Book Reviews

British Plan For The Western Pacific

Never Ouite Got Going

Britain established the Western Pacific High Commission in 1877 to deal with the growing problem of European lawlessness in the islands of the Western Pacific. There was no intention that it should take responsibility for one more acre of territory than it could avoid. But until World War I began, and the South Seas went into the melting pot, a succession of High Com missioners proved that best intentions were inclined to go awry, and that, whatever the theory might be, in practice the WPHC was an unsatisfactory concept for everybody concerned. The WPHC never at any time lived up to its promise.

The confusion, the anomalies, the heated campaigns and hollow victories that flowed from a succession of High Commissioners battling with the Colonial Office, the British Treasury, the Australian colonies, the Islanders themselves, the European settlers, and with their own inadequacies and personal biases, are detailed in Frag ments of Empire, by Deryck Scarr.

Dr. Scarr, who is now a research fellow with the Department of Pacific History at the Australian National University, traces the problems that the High Commission was confronted with in Samoa, Tonga, Melanesia and Micronesia and pays particular attention to labour recruiting, the Anglo-French stalemate in the New Hebrides between 1877 and 1906, and the establishment of protectorates in the Solomons and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.

How it began

Before 1877, Britain’s control of the Pacific consisted of a statute by which the Supreme Courts of New South Wales and Van Dieman’s Land were empowered to try British sub jects for offences committed in the Pacific (if the authorities could collar them) and in appointing consuls in Samoa and Fiji.

In 1874 the activities of a con siderable number of Europeans in Fiji had resulted in Fiji having to be annexed, much to the repugnance of the British Treasury. So that this expensive solution shouldn’t have to be repeated in other groups, the oppor tunity was taken to extend authority over British planters and traders in neighbouring islands by an order in council issued in August, 1877, which made the Governor of Fiji also High

Commissioner for the Western Pacific.

His duties were frustrated no less in the sophisticated islands of Tonga and Samoa than they were in such primitive areas as the New Hebrides, the Solomons and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. But at least in Tonga and Samoa the Treasury supplied finances enough for some kind of rep resentation, while elsewhere in his jurisdiction the Fiji-based High Com missioner’s efforts were largely nullified by the lack of money to enable him to appoint resident deputies in places where they were badly needed.

The WPHC had not been in opera tion very long before suggestions were being made to London that the post should be separate from that of the Fiji Governor, but in fact this never happened (not until 1952), although on occasions up to 1914 the division seemed to be close.

The overriding problem was lack of money but personalities entered into it. In 1904, for instance, Britain had suggested that the Governor of New South Wales be made High Commissioner, but the Common wealth had proposed that the Gov ernor-General should get the job— a scheme which was turned down by the Colonial Office on the ground

that the Governor-General was merely a figurehead for the new Aus tralian Federal Government and that the Federal Government’s trenchant views on the inadequacy of the recent New Hebrides settlement could im peril Britain’s relations with France.

Late-flowering British apprehensions about Australia’s competence at handling international relations, which could rebound on Britain, prevented the new Australian Federation com ing into what Britain had earlier re garded as Australia’s inheritance in the South Pacific. During all the early years of the High Commission Britain’s policy appeared directed towards off-loading British problems in the Pacific on to Australian shoulders just as soon as Australia could carry them.

Australian interest

In the Solomons in 1898, for ex ample, when the Colonial Office was faced with a private proposal to establish a charter company to ad minister the islands in the form of a “small sort of British North Borneo”, it thought the idea might be used to awaken Australian com mercial jealousy and so arouse antipodean public opinion to a sense of Australia’s responsibility to the Solomon Islands—in short, to make use of the proposal only to bring the Australians up to scratch.

Only a few years earlier Britain had been exploring possibilities of solving the Solomons problem by hav ing it managed by New Guinea. Sir William MacGregor, in New Guinea, had suggested as early as 1892 that Guadalcanal be annexed by Britain as a recruiting field for his police force, and suggested that the New

Britain was a reluctant colonialist

Hebrides should also be transferred to the Administrator of British New Guinea.

The Guadalcanal proposal was knocked on the head by fears raised by the British Ambassador in Paris that France would protest violently if Britain took any of the Solomons, and in retaliation would reopen the New Hebrides question. Similar fears by Britain as to what France or Ger many might do about this or that, affected British policy in many ways in that period. The British Govern ment considered that the islands were expendable.

When protectorates were finally de clared they were made with reluctance.

Islands were made protectorates rather than annexed so that Britain could easily shovel off what she might find it unnecessary to hold. The ideal type of administration in the Pacific Islands, as far as Britain was con cerned, was that of self-governing native communities acting under the advice of a resident officer whose salary and expenses were paid from local revenue.

Confusion

But as the High Commissioners found, this wasn‘t easy to achieve, especially without money. Britain’s attitude, made more complex at the Pacific end by the long time it took to get any decisions from far-off London, resulted in frustration for the High Commissioners. They were still having to resort to keeping dis cipline by the old method of act of war by naval ships.

