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THE EARLY YEARS OF PACIFIC HISTORY
Dorothy Shineberg
Australian National University
He asked me what I knew about Pacific history.
I said : ‘what’s Pacific history?’(1974)
PREAMBLE: I have been told that I am allowed to reminisce about my rambling career as a Pacific history teacher and researcher. Hopefully something on the evolution of thinking about
Pacific history will emerge.This paper reflects its origins.An earlier version was presented in December 1991 at the Pacific Islands History Workshop 2, held at the Australian National University. The conversational
style of the original has been retained.
A NOTE ON PACIFIC HISTORY IN NEW ZEALAND
Mary Boyd
Your enquiry about the beginnings of the teaching of Pacific history in New Zealand takes me back to 1949 when a new prescription for an MA degree in History was
adopted by the four constituent colleges of the University of New Zealand.This included an optional paper on Australia or Pacific history was then being taught; only
colonial history,which was mainly the evolution of responsible goverment in Canada and the evolution of the British Commonwealth, and colonial America. The lectures
we had on colonial history when I was a student included one on the history of New Zealand by J.C. Beaglehole and another on imperial rivalry by Sylvia Smith (nee
Masterman, and author of the Origins of International Rivalry in Samoa), yet most students wrote thesies on New Zealand topics.
AND NOW THERE WILL BE A VOID
a tribute to J.W. Davidson O.H.K. Spate
Australian National University
Jim Davidson had one of the liveliest minds and most distinctive personalities in the University which he served from its Canberra beginnigs in 1951. Throughout the
suceeding twenty-two years he was one of my closet friends, a good comrade in many struggle, a man who, while taking things seriosly, refused to be solemn about it.
‘ NOW AN ISLAND IS TOO BIG’
limits and limitations of Pacific Islands history
Barrie Macdonald
Massey University
When Doug Munro asked for this paper, he invited me to resurrect and reflect upon some comments I had made at the Australian National University in 1991 at a
workshop on the limits and limitations of Pacific Islands history * In response, intend to use some of the issues raised at that workshops as the basis for some reflections on
transitions over time in what we now call Pacific Islands histories. In particular, I will be concerned with the nature and fate of colonial histories, island histories, and
postcolonial histories-taking the last of these to mean histories of the postcolonial period, rather than postcolonial views of some earlier time. All three of these themes
raise the questions of limits and limitations on Pacific Island histories, and the borders and boundaries-geographic and displinary-within which we operate. To some extent,
too, these perspective have been shaped by the most recent Pacific History Association conference, which was held at Hilo, Hawai’i in August 1996.
THE ISOLATION OF PACIFIC HISTORY
Doug Munro
University of the South Pacific
Pacific Islands and Australian historiography share certain features.In an article ‘The Isolation of Australian History’, Donald Denoon opnce noted that the subject was in
the process of becoming detached from broader contexts of inquiry and caught, ‘like shags on a rock’, in the middle of nowhere (Denoon 1985). This was not simply a
function of Australia’s physical isolation and lack of contiguous neighbours. A good part of the problem lay elsewhere, notably in the decline of British
Empire/Commonwealth history, which had been ‘an obvious niche for Australian history ceasd to connect with wider publishings networks, largely London-based, and
then had nowhere to go except to stay at home; or else the Australian history courses (at Harvard, London and Dublin).
PACIFIC HISTORY ON THE RIM
What should students learn?
Max Quanchi
Queensland University of Technology
The present status of Pacific History in Australin schools is analysed and compared against earlier decades and against developments in the History curriculim of the
Pacific Island schools. After outlining obstacle facing teachers keen to introduce studies of the Pacific in their History classroom, it is suggested that the commitment
and professionalism of teachers will bring greater penetration. Discussion on variation in course design, appropiate content and awareness among teachers of recent
historiography debates, leads to reference to the many attempts made to promote, with limited success, Pacific-related content in History curricula.
