Writing Pacific history:

The state of the art

Four years after publication, Pe ter Bellwood’s Man s Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania has become a much used classic text among Pacific scholars from sev eral disciplines. Published in 1978 it was, and remains, the first and only substantial general account of the prehistory of the region. The author’s bold de fence of this work has been fully vindicated. In the introduction Bellwood wrote: “To those who would see this book as prema ture, I would only say that I am certainly not going to wait another 20 years in the hope that all will suddenly be made clear.

This is defeatism. Furthermore, my experience in teaching under graduate courses . . . indicates to me the need for this book, which has no comparable prede cessor.” (p 23). None of the re views I have read of Man’s Con quest has accused Bellwood of prematurity, while several have welcomed its appearance as a long-awaited teaching tool. Con-

Dr Caroline Ral

STON, lecturer in Pacific history at Macquarie Universi ty, Sydney, Australia, deals here not only with one work on Pacific history but with several, and in the process presents a picture of the present state of Pacific his toriography, and of directions in which it might develop in future.

versations with Pacific prehisto rians and historians have made it even clearer to me how widely appreciated and used Mans Con quest has become.

Inevitably it is already out of date. Seven years have elapsed since the manuscript was finish ed in 1975, and new findings have been frequently reported since then. But this does not

detract from the excellence and continuing usefulness of the book. In his final chapter, “Some Problems for the Fu ture”, Bellwood himself outlines a number of major areas still requiring extensive research ef fort, and throughout the book he makes it clear that his hypotheses are open to other interpretations, and that some may be totally reversed by future research.

Man’s Conquest is not in this sense a definitive text it was never intended to be but it is an outstanding work of scholar ship that no specialist interested in Pacific origins, movements and cultures can afford to ignore.

A brief description and outline of the contents of the book will reveal its encyclopaedic nature.

With 462 pages and 277 illustra tions (including maps, diagrams, line drawings and plates in black and white, and some repeated in color), it is a lavishly and magni ficently produced book, which is a pleasure to handle. The 14 chapters include human popula-

tions (past and present), cultural foundations, linguistic history, subsistence patterns, the neolith ic and early metal age cultures of mainland and island Southeast Asia, which are then followed by the prehistories of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, with a particular emphasis on New Zea land. Despite the time depth and geographical spread, Man’s Con quest is not intimidating. It is lucidly written and each chapter is clearly developed.

Within the enormous compass of this work, Bellwood’s greatest achievement is tracing the move ment of humanity to the birth place of Polynesia (Tonga and Samoa), through Southeast Asia and Melanesia, where ar chaeological sites are few and scattered, and knowledge is very preliminary. The makers and bearers of Lapita pottery are held responsible for the initial settle ments in Samoa and Tonga, where Polynesian culture evolv ed. This hypothesis poses few problems for prehistorians and archaeologists but the origins and

movement of Lapita potters from Southeast Asia through Melanesia is more problematic, and Bellwood’s solution of dis crete rapid migrations of Mon goloid groups has been challeng ed by some experts. In several places throughout Man’s Con quest Bellwood has put to rest misinterpretations that have be devilled Pacific prehistory, but over the Lapita potters perhaps he is perpetrating another “Vik ings-of-the-Sunrise’’-type mythology? Fiji, where exten sive archaeological fieldwork still needs to be done, may pro vide the key to this problem. In the meantime specialists wishing to challenge Bellwood have as little “hard” evidence to build on as he had.

Pacific archaeology has been accused of being still very much in the realm of migrations, influ ences and scenarios rather than explicit models, but the latter do not attract a general audience nor can they be used to introduce students of the Pacific to the area. Man s Conquest does both

these things admirably and will continue to do so probably for several decades to come. It will be an adventurous and dedicated scholar who decides that Bell wood’s work must be supplanted.

The publication of Man's Con quest highlights the anomalous position of Pacific history in the 1980 s. Several general histories of the Pacific have been written since Europeans first entered the ocean, but the one currently most used, Douglas Oliver, The Pacif ic Islands, is a single-volume text which was first published in 1951, revised in 1961, and which predates a large proportion of the “new” Pacific history, much of which has emanated from the Department of Pacific History established at the Australian Na tional University. The repeated republishing of The Pacific Is lands since 1961, most recently in 1975, is evidence of this major gap in Pacific historiography that publishers have opportunistically filled with an increasingly out dated and inadequate text. One

single-volume history has recent ly been written by Glen Barclay, A History of the Pacific from the Stone Age to the Present Day (London, 1978). But in the 231 pages of text, history before European contact is covered in 22 pages, and while Polynesia receives sufficient attention, Melanesia and Micronesia are not adequately covered at all.

Despite the current concern for Islands-oriented history, Barclay concentrates on foreign ac tivities: imperial, economic and military. Unfortunately his book is too brief and his focus too one sided to stand as a companion to Bellwood’s prehistory.

Portents of a multi-volume history of the Pacific appeared with volume one, The Spanish Lake, of Oskar Spate’s planned history of the Pacific. The Span ish Lake, which is ocean rather than Islands-oriented, ends in 1600; the rest is still to come.

Rumour has it that not one but two new general histories are being planned and/or written at this very moment in Canberra

and Palmerston North, New Zea land.

Clearly recent Pacific histo rians have show a certain reluct ance to synthesise and general ise. Archaeologists might accuse them of shirking a significantly easier task than that of writing the prehistory of the region. But in terms of published research monographs and articles, more historical than archaeological material has appeared, so there would be more to encompass in a general history than a general prehistory. But to balance that there would probably be less need to hypothesize. In terms of the amount of information avail able for Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, Pacific history is in a similar position to that of archaeology. In both disciplines Polynesia is best served, presum ably because it has always at tracted European interest, and because its past is less complex than that of Melanesia or Mic ronesia. But it fits the pattern of my present argument that two prehistories of Polynesia have been published recently while there is no historical counterpart.

Peter Bellwood, The Polyne sians: Prehistory of an Island People, and Jesse Jennings, editor, The Prehistory of Poly nesia, appeared in 1978 and 1979 respectively. The Jennings compilation of essays, although uneven in interest and style, is more substantial than Bellwood’s account which is number 92 in the Thames and Hudson series, Ancient Peoples and Places.

Concise as it is (164 pp), The Polynesians is an attractive and adequate introduction to Polyne sian prehistory, amply illustrated with black and white plates, maps and line drawings, and written in Bellwood’s lucid prose.

For the rest of the Pacific, knowledge of the past is less systematic. There is now great interest being shown in Melanesia’s past by historians, archaeologists and prehistorians, but there are still very few gener al histories for particular island groups and no general historical or archaeological texts for the area as a whole. For Micronesia the record is even briefer.

Here the similarity in the state

of historical and archaeological research and publication ends.

Despite the gaps in knowledge and the problem areas, where little bits of knowledge have gi ven rise to conflicting theories, Bellwood took the plunge, wrote a general prehistory for the reg ion, and in the process set an example and standard that histo rians will do well to emulate.

Further, Bellwood has provided teachers of Pacific history with an invaluable aid. No history of the Islands can legitimately start with the first European “dis coverers’’ to go ashore. If a student wishes to study continui

ty and change in the Island world, the precontact era of that world must be clearly delineated.

Before Bellwood the historian had to wade through a vast range of assorted books and articles.

Now, with Man’s Conquest, there is a firm foundation from which to work, and with the wealth of historical knowledge generated since 1949 it is hoped that a new general history of the Pacific (single or multi-volume) will soon appear that will do justice to the work that precedes it, and compare favorably with Bellwood’s achievement in

prehistory.