Aims and achievements of
pp. 58-59 · Read in the full issue
Books
Aims and achievements of the Germans in New Guinea
New Guinea under the Ger mans. By Stewart Firth. Pub lished by Melbourne University Press, 1983. ISBN 0 522 84220
8. Sa2S.
Dr Stewart Firth, now teaching at the University of Hawaii but due to return to Australia at the end of the current academic term, has written a book likely to be ack nowledged as the best one volume introduction to German rule in Melanesia from 1885 to 1914.
He has gained a comprehen sive perspective on the activities there and on the written records that induces us to see how far below par German colonisers were, taken all together, as moral agents (both in their treatment of Melanesians and in their treat ment of Melanesians and in their motives for acting). Dr Firth’s thorough-going characterisation and sound judgements are basic contributions to this part of Pacific history, characterisations and judgments on which serious researchers can be expected in creasingly to rely.
Dr Firth first entered this field of history by studying land and labor matters. It is not surprising, therefore, that the deepest in sights he offers in this book lie in these fields. He reveals, and makes us feel the injustice of it all, several astonishing facts: German Melanesia (New Guinea, the Bismark Ar chipelago and some of the north ern Solomons) was initially a labor-providing region for Ger man (Western) Samoa; loss of life on plantations rose to as high as 28 per cent per annum as an average for 1887 to 1903; and Governor Albert Hahl intended New Guinea to become home to thousands of Asian laborers and artisans, who would form an intermediate racial and class level between the dominant Europeans and the displaced
Melanesians. (This did happen on a smaller scale, in Japanese Mircronesia for a decade before World War II with the introduc tion of Japanese settlers and Okinawan workers.) Four of the six appendices (pp 175-80) substantiate this story.
What harsher indictment could there be against the Germans in this respect than the Reichstag debate in which the members were “eager to discuss issues such as the threatened extinction of the bird-of-paradise” but lack ed “understanding of Hahl’s
concern to preserve the New Guinean people” (pi 23)?
The book deals with the reasons behind Germany’s anne xation of Melanesian territory (Ch 1, pp 1-20); German rule through either the New Guinea Company (NGC) or the Reich (Chrs 2-5, pp 21-111), the roles of planters, missionaries, explor ers and scientists in the history of the protectorate (Chs 5-8, pp 112-165); and an assessment of the career of Albert Hahl, who served as governor or acting governor of New Guinea from mid-1901 to April 1914, and of the German impact on the ways of life led in the atomised, scat tered Melanesian communities (Ch. 8, pp. 165-174).
The nine maps are most help
ful in locating the various Melanesian communities, and the 18 photos are seldom reproduced copies of outstanding quality (with two exceptions).
The author also benefited from the separate labors of other scho lars in this field (Drs Hempen stall and Nelson), making this a heartening example of academic co-operation. There are also many passages of fine descrip tive writing, such as “but it was the village men who went on board the DHPG’s schooner the Niuafoou for trans-shipment to Mioko and Samoa rather than piles of coconuts exchanged for sticks of Niggerhead tobacco” (P 19).
Despite its wealth and size, New Guinea was treated shabbily from beginning to end. Adolph von Hansmann, the banker who was most responsible for the German annexation, botched the initial attempts at economic de velopment with unrealistic ends and means, with ineptitude and commercial wrong-headedness.
Even 30 years later, when Gov ernor Hahl finally managed to get an increase in the imperial subsidy out of the stingy Reich stag after years of trying, pre war military expenditures re-
Crumbling reminders of an old regime: The German administ ration, German settlers and German commercial interests were consolidating their pre sence and beginning to build more elaborately when time ran out for them in 1914. The pillar and steps shown here were part of the governor’s residence at Rabaul. Australian adminis trators continued to use the site in the 30s but neglect during World War II began the dissolution.
duced even that modest increase.
In the intervening years, without much success, German colonis ers in the field beat their heads against the walls put up by the local traders and planters, who wanted more say in the labor regulations in return for more taxes, on the one hand and, on the other, those put up by various commercial interests and offi cials in Berlin.
Furthermore, the inevitable gaps between imperial (or NGC) policy and praxis, as well as between the assertions of ad ministrative officers about their achievements and what they real ly did were constantly shown to have been wider than they ought to have been.
Besides the well-documented exposition of administrative and commercial matters, full-bodied cameos of frontier life, recorded episodes that hold the action, abound: the mission work of the steadfast Lutheran Flierl and the
flamboyant Catholic Couppe; the
sexual exploits of Peter Hansen; and the family tragedy of Rudolf
Wolff. Many comparisons bet
ween the British or Australian and the German colonial efforts
are sprinkled throughout the
book (with the former pair com ing off better). Men who had earlier, or who would later, play important roles in German Mic ronesia also appear here; Hans Rodatz, Dr L. Born (pp 123-24, not listed in the index), Johann (Jan) Kubary (pp 25-6, 83), and Dr Augustin Kramer (p 165).
The wealth of detail in the book is pleasing but makes for
some hard reading. Abrupt
changes often have to be made in locale (which is why the maps are useful, as perhaps a large up to-date map of PNG would be as well); the Biblical numbers of tribes that get involved can be bewildering. It would also have been helpful to append a list of officials, especially those in charge at the district offices and stations. And, as with all foot noting based on official German archival sources, abbreviations are a must. The abbreviations are intelligible to those who have worked with the material. But to those who haven’t, they must remain as incomprehensible as the strings of capital letters used
in the notation for formal logic devised by the Polish logician Jan Lukasiewicz.
Dr Firth’s book also points the way to further research. Perhaps a sizeable portion of the bartering done by the Germans was also an ingredient in cementing social relations between Europeans and Melanesians, or even between Melanesian and Melanesian via European. We still don’t know.
Much work also needs to be done in recording the local side of the story. On page 80, Dr Firth writes: “Without New Guinean allies, said Hahl, the Germans would not have been able to assert mastery over the inland peoples. Paparatava (inland peo ple of the Gazelle Peninsula) demonstrated the way in which the Germans were gradually to extend control over the villages of New Guinea, not simply by force of arms but by alliances with New Guineans who joined the punitive expeditions for pur poses of their own. These “pur poses” must now be delved into.
Although the Germans regard ed the New Guinean’s role as one
which each man was “to buy simple manufacturers, toil as an indentured laborer and defray the cost of colonial administration” (p 103), Dr Firth makes clear that they failed in this for the majority of the Melanesian population.
The cover illustration of his book makes a fitting image for this theme. The German eagle has swooped down upon the motionless New Guinean bird of-paradise. But the eagle has missed its mark and goes away
with empty talons, while the red eyed bird-of-paradise looks up defiantly.
New Guinea Under the Ger mans ought to be popular. The many sudden assaults by Melanesians, the German count er-attacks, arduous expeditions into unknown areas, and the broad picture of frontier life all presented here more than satisfy the appetite we all share to hear of strange, yet true, happenings in far-off places in the past.
M. L. Berg.
German influence and society in the South Seas: The picture at right shows a wedding party in 1910. It was photographed at Kieta on Bougainville, not far from where the Bougainville copper mine operates today.
Below right are German and New Guinean crewmen from the steamship Siar which navigated the Sepik River in 1908. Below is the plantation house built nearly 80 years ago at Maron in the Western Islands. It survived until about 10 years ago.