HISTORIOGRAPHY
THE HISTORIAN AS POLITICAL ACTOR
in Polity, society and academy
Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins University/Tulane University
It seems a proper enquiry for the Conference for the study of Political Thought to investigate the character of history, as both a subject and a form of political thought,
literature, discourse, or whatever term you may prefer.History-or, more interestingly, histories-are invented (meaning both discovered and constructed) in political societies
,as a characteristics and perhaps necessary activity, and are then discussed, and disputed, by participants in those societies, including those specialities in the activity
known as being historians. What manner of political action , or reflection, does all this entail? what kind of political institution, or phenomenon, is ahistory? what is done, to
whom, by whomand by what means, when a history is constructed, communicated, debated, criticised, subverted, and subject to all those, written? what kinds of political
practises go on and may be the subject matter of theory; what kinds of political reflection, or theory,may the various forms of his historiography constitute?
THE MAKING OF A BIOGRAPHY OF THE KOOTI ARIKIRANGI TE TURUKI
Judith Binney
University of Auckland
It is often only at the end of a project that it becomes possible conceptually as well as emotionally to articulate how it begin. This is certainly true of the biography of Te
Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Redemption Songs, published in 1995 (Binney 1995). The book was launched in a whakamanawa ceremony at Te Wainui, in the eastern
Bay of Plenty, on 28 October of that year, and was 12 years in the making. Yet even recently as five years ago I did not know wether it would, or could, or should be
written. Now that it has been completed, its readers will have to answer the third of these questions. This short essay is an act of reflection. It is prepared for publication
at the request of the editor of this journal and is offerd at the end of a commitment, which was fulfilled on the day the book was taken home.
WHO OWNS MĀORI TRIBAL TRADITION?
Angela Ballara
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
At a history conference in the late 1980s at Victoria University of Wellington, Michael King asked the question: ‘Should Pākehā academics write about Māori topics?’ He
answered himself in the negative, saying that Pākehā historians should stand back from ‘Māori history’, and wait for Māori historians to come forward to write their
own. While King’s concern was with the times European academics, often ill-informed, imposed their views of Māori events on the rteading public, in fact Māori
academics have been coming foorward, writing their own, since the nnineteenth century. In that century there were Mōhi Te Ātahīkoia, Mohi Tūrei, Takaanui
Tarakawa, Hoani Nahe, Hoani Parāone Tū-Nui-ā-Rangi,Te Kāhui Kararehe, and many others. In the twentieth century the works of Āpirana Ngata, Te Rangi Hīroa
[Peter Buck ], Māui Pōmare, Pei Te Hurinui Jones, and others were allowed in recent times by the published writings of Ruka Broughton, Hirini Mead, Joe Pere, Pou
Tēmara, Ranginui Walker and many others, and countless younger, recently qualified people.
JUST MARGINALLY POSSIBLE
Judith Huntsman
University of Auckland
The innovative enterprise- initiated and supported by the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific-which called for Pacific Islanders to write their own
histories, has been a laudable but not simple or unproblematic one, as anyone familiar with the nature and practice of history in the societies concerned must realise.
Together with Antony Hooper, I was involved for 10 years as an advisor/editor/transalator/faciliator in the production of the Tokelau-aurthored book
Matagi Tokelau (1990, 1991).
Association Conference in Suva. Our narrative ended with our dilemma of having been instructed to put together an uncontroversial Tokelau national saga from diverse
and differing contributed tala anamua ‘accounts of ancient times’. This essay tells the whole story, summarising the earlier narrative and completing it. How the Book was
written and produced is related and explained, and Tokelau reactions to it are discussed. The very political nature of the whole enterprise is highlighted in narrating
the events connected with its production and its reception.
THE NATURE OF PACIFIC HISTORY
a bibliography of critical and reflective writings
Clive Moore
University of the south Pacific
This listings includes essays on the nature and development of Pacific History as a speciallisation. The three broad criteria for inclusion are: what is Pacific History; how
it is practised, or should it be practised?; and how it is produced, or ‘made’? Works dealing with a restricted geographic area that make wider statements are also included
, but not autobiographical accounts. Also excluded are essays that deal with a single aspect of Pacific history (e.g. missionaries, the labour trade, gender, film) unless the author addresses wider issues.
A decision was also made to include earlier pieces on the use of ethnography and oral evidence. partly because the papers were (usually) seminal. Considerations of space
have also led us to exclude anything on the New Zealand Maori, an omission that is offset to a degree by the refences in Angela Ballara’s paper in this issue.
Overall, the criteria for inclusion are fairly generous. We apologise in advance to those who feel that their work falls within the stated ambit yet was somehow omitted.
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