TO KILL A BIRD WITH TWO STONES A SHORT HISTORY OF VANUATU Jeremy MacClancy Vanuatu Cultural Centre Publications No. 1 I am very grateful to the British Government and Burns Philp (Vanuatu) Ltd. for providing funds to help meet the cost of producing this ‘history’. Cover photo: Into the cash economy (Jean-Marc Loubat) I cannot avoid some reference in the following... which to some readers will be extremely distasteful. We know that to many naked truth and reality... are quite unbearable unless they display the pleasanter things of life. How often do we hear people say: “We all know that there are horrid things in life: why should we read about them ?” To which the reply might be – if horrid things were wisely written about we should understand them..., and that then we should not be afraid of reading about them, and the horrid things would fall into their right place in the perspective of all things, good and bad. Bohun Lynch (ed.) Isles of Illusion P..XV. Contents Introduction 5 Acknowledgements 7 Beginnings 9 Custom 11 1825-1865 23 1866-1906 33 1906-1939 50 1939-1970 64 The Seventies 75 1980 85 The last Chapter. 90 Further Reading 91 Select Bibliography 92 Endnotes 98 INTRODUCTION General histories satisfy few. This booklet, a product of the situation it describes, is no exception: most topics have been skimmed over and some events completely ignored. Within the compass of 60.000 words it is impossible to mention everything, or even perhaps one thing, in sufficient detail. Essentially what I have written is an eclectic précis of other people’s research. My most obvious debt in this sense is to Dorothy Shineburg’s They Came for Sandalwood upon which the account of the sandalwood trade given in Chapter Three is almost completely based. In order to maintain the flow of the text and prevent constant interruption, all footnotes and references have been confined to a separate section at the end of the booklet. I trust that the relevant researchers will regard this tactic as proper acknowledgement, not as an abuse, of their efforts. An unavoidable consequence of this academic dependence is that certain periods (such as the formation of the Condominium) and the history of certain areas (such as Nduindui, west Ambae) are better described than others. The cultural diversity and the piecemeal, sporadic development of the islands plus the fact that, until very recently, research has been carried out only by white men has meant that it has often been very difficult to draw out valid generalisations about what changes have occurred in villages. So any generalisations made in the booklet should be regarded as provisional in nature, not as definitive statements which are universally applicable. As ni- Vanuatu commence to write their own history, it is to be hoped that this situation will be corrected. The section on custom is, like the topic itself, an uneasy mixture of the past and present tenses. Custom is not timeless but a body of flexible rules subject to continual modification as people adapt to change of their living conditions: not so much a programme, more a way of life. But what people did before the white man came can only be learnt from myths and archaeological investigation. Anthropologists, the systematic recorders of traditional ways, have noted the custom practiced in the last hundred years. It is from their articles, and conversations with knowledgeable men that I have gleaned the material used in chapter 2. Use of the past tense when describing a ritual should not be taken to mean, however, that I think the particular ritual ‘dead’, merely that, so far as I know, it is no longer performed. That custom is alive today and that traditional dances, for instance, ‘can easily be revived was shown convincingly by the undoubted success of the first National Arts Festival, held in Vila in December 1979. The history of culture contact in Vanuatu is a sorry tale – a long series of exploiters and exploited with many occupying both categories at the same time; few emerge well from this story. While this brief essay has been written to fill the long-standing lack of a short history of the islands, it is, in fact, only an introduction to the history of Vanuatu, merely a setting out of the main themes in chronological order. As such I hope that it will act as a guide and stimulus to interested Ni-Vanuatu, the audience for which it has been written, who wish to learn more about what happened in their islands. Assessments and judgements are rarely made. In particular I have tried to write a chronicle, not an interpretation, of the political events of the 1970s. With so much of the relevant material still confidential and contradictory explanations readily available for most of the important events, it seems premature, and possibly counter-productive, for me to attempt to explain why this struggle for independence took the course it did. I must also add that any comment on any institution in the essay does not necessarily apply to the same institution today, if it still exists. Place-names are taken from D. Tryon and R. Gely’s edition of Official Gazetter of Place Names. Following their practice, no attempt whatsoever has been made to standardize names of islands: for instance, Anatom is also spelt Aneityum and Ambae, Oba or Omba. * * * The author makes no profit from the sales of this booklet. All copyright and rights of reproduction rest with the Cultural Centre, Vila. Acknowledgements This is a first booklet and I am deeply indebted. In particular, I must thank those who willingly gave up their time to talk about their memories of Vanuatu: John Peter Anahapat of Tenmarou, North Malakula, Raymond Colardeau, Remy Delaveuve, Guy Dillensinger, Jack and Jean Holder, Pastor Simon Karae, Levi Ligo of Lavusi, and Ethel Ligo of Agatoa, both of North Pentecost, and Nakomaha Solaski of lpekel, Tanna. I am grateful to Margaret Nameil, Yvonne Hoiden and especially Kirk Huffman who tried to answer my many questions and patiently put up with my continual borrowing of books. John Carney, Jack Golson, Reece Discombe, Bob Meakin, Bishop Lambert, Annie Massias and Barry Weightrnan also gave their help. Joy Wu typed the final draft. Keith Woodward, Deryck Scarr, Bryan Bresnihan, Jean Massias, Ken Calvert, Jodi Bonnemaison and David Grundy all read parts of the manuscript. While I