Paradoxes Of The

Modern Pacific

The European empires in the insular Pacific lasted scar cely a century, from the rais ing of the national flags at the outset to raising the ex pectations of the inhabitants in more recent decades. In Oceania and Beyond, 20 con tributors, in 16 not always easy pieces, tell us about the many paradoxes that com prise the modern peoples of the Pacific and the places where they are trying to live.

The interested reader, and there should be some, will regard this collection of dis parate essays as a resource, to be dipped into and to be con sidered along with PI M’s up to the minute news and the oc casional specialist accounts.

Rather than examine each of the separate authors and their articles, it seems that the most relevant factors are the con

flicting and complementary

themes that run through the book’s nearly 300 pages.

Regrettably, the half dozen pages of foreword and in troduction tell us little of such matters, the usual job of the editor of such collections.

Modernity for such places as different as Funafuti and Fiji has been accompanied, in the last decade, with the assertion of independence, either aspired to or achieved.

But, such independence has

come parallel to growing economic and, even, cultural dependence. Though no longer threatened with annex ation to Queensland, as it once was in the not-so-distant

past, politically independent Papua New Guinea is today firmly a part of Australia’s economic region. The severe problem of balance of pay ments afflicts most Pacific economies and some, such as Tonga and Western Samoa, rely heavily upon exported labour remittances to pay for their next import shipment of transistor radios or anti biotics.

Scale and balance are fun damental problems in the Pacific countries, small dots of land scattered at uneven in tervals over the largest ex panse of water on earth. Now that the accidents of colonial ism have become the bound ary lines on Mercator projec tions, political states whose land area and population would be lost in most of the world’s larger cities suddenly find themselves struggling to maintain a separateness and an integrity that will only reduce them to still greater dependence. The small size of countries such as Tonga, Niue, and, even, Fiji contrasts sadly with their enormous hopes and aspirations.

To fulfil hopes and to realise aspirations, many of the new Pacific nations seemly are prepared to destroy them selves in order to develop.

Some adhere to the cargo cult of environmentally questiona ble resource exploitation, while others, not content merely to pollute, permit free

spending military estab

lishments to blast away at

their coral and coconuts. Still others look to that alleged panacea for all economic ills, tourism, heedless of both the social and economic costs in volved. The rapid conversion to tourism, with its attendant rituals and millenarian beliefs, may come to rival Christianity as a potent belief system on tomorrow’s Pacific Islands.

Still another feature closely related to modern develop ment plans is the frequent contrast between expatriate riches and local poverty. Only sections of Pacific populations are reaping the benefits, if benefits they be, of modern resource and tourist develop ment. The effect of this upon non-wage-earning rural folk is to create a poor class where only affluent subsistence ex isted before.

The list of paradoxes and complaints could go on and on, using the documented, specific examples from the ar ticles in this book. For the most part, these essays are de scriptive accounts and the authors suggest only the most obvious of solutions to the problems they analyse.

Richard Herr, for example, writes that the Unites States has not been sufficiently in volved in the South Pacific Commission and should become more concerned in future; McTaggert tells us that New Caledonians are unhappy with exploitative French rule and suggests that they may do something about it in the future; and so on.

Oceania and Beyond is not a compendium of answers, but it is a collection of questions and information. It is largely historical in orientation. The book’s dedication to C.

Hartley Grattan, as well as that scholar’s own long arti cle, remind us that most of the authors, whatever their own

discipline, display the

historian’s penchant for excit ing generalisation, often with out visible means of support.

In addition to the usual analysis of French atomic tests, American neglect, and the increasingly hasty British attenuation of effort in the Pacific, a third of the articles deal with Australian and Nfew Zealand involvement in Pacific affairs. The critical tone applied to the Great Powers is directed equally to the little ones, though the costs and benefits here are not

nearly so clear. Felise Va’a, familiar to regular readers of PIM, ends his article on the New Zealand experiment in Western Samoa with the pessimistic, “Who has really gained?”

Perhaps the most interest ing pieces are those that relate events in the colonial ex perience to wider trends, in metropolitan countries, and in the world at large. They help us to comprehend the Pacific in its world context.

The final paradox brought out by Thomson is that the newly independent nations fanned out to the north of Australia can only hope to survive if they dissolve their

recently-acquired separate

ness and co-operate on a regional basis. His suggestions for small-scale industry are particularly worthy of wider attention and consideration.

All the authors are sym pathetic to the predicament of the indigenous Pacific popula tions, though only a few are Pacific Islanders themselves.

A book with essays by Islan ders probably would have dif ferent emphases and per spectives. It seems to me that if there is a fault in this volume it is that its feeling and flavour are more redolent of the fluorescent-lit govern ment archives that produced its data than the sunlight and salt air the authors seek to de scribe and explain.

Duane Stormont’s nine carefully drawn maps are useful to those still lacking a copy of the Pacific Islands Year Book, but none of the authors seems to be aware of their inclusion in the volume, for none refers to them.

Grant McColl

(Oceania And Beyond: Essays On

THE PACIFIC SINCE 1945. Edited by F. P. King. Published by Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1977. 5U522.50.)