This was not considered a humane solution, and efforts over the years in widely differing areas to find a better kind of working solution ended often in confusion and some times chaos as decisions were made, reversed, modified, remade and modi fied again.

As the torturous paths are out lined we get in Dr. Scarr’s book in teresting glimpses and sometimes even a portrait of the personalities of some of the 16 High Commissioners and Acting High Commissioners who took charge over the 37-year period.

There is particular attention paid to the two most outstanding men— Sir Arthur Gordon, the first High Commissioner (who became Lord Stanmore), and Sir John Thurston, the fourth.

Gordon’s activities in the Pacific form part of this narrative even after his relinquishment of his HC post in 1883. Sir Arthur was chairman of the Pacific Islands Company, formed

in 1898, when the guano and copra exporting firm of J. T. Arundel Ltd., bought out Henderson and McFarlane’s interests around The Line.

The board included other knighted former Colonial Office men, and Lord Stanmore, as he then was, saw this company as achieving, with Burns Philp, “a joint domination over the Pacific”, with Anglo-French and Anglo-German subsidiaries—the latter being expected to settle the Samoan problem peacefully on Britain’s be half.

The company selected land in the Solomons for 99 years’ lease, but when Stanmore’s application for a

kind of charter by way of greater protection was refused he persisted in his application for a Solomons scheme until 1906. He was at that time unable to raise sufficient capital so the concessions were disposed of to Levers Pacific Plantations.

The attentions of Arundel and most of the other directors, includ ing Stanmore himself, had by then been distracted by the discovery of phosphate on Ocean Island which, as Arundel said, “promised riches beyond the dreams of avarice.”

Some of Stanmore’s extraordinary submissions on Ocean Island are out lined by Dr. Scarr (you will find more of them in PIM, Aug., 1965, in an article by Robert Langdon on “The True and Wondrous Story of How Britain Got Hold of Ocean Island”).

Dr. Scarr comments in a footnote that Lord Stanmore’s biographer, J.

K. Chapman (The Career of Arthur Hamilton Gordon ) “unfortunately has not given Stanmore’s involve ment in these commercial enterprises the elucidation which it requires”.

In the Solomons meanwhile the

operations of Levers were apparently giving the skeleton administration there another lesson in the variety of problems encountered by a WPHC. The advent of Levers on the scene was hailed with relief and gratitude by the Resident Commis sioner, C. M. Woodford, for Britain had almost decided that his Treasury vote would not be sanctioned in future and that Australia would be told that “British authority would be withdrawn from the Solomon Islands on a date to be definitely named” unless before that date Australia was “prepared to assume all the respon sibility for the administration of the protectorate.”

As a result of Lever’s operations the protectorate government’s financial difficulties were solved almost over night. But within a few years the government’s enthusiasm for opera tions of so large a company had waned considerably.

Lever's attitude

As Dr. Scarr puts it, “Lever’s policy came rapidly to exhibit the character istics typical of the large firm with heavy investment in a comparatively small territory. They assumed, naturally enough, a proprietorial at titude towards government.”

But Levers also had their com plaints about the government. Their presence placed an obligation on the government to bring at least the coasts of the main islands under con trol, but this turned out to be an impossible job with the small re sources at Woodford’s disposal.

As late as 1916, Sir Hubert Murray, Lt-Governor of Papua, was writing privately to his brother after a visit to the Solomons: “It is the queerest place imaginable ... no at tempt is made to preserve order or to punish crime. . . .”

However, Sir Hubert considered that this “seems to be a deliberate policy on the part of the government.

They say you cannot bring these people under control by violence but only by moral influence; therefore they do not punish them at all— even apparently when they kill a white man —and not only that, but they hardly take any pains to pro tect the lives of the law-abiding natives. It seems difficult to believe that anyone can allow things to get in such an awful muddle. . .”

As far as most of the British settlers in the WPHC area were con cerned, the advent of the Com mission meant the very extinction of British interests, and there is no doubt that the difficulties of estab lishing a uniform policy almost made

this a fact in some places. The WPHC adopted a policy of limita tion and even prevention towards British settlement in the Western Pacific.

Trade with islanders in the staple articles of arms and liquor was pro hibited to British subjects, there was reluctance or refusal to register titles to land which British subjects claimed to have bought from natives, and at various times licences to recruit labourers were refused.

This had particularly devastating effects in the New Hebrides, where within 20 years the results of the High Commission’s policy resulted in British planters being swamped under a sea of tricolours. By 1880 Dnly a handful of British planters remained in the New Hebrides. In he absence of international agree nents applying the same British re strictions to Frenchmen, Germans, \mericans, Swedes and others, other lationalities had a free hand in trad ng and planting operations.

French intervention

In October, 1882, the French from >< Jew Caledonia intervened energetic ally in the New Hebrides. John Jigginson, English-born financier vith Australian experience, a natur ilised French citizen with a hatred or things English, founded in that ear the Compagnie Caledonienne les Nouvelles-Hebrides. He began •y purchasing any existing land title ic could obtain, and in the next 10 ears anyone with a deed could be ure of a ready sale to the company.

