The south pacific 'experiment': Reflections on the origins of regional identity

Journal of Pacific History

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 180-202

  Fry, Greg ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039802166     PISSN: 00223344     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00223349708572837     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. O. H. K. Spate, 'The Pacific as an Artefact', in Niel Gunson (ed. ), The Changing Pacific: Essays in Honour of H. E. Maude (Melbourne 1978), 32.
2. Not to be confused with 'the South Sea' (singular) which, following Balboa's sighting of what was later called the Pacific Ocean (and he called the Mar del Sur), was used until the beginning of the 19th century to refer to the Pacific Ocean as a whole. From the 19th century when the broader Ocean had begun to be generally referred to as the Pacific, 'the South Seas' (plural) suggested a more restricted geographical area covering the islands in the south and central Pacific and the waters around them. See Spate, The Pacific', 34-5.
3. 'Agreement Establishing the South Pacific Commission, Canberra, 6 February 1947', Australian Treaty Series, 1948, no. 15.
4. The conference, held 25 Apr. - 5 May 1950, was attended by 43 representatives of 14 Pacific Island territories: American Samoa, British Solomon Islands Protectorate, Cook Islands (including Niue), Ellice Islands, Fiji, French Oceania, Gilbert Islands, Nauru, Netherlands New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Papua, New Guinea, Western Samoa. Representatives of the Tongan Government also participated. Tokelau Islands, although entitled to representation, did not have a delegate present.
5. As reported in 'Pacific History Made Today', Fiji Times and Herald (hereinafter FTH), 25 Apr. 1950.
6. 'South Seas Experiment in Co-operation', Sydney Morning Herald (hereinafter SMH), 24 Apr. 1950, p. 2.
7. 'Talks End on S. Pacific: Results Pleasing to Delegates', The Age, 6 May 1950.
8. 'New Era for South Seas: Success at Suva', SMH, 6 May 1950.
9. 'NZ Observer Review Aims and Results of Conference', FTH, 9 May 1950.
10. J. W. Burton, 'The South Pacific Conference, held at Nasinu, Fiji, May 1950: Report by the Australian Observer, Rev. J. W. Burton, (for the Minister of State for External Affairs and External Territories)', Sydney, June 1950.
11. Canberra, Australian Archives, Dept of External Affairs, Ser. A1838/1, file 347/2/6, 1950, folio 79.
12. J. W. Burton had only recently retired as the General Secretary of the Methodist Church of Australasia and had also been General Secretary of the Methodist Overseas Mission for around 20 years. His missionary work had focused on the South Pacific, and he had published extensively on the Pacific Islands (see, e. g. , Brown and White in the South Pacific: A Study in Culture Conflict, Sydney 1944). His son was the head of the Department of External Affairs at the time of the Nasinu Conference.
13. Nancy Robson, 'The Suva Conference of South Pacific Peoples', Australian Outlook, 4:3 (1950), 179.
14. 'South Pacific Peoples' Conference: Successful Experiment', The Times (London), 6 May, 1950.
15. Robson, 'The Suva Conference', 179, 185.
16. See, e. g. , Ratu Mara, 'Twenty Fifth Anniversary Messages', South Pacific Bulletin, 22:2 (1972);
17. S. K. Sikivou, 'Statement to the Twenty-eighth Regular Session of the UN General Assembly-1973', in Ratu Mara, Report on Foreign Affairs for the Period 10th October 1970-31st December 1973, Parliament of Fiji, Parliamentary Paper no. 19 of 1974, Suva;
18. Ratu Mara and Michael Sornare ,Joint Communique, Port Moresby, 27 May 1974;
19. and Epeli Hau'ofa, 'Our Sea of Islands', The Contemporary Pacific, 6:1 (1994).
20. The main scholarly accounts, and accounts by former SPC officials, of the origins and development of the SPC either do not mention, or only mention in passing, this first meeting of Pacific Island representatives. See R. A. Herr, 'Regionalism in the South Seas: The Impact of the South Pacific Commission 1947-1974', PhD thesis, Duke University (Durham NC 1976);
21. T. R. Smith, South Pacific Commission: An Analysis after Twenty-Five Years (Wellington 1972);
22. W. D. Forsyth, 'South Pacific: regional organisation', New Guinea and Australia, the Pacific and South-East Asia, 6 (Sept. /Oct. 1971);
23. and Harry Maude, 'The South Pacific Commission', Australia's Neighbours, ser. 4, no. 5 (June 1963).
24. My own earlier accounts of South Pacific regionalism (see, e. g. , 'South Pacific Regionalism: The Development of an Indigenous Commitment', MA thesis, The Australian National University (Canberra 1979)
25. and Regionalism and international politics of the South Pacific', Pacific Affairs, 54:3 (1981), also skate over this important meeting.
