the experience

tropicalities

Offshore historians enjoy the experience

I feel like a fraud,” announced Convenor David Routledge, in his opening remarks. “There should be a Pacific Islander in my place.” His viewpoint had more than a few supporters at the mid-year fifth conference of the Pacific History Association which was held at the Univer sity of the South Pacific, Suva.

In quick time, however, there were two Pacific Islanders, and outstanding ones at that, in Dr Routledge’s place on the ros trum of the USP’s main lecture theatre.

In order of appearance they were the Honorable Ratu David Toganivalu, Fiji’s Deputy PM, who delivered the opening address, and Professor Albert Wendt, USP’s Professor of Pacific Literature, who pre sented the keynote lecture.

These details alone were suffi cient to distinguish PHA 1985 from its four predecessors, but there were others and not the least of them was the venue itself it was the first such conference held outside Aus tralia.

It was probably appropriate then that the organisation of the Suva conference, for which Professor Ron Crocombe, in cumbent president of the association and Professor of Pacific Studies at the USP, was largely responsible, should have attempted to shift the bias in favor of Islander concerns.

And although the opening night presence of Ratu David Togani valu and Professor Wendt had less to do with Pacific history than with good entrepreneur ship on Crocombe’s part, what they had to say reinforced the strong sub-text of the confer-

ence that Pacific Islanders should be the ultimate intellec tual arbiters of Pacific History.

The rod to lay upon colonial history’s backside was taken up with particular vigor by Profes sor Wendt, who charged papa lagi (European) historians with erasing the historical memory of Islanders in order to replace it with their own. “We are what we remember,” declared Pro fessor Wendt, but an alien memory had for too long been substituted for an indigenous one. This experience, of course, is not peculiar to Pacific Islan ders Africans and Indians (American and Asian) were vic tims of it also. But neither is intellectual colonialism peculiar to Europeans consider those cultures overcome by Islam.

Never mind, Professor Wendt was in splendid rhetorical form and those whom he didn’t fully

Above: Historians afloat ... John Garrett (standing, left) and David Routledge (right) convene a seminar on the Rewa River delta. Top: Convenor David Routledge... “I feel like a fraud ...” - Norman Douglas Pacific Profiles photos.

convince, he at least managed to confuse. “What on earth was all that about?” asked one bewildered delegate afterwards.

The conference was sho wered with a plethora of papers fitted, not always comfortably, into nine separate categories and covering almost every his torical concern from the influ ence of climatic change to labor relations and trade unionism.

This abundance meant that as many as four sesssions were being conducted simul taneously and made it impossi ble for even the most agile delegate to get the benefit of more than a fraction of the proceedings. This was typical academic super-marketing, some distance away from the association’s original more re laxed purpose. Any estimate of the conference’s quality, there fore, has to be based partly on a restricted sample and partly on hearsay.

Gender Relations, among the best attended series of papers, turned out for the most part to be not about relations at all but almost exclusively about the position of women. This is certainly a valid re-discovery of the past, since Pacific history, or most other history for that mat ter, has to date been almost exclusively about men. Re visionist interpretation not conspicuously underpinned by feminist theory on the part of Penelope Schoeffel, Caroline Ralston, Margaret Jolly, Patricia Grimshaw and Judith Binney effectively enhanced the status

and significance of islands women, both the high born and the commoners, in some cases blaming the suppression of women’s role on the “colonial memory”.

But the most impressive con tribution to the gender cause came from Niel Gunson of the Australian National University, one of Pacific history’s most erudite scholars, who tempor arily vacated missionary history, the field for which he is best known, to deliver a splendid paper on “Sacred Women and Female Headmen (!) in Polyne sian History”.

Not far from the Gender room with its mostly female scholars, was the Penetration room, where a number of most ly male academics examined early alien contacts with the Pacific Islands, ranging from David Hanlon’s treatment of first encounters on Pohnpei (Ponape) to Robert Langdon’s accounts of historical associa tions between Peru and Easter Island. Langdon had recently been in both places and brought even more than usual of his customary enthusiasm to his expositions. The Penetrationists, however, had the misfortune to be on the same bill as Professor Oskar Spate, a hard enough act to precede but an even harder one to follow. (It says some thing for the significance of the Suva gathering that both Pro fessor Spate and Professor H.

E. Maude were present. These two masters of their craft and godfathers of the association had been present at the first conference in 1980, but had

missed the intervening three conferences.) Elsewhere, the past was being re-discovered in a num ber of ways. The rather bland sounding category “Social and Political History” was used to embrace a variety of inputs, from Japanese policy in Palau during the Mandate to an appraisal of Solomon Islands first colonial capital, Tulagi.

In these sessions of very variable quality, however, there were papers by Malama Meleisea and Simione Durutalo which successfully undermined the received wisdom about Dr Wilhelm Solf of Samoa and Sir Arthur Gordon of Fiji respec tively, showing them to be something less than the benefi cent enlightened administrators that standard works of Pacific history have claimed. This was revisionism at its most effective, the re-discovery of the Pacific’s colonial past by indigenous scholars.

I was unable to attend any of the several papers on religious history (in addition to the Gen der and Penetration rooms there was also a Lotu room), and didn’t speak to anyone who had done so; and, because of the somewhat confused programming and frequent changes of schedule, heard only fragments of the presenta tions on Historiography. Other sessions which looked promis ing, at least on paper, fizzled out when scheduled participants either changed their topics or failed to appear at all, a prob lem not encountered in pre vious conferences of the association.

By the time of the associa tion’s general meeting on the fifth day of the conference, several delegates were begin ning to show signs of mental and physical weariness the latter contributed to by two rewarding but exhausting “his torical” tours on the weekend; one to Naililili Mission and the Rewa Delta, the other to Fiji’s fascinating old capital, Levuka.

Some delegates, victims of quir ky international flight connec tions, had already departed.

The meeting produced no surprises, except perhaps for the large numbers of Pacific Islands students who had been generally absent from most of the other proceedings, and a particularly tactless criticism of the “Canberra School” of Paci fic history at the AND from an Australian historian whose en thusiasm for what seemed like her first trip to the islands was allowed to temporarily obscure her judgment.

There was general agree ment that the first islands-based PHA conference had been a success thanks largely to Pro fessor Crocombe, who knew all along that it would be. ANU doctoral graduate Crocombe, the association’s retiring presi dent, handed the presidency over to ANU doctoral graduate Professor Sionc Latukefu who, with characteristic sincerity, de scribed the five day affair as a “beautiful conference”, a view which most of the 150 or so historians, anthropologists, political scientists, linguists and geographers who had been present appeared to share.

Norman Douglas.

Professor Oskar Spate addres ses the Pacific History Associa tion’s fifth conference in Suva ... a hard act to precede, an even harder one to follow.

Incoming Pacific History Association president Sione Latukefu (left) assumes the mantle from outgoing president Ron Crocombe.