealand, as British dominions, sent armies to aid Britain, including a Maori battalion which saw action in Greece in 1942. Japan mounted assaults from bases stretching from one end of its Micronesian territory to the other, from Saipan to Kwajalein. The Allied reoccupation of territory was relentless, leaving Japanese on many Islands isolated from supplies as the Americans leapfrogged north and north-west towards Japan. The Australians' departure from Kieta on Bougainville was an even greater blow to white prestige. The Japanese evacuated entire populations as the American threat loomed. While some Islanders fought, many more laboured for the military forces. The Japanese thought the crossing of Papua would be simple.