26. For the official account of the conference see South Pacific Commission, Report of the Secretary-General of the South Pacific Commission on the First South Pacific Conference, 25 April - 5 May 1950 (Suva 1950). There is no verbatim record of proceedings. The main points of debate were covered in newspaper commentaries, the most complete being those of FTH and Pacific Islands Monthly (hereinafter PIM). The only account in an academic journal, that of Nancy Robson ('The Suva Conference'), was brief and kept mainly to the broad significance of the event.
27. David McNicoll, 'Better days ahead for the natives of South Pacific', Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1950, p. 6.
28. The leprosy colony at Makogai in Fiji also drew its patients from various British, Australian and New Zealand territories. (The delegates to the Nasinu conference visited the island during their meeting. ) A more limited region was suggested by the most prominent of existing administrative arrangements, the Western Pacific High Commission, which only covered the British territories, and by the Nasinu Teachers' Training College itself, which drew its students from Western Samoa, Tonga and Fiji by the time of the 1950 conference.
29. See H. V. Evatt, Foreign Policy of Australia (Sydney 1945), 116, 132;
30. and 'Australian-New Zealand Agreement', Current Notes on International Affairs, 15:1 (1944), clause 31.
31. See Donald Emmerson, ' "Southeast Asia": what's in a name?' Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 15:1 (1984), 7-9.
32. Indeed the boundaries of the South Pacific were redrawn to include the American islands north of the Equator in 1951. See 'Agreement Extending the Territorial Scope of the South Pacific Commission, Noumea, 7 November 1951', Australian Treaty Series (1951), no. 18.
33. The list of participants with a very brief description of occupation is contained in the Report of the Secretary-General, 10-15.
34. Eric Ramsden, 'The Pacific is on the move: personalities at first Peoples' Conference', Auckland Star, 20 Apr. 1950;
35. 'Pidgin editors for Suva talks', Daily Telegraph, 21 Apr. 1950;
36. 'Kokoda Trail carrier is now leader-envoy for his people', Sunday Telegraph (Sydney), 23 Apr. 1950;
37. 'Delegates gather in Fiji for South Pacific talks', Daily Mirror (Sydney), 24 Apr. 1950;
38. See J. W. Davidson, Samoa Mo Samoa: The Emergence of the Independent State of Western Samoa (Melbourne 1967), ch. 6.
39. Penitala Tea later became the first Governor-General of Tuvalu.
40. See Jemima Garrett, Island Exiles (Sydney 1996), 23, 43.
41. They later became important leaders in the organised opposition to Indonesian rule. See R. Osborne, Indonesia's Secret War: The Guerilla Struggle in Irian Jaya (Sydney 1985), 32, 35.
42. See 'Fijians and Indians: how should they be represented at South Pacific Conference?', PIM, Jan. 1950 (from a correspondent in Suva, 19 Dec. 1949);
43. Burton, 'The South Pacific Conference', folio 79.
44. and SMH, editorial, 13 May 1950.
45. See Robert Langdon, 'Harry Maude: shy proconsul, dedicated Pacific historian', in Gunson, The Changing Pacific, 11-12, 16.
46. See R. W. Robson, 'Need for a closer relationship between territories', PIM, 17 Jan. 1931, pp 1-2
47. and 'Plea for co-operation in Pacific affairs', PIM, 24 Sept. 1936, pp 53-4.
48. This recognition of heterogeneity was a central theme in several prominent region-wide academic surveys of the Pacific Islands which appeared around this time: W. E. H. Stanner, The South Seas in Transition: A Study of Post-War Rehabilitation and Reconstruction in Three British Pacific Dependencies (Sydney 1953) (the text was 'originally written in 1947'), espec. 418;
49. Douglas Oliver, The Pacific Islands (Cambridge 1951), 20-1;
50. and Felix Keesing, The South Seas in the Modern World (New York 1946), 293.
51. McNicoll, 'Better days ahead for natives'.
52. See also 'Delegates meet in Suva to discuss broad programmes for native welfare', The Evening Post (Wellington), 21 Apr. 1950.
53. Although opportunities for contact between island groups had been severely restricted in the colonial period, actual contacts between particular representatives of island cultures suggest that this extreme view was unfounded. Fijian soldiers, including Ratu Edward Cakobau, a delegate to the conference, had served in British Solomon Islands during the recent war; relationships between Tongan and Fijian chiefly lines were very close (Prince Tungi, representing Tonga, was in fact the nephew of the Fijan representative, Ratu Edward); the Central Medical School in Suva had brought many Pacific Islanders from the British Pacific together, including two delegates at Nasinu, Frank Aisi from Papua and John Kalsakau from New Hebrides; and many Polynesian missionaries had spent time in Melanesian cultures. This extreme view also ignored the language and cultural links among Polynesians.
