In the Long ‘Run’: Kanak Stockmen,the Cattle Frontier and Colonial Power Relations in New Caledonia, 1870–1988

ABSTRACT For more than a century, from the 1870s to the 1980s, stockmen were important intermediaries and figures of power and influence in the construction, maintenance and renewal of the colonial order in New Caledonia. Social relations between Kanak and settlers working in the cattle ‘runs’ permitted a unique form of mobility spanning the frontier. The relations developed between chiefs and cattle farmers are central to the processes by which certain administrative chieftaincies emerged in the late‐nineteenth century, and by which Kanak entered the ‘political’ sphere in the second half of the twentieth century. With reference to the locality of Koné, this article traces the political alliances fashioned between Kanak stockmen and their employers in the context of colonisation, rebellion, evangelisation, post‐war political emancipation, local development and, finally, the struggle between supporters and opponents of independence in the 1980s.     

The Challenges of Financial Responsibility in the Tribal Administration of Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1919–1966

Abstract

This account of tribal finances in Bechuanaland Protectorate under British colonial rule argues that while the treasury dispensation made the tribes responsible for their finances, it also brought about a new dynamic and challenge in tribal communities as a result of a new monetary and financial system. Little or inadequate remuneration led to low morale, theft, and the employment of incompetent personnel in some instances. The colonial authority needed the chiefs to run tribal affairs and for political stability. As a result, chiefs often escaped unpunished whenever they were involved in peculation of funds. On the other hand, when tribal revenue workers did the same they were harshly dealt with. Efficiency and corruption in the treasury system differed from one area to another and was dependent on the character of the chief in the area.     

Neo in Oceania

Between 1790 and 1830, Hawaiian chiefs built, purchased or otherwise acquired a fleet of Westernstyle sailing vessels which they used to transform various aspects of Hawaiian culture, including military engagements, tribute collection, inter-island commerce and status competition. A list of 41 such vessels with known names is presented, but historical records point to the existence of dozens of other such ships whose names have not been identified. These data allow for the estimation of economic investments made by chiefs in the purchase of ships, and document a trend in which the earliest Western-style vessels were built locally, only later to be replaced by a tendency to buy foreign vessels. Issues pertaining to power, agency, colonialism and indigenous self-determination in the transformation of Pacific cultures are discussed.     

Political Structure and the Limits of Recognition and Representation in Ghana

Recent studies of democratization in sub‐Saharan Africa often focus on government recognition granted to traditional authorities. This article examines northern Ghana, where chiefs of a minority group are denied formal recognition but pressure state officials to recognize their status as land custodians. This leads to contests and debates between state officials, chiefs and communities over whether the customary institutions have in fact been recognized for what they claim to be. The article uses episodes of contention to nuance conceptualizations of recognition as a specific relationship between actors and institutions, and as a question of government policy or choice. Recognition and non‐recognition are contested in a grey zone of social constructions. Non‐recognition persists as a continuation of colonial policy, state law path trajectory, and state officials’ endeavours to stay out of ‘traditional’ affairs. However, customary rights to land are validated by the new local government institution, and chiefs use newfound positions to expand their jurisdictions. Stakeholders affirm unequal social categories underpinning different understandings of recognition. The article examines contentions that hinge on interpretations of who is recognizing and not recognizing whom, and actors’ efforts to reshape and reproduce political structures.     

From the Archives: The Archbold Expeditions to New Guinea: A preliminary survey of archival materials held at the American Museum of Natural History,New York City

In accounts of the Kanak (Melanesian) opposition to the recruitment of volunteers for the Great War in 1916–17 and of the war that followed in the north of New Caledonia in 1917–18, the involvement of a district grand chef, Téâ Antoine Katélia, was the subject of conflicting testimonies. Drawing extensively upon archival materials dating from before, during and after the war, this paper examines the contested authority of a Kanak chief in the early-20th century and contributes to the local history of the Koné region.     

Killing the ' Fantôme Canaque ': Evoking and Invoking the Possibility of Revolt in New Caledonia (1853-1915)

Evocations and invocations of the possibility of revolt or violence on the part of Kanak were an ever present feature of European settler discourse in 19th and early 20th century New Caledonia. Within this discourse, there was a constant tension between the possibility of (or potential for) violence invoked by settlers, and the attempts of colonial administrators to deny this possibility. For the local administration, denial of the possibility of a mass Kanak revolt was part of an attempt to move towards a more indirect form of control over the dangerous individual. Settler evocations or invocations of the possibility of revolt can be seen, depending on the context, as direct threats to Kanak, as appeals for administrative intervention (repression) or as rhetorical attacks on the local administration.     

