Religion and nation-state formation in Melanesia : 1945 to independence

Abstract

Although this is a study of small countries, having small populations, over a limited time period, it is at once a study too vast to portray within the specifed limits of PhD research and dissertation. I therefore acknowledge at the outset the difficiencies of the present work. I write about Melanesia, but refer only briefly to New Caledonia and Fiji. To have included them would have rendered this regional survey of church-state relations unwieldy. The complexity of Fijian society requires a separate study. New Caledonia has a similar complexity, and cannot yet be counted among the independent Malanesian nation-states. The limitations of undertaking documentary research in what are essentially oral societies became clear during investigation. Through use of written records this study became primarily one of Melanesian elites, than of peasantry. State-formation and church-building are both, I suggest, exercises in the production of elites. Given the opportunity for interdisciplinary work, the themes developed in this study would benefit from complementary anthropological investigation at grass-roots level. Although missionaries from the continents of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, as well as from Australasia, have exerted their influence in Melanesia, my research was necessarily limited to source materials within the region. My task was eased by the availability of well-ordered government archival records in Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and I acknowledge the assistance of their staff below. Non-official archives, on the other hand, present more of a challenge to the researcher who faces strict time limitations. Mission societies have no obligation to preserve, order, and maintain past records, and the historian owes a debt of gratitude to societies which spare limited resources to do so. In the course of examining mission records I have perused micro-fiche; and I have dusted cob-webs, silver-fish and other vermin from mouldering and unsorted, uncatalogued, correspondence files. I have examined mission records stored in filing cabinets, tea-chests, and beer cartons. In the latter instances, there was no possibility of assessing the depth and breadth of a mission's collected papers, and often difficulty in obtaining records for the exact time and location I anticipated and required. Unfortunately, for instance, the archivist of the Methodist Church of New Zealand was unable to locate records for the Western Solomons in the critical years relating to Silas Eta's break with the Methodist Western District; and working in the unsorted records of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, I searched in vain for files concerning the critical years in which the Jon Frum movement on Tanna most affected the work of the Presbyterian Mission. My endeavours in other non-official sources were, on the hand, most productive, and my narrative makes first use of some materials relating to the post-war period derived from records of the Australian Baptist Missionary Society, the South Sea Evangelical Mission, the Presbyterian Missionary Society of New Zealand, and the Anglican Church of Vanuatu. Many people assisted me in the course of research and fieldwork. I wish to thank, without reference to titles or offices, the following interviewees: in Fiji - Niel Soucy and John Foliaki; in Papua New Guinea - Violet Hoehnke, Saimon Gaius, Rodney Hancock, Arnold Smith, Gordon Stafford, Helmtrude Tewes; in New Zealand - George Carter, John Stanley Murray, Peter Wedde, Gordon Parsonson, and Philip Baker; in Solomon Islands: Gertrude Blum, Adrian Smith, Dan Stuyvenberg, and Marietta Teuluata; in Vanuatu - Roger Bowden, Tony Deamer, Dick Joel Peter, Chris Foote, Timothy Kaio, Graham Kalsakau, Kathleen and Pastor Lingi, Tom Namake, Ann Naupa, John Naupa, Titus Path, Fr Sacco, Willie Samuel, Philip Shing, Hari Tevi, Tuk Nowali, and Peter Noah; and in Australia - Misty Baloiloi, John Black, Judy and Rex Fisher, Cecil Gribble, J. Graham Miller, Jack Sharp, Kay Williams, and David Wilson. For granting me access to their archives, or otherwise assisting me, I thank the Staff of the following institutions: the Mitchell Library, and the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney; the Alexander Turnbull Library, Auckland; Auckland Municipal Library; University of Auckland Library; Wellington Central Library; Victoria University Library, Wellington; Macmillan Brown Collection, University of Cantebury; Hewitson Library, Knox College, Dunedin; Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin; the Church of Melanesia and the Solomon Islands National Archives, Honiara; the Australian Baptist Missionary Society, Melbourne; the Anglican Board of Mission Library, Sydney; the Menzies Library, Australian National University; the Commonwealth Archives of Australia, Canberra; the Melanesian Institute, Goroka; and the North Solomons Provincial Government Library, Arawa. I wish to thank J. Brian Lee, Uniting Church in Australia, for access to the Methodist Overseas Mission Records in the Mitchell Library; Ross Carlyon, Executive Secretary of the South Sea Evangelical Mission for his assistence in Laureton; Ian Harris, of the Department of Communication of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, for granting access to the archives of the Presbyterian Missionary of New Zealand; and George Carter, of the National Archives of the Methodist Church of New Zealand. I have benefitted considerably from correspondence with Brian Macdonald-Milne, Charles Horne, John Garrett, Theo B. Cook, Gerhard 0. Reitz, Dudley Deasey, Sir John Gutch, Ann Lilburne, Michael Myers, and Keith Dyer; and from conversations with Hugh Laracy, Simon Rae, Alan Davidson, Jim Veitch, Gordon Parsonson, David Hilliard and Dennis Steley. I thank Mariette and Hasan Leong for allowing me to obtain a copy of their interview with Pelis Mazakmat and Michael Homerang, and thank Betty Palaso for the translation from Pidgin to English. For help in various ways during field work 1986-87 I acknowledge the particular. assistance and friendship of Bruce Saunders, Earl and Audrey Cameron, Charlie and Barbara Pierce, Mariette and Hasan Leong, and Richard and Verona Lucas - although the list of friends to whom I am indebted for kindness and assistance while in the Pacific is considerably longer than this, and certainly too vast to unravel here. My hope is to have the opportunity at some future time to thank these dear friends by returning the hospitality I received in abundance from them. Over a period of four years I have appreciated the assistance provided by support staff in the Department of Pacific and Southeast Asian History: Julie Gordon, Karen Haines, Sally-Ann Leigh, and Dorothy Mcintosh. Also, I have been privileged to attend seminars offered by student and staff members of this department, as well as by various other departments within the Research School of Pacific Studies. Field-work was only made possible by the generosity of the Research School, which I wish to acknowledge here. As much as I have benefitted from institutional support my parents, David and Judy Hassall, have provided the essential spiritual and material support which made my education possible. I cannot thank them enough. For academic assistance, as well as friendship, I owe much to Ron Adams, who acted as a patient advisor to the project and critical reader of draft materials, during his time in the Department of Pacific and Southeast Asian History and after, having taken a position at the Western Institute in Melbourne. I have learnt much from the honest and direct approach to scholarship demonstrated by Dr Adams since our first meeting in 1985. I very much regret that my thesis was incomplete at the time Gavan Daws retired his position as Professor of Pacific History. Nevertheless, I thank Professor Daws for supporting the idea of a regional study, and for his comments on my earliest drafts. In the later stages of writing, various chapters were considerably improved following the critical and knowledgeable advice of Dr Hank Nelson, for which I am most grateful. Finally, I express my thanks to my supervisor Niel Gunson, doyen of supervisors, in whose presence I have experienced the spirit of the scholarly path. Show more