have not made all the changes they advised, the essay would have been much poorer without their valuable comments. Of course, any errors in the text remain my own responsibility. I must also thank Melbourne University Press and Dr. Dorothy Shineburg for granting permission to use her book, They Came for Sandalwood, as the basis for my short account of the sandalwood trade. I am grateful to the British Government for having borne the major part of the cost of producing this book. However I accept this as a contribution to the people of Vanuatu and not as a commitment to the many and varied views expressed in the text. The opinions given are either my own or those of the sources I have relied on. Finally I am very pleased to be able to thank Tessa Fowler. Without her assistance and incisive criticism, informed by long residence in the islands, I seriously doubt whether anyone would have even considered publishing this ‘history’. To the memory of Chris Weaver, 1955 - 1979. BEGINNINGS Originally, there were no islands; there was only the sea. But underneath the saltwater, the plates of the supper crust of the earth moved and collided. Volcanoes were formed and were pushed slowly upwards, breaking through the surface of the sea. They continued to rise. Then, their active centres died slowly. Once they had become extinct, coral began to gather and grow around their edges. As the earth uplifted the reefs so that they became part of the landmass, and today 20% of the land area of Vanuatu is made up of limestone. Faulting, subsidence and further uplift throughout the geological history of the islands plus constant erosion by the weather has led to the present shape of Vanuatu. These movements of the earth have not stopped; the islands continue to rise at the approximate rate of 1/2 mm. a year. In 1965, a major earthquake in northwest Malakula raised the ground there by one meter. The islands were all created in this way but not all at the same time; Santo, Malakula and the Torres first appeared about 22 million years ago. They increased in area greatly about 7 million years later with structural movements of the earth. Maewo and Pentecost rose out of the sea about 4 million years after that. Aneityum, Futuna, Aniwa, Tanna, Erromango, Efate, the Shepherds, Epi, Ambrym, Ambae and Banks have all been formed in the last two million years. Once the major geological changes had ended, it became possible for plants and animals to live in the islands. Most species came from Indo-Australasia via Papua New Guinea, New Britain and the Solomons. Plants that could be borne on salty sea currents survived the voyage to Vanuatu and began to germinate. Other plants were carried in the stomachs of birds or among their feathers. Insects were borne by wind currents; birds and bats flew; small animals were carried by ocean currents or driven over the sea by storms, on floating masses of vegetation or small pieces of timber. There are no large undomesticated animals, such as the cassowary, in Vanuatu because they had no means of reaching the islands. Certain birds (the Australian Goshawk, the sooty rail, cuckoos, the speckled ground skink, and the silver-eared honey-eater) came from Australia via New Caledonia. When compared to the land from which they originated, Vanuatu has a very limited number of plant and animal species. The number in Vanuatu is so small because of this great distance away from Indo-Australasia and its geological recency compared to the rest of the world. However, it is a particularly rich region for marine molluscs. There are about 4,000 species in the islands with many unusual patterns of distribution. Before man came to Vanuatu, the islands were covered in forests. Tropical rain forests, or ‘bush’, were especially developed in the northern and central islands, dry forests in the southern ones, and Kaoris pine on Santo. Sandalwood, found throughout all the islands, was particularly plentiful on Erromango. The northwest of many islands are in rain shadow areas and have open grassland. The early inhabitants often cleared lowland rain forest, which was later taken over by secondary growth. Yams, taro, bananas, sago palm, maize, breadfruit, sugarcane, pigs, dogs and fowls were all brought by the early migrants. It is possible that they did not bring coconuts, but that the coconut palm- tree evolved first in Vanuatu and the Solomons since the number of insect species dependent on the nut is greater in these islands than anywhere else in the world. Pineapple, avocado, pawpaw and manioc were all introduced in recent times from tropical America by European settlers. The sweet potato was brought from Papua New Guinea, where it had possibly been introduced by the Spanish and the Portugese – also from tropical America. There are no native amphibians in Vanuatu, though marine turtles use the beaches of the southern islands as breeding-grounds, frogs are found on Santo, Malakula and Efate now, and seawater crocodiles swim over from the Solomon Islands occasionally. They are found on Santo and Vanua Lava infrequently and are caught even more rarely. There are 19 species of land-based reptiles in Vanuatu; five kinds of gecko, 12 of skink, the flowerpot snake which is found only in Efate, and the Pacific Boa which is found on Santo, Vanua Lava, Malakula, Efate and Erromango. 61 species of land-and water-birds are resident, five of which were recently introduced deliberately, or accidentally, by man; for instance, the Indian myna bird first appeared in Vanuatu in the 1880s when a ship, the Pikinini, carrying caged birds to Fiji was wrecked at Lenakel, Tanna. Of the 11 species of bats, 3 evolved in, and are unique to, Vanuatu. The small Polynesian rat arrived independently before man, but the larger black and brown rats came with the white man. Perhaps the most recent immigrant is the giant East African snail. It was carried by ships from islands in the north Pacific to Vila about seven) years ago. It appears to find the local environment satisfactory because it has spread to Santo and north Malakula where it is thriving. CUSTOM Prehistory The Pacific Islands are the last area of the world that man has occupied. The first arrivals came about 4 or 5,000 years ago. About 2,000 years later some of these people migrated from the northwest Pacific and Papua New Guinea via the Solomon