Leadership in Absentia: Negotiating Distance in Centralized Solomon Islands

This article examines a tension at the heart of national leadership in Solomon Islands today: a conviction that national leaders need to spend more time in rural environments to better represent rural interests, needs and values, while having to be in town to access the individuals and organizations that, essentially, make them national leaders in the first place. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in urban Honiara and the rural Lau Lagoon, Malaita, we are especially interested in how this tension shapes rural perceptions of the legitimacy of chiefs as national leaders. Given that development projects can only be negotiated in Honiara, where the required state institutions, international (N)GOs and major businesses are based, rural residents feel compelled to send their most important village leaders, especially clan chiefs, to town. However, the longer these leaders are away from their homes, the more they seem distracted by urban ‘luxuries’ and the less they appear committed to their rural homes. In particular, villagers complain about their chiefs' contributions to exchange relations. Villages, thus, find themselves in a double‐bind that exaggerates a broader ‘crisis of leadership’ alongside an urban‐rural divide which challenges the promise of chiefly leadership as solution to antipolitical sentiments and a centralized state.     

MISSIONARIES AND WAR LORDS: A STUDY OF CULTURAL INTERACTION ON ABAIANG AND TARAWA

Hiram Bingham Jr, Protestant missionary, landed at Abaiang in the Gilbert Islands in November 1857. He came not only with a distinct missionary policy but also with an inner vision based on his ideals and his own personal interpretation of the Protestant Christian message. Bingham envisaged a loving community which was made up of both ruler and the ruled, including men and women, young and old. For their part, Gilbertese on Abaiang did not share Bingham's view of God or the cosmos. They had their own spirits (Anti) and lived in a world punctuated by wars. Given their limited contact with Europeans, most Islanders on Abaiang and Tarawa saw little relevance in the particular type of Christianity that Bingham espoused and attempted to convey to them. Yet despite this dissonance, two war chiefs (uea) began a communication. This communication was meaningful to their side but was not shared by the other. Bingham was perceived in a way he would not have wanted and he, in turn, misinterpreted the entire situation in Abaiang and nearby Tarawa. The result was that the missionaries became embroiled in the wars and failed to usher in a reign of peace and benevolence.     

Chiefs,Agitators and the Navy:

American Samoa was governed directly by the US navy from 1901 to 1951, using naval officers on short-term rotations, assisted by Samoan chiefs. Despite being benign and protectionist, the administration in 1920 was disturbed by a protest movement commonly known by the Samoan term mau. This coincided with criticisms from other quarters, including a mixed-race Samoan–Caucasian family, assisted by a California attorney, a mutinous naval officer, a Honolulu journalist and resident American traders. Previous assessments that foreigners agitated among the Samoans for their own ends were challenged by David Chappell, who transfers the initiative for the agitation to the Samoans and sees in the movement an expression of cultural rather than political nationalism. This revisionist interpretation fails to recognise the nature of the links between the foreign and indigenous elements and misreads the Samoan component. The latter was less concerned with grievances about naval rule than with the continuation of traditional rivalries between Samoan chiefs, which crystallised over access to navy patronage. Both Chappell's interpretation and the current one are post-colonialist in their endeavours to shift the focus onto Samoan cultural understandings but they differ in identifying the specific processes involved.     

Why the Kanak Don't Fear Sharks: Myths as a Coherent but Dangerous Mirror of Nature

This study focuses on the important role of sharks in the Melanesian mythology. Based on unpublished stories essentially originating from New Caledonia, we show how strong the links are between myths and the physical environment in which Kanak live. As prevalent mythical animals, sharks can indifferently play the role of avengers and righters of wrongs, or vehicles for the spirits of living or dead people. They can be either allies or enemies in wars, and their role as potential man-killers is never overlooked. However, when humans are attacked and killed by a shark, it is always for a material reason: the victim broke a rule or a tabu, the shark was an enemy, the sharks withdrew protection, the event allowed a pregnant woman to reach a new territory, etc. Beyond arbitrary metaphysical justifications, such perceptions reflect respect for social and natural order. For Kanak ni-Vanuatu and other Pacific Islander peoples, sharks are part of a coherent Nature that includes natural and social hazards. In the quest for sustainable development of the planet, more in harmony with Nature, so-called ‘developed societies’ might draw inspiration from such perceptions. Indigenous understandings could also help change the globally negative perception of sharks, and support shark conservation efforts in Oceania and worldwide.     

