the key to the economy?

. . . and how much is geography the key to the economy?

Twenty-one dollars is a lot to spend on a book but anyone who wishes to take a closer look at the background to Professor Brookfield’s Colonialism, Development and Independence, recently published and likely to become a classic, will get full value in Melanesia, a Geographical Interpretation of an Island World (H. C. Brookfield with D. C.

Hart), a detailed study of the traditional and contemporary economies of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Solomon Islands and Irian Barat.

Taking a geographer’s approach, the author first gives us a synthesis of relevant studies by himself and others in his discipline and by workers in other sciences. The corpus of knowledge has grown so rapidly during the last two decades that the general reader is greatly helped by this kind of expert summary.

The author then makes a geographical evaluation of the development process, using locational patterns to illustrate the problems of distance and lack of size (except for Papua New Guinea) and the difficulties which the present dual economies

present to the newly-independent governments.

Taking a dual economy to consist of a commercial system and a peasant system, with the former being or, at least, having the potential to be, the engine of development, the author details how and why the Islanders have only a very small share in the commercial system.

This is nothing new to most informed readers, but the author goes further by explaining the reasons for the tenacity of laissez faire capitalism after colonial rule has ended, He gives an excellent account of metropolitan control by Big Busi ness, eg the Rothschilds over New Caledonian nickel, and suggests that this pattern may, if continued, drive the Island nations to seek solutions that will not be in the best interests of both parties.

In quoting some Melanesian writers’ view that the Islanders are searching for a “viable dignity without holus bolus assimilation of alien culture and its values”, Prof Brookfield has pinpointed the central issue in Islands’ economics, and his assertion

that strident economic nationalism will arise unless urgent measures are taken to integrate Melanesians more closely with decision-making and ownership in the centralised enter

prises, especially in the towns, has already been proved by events since this book was published.

The new economic policy recently announced by the Somare Govern ment in Papua New Guinea, and one not very different already under way in Fiji ought to cause some serious and rapid re-thinking in Sydney, Paris, London and New York.

If it does not, then the Western nations’ changing role in the Pacific

may end up as no role at all. For the Islanders, it would mean loss of an opportunity to spread their econo mic eggs over several baskets—they would all end up in the Japanese one. For the Western nations, there would be politico-strategic as well

as economic implications.

Harry

Jackman.

'MELANESIA, a geographical

Interpretation Of An Island

WORLD. By H. C. Brookfield with D Hart. Methuen & Co Ltd. London. $2160)’