Critical Perspectives on Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xii, 265 pp. US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-03759-5.
Considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to the end of empire and decolonization, so it is timely that Tracey Banivanua Mar now draws attention to what she calls “a process” (6) that culminated in fourteen declarations of independence in the Pacific between 1962 and 1994. She positions decolonization as the result of two phenomena: assertions of rights by indigenous peoples and an international imperative enshrined in the famous United Nations Resolution 1514. The second position is well presented, with original and revealing research about Pacific Island submissions to international organizations and petitions to the League of Nations. Her third structural position is that decolonization should be studied holistically as a single sea-of-islands approach rather than through the nation state. She calls this an “unconventional framework” (4) but this is treated only briefly and instead selected case studies of indigenous self-determination in Australia and New Zealand, with examples from the islands, are presented to argue that assertions of indigenous identity go back a hundred years. The book is therefore mistitled and should have been called “Indigenous self-determination in Australia and New Zealand and the western Pacific,” a phrasing that better captures the author’s main focus and content. The framework throughout is contextualized by an “us-and-them” approach, with Mar, of Fijian descent, stating in the opening lines that she is on the “us” side.
The book’s introduction, “Sailing the winds of change—decolonisation and the Pacific,” sets out the key themes and offers a broad review of the literature, arguing that decolonization is best understood not as an event but through “spaces between nations, the interstices between colonial and national borders where people travelled and connected” (21). Unfortunately, there is little evidence historically of linkage as the fourteen sites of decolonization either fought their own campaign to force the colonizer out (for example, Samoa, Nauru, and Palau) or quickly adapted domestically as the colonizer walked away, as in PNG, Vanuatu, and the Solomons. Vanuatu, for example, did not engage diplomatically, share, or borrow from its neighbours, the Solomons and PNG, though these two countries had decolonized just five and two years earlier, respectively. Nor did Vanuatu engage with the Republic of the Marshall Islands or the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), which decolonized six years later. Although Fiji’s rapid transition, as Bob Norton’s research has shown, had close links to India, this is bypassed. Also not mentioned are Niue’s inclusion and then breakaway from the Cook Islands, Tongan pretense of autonomy (a “we were never colonized” attitude), or the long-term impact of gathering up disparate entities—the Gilberts, Ellice, Tokelau, and Banaba—to form the Gilbert and Ellice Island Colony (known as the GIEC).
Halfway through the book, at the end of chapter 3, Mar is still engrossed in the colonial era, looking for indigenous affirmations of identity. After interesting discussions about the saltwater principle, and events in the Solomons, Vanuatu, and Fiji, Mar makes the point that colonial powers ignored expressions of indigenous identity and potential governing mechanisms and instead imposed the nation state. Mar also states that colonial administrations had limited influence or “lightly touched” Island peoples (40). Mar argues that Diaspora and mobility were characteristics of the colonial period; however, the argument that decolonization has a hundred-year history becomes problematic as Mar focuses on Australia and New Zealand, and the arguments are heavily reliant on the archive rather than the promised islander-based narrative. Personal vignettes serve as a façade for each chapter. The term “centrifugal forces” then enters the dialogue, suggesting that often-militant, sometimes radical, indigenous resistance and concepts of governance were pushing against the nation state. This is not convincingly presented and the particular goals of the Santo rebellion, the New Britain Mataungan Association, Bougainville, Western Province in the Solomons, and half-hearted Rotuman expressions of self-determination are all ignored. Mar does bring in some telling factors for connected islander resistance such as the South Pacific Commission conference in 1965, delegations to the UN in 1970, and the 1978 Pohnpei Charter, but it is not enough to challenge the conventional nation-state pathway to independence. Mar excitedly claims that by 1970, stemming from indigenous movements, islanders were on the “cusp of a decolonizing revolution” (204) but this ignores the fact that Fijians hardly knew they were being forced to decolonize, and that only a small elite among Vanuatuans, Solomon Islanders, and Papua New Guineans understood that within a few years the colonizers would be gone.
The conclusion claims the two key decolonizing powers were Britain and Australia, but New Zealand and the US were also key players; indeed, nations that raised their new flag subsequently between 1970 and 1994 are overlooked. New Caledonia, French Polynesia, West Papua, Rapanui, Guam, and Hawaii are all continuing sites of resistance and self-determination and Mar could have addressed these more fully. The identity politics of the US and the Congress of Micronesia and the long struggles by the Marshalls, FSM, and Palau, and the role of churches, are not mentioned. The conclusion raises gender as a factor but this is treated briefly and deserves a longer discussion. Despite claiming that islander narratives and voices would be at the forefront, there is little for readers looking for outspoken islanders. Who wrote the constitutions or national anthems? Who danced at Independence Day? How did remote villages celebrate their new nation? Did dissenting islanders express their opposition in dance-drama and poetry in the run-down to raising the flag? I agree with the concluding statement that decolonization in the Pacific Islands was unique, but readers will probably question the claim that it was an “internal, often spatial, postcolonial project … an identity, a belief system and a thought process” (224). Mar notes she did not set out to write the definitive history of decolonization, and while this is an argumentative foray, the history of decolonization as suggested in the book’s title remains to be written.
There are some claims that careful checking could have avoided, such as confusing Phyllis Corowa for Patsy Corowa as founder of the Australian Pacific Islander Association, and conflating events in 1848 and 1859 to suggest that Ben Boyd’s labourers returned home via the North Pacific after a series of tragic events. Ratu Seru Cakobau is twice identified as the King of Fiji (22, 64), despite being given that title by European settlers even though he was only one of thirteen powerful chiefs who ruled domains within Fiji. There are omissions in the literature such as Robert Nicole’s Disputed Histories and Brij Lal’s histories of Fiji as it decolonized, told through biographies of A.D. Patel, sadly passing away on the eve of independence, and Jai Ram Reddy, a key figure in the political arena post-1970. More could have been made of David Chappell’s Double Ghosts and The Kanak Awakening and of Ian Campbell’s work on the Mau movement in Samoa. This is a well-written, deeply researched, and strident argument, but it is not convincing. As a study of “autonomy, cultural pride, survival and revival, custom and identity” (224), it offers a useful survey of the hundred years leading up to the 1960s and 1970s, but the Pacific experience of decolonization remains open for a scholar who will focus on the fourteen islands, and those still waiting, and their particular experiences leading up to flags being raised.
Max Quanchi
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
pp. 875-877