Islands to Vanuatu. Travelling in large canoes that could carry up to 200 people, a few animals and stocks of food, they arrived in a series of waves over a long period of time, not all at once. Vanuatu became the centre of a region where different people settled and multiplied. Traces of this mixing are still to be found; there is a very large number and great variety of languages and an extreme diversity of physical types in the islands. The languages of Futuna and Aniwa, for instance, are practically a Tongan one and are unlike almost all other Ni-Vanuatu languages. The recent arrival of Europeans and Chinese into the islands has only added to this linguistic and physical diversity. Very little is known about the history and life of these early settlers. We can gain some idea of what happened, thanks to the work of archaeologists and linguists, though tere are still many gaps in our knowledge. The earliest known settlement is on Malo, which was inhabited at least 3,500 years ago. The people of this settlement were part of a very quickly moving group which did not penetrate inland, but abased itself on the coasts of islands. They cleared areas of forest, grew yams and taro in their gardens, raised pigs and fowls, gathered nuts, collected shellfish and were very skilled fishermen. These ‘Lapita people’, so called after the distinctive kind of pottery that they made, were perhaps the earliest migrants into the Pacific. For one reason or another, some of the Lapita people sailed away in their large canoes to other islands. They traveled eastwards, colonising Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, the Marquesas, the Society Islaes, Hawaii and Easter Island. About 2,500 years ago, other peoples sailed from the Solomons to Efate and Tongoa where they settled. They used stone tools (adzes in particular) and made a certain type of pottery with decorated incisions and applied reliefs. Unlike Lapita, this kind of pottery, known as Mangaasi, is found throughout north and central Vanuatu. It is possible that the makers of Mangaasi pottery sailed on to Fiji and New Caledonia about 2,400 and 1,600 years ago respectively and settled there. It is very difficult to discover when people first settled in southern Vanuatu and where they came from, since no pottery has been found there. It is possible that they were colonised by people from the western Solomon Islands. Tanna was inhabited at least 2,500 years ago, while Aneityum has a long history of complex agricultural systems with wet- and dry-bed terracing for different root crops. About the year 1,200 AD, the culture of the Shepherds and Efate began to change rapidly. The making of pottery, the style of which had changed over the centuries, stopped suddenly and the use of shellfish tools replaced that of stone ones. Some archaeologists have suggested that this was caused by the migration of peoples from the northwestern islands of the Pacific. According to custom stories told in the Shepherds, many years ago there was a very important chief called Roy Mata, who ruled over the people of the Shepherds and the coastal region of Efate. Every five years he held a feast to maintain the peace, during which everyone laid down their arms and celebrated their allegiance to him. When he died, his body was presented to all the villages he had controlled. Then, accompanied by all his followers, it was taken to Retoka Island for burial. On the burial ground, a great feast was held with dances and sacrifices. The close kin of Roy Mata were buried with him. One man and one woman from each of the clans he had governed were voluntarily buried, the men drinking strong kava before going to their grave. After the funeral, the participants left saying that from now on, the burial ground was tabu, and that anyone who went there would die and that nothing would grow over the graves. Jose Garanger, a French archaeologist, listened to these stories and decided to dig for the grave on Retoka. A few feet under the ground, he found a large number of skeletons arranged in pairs and a deeper pit containing five skeletons in front of two large stones. In this pit one male skeleton was placed in the middle with that of a young woman at his feet, a skeleton couple to his left and a male skeleton to his right. Garanger had discovered the grave of Roy Mata and his followers and shown that the custom stories were at least partly true. Using radiocarbon dating, he showed that the burial must have occurred about 1,265 AD. At this time, Tongoa, Ewose, Valea, Buninga and Tongariki were all one island called Kuwae. About 1,475 AD, there was a great volcanic eruption and large movement of the earth. People were killed by falling stones, suffocated by smoke or burned to death in the forests. Saltwater poured into the island, the volcano subsided and Kuwai disappeared, leaving the present group of small islands. Custom stories told in the area speak of this event and of a man, Ti Tongoa Liseiriki, who survived it and went on to become a great hero. The stories say that when he died, he was buried with his wives and many men from his entourage. Ti Tongoa Liseiriki had worn four circular pigs’ tusks, but he gave one of them to another chief when he gained his title. A circle of large shellfishes were left around the collective grave and dressed flag stones were placed on top to mark the site. Garanger listened to these stories as well and dug for the grave. He found everything as it had been described to him, including the skeleton of a man decorated with three circular pigs’ tusks. Custom We simply do not know what gods the early migrants and their descendants believed in, what rituals they performed, what languages they spoke and how they organised themselves into groups. Garanger's excellent work has only given us a small insight. Whatever the custom of the earliest settlers, it must have changed with long residence and contact with other migrants who had settled in different regions. Today there is a remarkable number of languages and cultures in Vanuatu, thought there are many similarities in both throughout the islands. Exactly how or why such linguistic and cultural diversity occurred in Vanuatu is still an unanswered question. What written knowledge we do have of custom comes primarily from the articles and books of anthropologists and