The ‘Rebalancing’ of New Caledonia’s Economy

This article assesses the impact of ‘rebalancing’ (ré-équilibrage) policies implemented in New Caledonia following the Noumea Accord in 1998. These policies were designed to redress the disadvantages of the Indigenous Kanak population (both at the political and at the socio-economic level) and to foster Kanak support for a post-Noumea Accord deal with the non-Indigenous population. It outlines the institutional framework of the Noumea Accord and its impact on development policy, exploring the structural dynamics of the New Caledonian economy and the extent of achievements in reducing inequalities. Conventional indicators demonstrate some accomplishments as regards reducing provincial inequalities but this article argues that the goals of rebalancing remain far from achieved and it explores the reasons for those shortcomings. I argue that most difficulties stem from the lack of structural reforms and absence of a shared vision of development. Nevertheless, scope does exist in New Caledonia for fostering balanced development that is environmentally and socially sustainable and better adapted to local specificities.     

Border Practices,Boundaries, and the Control of Resource Access: A Case from China,Thailand and Burma

This article traces border practices along boundaries that China and Thailand share with Burma. It portrays a spectrum of small border polities, from principalities on the fringes of Southeast Asian kingdoms, through Nationalist troops in Burma following their defeat in China, to ‘drug lords’ and ‘rebel armies’. The focus here is on Akha village heads who have worked their connections in multiple directions, including into Burma, to position themselves as patrons controlling local resource access. With state appointment as border guardians, village heads become chiefs of new kinds of small border entities, protecting the border for the homeland while enabling certain illicit information, people, and goods to cross. In regions with a history of complex patronage relations, state efforts to control peripheral people, resources, and territories have in fact produced small border chiefs, with practices similar to those of frontier princes in the past.     

Planting Islands: Marshall Islanders Shaping Land,Power, and History

This paper reframes encounters between ri-aelōñ-kein (Marshall Islanders) and ri-pālle (outsiders) between the 16th and 19th centuries through a ri-aelōñ-kein cultural lens. It applies a deep ethnographic approach and frameworks of cross-cultural exchange and mutual possession to re-present ri-aelōñ-kein engagements across the beach as purposeful attempts to ‘plant’ ri-pālle on land and within genealogies. It argues that, in addition to violence, ri-aelōñ-kein used ‘gifts’ of land and other exchanges to ‘plant’ ri-pālle within their realms and, in turn, augment their social status. While deployed most often by irooj (chiefs), kajoor (commoner) men and women used similar tactics with some success. Throughout, ri-aelōñ-kein made history by deploying aspects of culture to advance local ambitions through engagements with ri-pālle.     

The Evolutionary Ecology of Rotuman Political Integration

On the basis of the constructs of evolutionary ecology, this article presents an explanation for political integration during the prehistoric-protohistoric period on Rotuma, Fiji. Archaeological, ethnohistorical, and environmental data are analyzed with a geographic information system (GIS) to define the natural and social constraints according to which specific behavioral strategies conferred benefits to the people who employed them. The analysis suggests that during the prehistoric-protohistoric period chiefs from the relatively less productive, eastern side of Rotuma dominated the political arena. The integration of the island into a single, loose polity provided the eastern chiefs with social and material benefits. Because of these benefits, the eastern chiefs sought to perpetuate the political structure. Individuals from other districts participated in the hegemonic political structure because they reaped long-term benefits, suffered minimal costs, and perceived relatively fewer advantages in obtaining pan-Rotuman positions. Given the specific environmental context of this relatively isolated island, the formation of an island-wide polity provided selective advantages to its members.     

RE‐INVENTING TRADITIONAL LAND TENURE IN THE ERA OF LAND COMMODITIZATION: SOME CONSEQUENCES IN PERIURBAN NORTHERN GHANA

In northern Ghana periurban areas are encroaching on rural areas and agricultural land ends up being sold for residential purposes mainly by chiefs and “earth” priests. The changing customary land tenure systems have generated a state of uncertainty and tension as the title and responsibilities of titleholders are subject to the interpretation by those who administer custom. Increasing commodification is taking place that benefits an emerging political‐traditional and economic elite. The centralized systems restrict the benefits of the commoditization process mainly to chiefs and their collaborators, whiles acephalous systems allow more space for objections and struggles by those whose land is expropriated. Neoliberal development policies have shaped the commodification of land and entrenched existing socio‐economic inequalities that marginalize the poor who are unable to seize the opportunities of the emerging urban economy.     

