Scholarly history

of Cl at last

The Cook Islands 1820-1950.

By Richard Gilson. Edited by Ron Crocombe. Published by the Victoria University Press, Wellington, in association with the Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific. SNZ6.SO. No ISBN provided.

The publisher and editor of this book are to be congratulated, for here at last we have access to a history of the Cook Islands that is the work of a scholar.

Back in 1947 1 helped put together a piece, not on the history but on the historical traditions of the Cook Islands, to be read at a conference of the Polynesian Society. I well re member the nightmare of sift ing and sorting the conflicting information which was to be the basis of the article. Dr Tom Davis, the author, chose, and correctly I think, to ignore the accounts of thef early missionaries and passers-by in the group, and rely instead on the spoken accounts of the various tumukorero who were available. Some of the infor mation was authentic, some, I regret to say, inventions made to please us. We longed for a decent factual account and a bibliography to go with it.

Now we have it. Richard Gilson has tempered the infor mation he has retrieved through careful research with the spoken information he has re ceived from on-the-spot inter

views. After three years’ work on the manuscript, Gilson turned to writing a history of Samoa, intending to continue the Cook Islands work by in cluding more personal research

and information on the islands of the outer groups.

Unfortunately he died before this could be done, and it fell to Ron Crocombe to sift through the manuscript and reduce it to manageable size. Of course, events in the Cook Islands moved very fast after 1950, which is as far as the book goes.

But those events are now well recorded by government agencies and journalists so that the future student of the history of the Cook Group will find his studies greatly simplified.

The early missionaries to the Pacific Islands gave more thought to the spreading of Christianity than to the written word. They were, for the most part, ill-educated, and did con tinuing harm by their rather juvenile misinterpretation of what they saw about them. The ariki system, particularly as it concerned tenure of land, was not a feudal system with rights of primogeniture, but that is how they saw it. Early agents and other white leaders seem to have left very little in writing.

Judge Ayson, William Tailby and the more recent resident commissioners wrote only brief and irrelevant official reports.

Much was said of afternoon tea parties, but little of the appli cation of traditional customs and thinking to the 20th cen tury. Captain Cook and his assistants seem to have been the only reliable source of careful observation without impulsive conclusions. But that was too long ago to be applicable today.

One omission in the book that puzzles me is that of the contribution of Sir George Grey, who published a fine work on the history of the Pacific Islands.

In editing the book, Ron Crocombe was obliged to re duce the original manuscript by a third and has added ad ditional material regarding the outer islands. To the commonly used sources of Gill, Buzacott, Williams and others of dubious authenticity, we now have a quid* reference to the more contemporary and more careful scholars such as Buck, Beaglehole and the present premier, Tom Davis. Rather than having to pore over the welter of information that comes out of the reports of the

South Pacific Commission, again, quick reference is avail able.

However, the scholar who believes that he can obtain useful information, particularly on statistical matters from the government departments con cerned with Pacific affairs and located in New Zealand, had best put on his jogging shoes. I tried this system myself re cently. Foreign Affairs thought I should try General Assembly library at one end of Wellington, General Assembly thought I should try National Archives at the other end.

Archives, having only one re port that they could dig out, thought I should try Turnbull Library somewhere in the

middle of Wellington. Back to Foreign Affairs, who thought 1 should try Rarotonga.

The Cook Islands has in cluded in it, whether by Ron Crocombe or by the author, appendices concerning exports, imports, and public accounts, although the information is admittedly not recent. I ap preciate the skill required to find them to include at all.

Public accounts of the Cook Islands do seem to become increasingly elusive. Perhaps that would be a good project for a researcher who would like to extend the date of 1950 to 1980 in recording the chequered his tory of this fascinating little

group of islands.

Lydia

Davis.