Search

Ethnographic research with the Kerewo-speakers in the Kikori area of the Gulf Province shows that they refuse the severance of Australia's and Papua New Guinea (PNG)'s histories. From the Kerewo perspective, PNG's national independence cannot erase valued social relationships forged through past contact with Australia. Drawing on the work of Frederick Cooper and John Pocock, this article contends that Australia's and PNG's shared past should be considered within a single analytical framework that highlights the legacies of colonialism in shaping Papua New Guineans' perceptions of themselves and their place in the world. For Kerewo, recognising a shared past is a necessary (albeit frustrated) basis for re-forging relations in the present. The efforts of historians today to reconnect these stories is political insofar as it seeks to undo the efforts of colonial administrators – in the pursuit of a self-serving decolonisation process – to forget these links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on the Indigenous experience of World War II has justly focused on recording accounts of direct witnesses of that period. Such a sense of urgency, at least in Papua New Guinea, has led to the neglect of areas of the country that, though not directly affected by the war, were invested in the war effort by providing labour and soldiers. Communities residing in those areas recall stories of their war heroes as key figures for the liberation of the country and, ultimately, its current adherence to 'Western values'. Through an analysis of the moral claims that those peripheral stories entail, in this article I suggest potential directions for the study of narratives of World War II that move beyond 'the era of the witness'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to a series of reviews of the book "Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History" edited by Robert Borofsky.

This article is prompted by the recent debate on the so-called crisis in the humanities, and the related call for historians to change direction by returning to history of the longue durée. While pointing out that the ‘crisis’ is more influenced by the changing political economy of the tertiary education sector than by specific historiographical practices, I suggest that small-scale analysis remains compatible with global history approaches. Articulating a parallel examination of Pacific historiography and the Italian variant of microhistory, the article argues that the latter provides fertile stimuli for Pacific history. In particular, I maintain that integrating social analysis can serve to counterbalance the over-emphasis on cultural aspects found in much Pacific historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]