Morality as Identity: the Missionary Moral Agenda in Buganda,1877–1945

This article advances three arguments. First, that prior to European intrusion in the mid-1800s, "Buganda" and "Mugandaness" were continually contested ideologies whose meanings were not given but discursively constructed and reconstructed in conditions of historical specificity. Second, that "Baganda" as an identity, was first constructed in the early travellers' journals. Later on missionaries and Buganda's leading chiefs appropriated the construct "Buganda" and actively participated in its elaboration and refinement as it was later to be used and popularized in the twentieth century. Third, that Buganda identity was constructed through the active silencing of the disruptive relations of ethnicity, of gender, and of class. In the celebration of an ethnic identity, inequalities and oppression were glossed over. Out of a confrontation with the "other," Buganda identity was carefully and powerfully articulated by the Christian middle-class men who, from 1900, dominated the newly created ruling council of Buganda, called the Lukiiko. These men claimed to speak for the Buganda "nation" and on behalf of others. Their search for a secure identity was built on their assertion of their superiority over the "decadent" sub-nationalities; over all non-royal females and over all others who were not Christians, male and middle class. In examining the historical dynamics of identity, it is important to look beyond the illusion of a Buganda "Christian nation" to investigate articulations and manipulations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality.     

A history of the African people

Abstract

Colonialism entailed numerous changes in Swazi socio-economic configurations, including a growing recourse to waged employment. Yet little is known about the dynamics that drove indigenous Swazi women to work for wages. This article argues that colonial policy, by adversely impacting areas of production involving Swazi people, drove women to seek wage employment. Moreover, this was not a smooth process, but a contested issue. Swazi men, chiefs, the monarchy and colonial administrators all attempted to frustrate female participation in wage employment. In spite of such barriers, as oral interviews with mid-twentieth century working women show, women continued to take up wage employment, and eventually secured the implicit support of colonial administrators in the service of the colonial economy.     

The Limits of Influence: Australia and the Future of New Caledonia, 1975 to 1988

From the late 1970s Australian governments (led in turn by Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke) expected New Caledonia to become independent. France responded with suspicion. From 1983, however, reformist governments in Australia and France took apparently converging views. But tensions rose because of unrest in New Caledonia and conflict over French nuclear testing. Australia’s limited capacity to influence developments waned further in 1986 when Jacques Chirac became French prime minister and countered the Kanak nationalist movement. Foreign Minister Bill Hayden favoured moderating Australia’s position, but the issue became moot in mid-1988 when the rival forces in New Caledonia agreed to the truce embodied in the Matignon Accords. The different approaches of the Fraser and Hawke governments reflected philosophical differences, the personal stance of key players, influences from their political movements, and the challenges of changing circumstances. Decades later, with a referendum due by November 2018, Australia’s approach is likely to be cautious.     

Colonial intellectuals at the end of Empire: Manning Clark's Australia and Guy Butler's South Africa

Abstract

Colonial masters considered it their right to take human remains collected from colonies or plundered as a result of war. The skulls of Chief Mkwawa and the sub-chief Songea were looted in the same manner from Tanganyika (now Tanzania) to Germany. While Chief Mkwawa’s skull was returned in 1954, the demands for sub-chief Songea’s skull are ongoing, with the Tanzanian community contesting ownership of human remains in European museums. The absence of bones in graves, particularly those of chiefs, have a major impact on the colonised people as graves are associated with communities’ spirituality and wellbeing. This article shows that without a final resting place for the victims of colonialism, mourning is difficult, traumatic and endless. Individuals, communities and nations bestow social, cultural and political significance on human remains, even those curated in museums. The significance of each group is attached to the affective memorialisation of personal bereavement. What happens, then, when the memorialised graves were created at a time when mourning was impossible and the authority to bury or not to bury was in hands of the colonisers? How do the colonial plunder of human body parts and the demands for their return unfold in the contemporary history of Tanzania? These are some of the questions