U the beginning the vendors were II British, and having disposed of lis opposition, Higginson entered pon a programme of buying from le New Hebrideans the best land i the group, paying particular atten on to Malekula, Epi and Santo.

In this orgy of land buying it was vidently considered more important lat the purchases should be quickly oncluded, and that the areas in olved should consist of several musand hectares, than that the lleged vendors should understand hat it was all about.

On one occasion one of Higginson’s gents claimed to have bought about ne-twelfth of the New Hebrides’ >tal area in a space of only 14 days! lost of the transactions in that par

ticular expedition were conducted from the deck of a ship.

In April, 1894, the CCNH became the Societe Francaise des Nouvelles Hebrides, reconstituted under French Government supervision and claim ing to own 780,600 hectares of land in the group, whose total area was estimated at 1,467,320 hectares.

When the company attempted to turn many of these paper titles into actual plantations the pretentions of the SFNH were challenged seriously by their enemies, the Presbyterian missionaries, and by many of the natives alleged to have sold the land.

HP's interest

British interests had not been en tirely inactive, although they got no help from the High Commission— which now allowed land to be registered so long as it was under stood that registration didn’t confer title. The Australasian New Hebrides Company came into being in Sydney in 1899 with a directorate on which were represented Burns Philp and other established firms. Its object was to compete with French interests, and

Wild scramble for New Hebrides land

it, too, bought land and placed settlers on various parcels.

The settlers had no more success than the French settlers, although for different reasons, most of which could be laid at the door of British policy. The Australian com pany was dissolved in the 1890’s, and in 1901 Burns Philp made over to the Commonwealth all the lands it had received. These were the famous Burns Philp lands still heard of occasionally today.

After Commonwealth acquisition, the name of Burns Philp was still used as a cover by the Commonwealth in an effort to extend British in terests in the New Hebrides, but at the conference in 1905 to establish a joint Anglo-French administration of the New Hebrides, France easily came out the winner. The French viewpoint prevailed in drawing up land clauses.

Dr. Scarr gives an absorbing account of the behind-the-scenes moves of this period when both Britain and France were competing for supremacy in the New Hebrides.

The French Government found it impossible to ignore the commanding

Australia's interests being involved again

position which on paper it had ob tained for itself in the group, and it had no intention of allowing its land titles to be invalidated. For several years prior to the conference France had rejected British proposals to set up a Lands Commission in the New Hebrides which would apply the same tests that had been made in Samoa— i.e., whether the land sale had been made by the rightful owner, whether it was for sufficient consideration and whether the property could be clearly identified.

The application of these and other tests had resulted in a mere fraction of the land claimed by Europeans in Samoa being awarded to them, and Dr. Scarr believes it is likely that a similar result would have occurred in the New Hebrides if France had agreed to the British proposals.

The French carried their insistence that titles registered before a certain year should be regarded as valid.

How it was settled

In the end result it was agreed that if a deed had been registered before January 1, 1896, its validity could not be questioned if it was proved it had passed between Europeans for a valuable consideration. This meant that 300,000 hectares of land sold to Higginson by Europeans between 1882 and 1887 were beyond contesta tion and a further 300,000 bought from natives and registered before January 1, 1896, could only be chal lenged with great difficulty.

Dr. Scarr says that what seems to have weighed most with British dele gates at the conference was the assur ance of the French that in French law, title deeds of a certain age con veyed a prescriptive right even when the land had not been occupied.

After the conference the Foreign Office took the opinion of a Sorbonne jurist and discovered that there was room for argument on this point.

By then, of course, it was too late.

Dr. Scarr believes also that the French viewpoint prevailed on the land clauses “because the French delegates wore down their British counterparts with their intransigence or because the Foreign Office did not consider it worthwhile to risk en dangering the new found entente with France by insisting on the protection of the rights of islanders in a distant group where Britain was involved simply through Australian interests”.

It is surprising how this matter of Australian interest in the Western

Pacific affected so many decisions made at that time; and it’s of special interest now that the call from the Islands for greater participation by Australia is being heard more and more often.

In Fragments of Empire there’s material enough on this point and on others to engross the Pacific specialist; material new enough to set a whole team of research scholars off in different directions. But Dr.

Scarr’s blurb writer is not accurate when he states on the jacket that “the colourful nature of the subject and the vigorous way the story of the islands is unfolded will appeal greatly to the general reader”.

I can’t see this as a book for general readers, for it never attains the pace the general reader will ex pect to get. One reason is Dr. Scarr’s habit of using large slabs of quota tions in the text when brief to-the point excerpts would have made read ing much easier. His footnotes are often more readable, and the later sections of his book run more easily than the first chapters. But the

material is certainly there.-

SI

(Fragments Of Empire; A History

of the Western Pacific High Commission, 1877-1914. Australian National University Press, Canberra: distributed by Jacaranda- Cheshires. $9.90.)