Fascinating

island portraits

More Pacific Islands Portraits.

Edited by Deryck Scan - . Published by the Australian National University Press, Canberra. $A 18.50 cloth; $A9.95 paper.

More Pacific Islands Portraits is the second book of short

biographies of personalities

who were influenced by, and influenced the development of the Pacific area in the century

preceding the last war.

The 13 portraits are divided almost equally between local worthies and expatriate or col onial characters of European origin. Of the former, many may not have been very well known outside their own areas, and these essays will bring them before a wider public, and give a surer understanding of the historical background to

day’s territories.

All the biographies illustrate s reaction of individuals to

2 dynamic situations which

Dse in the interplay of newly troduced factors, colonial, re ;ious, political and commer il. Some resisted, passively or lively, some played off one wer or religious sect against other, and some soon iployed the new ideas of mmerce to their personal vantage.

In all the varying geographi l areas certain local lividuals reached promi nce or notoriety, such as the

lisilines in the Loyalty

ands, the Nanpei family in •nape, Apolosi in Fiji. The tivities of these and many

iers changed the history of

2se areas and so also the

entual route to indepen

nce.

Most of the personalities of iropean origin represented in is book are well known and jendary names, but these Jays add flesh to the bones, d the figures which emerge i not always recognisable as

the persons we had thought them to be. Arthur Grimble now appears as a frustrated academic, a difficult man both to his superiors and his inferiors, and although we had become to suspect as much from the recent disclosures at the Banaban trial in London, he certainly was not the urbane figure we mentally built up whilst listening to him reading his stories on the BBC 25 years ago. Possibly by then he had been mellowed by a transfer to the Caribbean and a knight hood.

Being the man on the spot changed the lives of many of these expatriates. Stevenson, seeking health, became in volved in Samoan politics, both local and international; Wood ford, chasing butterflies, emerged as a reluctant admin istrator in the Solomons, and Thurston, a bare-footed cast away on Rotuma, the defender of Fijians, became High Com missioner of the Western Pa cific, Governor of Fiji and grand panjandrum of the South Seas.’

But perhaps the most enig matic of this collection of

exceptionally individualistic

personalities is St. Julian. A man of confusingly obscure origins who became a success ful journalist in Australia with a long-standing interest in Pa cific territories, he left a secure job in Australia, relatively late in life, to accept the offer of Chief Justice and Chancellor of Fiji, notwithstanding that he was completely bereft of any

formal legal training. His

appointment ended with Ces sion, and on his final exit from the scene he had only his Hawaiian knighthood and a

compassionate pension

which he did not live to draw to show for his work.

These monographs by vari

ous authors are a fascinating addition to our knowledge of the men who influenced the Pacific at a time when it was

evolving rapidly under the

impact of the Eurcpean, and this slim volume is worthy of its dedication to the late Pro fessor Jim Davidson, of the ANU. Well printed, and with

extensive bibliographies, it is of that high standard of scholar ship that we have learned to expect from the ANU’s

Department of Pacific History.

It would have been nice to have

had the lily gilded with photo

graphs or drawings of these influential and colourful per

sonalities.

Leonard Good -

man.

The late Professor Jim David son, first Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University, to whom ‘More Pacific Island Portraits’ is dedicated.