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Forthcoming

LIKE FIRE: The Paliau Movement and Millenarianism in Melanesia | By Theodore Schwartz and Michael French Smith

Monographs in Anthropology Series. Acton, Australia: ANU Press, 2021. xx, 540 pp. (Maps, B&W photos, coloured photos, illustrations.) US$75.00, paper; free ebook. ISBN 9781760464240.


This substantial volume provides an extensive account of the Paliau Movement, a millenarian religio-political movement that has maintained its presence in the Manus region of Papua New Guinea since 1946. While the book is primarily intended for anthropologists specializing in Melanesia, it offers valuable insights for anyone intrigued by religious movements and the human inclination toward millenarianism and conspiracy thinking. It will also be of concern to people in the Pacific region, so it is great that it is available for free at press.anu.edu.au.

Building on the work of Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune in the 1920s, Schwartz’s research from 1953 until the 1990s, Smith’s fieldwork in the region in 1973 and 2015, and later extensive research by Ton Otto among others, Like Fire presents the most complete historical narrative of the Movement so far. Schwartz and Smith take issue with Margaret Mead’s New Lives for Old (New York: William Morrow, 1956) that is based on fieldwork in 1953 and in which Schwartz participated, as failing to acknowledge the extent to which millenarianism encouraged the Movement. Mead was keen to see the Movement as the harbinger of rational modernization. By contrast, Schwartz and Smith emphasize millenarianism and the human inclination to attribute conscious agency to unfolding events.

The narrative’s main character is Paliau Maloat—“protean figure, melding politician and prophet” (11) who established the Movement almost immediately after World War II. It spread “like fire” in the then fertile ground of cultural change due to colonialism: “people were eager for someone to help them overcome their reluctance to abandon old, reliable ways of understanding the world for something untested but infinitely more exciting. In the early years of the Movement, some of its adherents yearned for a prophet and found one in Paliau” (56–57).

The book is nicely written, and I especially enjoyed reading about Paliau’s self-transformations, starting with him telling the story of his life, including a critical revelatory dream, and the “Long Story of God” in chapter 5. As Paliau grows older and most Manusians began to accept the post-colonial political order of Papua New Guinea, their millenarianism became less revolutionary. By the 1970s, the Movement began to develop theocratic ideologies and Paliau told Schwartz that Manus should have a “Government of the Holy Spirit” (388). Under its new name, Win Neisen (“Wind Nation”), the Movement also became a vessel for Paliau’s regional and national political aspirations, but with limited success. Just a year before his death in 1991, Paliau stated to Schwartz that he was a kind of Jesus, and in 2015, when Smith visited Manus, some were keen to suggest that he was in fact Jesus (421–422). At present, Win Neisen is still active and has become institutionalized and formalized amid half a dozen other religious congregations. Alongside apotheosizing Paliau, followers now also engage in monumentalization, which Smith documents in chapter 14.

The book’s analysis strongly focuses on the early phases of the Movement and seeks to draw out continuities. People’s seizing on prophecy from the start of the Movement onwards highlights, according to Schwartz and Smith, a Manusian and perhaps even universal inclination to personify causation (chapter 3). By this they mean that people assume that the world is governed by conscious forces that manifest in a wide variety of numinous forms (450). In addition, they see a widespread paranoid ethos or conspiracist worldview that is the dark side of the understanding of the worlds as controlled by personified agents (25). The fusion of this ethos with the personification of causation creates fertile ground for millennial beliefs.

The authors’ emphasis on psycho-cultural characteristics enables them to highlight the ongoing elements of the Movement. Even those followers of the Movement who have pursued political objectives have done so within a framework of animate and personal causation. Understanding this cosmology and its impact on individuals does not, the book argues, necessarily require the concept of religion (chapter 2). By defining the “religious” aspect of the Paliau Movement more precisely, Like Fire reveals significant similarities between elements of the Movement and millenarianism worldwide. Their critique of conventional approaches to interpreting cargo cults in anthropology also paves the way for a focus on conspiracy claims as a shared characteristic of millenarian ideologies, demonstrating a common psycho-cultural aspect of millenarianism that extends beyond the colonial context of cargo cults. Like Fire represents an intriguing contribution to the field of anthropology concerning Melanesian religion and millenarianism in a broader sense. I anticipate the book will stimulate enriching discussions.


Jaap Timmer

Aarhus University, Aarhus
Macquarie University, Sydney


Last Revised: September 19, 2023
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