interested missionaries. But these writings only cover the last 100 years. The custom briefly outlined in this section, which comes mainly from their material, is not meant to be indicative of what happened before the nineteenth century. It is important to remember, though, that kastom, in this sense, is not merely an odd collection of dances and rituals, but a whole way of life which dictates almost all of one’s actions and provides its own particular interpretation for almost everything that happens. It is complete unto itself. Distinctions used to describe modern Western society may not necessarily be applicable to it. ‘Social orgnisation’, ‘economics’, ‘politics’, ‘communications’, ‘medicine’, ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ may be separable categories in accounts of the French (or the English) way of life, but in custom they are woven together into such an intricate complex whole that our understanding of custom would be gravely distorted if they were to be used in this section. So the apparent lack of structure and the repetition of certain themes, or facts, may make the following slightly more difficult to read, but it does have the virtue of preventing artificial clarity. In brief, we are looking into another world. Men and their ancestors grouped into clans, each of which lived on its own land. This ground, the physical embodiment of the metaphysical link between the past and present member of a clan, both contained the bones of people’s ancestors and provided them with food. Once called another ‘Brother’, because they had both been nurtured by the same soil. It was the clans who owned land, families having individual holdings within the clan’s area. In fact, a clan was its land and man ples, the indissoluble identity of a man and his land, one of the most important concepts governing Ni-Vanuatu life. Men took their women from different clans, yet speaking the same language. Since each language was only spoken in a certain area and by a relatively small number of people, one did not have much choice and did not have to travel far to find a spouse. As a Tannese said to me, “Men were rooted to the soil, but women were like birds who fly above the trees only descending where they see good fruit”. Villages, small isolated anarchic units, consisted of the leaf houses of several families, the men’s club-house, or nakamal, and a ceremonial ground, or nasara. Every year, a part of the forest was cleared and yam, taro, sugarcane and bananas planted. Morel food was always grown than was strictly needed in order to have a surplus for gift-giving and to forestall famine in case of natural disaster. Like the earliest migrants, people also fished, reared pigs, collected shellfish, caught birds and bats, and picked nuts and fruits. People did not want, and satisfied all their needs from what they found growing around them. Houses were made of plaited wild cane walls, lashed together by vines and covered by leaf roofs, which reached down to the ground on both long sides. Figures for rituals were sculpted from vine fibres, mud, ground tree fern pith, coconut milk and breadfruit juice. Headdresses were made from hawks’ and fowls’ feathers; sculptures from tree ferns; colours from clays and leaves; amulets from beads; adze heads from seashells; slit drums from bows and canoes from trees; baskets from plaited coconut leaves. Red clay is still used to make pots by the women of Wusi and the men of Butmas villages, Santo. Clothes were made from plaited fibre, leaves of strips of pandanus. On Ambae, Maewo and most of Pentecost, everyone wore fibre mats. On Santo, women wore bunches of small leaves. On most of the other islands, women wore fibre, mat or grass skirts and men nambas (penis wrappers) from the day they were incised. Polite Victorian observes had great difficulty describing nambas, a small woven mat or leaf spirally wound around the penis, its loose end tucked under a ring of dry coconut bark which hung on the hops. Most contented themselves with mentioning women’s skirts, simply calling the men’s dress ‘indescribable’. E. Vigors, an early visitor to Erromango, cloaked his embarrassment with his education: . . . [the men are] destitute of all clothing si excepias penem quem decorant MODO dissimilis indigenes Tannae ube membrum virile semper erectum tenent, sub singulo ligatum. Vigors, E. Private Journal of a Four Months’ Cruise Through Some of the South Seas Islands in H.M.S. Havannah. MS. Marshall Library, 1850. Some pierced their nasal septa and earlobes, plugging the holes with coral, bone or bamboo. In southwest Malakula, men imitated their mythical ancestors, the Ambat brothers, by piercing their nasal septa and inserting small pieces of wood into their nostrils to that their noses became more acquiline. South Malakulans also had their skills deformed in infancy so they developed steeply sloping foreheads, which extended to the back of their heads. The more pronounced, the more effect the and, thus, the more beautiful it was considered. (Photograph) A man from the bush area inland from Port Resolution, East Tanna, 1895 (De Tolna 1895) Men and women went to their gardens most days, but it was women who did most of the work. Men exercised themselves only when their greater strength was needed, as in the cutting down of a tree or in the performance of more prestigious tasks, such as the growing of kava. In the late afternoon, women accompanied by armed men brought back yams or taro from the gardens. The evening meal was boiled or baked roots. For special occasions, a laplap, or root pudding, was made. In the morning, women grated and pounded roots, making a dough by mixing in coconut milk. The dough was then wrapped in banana leaves, placed over smouldering fire and covered with hot stones and earth for several hours. Once the laplap was cooked, it was cut up and distributed among the members of a family at their evening meal. After eating, the men retired to the nakamal to storian (chat or yarn) through the evening. There was little variation to this routine; people worked almost every day, but at their own pace, relaxing when they wished. November to February was the rainy season – the time of waiting for the crops to grow or for repairing and building houses. Over tall hung the threat of war and attack by the spirits. Essentially, the