54. Albert Norman, 'The reclamation of Oceania', Christian Science Monitor, 4 June 1949.
55. Although the 'Melanesian' and 'Polynesian' labels were used, it was clear that the island delegates being referred to as evidence for these generalisations were more specifically from Papua and New Guinea on the Melanesian side and Fiji, Tonga, American Samoa and Western Samoa on the Polynesian side. This characterisation left out French Oceania, French and Dutch-speaking Melanesia, the Ellice Islands, the Gilbert Islands and Nauru.
56. Ramsden, 'Sons of Stone Age Peoples Delegates', 3.
57. Nancy Robson, 'The Suva Conference', 181.
58. R. W. Robson, 'Sidelights on the South Pacific Conference', PIM, May 1950, p. 11.
59. Dr J. T. Gunther, 'South Pacific Conference: Preliminary Report by Dr J. T. Gunther, Advisor to Papua-New Guinea Delegation and Acting Chairman for Australia', Canberra, Australian Archives, Dept of External Affairs, Ser. A1838/1, item 347/2/6, folio 68, undated (attached to memo to Secretary, Dept of External Affairs, dated 17 July 1950, from Secretary, Dept of External Territories).
60. Colin Simpson, ' Native Conference in Fiji opens colourfully', Argus (Melbourne), 26 Apr. 1950;
61. 'Pacific Queen in limelight, Melbourne Herald, 29 Apr. 1950;
62. 'Black-eyed beauty bosses Pacific talks', Sydney Telegraph, 30 Apr. 1950.
63. See Burton, 'The South Pacific Conference . . . Report', and Gunther, 'South Pacific Conference . . . Preliminary Report'.
64. Robson, 'Sidelights on the South Pacific Commission', 11.
65. See 'Storm in a glass at Suva: native delegates are refused drinks', Melbourne Herald, 1 May 1950;
66. and 'Here's to the Governor', Argus, 2 May 1950;
67. Burton, 'The South Pacific Conference . . . Report', folio 79.
68. 'Better days ahead for natives', 6.
69. Gunther, South Pacific Conference . . . Preliminary Report', folio 70.
70. See, e. g. , 'New deal talks in Pacific', Argus (Australia), 21 Apr. 1950.
71. A. H. McDonald (ed. ), Trusteeship in the Pacific (Sydney 1949), p. vii.
72. J. D. Legge, Australian Colonial Policy: A Survey of Native Administration and European Development in Papua (Sydney 1956), 192-5.
73. These developments are described in detail in Davidson, Samoa mo Samoa, ch. 6.
74. See especially Smith, South Pacific Commission: An Analysis, chs 3-5;
75. Herr, 'Regionalism in the South Seas', ch. 3;
76. Forsyth, 'South Pacific: regional organisation', 7-14;
77. and Robert Michael Munro, 'New Zealand's role in the establishment of the South Pacific Commission', MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington (Wellington 1970), passim.
78. 'Australia/New Zealand Agreement' [ANZAC Pact), Current Notes on International Affairs, 15:1 (1944), clauses 28-31.
79. In the case of the Dutch government the aim was to retain West New Guinea against pressure from the new Indonesian government keen to complete the decolonisation of the Netherlands East Indies.
80. 'South Pacific Conference', brief to the Minister for External Affairs from South West Pacific Section, 27 Jan. 1950, Canberra, Australian Archives, Dept of External Affairs, ser. A1838/1, item 347/2/1, folio 89.
81. 'S. Pacific natives find new outlook', Melbourne Sun, 4 May 1950.
82. The Suva Conference', The Daily News (New Zealand), 6 May 1950.
83. The link between 'native welfare' and security in the formation of the SPC is well covered in Herr, 'Regionalism in the South Seas';
84. and Smith, South Pacific Commission.
85. See ANZAC Pact, clauses 28-31;
86. and H. V. Evatt, Foreign Policy of Australia (Sydney 1945), 116, 132, 142.
87. 'The South Pacific Commission', The New Zealand Herald (Auckland), 20 Feb. 1950.
88. Editorial, PIM, May 1950, pp 1,6.
89. Robson, 'Sidelights', 11.
90. and see SMH editorial, 13 May 1950.
91. I am indebted to Doug Munro, head, History/Politics, School of Social and Economic Development, the University of the South Pacific, for his insights on these points.