Pacific Islanders Under German Rule

Pacific Islanders Under German Rule PDF

Author: Peter J. Hempenstall

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2016-06-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1921934328

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This is an important book. It is a reprint of the first detailed study of how Pacific Islanders responded politically and economically to their rulers across the German empire of the Pacific. Under one cover, it captures the variety of interactions between the various German colonial administrations, with their separate approaches, and the leaders and people of Samoa in Polynesia, the major island centre of Pohnpei in Micronesia and the indigenes of New Guinea. Drawing on anthropology, new Pacific history insights and a range of theoretical works on African and Asian resistance from the 1960s and 1970s, it reveals the complexities of Islander reactions and the nature of protests against German imperial rule. It casts aside old assumptions that colonised peoples always resisted European colonisers. Instead, this book argues convincingly that Islander responses were often intelligent and subtle manipulations of their rulers’ agendas, their societies dynamic enough to make their own adjustments to the demands of empire. It does not shy away from major blunders by German colonial administrators, nor from the strategic and tactical mistakes of Islander leaders. At the same time, it raises the profile of several large personalities on both sides of the colonial frontier, including Lauaki Namulau’ulu Mamoe and Wilhelm Solf in Samoa; Henry Nanpei, Georg Fritz and Karl Boeder in Pohnpei; or Governor Albert Hahl and Po Minis from Manus Island in New Guinea.

The German Colonial Experience

The German Colonial Experience PDF

Author: Arthur J. Knoll

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2010-03-10

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 0761850961

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The German Colonial Experience provides readers with an understanding of how the Germans gained, explored, pacified, ruled, and exploited their colonies prior to their loss in World War I. Knoll and Hiery show how Africans, Chinese, and Pacific Islanders reacted to German rule, how the Germans ran the daily affairs of government, their vision for the colonized peoples, and how the colonizers and the colonized perceived one another. In other words, how did German colonial rule actually work? This book intensely scrutinizes colonial documents, most of them in German script, from archives not only in Germany, but also from places such as Australia, New Guinea, and Samoa. Many of these documents have never previously been published, even in the original German.

The Neglected War

The Neglected War PDF

Author: Hermann Hiery

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1995-12-01

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0824864891

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In the summer of 1914 Germany’s Pacific colonies were a quiet backwater of its empire. But the shots of Sarajevo shattered the Pacific as well as Europe. Within weeks of the outbreak of World war I Western Samoa - German territory to be taken in the war - New Guinea, and the Micronesian lands, were occupied by Australian, New Zealand, and Japanese forces. Current historiography claims that World War I made little difference to the indigenous populations of the Pacific and that this change in colonial masters had little effect on those they ruled. The Neglected War challenges this interpretation. World War I and its aftermath, Hermann Hiery claims, had a tremendous effect on the Pacific Islands, Hiery details the policies pursued by Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, showing how each viewed and treated the indigenous populations. Administered by military officers with little civil oversight, the new colonial regimes employed the mandates they had received at the Paris Peace Conference with impunity. Hiery’s scrupulous review of the evidence, gathered from largely unknown primary sources, has uncovered a story of masquerades and coverups, negligence and duplicity, leading in some cases to full blown atrocities. Most of all, he tells the story of Pacific Islanders ,how they coped with the dramatic changes brought about by the war, and how they tried to influence its consequences. Many Islanders were fully aware that their political destiny was to be redefined after the war, and a few even saw it as an opportunity to achieve independence. This is also the story of their failure. Behind the evidence gathered here lie fundamental questions. How important are the differences in the nature of particular colonial regimes, and what effect do such differences have on indigenous peoples? How do indigenous peoples interpret disparities in colonial rule? This revisionist work addresses these issues while shedding light on a crucial time in the history of the Pacific.

European Impact and Pacific Influence

European Impact and Pacific Influence PDF

Author: Hermann J. Hiery

Publisher: I.B. Tauris

Published: 1997-12-31

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13:

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British and German ambitions have clashed in the Pacific at many times in the last two centuries. This is a study of those episodes, and their effects on the European powers and the Pacific Islanders involved. It throws light on the activities of missionaries in Micronesia, head-hunters in New Guinea, Law-makers in Tonga and the influence of the British and Germans in the region. The book considers: European perceptions of Pacific islanders and vice versa; the ecological effect of European intervention, both on the environment and its inhabitants; the efforts to impose a European rule of law in the South Pacific; the area of sexuality as a specific form of Pacific-European interaction where cultural differences between European and traditional behaviour was at its most marked.

Strangers in Their Own Land

Strangers in Their Own Land PDF

Author: Francis X. Hezel

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2003-09-30

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0824864492

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"Hezel has written an authoritative and engaging narrative of [a] succession of colonial regimes, drawing upon a broad range of published and archival sources as well as his own considerable knowledge of the region. This is a ‘conventional’ history, and a very good one, focused mostly on political and economic developments. Hezel demonstrates a fine understanding of the complicated relations between administrators, missionaries, traders, chiefs and commoners, in a wide range of social and historical settings." —Pacific Affairs "The tale [of Strangers in Their Own Land] is one of interplay between four sequential colonial regimes (Spain Germany, Japan, and the United States) and the diverse island cultures they governed. It is also a tale of relationships among islands whose inhabitants did not always see eye-to-eye and among individuals who fought private and public battles in those islands. Hezel conveys both the unity of purpose exerted by a colonial government and the subversion of that purpose by administrators, teachers, islands, and visitors.... [The] history is thoroughly supported by archival materials, first-person testimonies, and secondary sources. Hezel acknowledges the power of the visual when he ends his book by describing the distinctive flags that now replace Spanish, German, Japanese, and American symbols of rule. the scene epitomizes a theme of the book: global political and economic forces, whether colonial or post-colonial, cannot erode the distinctiveness each island claims."—American Historical Review

Sailors and Traders

Sailors and Traders PDF

Author: Alastair Couper

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2008-12-09

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0824864239

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Written by a senior scholar and master mariner, Sailors and Traders is the first comprehensive account of the maritime peoples of the Pacific. It focuses on the sailors who led the exploration and settlement of the islands and New Zealand and their seagoing descendants, providing along the way new material and unique observations on traditional and commercial seagoing against the background of major periods in Pacific history. The book begins by detailing the traditions of sailors, a group whose way of life sets them apart. Like all others who live and work at sea, Pacific mariners face the challenges of an often harsh environment, endure separation from their families for months at a time, revere their vessels, and share a singular attitude to risk and death. The period of prehistoric seafaring is discussed using archaeological data, interpretations from interisland exchanges, experimental voyaging, and recent DNA analysis. Sections on the arrival of foreign exploring ships centuries later concentrate on relations between visiting sailors and maritime communities. The more intrusive influx of commercial trading and whaling ships brought new technology, weapons, and differences in the ethics of trade. The successes and failures of Polynesian chiefs who entered trading with European-type ships are recounted as neglected aspects of Pacific history. As foreign-owned commercial ships expanded in the region so did colonialism, which was accompanied by an increase in the number of sailors from metropolitan countries and a decrease in the employment of Pacific islanders on foreign ships. Eventually small-scale island entrepreneurs expanded interisland shipping, and in 1978 the regional Pacific Forum Line was created by newly independent states. This was welcomed as a symbolic return to indigenous Pacific ocean linkages. The book’s final sections detail the life of the modern Pacific seafarer. Most Pacific sailors in the global maritime labor market return home after many months at sea, bringing money, goods, a wider perspective of the world, and sometimes new diseases. Each of these impacts is analyzed, particularly in the case of Kiribati, a major supplier of labor to foreign ships.

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