Understanding Oceania

Understanding Oceania
Author: Stewart Firth
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2019-05-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1760462896

This book is inspired by the University of the South Pacific, the leading institution of higher education in the Pacific Islands region. Founded in 1968, USP has expanded the intellectual horizons of generations of students from its 12 member countries—Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu—and been responsible for the formation of a regional elite of educated Pacific Islanders who can be found in key positions in government and commerce across the region. At the same time, this book celebrates the collaboration of USP with The Australian National University in research, doctoral training, teaching and joint activities. Twelve of our 19 contributors gained their doctorates at ANU, most of them before or after being students and/or teaching staff at USP, and the remaining five embody the cross-fertilisation in teaching, research and consultancy of the two institutions. The contributions to this collection, with a few exceptions, are republications of key articles on the Pacific Islands by scholars with extensive experience and knowledge of the region.

Australian Travellers in the South Seas

Australian Travellers in the South Seas
Author: Nicholas Halter
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2021-02-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1760464155

This book offers a wide-ranging survey of Australian engagement with the Pacific Islands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through over 100 hitherto largely unexplored accounts of travel, the author explores how representations of the Pacific Islands in letters, diaries, reminiscences, books, newspapers and magazines contributed to popular ideas of the Pacific Islands in Australia. It offers a range of valuable insights into continuities and changes in Australian regional perspectives, showing that ordinary Australians were more closely connected to the Pacific Islands than has previously been acknowledged. Addressing the theme of travel as a historical, literary and imaginative process, this cultural history probes issues of nation and empire, race and science, commerce and tourism by focusing on significant episodes and encounters in history. This is a foundational text for future studies of Australia’s relations with the Pacific, and histories of travel generally.

France in the South Pacific

France in the South Pacific
Author: Denise Fisher
Publisher: ANU E Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2013-05-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1922144959

France is a Pacific power, with three territories, a military presence, and extensive investments. Once seen by many as a colonial interloper in the South Pacific, by the early 2000s, after it ended nuclear testing in French Polynesia and negotiated transitional Accords responding to independence demands in New Caledonia, France seems to have become generally accepted as a regional partner, even if its efforts concentrate on its own territories rather than the independent island states. But Frances future in the region has yet to be secured. By 2014 it is to have handed over a set of agreed autonomies to the New Caledonian government, before an independence referendum process begins. Past experience suggests that a final resolution of the status of New Caledonia will be divisive and could lead once again to violent confrontations. In French Polynesia, calls continue for independence and for treatment under UN decolonisation procedures, which France opposes. Other island leaders are watching, so far putting faith in the Noumea Accord, but wary of the final stages. The issues and possible solutions are more complex than the French Pacific island population of 515,000 would suggest. Combining historical background with political and economic analysis, this comprehensive study offers vital insight into the intricate history -- and problematic future -- of several of Australias key neighbours in the Pacific and to the priorities and options of the European country that still rules them. It is aimed at policy-makers, scholars, journalists, businesspeople, and others who want to familiarise themselves with the issues as Frances role in the region is redefined in the years to come.

Lonely Planet South Pacific

Lonely Planet South Pacific
Author: Lonely Planet
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Total Pages: 1083
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1786577348

#1 best-selling guide to the South Pacific* Lonely Planet South Pacific is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Laze on New Caledonia's white sand beaches; learn traditional dance in Tahiti or hike through Fiji's 'Garden Island', all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of the South Pacific and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet's South Pacific Travel Guide: Colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, environmental issues, culture, arts, cuisine, health, language Over 110 colour maps Covers Easter Island, Fiji, Rarotonga, the Cook Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tahiti, French Polynesia, Tonga, Vanuatu and more eBook Features: (Best viewed on tablet devices and smartphones) Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet South Pacific, our most comprehensive guide to all the islands of the South Pacific, is perfect for both exploring top sights and taking roads less travelled. About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, gift and lifestyle books and stationery, as well as an award-winning website, magazines, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in. TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *Best-selling guide to South Pacific. Source: Nielsen BookScan. Australia, UK and USA Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition.

Australia & the Pacific

Australia & the Pacific
Author: Ian Hoskins
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing
Total Pages: 597
Release: 2021-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1742245315