world was full of forces, magical, spiritual and physical, which had to be differentiated and, so contained, controlled. Crops, for instance, did not simply grow of their own accord; the spirits policing the gardens had to be coaxed and mollified by magicians if there was to be an abundant harvest. Men and women gained strength from different sources of power which were only to be brought together at certain times. Menstruating women produced ’bad blood’ and were strictly prohibited from going to the gardens or cooking food. It was well known that boys became stronger as they grew older, only to have their strength ebb away after marriage. Mana was the name given to a supernatural force, both good and evil. Though impersonal, it was always connected to persons, who manipulated it for their own gain with bones, stones or water. Its presence was realised by its effects; a successful man had to have mana, and a man with mana could never succeed. A world peopled with ghosts is a very different place to the one a modern agnostic lives in. The agnostic rarely thinks of the supernatural and notices no sights of it. But, in custom, the supernatural was not a separable and unusual part of one’s life, but an integral and important aspect of which people had to take daily account. Men were not alone on their islands; they were in contact with a great variety of ghosts, spirits, hobgoblins, dwarfs, devils and familiars. Some were dangerous, other benevolent. It was risky to go outside at night in case a ghost attacked. Food was not eaten after dusk without light; a ghost might touch it and make the eater ill. Parents guarded their children against the jealous ghost of a barren woman. One way of communicating with the ghosts of ancestors was to drink kava (piper mtthysticum). Kava roots were crushed, either by chewing or pounding, at evening ceremonies governed by strict rules. Among the Big Nambas, the men of a clan gathered in their nakamal to chew the root. When thoroughly chewed, it was spat out into a trough made from the dry leaf of a palm tree. A young man squeezed the fibres of the root to extract the potent juice and added water from a suspended bamboo. The chief drank first, sucking up as much as possible in one draught while slurping loudly. The other men drank in turn in strict order of their importance. Anyone who spat or sneezed before the chief had finished drinking was fined, the kava was thrown away near the door inside the nakamal and a fresh trough prepared. Kava has a strong, bitter, earthy taste. It numbs the mouth and induces a feeling of well being and passiveness. You feel an urge to sleep. On standing up, your knees feel weak and you may fall to the ground. But what matter? Lying on the ground is a good position from which to view the stars. As men drank kava together at night, they had time to leisurely storian – to relate the happenings of the day, to gossip, to make plans for the future, to tell custom stories until late. To this day, Tannese men, their kava drunk, sit under a sacred banyan tree and silently listen to the gentle waving of the branches in the light breeze. Kava-drunk, a man dreams vividly. He is visited by his ancestors, telling him a new song or dance, to obey custom properly, what is to happen in the future, or what they want done. Women are absolutely prohibited from drinking kava. Anyone caught doing so was buried alive. Spirits had to be controlled or encouraged and most groups had men, or women, each specializing in a certain kind of magic. There was magic to make women fruitful and a whole district healthy and strong; to make the yams grow; to make the rain come or go away; to make a volcano erupt; to make the wind plow and also to calm it; to make oneself invisible; to make someone else fall in love; and so on. Magic was powerful and, therefore, dangerous, if not handled properly. A magical ceremony was performed by someone powerful who observed many tabus, checked that other spirits were not attacking him and carried out the performance exactly and accurately lest disaster follow. Special stones, the homes of certain potent spirits, were a common medium in these ceremonies. Spirits do not change over time, individual ones living as long as people’s memories, so it is not surprising that they reside in stones. In the middle of everything in the bush, which grows and dies, only stone does not change under the eye of man. Magic could be used for good, but also for bad. Anyone who had suffered an injury, whose child had died, or whose crops had failed, claimed that sorcery was being used against him. A man fell ill or went ‘mad’, because a spirit had entered him and given him the illness. Spirits might attack for a number of reasons: punishment for someone’s inobservance of custom or breaking of a tabu; maliciousness; following of the directions of a sorcerer. The ill person went to someone powerful in dealing with spirits, who performed a special ceremony to force the illness or resident spirit to leave the patient’s body. Sometimes, he succeeded and his patient recovered. Other times, the spirit attacking was more powerful than the spirit called upon and death ensued. Minor illnesses, though, such as colds, coughs and fevers, were not thought to be the result of hostile spirits. They were cured with custom medicines, special brews from plants. The performance of a major ritual must have been a grand spectacle. As musicians beat out elaborate rhythms on long wooden slit-drums, other, brilliantly painted, came on in formation and danced, stamping their feet to make the jingling of their anklet bunches of empty nuts resound across the nasara. ‘After the sweaty dancers had walked off and the dust settled, prized pigs, squealing madly, were dragged on in their hundreds. Clubbed to death, they were cut up and the pork distributed. Blood had flowed, the dancing could begin again and would continue for many hours. When a Big Nambas chief performed an important pig killing, men painted dark black and bright orange, and with tall headdresses of black hawks’ feathers, danced in four long ranks. One man, acing a hawk, had white, red and grey bands painted across his whole body, a tall feather head dress, long white feathers on his fingernails and a large white nambas. Waving his outstretched arms from side to side, he