Comparative History and Ethnography in William Ellis’s Polynesian Researches

ABSTRACT

This article develops recent scholarly efforts to take seriously the scientific work of evangelical missionaries in the South Pacific. Ellis’s Polynesian Researches gives us an insight into the broader issue of the way in which theological concepts could inform the framework of missionaries’ observations of the traditions, manners and functioning of human societies. Central to Ellis’s observations was the idea of idolatry. I argue that Ellis brought together a theological definition of idolatry – in which idolatry represented the sinful worship of created things rather than the creator God – with an Enlightenment idea that polytheistic idolatry was a universal stage in the historical development of civilization. Ellis’s Polynesian Researches gives us a point of entry into understanding some of the ways that European theological ideas were put to new uses in the South Pacific, against the backdrop of the increasingly global exchange of people, goods and ideas.     

Standing Together: New Guinean Villagers and the Pacific War in the Huon Peninsula

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the struggle of civilians at the home front during the Pacific War (1941–45). The home front under analysis is the Huon Peninsula, a strategically important stretch of coastline on the New Guinea mainland. From late 1941 the Huon was a ‘borderland’ of overlapping colonial rule, partly occupied by Japanese forces, still patrolled by Australian coastwatchers, and serviced by (three) remaining German missionaries. From 1943 onward, large stretches were heavily bombed by Allied forces. Histories abound on battles and army units that moved through the region, memoirs of coastwatchers tell of survival and clandestine operations behind enemy lines, and mission histories focus on the missionaries’ sacrifice. In contrast, this article places New Guinea villagers as the central focus of the story by using rare documents written by village elders during and shortly after the war as the central documentation.     

Geographical Influences on Settlement-Location Choices by Initial Colonizers: a Case Study of the Fiji Islands

From 3200 to 2850 cal BP (1250–900 BCE), the Lapita people of the Bismarck Archipelago (Papua New Guinea) undertook voyages eastward that led to their colonization of the eastern outer Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. The earliest (Lapita) settlements in Fiji were along the Rove Peninsula in southwest Viti Levu Island. At the time of colonization, sea level was 1.5 m higher than today. The Rove Peninsula was then a smaller island off the coast of larger Viti Levu, with a broad, fringing reef along its windward coasts, which was probably the main attraction for Lapita colonizers. As elsewhere during Lapita times in the western tropical Pacific Islands, settlement choice for the initial colonizers of the Fiji Islands was at one level driven by site access, at another by the presence of broad, fringing coral reefs suitable for marine foraging. The earliest settlement along the Rove Peninsula was at Bourewa, occupied first in 3050 cal BP (1100 BCE), where people lived in houses on stilt platforms built along the axis of a subtidal sand barrier; on one side was a broad coral reef, on the other a partly-enclosed tidal inlet. There is no evidence that the Bourewa settlers practised horticulture or agriculture at this time, their subsistence being predominantly marine foraging. After some 300 years of following this subsistence strategy, the inhabitants of Bourewa responded to sea-level fall and the arrival of cultivars (of taro and yam) by including horticulture. As sea level fell further, a total of 550 mm during the Lapita era, the tidal inlet dried up and marine-food resources diminished to a point where the natural environment of the Rove Peninsula could no longer sustain its Lapita inhabitants. All Lapita sites in the area were abandoned about 2500 cal BP (550 BCE), at the same time as the Lapita culture, marked by the end of dentate-pottery manufacture, came to an end in Fiji.