Through
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Books
Through the ages
Pacific Islands Yearbook, in its 62 years, has brought together facts and details on the region into a single work of reference.
By Norman Douglas
In the 62 years since its first appear ance in 1932, the Pacific Islands Yearbook has undergone a number of modifications in geographical scope. In the beginning the word was with R. W.
Robson, founder and editor of PIM , who decided the region needed a regularly published reference work that brought together the facts and details of politics,
geography, economics and history.
The first few editions of the Pacific Islands Yearbook consisted almost entirely of the Pacific islands and omit ted the islands of the ocean’s periphery, most of which had more in common with their continental neighbours than they did with the islands of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.
Robson’s motivation for including Fiji under the general heading “Micronesia”, a category which also included the
undeniably Polynesian Ellice Islands
(Tuvalu) and Wallis and Futuna, is vague.
It may be that Robson, who had some interesting ideas on ethnicity and its association with intelligence and ability, was anxious to dissociate the Fijians, a people he evidently admired greatly, from the rest of Melanesia, since he wrote in an introduction to the sixth edition (1950): “Polynesians, Micronesians and Indonesians are peo ple of a good type, who quickly become accustomed to and accept European
standards of life ... Melanesians are more primitive folk”. The observation remained for the next two editions.
Robson, was very much a man of his time, and given to making pronounce ments that these days would be consid ered at best paternalistic and at worst grossly offensive. “The Polynesians”, he declared, as late as 1959, (are) usually happy-natured, attractive and intelligent ...”, even if they were tending “towards aggressive nationalism”.
When it came to the Islanders of the Western Pacific, however, Robson was far less impressed. “One of the Administration’s main concern”, he wrote in the entry on Papua in the 1956 edition, “is to inculcate among the natives a proper respect for Europeans.
Some of the natives, as they become partly educated and granted privileges, are inclined to be insolent - a condition for which a certain class of Europeans, who do not know how to handle these primitive people, are largely responsi ble.”
In the next edition this paragraph was toned down but the matters of “control and respect” remained. As for the ni- Vanuatu (New Hebrideans in Robson’s time), “Even now (1959) they are per haps not the most loveable natives in the South Seas; but at least they are tractable, and their practices are not an offence to European ideas”.
By the ninth (1963) edition, Robson’s
long-time companion, Judy Tudor, had become the editor - though Robson’s name was still associated with the Yearbook - and many of the quaint statements were removed.
Fiji, however, remained listed tem
porarily under the heading
“Micronesia”.
With the appearance of a new edition in 1977 (the 12th), under a new editor, Stuart Inder, the format and the geo graphical scope of the Yearbook changed abruptly. The East Asian com ponent was discarded. The island groups were now listed alphabetically and for the first time an attempt was made to provide the information in the same sequence for each group. It was also, the preface announced, the first of the Yearbook’s annual editions. It was almost certainly not the fault of the energetic and Pacific-wise Inder, who was also the publisher of PIM, that this claims could be maintained. Although he succeeded in producing another edition the following year, the prospect of annu al editions quickly became as difficult as it had ever been.
For the new edition - the 17th - the editors have thought it appropriate to make other changes which better illus trate the Yearbook’s relevance and use fulness in the 19905.
On the other hand, the omission, since the first edition, of one of the most important of all Pacific island countries - New Zealand - seemed inexcusable.
The new edition contains an entry on New Zealand and the book is now devoted entirely to the islands of the Pacific’s three cultural regions - Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.
The entry devoted to the Pacific War has finally gone, 53 years after the begin ning of the conflict which inspired it.
The separate entries on regional organisations - now proliferating more rapidly than ever - have been replaced by a recent appraisal of inter-govern mental organisations. And in this edi tion, for the first time, the information for all the major alphabetical entries is organised in the same sequence, fulfill ing a promise which Inder made in 1977, but which, for a variety of reasons, could not be kept until now All this, while making the 17th edition of the region’s leading reference work
perhaps less charmingly idiosyncratic
than previous editions, has resulted in a tighter, neater, more consistent and more useful Pacific Islands Yearbook , one that will grow in value as the 21st century, the so-called “Century of the Pacific”, comes nearer.