danced nimbly through the ranks of dancers. ‘Art’, as such, did not exist in custom. People carved, decorated or made special objects for particular rituals. Once the rituals had been performed, the objects had no further use and could be thrown away or left to rot. The north Ambrymese still carve tall ornate slit-drums with intricate dog-tooth patterns and abstract facial designs. On Tanna, kweriya poles up to three metres high covered in alternating bands of black and white fowls’ feathers surmounted by sacred hawks’ feathers are made for yeremanu to carry in toka dances. To this day, the custom followers of the south Malakulan bush manufacture a large number of gorgeous objects for their rituals – representations of the sun and the moon; special plaques for circumcision ceremonies; masks, spears and sculptures for each grade of the nimangki; hand held figures for ‘puppet shows’; life size models of recently dead men, called rambaramp. When a man dies, his skull is removed, over-modeled and set on a figure of palm and bamboo. The rambaramp, as tall and big as the man it represents, is painted and decorated with bead arm bands, turtle shell armlets and boars’ circular tusks. Made in the namakal, it is carried out to the nasara, where the weeping widows of the dead man sit at its feet and fondly stroke it before its return to the nakamal. There it is left to decay. Once the clay has fallen away from the face, the skull is taken out and thrown down into the clan ossuary. (Photograph) A nimangki ceremony at Southwest Bay, Malakula 1917. (note the muskets) (Martin Johnson) In the northern islands, the right to perform a certain song, dance, slit-drum rhythm, or part of a ritual, could be sold to another village. Since people often received new variations in dreams, there was a constant, rapid change in the form of rituals as new variations were produced and other older ones sold to neighbouring villages. What was bought, however, was not always used in the same way by the purchasers, as it had been by the sellers. Songs, for instance, were often bought by people who did not understand the meaning of the words that they were singing. With copyright so important, people regarded anthropologists with suspicion and distrust; learning custom without providing any obvious benefit in return, they were considered thieves and to dealt with as such. The more innovative the ritual, the more prestige the holder of it gained. A big men would jealously guard his authority to made sure that up-and-coming young men did not stage ceremonies considered beyond their station. In the 1910s, William Nahehe, a West Oban, proposed for his nimangki, ‘making the earth and the sky copulate on the same day’ by killing one hundred animals (boars, sows, castrated pigs, fowls, pigeons, bats, rats, fish, eels and dogs) instead of the ten tusked boars decreed by custom. Village leaders had sorcery made against him and in the next dysentery epidemic he died. Only men already influential in their community could host such radical departures from custom. In the 1950s, Eric Tari, an important West Oban, held his pig killing at night. Wearing a set of European clothes underneath his traditional regalia, he drove around the nasara (starkly illuminated by high-pressure lamps) in an ex-US Army jeep, leaning over the side to club his pigs to death. Already an influential person, no one made sorcery against him. In all the passages of life marked by rituals (birth, initiation, grade-taking and death), people called on the ghosts of their ancestors to observe the ceremonies and be propitiated. Ghosts watched to check that custom was obeyed. If it was not, they might injure their living descendants. A boy was initiated into manhood by the cutting of all, or part, of his foreskin with the sharpened edge of a piece of bamboo. Custom medicines were then applied to the wound. On Vao, the young men, their penises freshly incised, entered a specially built hut in which they were secluded for the next thirty days. Cared for by older men, they were frightened by the hoaxes of others and made to undergo severe ordeals. Ashes and earth were kicked in their faces and fresh wounds. A man hid in the roof and, pretending to be a ghost, called out that he would have homosexual intercourse with the young men. On one night, a crowd of painted men, looking like ghosts, burst into the hut and tried to get at the young men. An arduous initiation, perhaps, but the boy who did not finish it could not marry. It is difficult to speak of ‘tribes’ in Vanuatu since there does not appear to have been social and political organisation on such a large scale. A clan may have formed a village or two, or have lived in several villages alongside other clans, but there were no large villages. No one, except for the hereditary chiefs of the Big Nambas, north Malakula, the Shepherds, Mele and Vila Islands, held absolute authority which could be passed onto the son. Various ‘big man’ held positions of authority and acquired such prestige, but no individual voice was binding on everyone else. On Tanna, for instance, the yeremanu, or big man, was listened to respectfully by others, but in times of war, the yani en dete, or ‘war chief’, became more important. Men who held the right to perform certain kinds of magic rose in importance when there was need for them to use their special knowledge. These various Tannese posts were hereditary and almost every other man held at least one. In northern Vanuatu, the way to acquire prestige, power and authority was provided by the graded society, or nimangki. Men ascended through a series of grades by buying the rights to enter each grade from the men of his group who had already achieved it. The number of grades varied from place to place and from time to time: on Ambae, there were only four; in Southwest Bay, there were as many as 35. Women had their own nimangki, though they were not so elaborate or complex as the men’s versions. In the taking of each grade, a man had to sacrifice pigs, their number and value increasing as he took higher and higher grades. On the Sakau peninsula, Santo, inter-sex pigs, those which had both male and female body parts, were valued highly. On Ambae, Malakula, Ambrym, Pentecost and other parts of Santo, pigs with circular tusks were reared and sacrificed. By