in Pacific colonisation

There was some virtue in Pacific colonisation

Dr Ward in the opening sentence of his introduction to Man In The Pacific Islands says, “The Pacific Islanders are regaining the right of self-government taken from them during the nineteenth century” This gives the impression that it was only during the nineteenth century that anything like this had happened in the Pacific, but one of his contri butors goes on to show that this was not so, and some contributors show that, contrary to once popular opinion both in the Pacific and out of it, the period of colonisation had some virtues.

Many reading Man In The Pacific Islands may perhaps know of researchers whose findings might have been included in the volume, but regrettable though it is that the book is so short, I think it must be agreed that Dr Ward has done a remarkable job in assembling the amount of learning and valuable research that is contained in the book.

To ask for more is to ask for too much. It would, however, I think, be difficult to think of anyone whose contribution to our knowledge of the Pacific, within the scope of this book, has not been quoted by one or other of the 10 contributors to Man In The Pacific Islands.

The book starts with the pre-history of the Pacific, about which it is astonishing that we have so much information, right to the present un certainty. It is a necessary addition to the library of anyone interested in or studying the Pacific. It is not the answer, nor is it intended to be, to all the problems which confront the Pacific peoples at this time. The actions of the past will no doubt be hardly distinguishable from those of the future when the future has been the past. As a list of bibliography, the book is invaluable, and each contributor has given credit to many

who have made no more than a small, but valued, contribution to our knowledge of the Pacific.

Since I have spent most of my life in the Pacific, perhaps it is lack of reading about other places that makes me ask, “Has any other area of the world had the advantage of so many authorities giving their at tention to it?” I think, among other things, Man In The Pacific Islands demonstrates that whatever else we invaders may have done in the Pacific, at least our best men of learning have attention to its prob

lems.-

Peter Livingston.

(MAN IN THE PACIFIC. Edited by R. Gerard Ward. Oxford University Press. $16.30).