Gap In Pacific

History Is Filled

Example For Other Territories

CALEDONIENS: Repertoire bio bibliographique de la Nouvelle- Caledonie. By Father Patrick O’Reilly. Illustrations de Jean Lebedeff. Paris, Publications de la Societe des Oceanistes, 1953.

“ on the footpath of Boule vard Montparnasse, I worked out a plan of research: ransack local newspapers; probe into the Colonial, Marine and War Departments’ per sonnel records; send a questionnaire to the various local personalities and main families of the Island; solicit from different friends— hydrographers, geologists, botanists or prospectors—articles about New Caledonia’s specialists: and I had only to organise the easily collected material. Ten minutes later, at my home in Rue de Vaugirard, the task was mentally completed.

There is many a slip between the cup and the lip ”

SUCH a modest introduction will not deceive the reader who cares to look at the 300 scholarly pages that follow. This gallery of New Caledonians—scientists, traders, missionaries, teachers, officials, to name but a few of its classifications —contains some 1,500 portraits of men and women who contributed to

the history or literature of the Island. The biographies range in size from thumbnail sketches to sometimes several pages of solid in formation.

Father O’Reilly warns us in the preface to look for no proportion of space to historical importance.

The fault is more than compensated for by the generous treatment given to all the persons included, and the publication of a wealth of material inaccessible to many historians and to the public at large.

For, it is to this book that Pacific historians will turn to verify fact, follow the leads provided in its ex cellent index, and consult the many bibliographies that are attached to the biographies of authors. The reader generally interested in the Pacific will find, in what might easily have become a dull catalogue, an astonishing variety of person alities—French, English, and New Caledonian—who were the founders, artisans, rulers and writers of a cross-section of Europe in the Pacific.

Perhaps that is the most lasting impression of Father O’Reilly’s work; its sense of proportion that has not left without memorial the host of small traders, colonists, miners, who shaped the present ethnic and economic structure or the Island’s society.

Patience and research has given a place to Alfred Baker and “recog nised” his work and his enterpris ing mind,” alongside the better known names of Ballande, and that

stocky Jack-of-Pacific-tradas, James Paddon. The ethnographical writ ing of Maurice Leenhardt is paid full homage; we are reminded of the work of influential journalists like Neething and Laborde; the biography’s large list of missionaries and teachers assures that Theophile Busson and Professor Noellat have public record of their labours on Melanesian dialects and local educa tion.

CALEDONIENS also proves, only too painfully, what remains to be done in the same manner for other Islands groups before the sociologist can freely draw conclusions about the structure and origin of Pacific colonial societies. Father O’Reilly need not have wished so timidly in his preface that this work might take a place with Scholefield’s, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. That corner of the shelves is very bare.

Finally, the author was indeed fortunate to find an illustrator of the sympathy and 'directness of Jean Lebedeff, whose vignettes at the head of each alphabetical chapter are an entertaining history in themselves. The slips from the cup to the lip have been few.—

Colin Newbury, Paris, 1954.

Editorial Note

Every other one of the South Pacific Territories is crying aloud for the kind of historical compila tion that Father O’Reilly has given to New Caledonia. The complete, up-to-date history of such terri tories as New Guinea, Solomons, New Hebrides, Fiji, Samoa—in fact, practically all the South Pacific — has still to be written. There is opportunity here, and a market.

But where are the writers —men or women with a sense of history and some real regard for accuracy?

Plenty of useless pot-boilers about the Pacific Islands, but few com pilations of any historical value.

IT On Empire Day (which happens also to be her birthday), Miss May Anderson was honoured by a pre sentation at a special party in Fiji, Her name is closely associated with the history of medical services in Fiji. She was formerly matron of the Suva Hospital (now Colonial War Memorial Hospital) and is one of those who built up the training of Fijian medical students to a level that set a standard for the

School. Miss Anderson now lives in retirement at Colo-i-Suva. A cordial message from Sir Ronald Garvey, Governor of Fiji, was read at the gathering by Dr. D. J. Oldmeadow. fl Dr. Jacquier has succeeded Mr.

Van Den Broek D’Obrenan, in the position of president of the Syndicat d’lnitiative Tourisme, Tahiti. His assistant is Mrs. Jacquemin. Mr.

Broek D’Obrenan held the position for some years, and gave Tahiti

now famous Central Medical valuable and enthusiastic service.