removing two of the upper teeth of the boar, two of his lower teeth were able to grow in a spiral fashion without any resistance. When the tusk had completed an almost full circle, it re-entered the lower jawbone and slowly grew through it until it came out and began a second circle. The growth, so very painful to the boar, made it very difficult for him to eat. Consequently, these pigs were fed by hand by the owners’ wives and tethered to posts so that they did not have a chance to break their tusks while wandering through the bush. Boars with tusks, which described more than a full circle, were especially prized. But this required many years of effort. Taking of any of the higher grades demanded the sacrifice of more pigs than any one man had. A man indebted himself to others by borrowing their pigs for sacrifice in the ritual. Sometime later his creditors approached him because they wanted pigs for sacrifice themselves. He gave them some of the pigs he had reared in the meantime, and borrowed yet more from others to cancel his original debts. He also lent some of his pigs to others whenever he was not immediately preparing to take an even higher grade himself. So the only men who reached the very highest grades were those most capable at exploiting this complex interplay of debts and loans to their own advantage. A man who had reached the higher grades acquired much prestige and gained many privileges. But to become a big man, or influential person, a man had also to have the appropriate personal qualities. A bad or ineffectual character was not granted authority by the rest of his group. It was easier for a big man to acquire more wives who were given to his sons so they could take low grades. When the old man died, his sons inherited all his pigs, giving them a greater chance than the other of reaching the higher grades themselves and so leading to the rise of ‘dominant’ or ‘important’ families in certain areas. The nimangki, though the most important, was only one society among many others in the northern islands. In many places, there were one, two or more, secret societies which only men could join. Again, women had their own, less elaborate versions. Entrance to a society meant undergoing a series of arduous ordeals, after which the novice was shown the secrets of the particular society he had joined: how to make their special masks; how to perform their special dance; how to make strange sounds from their own musical instruments. The main benefit of joining seems to have been social; a man had to be a member of at least one society as well as being a holder of high grade if he wished to be respected by his fellows. Some of the societies, especially on Ambrym, were sorcerers’ covens, entrance to which was gained by killing and eating a man. At the societies’ ceremonies, men covered themselves in long grass-skirts and wore large colourful peaked masks. Then they ran through the bush and villages striking anyone they met on their path. Women and children, scared by the sound of the music coming from the bush and terrified by the sight of the masked men they thought were ghosts, fled into the bush or hid in their houses. The nakamal was divided into areas each with its own tabu fire, at which men of the same grade cooked their food, moving from one fire to another as they ascended through the hierarchy of grades. The fires were tabu because it was forbidden to eat at the fire of a higher grade and because women were absolutely prohibited from cooking on or eating at any of them. Sexually and socially segregated, a man could retain the power he had gained and accumulated by the taking of grades. Symbolically, ascension through the grades was seen as a man climbing higher and higher until, at the highest grade, he became like a hawk, that high-flying bird living in the sky-world of the gods, soaring above others yet able to swoop suddenly and kill. A holder of the highest grade was so powerful and sacred that he talked to the dead and was known as a ‘living ancestor’. His grade promised him a place of honour in the after-life and his closeness to the dead was one reason why he was respected so much by others. (Photograph) Mask used in funerary rituals, south Malakulan interior (K. Huffman 1974) Relations with other members of your clan were supposed to be always friendly. But relations with the people from another clan or a nearby village were often troubled. People in the next valley, who most likely spoke a different dialect, if not a different language, were regarded with permanent suspicion and antagonism. To have wandered unannounced into their territory was to invite death. Basically, the people (and ghosts) with whom a man exchanged gifts and other goods were his friends. Those people he did not share with were his enemies. If the exchange stopped, so did the friendship. This gift giving was supported by the obligation to return in kind eventually by the receiver. If one person, A, gave another, B, the pigs in a ceremony, then B was obliged to give the same number back in a future ceremony. Then A would be obliged to repay B at some other, future ceremony. And so the bond between two people was kept up. If B wished to gain prestige, then he gave A ten more pigs. In order not to lose face, A had to repay B with an even greater number of pigs at a later date, so setting up a system of competitive prestige, leading to the eventual ruin of one and the triumph of the other. Many exchanges between people or villages during feasts or ceremonies took this form. With the killing of a very large number of pigs, it was possible to give so many pigs to one person, or village, that it was impossible for him, or them, to repay. Causing guests to lose so much face at an inter-village event could easily be used as the excuse for starting a war, though many more trivial reasons were often used. Most villages waged war on others. These ‘wars’ were not set battles with two groups of warriors attacking one another in formation but surprise ambushes by the men of one village against the people of another. The intention was not to kill as many men as possible, but one man. If successful, the attackers carried the corpse of the dead man back to their village and cut it up. Pieces, an arm or a leg, were sent to friendly villages. Men sang and danced, the human meat