Rowley's perceptive New

Guinea in paperback

WHEN C. D. Rowley first produced his oddly-titled The New Guinea Villager in 1965, a PIM reviewer described it as a “book of real sig nificance ... a highly perceptive and timely analysis of the current prob lems of the big Australian territory . . with urgent comment in almost ;very paragraph.”

Although it has since gone into hree editions, and a fourth is now ivailable in large format paperback, vhat Professor Rowley had to say in 1965 is still as timely, and possibly wen more valuable for anybody vanting to understand what is going m in a New Guinea that will be self ;overning by the end of 1973. This lew issue has not been added to; it s still “retrospective from 1964”, but fi-ofessor Rowley has laid firm foun lations.

The new issue is part of the Cheshire Group’s Studies in Society eries, and retails for $3.25.

FREDERIC Koehler Sutter’s ■ Samoa: A Photograph Essay University of Hawaii Press, SUSI 6) mst be one of the most sumptuous □lour books produced on the South acific. The binding, paper, colour and general presentation re almost magnificent. Somebody at le Hawaii Press is doing fine work, )r a PIM reviewer last month also Dmplimented that organisation on s beautiful presentation of Robert lampier’s To the Sandwich Islands n HMS Blonde.

In his photographic essay, Western amoa resident Sutter (he and his ife came in 1962). presents us with lotographs of Samoan life we don’t :ten see mourners at a funeral, Ilage sports, tatooists at work, night ihing, house building—all the prints ghly competent, some of them •ectacular. Nobody who lives there, • has visited there, can fail to be ipressed. Extensive notes at the ick of the book explain the pictures detail and point up the rhythm of uly Samoan life.

The author has tied most of his lotographs to Samoan proverbs, ven in both Samoan and English the text. Oddly, this device is an itation to some readers, merely cause it is patently a device. Many the proverbs are old and have me out of use and thus don’t rep sent the modern-day Samoa as the etures do. They make the book just

a little bit “precious”. Nevertheless, a volume worth owning, covering an area that doesn’t get much attention. 7 of The Journal of ▼ Pacific History is now available (at $5.50 through booksellers or $4.75 by subscription to the Aus tralian National University, Canberra, which produces it).

As usual the annual issue is a first rate “read”, with No. 7 perhaps better than last year’s (which was better than the year before). Jack Golson has the lead story on “The Remark able History of Indo-Pacific Man” (from a lecture that many people missed); there is an absorbing study by W. H. Pearson of just how Hawkesworth went about editing Captain Cook; there is a backwards look at the influence of the well known Hennings family of Fiji, by Deryck Scarr; and a fascinating account (the most readable in the issue) by Jim Allen and Roger Green on their recent Solomons investiga tions into Mendana’s lost ship. And much more.

This is the first issue not edited by the journal’s founder, H. E. Maude, and one of the tributes paid to him in this issue is that he “possessed the capacity to write to authors of manu scripts the Journal was unable to pub lish in terms of such generosity and delicacy that rejection must have

seemed almost as welcome as acceptance”. High praise for any editor! jDAPERS read at the 1971 con ference of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs have now been printed in booklet form by the institute’s publishers, Price Milburn and Co., Wellington, for $2.

The theme of that conference was ‘‘Pacific Horizons: A regional role for New Zealand”, and the papers were by R. Q. Quentin-Baxter, S. M.

Koya, Keith Jackson, Sir Alan Watt, W. David Mclntyre and Alexander MacLeod. There is a worthwhile introduction by Mary Boyd, reader in history at Wellington’s Victoria University.

The institute has also published (for 50 cents, direct to the institute at PO Box 196, Wellington) a 40page booklet titled New Zealand and Nuclear Testing in the Pacific, by Nigel Roberts, lecturer in political science at Canterbury University.

The author concludes that NZ protests probably haven’t done much to discourage the French, but that NZ or other nations can’t afford to stop protesting because continuing, unabated protests add to France’s difficulties. The booklet has some useful references.