Australia’s deep past and its modern history are intrinsically linked to the Pacific. In Australia & the Pacific, Ian Hoskins — award-winning author of Sydney Harbour and Coast — expands his gaze to examine Australia’s relationship with the Pacific region; from our ties with Papua New Guinea and New Zealand to our complex connections with China, Japan and the United States. This revealing, sweeping narrative history begins with the shifting of the continents to the coming of the first Australians and, thousands of years later, the Europeans who dispossessed them. Hoskins explores colonists’ attempts to exploit the riches of the region while keeping ‘white Australia’ separate from neighbouring Asians, Melanesians and Polynesians. He examines how the advent of modern human rights and the creation of the United Nations after World War Two changed Australia and investigates our increasing regional engagement following the rise of China and the growing unpredictability of US foreign policy. Concluding with the offshore detention of asylum seekers and current debates over climate change, Hoskins questions Australia’s responsibilities towards our increasingly imperilled neighbours. ‘A captivating general history of Australia viewed in a Pacific context … Hoskins’s meticulously researched and well-crafted account of Australia’s place in the Pacific certainly deserves a wide readership.’ — Ross Fitzgerald ‘Ian Hoskins has written a major book. It is a fundamentally important subject, and is timely, original, fair-minded and accessible…a fascinating history that shows how Australia’s relationships with the Pacific have shaped and informed each of our worlds. He reveals the major underlying historiographical and political disputes with subtlety, clarity and power, while always displaying a remarkable fairness of judgement.’ — Iain McCalman ‘It is possibly no secret that I have been a passionate campaigner for Australia – and especially the Australian media – to pay more attention to the island nations to Australia’s North and East. Therefore, I am more than happy to see the publication of Ian Hoskins’s Australia & the Pacific. I spent the majority of my career as a journalist visiting and reporting on these island nations and I believe that today it is even more crucial for us to understand exactly what is going on in our region.’ — Sean Dorney

Framing the Islands

Framing the Islands
Author: Greg Fry
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1760463159

Since its origins in late eighteenth-century European thought, the idea of placing a regional frame around the Pacific islands has never been just an exercise in geographical mapping. This framing has always been a political exercise. Contending regional projects and visions have been part of a political struggle concerning how Pacific islanders should live their lives. Framing the Islands tells the story of this political struggle and its impact on the regional governance of key issues for the Pacific such as regional development, resource management, security, cultural identity, political agency, climate change and nuclear involvement. It tells this story in the context of a changing world order since the colonial period and of changing politics within the post-colonial states of the Pacific. Framing the Islands argues that Pacific regionalism has been politically significant for Pacific island states and societies. It demonstrates the power associated with the regional arena as a valued site for the negotiation of global ideas and processes around development, security and climate change. It also demonstrates the political significance associated with the role of Pacific regionalism as a diplomatic bloc in global affairs, and as a producer of powerful policy norms attached to funded programs. This study also challenges the expectation that Pacific regionalism largely serves hegemonic powers and that small islands states have little diplomatic agency in these contests. Pacific islanders have successfully promoted their own powerful normative framings of Oceania in the face of the attempted hegemonic impositions from outside the region; seen, for example, in the strong commitment to the ‘Blue Pacific continent’ framing as a guiding ideology for the policy work of the Pacific Islands Forum in the face of pressures to become part of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

Violence and Colonial Dialogue

Violence and Colonial Dialogue
Author: Tracey Banivanua Mar
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2006-12-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824830253

During the post-abolition period a trade in cheap and often cost-neutral labor flourished in the western Pacific. For more than forty years, it supplied tens of thousands of indentured laborers to the sugar industry of northeastern Australia. Violence and Colonial Dialogue tells the story of its impact on the people who were traded. From the beaches and shallows of the Pacific’s frontiers to the plantations and settlements of Queensland and beyond, a collective tale of the pioneers of today’s Australian South Sea Island community is told through an abundant and effective use of materials that characterize the colonial record, including police registers, court records, prison censuses, administrative reports, legislative debates, and oral histories. With a thematic focus on the physical violence that was central to the experience of people who were voluntarily or involuntarily recruited, the history that emerges is a powerful tale that is at once both tragic and triumphant. Violence and Colonial Dialogue also tells a more universal story of colonization. Set mostly in the British settler-colony of Queensland during the last forty years of the nineteenth century, it explores the brutality embedded in the structures of a colonial state, while attempting to recover the stories that such processes obscured.

South Pacific Cauldron

South Pacific Cauldron
Author: Alan P Rems
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2014-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612514707

“Award-winning author Alan Rems brilliantly tells of the campaigns in the South Pacific, a region long overlooked, offering both the big picture and the foxhole view” — Military Officer “A fitting tribute to the men who fought and died in an often overlooked theater of World War II. As such, it is a welcome addition to our knowledge of World War II in the Pacific Theater.” — On Point: The Journal of Army History While the Pacific War has been widely studied by military historians and venerated in popular culture through movies and other media, the fighting in the South Pacific Theater has, with few exceptions, been remarkably neglected. Authoritative yet written in a highly readable narrative style, South Pacific Cauldron is the first complete history embracing all land, sea, and air operations in this critically important sector of the oceanic conflict.

The White Pacific

The White Pacific
Author: Gerald Horne
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2007-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824831470

"[Book title] ranges over the broad expanse of Oceania to reconstruct the history of "blackbirding" (slave trading) in the region. It examines the role of U.S. citizens (many of them ex-slaveholders and ex-confederates) in the trade and its roots in Civil War dislocations. What unfolds is a dramatic tale of unfree labor, conflicts between formal and informal empire, white supremacy, threats to sovereignty in Hawaii, the origins of a White Australian policy, and the rise of Japan as a Pacific power and putative protector."--Back cover.