Excerpt from The History of Melanesian Society, Vol. 1 of 2 At the present moment there exists in Melanesia an influence far more likely to produce disintegration of native institutions than the work of missionaries. I refer to the repatriation of Melanesian labourers from Queensland which has been the result of the movement for a white Australia. Large numbers of men, women and children have recently returned to nearly every Melanesian island. Some had been many years in Queensland and have quite forgotten all they ever knew of their native institutions; some even have that contempt for these institutions which so often accompanies a smattering Of civilisation. Their influence on native institutions in the future must almost certainly be great, but this influence is so comparatively recent that I do not believe it has had any appreciable effect on the social conditions which I record in this volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.