was cooked in a special laplap and most men of the village ate a small part. Women did not eat any of it. Having been insulted in such a fashion, the enemy village prepared for a counter attack to avenge its loss. The villages that had received a portion of the body from the attackers also prepared to fight other villages since they had to repay the gift of human meat in kind. These processes of attack counter attack, plus the obligation to reciprocate any gift, meant that, theoretically, wars never stopped. However, there were ways of making a peace. When two Big Nambas villages wished to end their bloody quarrels, the chiefs of both met at the boundary of their territories and arranged a date when one of them would visit the nasara of the other. On the appointed day, the visiting chief gave several pigs to his host and drank kava with him. At a later date, the visiting chief played host, in turn, accepted several pigs and shared his kava. This was meant to lead to a lasting peace. Generally the most binding peace was made by the exchange of women. When a village was not at war, its inhabitants could trade, exchange women and invite other villages to attend its rituals. In the toka feast on Tanna, for instance, all the people of an entire region came together to exchange food and pigs, and to dance and sing through the night. Trading links were set up between a number of villages so that items rare or in demand in one region could be relayed from a distant area where they were more plentiful. The Big Nambas made the purple dye for their nambas by crushing leaves of the nese plant which grew only on Tangoa island, south Santo. So Tangoans traded the leaves for pigs with the people of Malo; they exchanged them for shell-money with the people of Matanvat village who traded them for pigs with tusks that had completed a full circle with the Big Nambas. People voyaged to other islands in large sailing canoes made from the hollowed-out trunk of a tree with a single outrigger. But these canoes, able to carry 30 people, could only land at beaches near friendly villages. For shorter trips, much smaller canoes, able to carry three, or four, people were used. Connections were also kept up with island communities living outside Vanuatu. The Tannese and the Aneityumese occasionally traded with New Caledonians and people from the loyalty Islands. In times of earthquake, hurricane or other natural disaster, the Tikopians who lived on a small island to the north of the Torres had the traditional right to live temporarily on one of the northern Banks Islands. According to a widespread custom story, the first men and women did not die. When old and their skin wrinkled and tired, they went to a nearby river where the running water gently pulled their old skin off, so that they emerged young again. But once, the daughter of an old woman did not recognise her mother when she returned from the river as a young woman. Her mother tried to persuade her that it was only her skin that had changed. She was still the same person. But the daughter would have none of this; she wanted her mother back and began to cry. Full of regret her mother returned to the river, found her old skin and put it back on. Her daughter saw her when she came back and was delighted that her mother had reappeared. But her mother was old again and old people die, which she did eventually. So it is from that day that the people of these islands lost their immortality and die. Only some people had a place in the after-life. On Vao men who had held only low grades spent the life after death in a dreary cave full of small running sparks under the ground on the east Malakulan coast. Men with high grades were ferried over to Ambrym after death, climbed the volcano and joined the other ghosts there, who danced all night. At dawn their bodies fell apart, only to reassemble every sunset and continue their revelry. The ritual commemorating a man’s death was performed either just before he died or shortly afterwards. Ceremonial feasts were then held at intervals after the death by the dead man’s kin. Hold partly to placate any bad feelings his ghost might have to the living, food was carefully left aside at such feasts for him to eat. The ghost of a recently dead person was far more dangerous than those of people who had died a long time before. When dealing with ghosts one had always to be careful. * * * Was life in Vanuatu idyllic, or brutal and short, for its inhabitants? Certainly, the length of their lives was short; many children died before reaching puberty. Infanticide and euthanasia were practised and widows strangled. Suicides were not unknown, especially by women. The breaker of a tabu was frequently put to death. Men were killed in war and their bodies cooked and eaten. Living in small villages where they knew everyone as kin or in-laws, not venturing far, people followed and exploited the rules of custom to protect and advance themselves. Spirits, good and bad, lay everywhere, while over the bill, from the next valley, came wives, other trade-goods and the enemy. As people often say, “The custom road is very hard; very, very strict. It allows no chance of escape; if I make a mistake then I will die. But custom is strong. If you are careful, loyal to its rules, then you will be strong. Custom will protect you”. To an old man, the ‘custom road’ must have seemed perfectly satisfactory. He had prestige, power and authority; more than one wife; did not need to work; and had guaranteed a good place for himself in the afterlife. Others deferred to his opinion and listened to his comments respectfully – an enviable position. But to you men, women and children, the ‘custom road’ cannot have been so pleasant. Young men had decades of constant bargaining and hard work to look forward to. They struggled to obtain enough pigs to sacrifice for each grade of the nimangki and could not take a wife until many years after reaching puberty. They did, however, have the consolation that they too would become old men in the fullness of time. Women did not have this consolation and had to spend their time performing tedious tasks: feeding the prized pigs, making clothes, cooking and doing the light work in the gardens. Married away from their villages, they spent most of their lives among people who knew them only as the wife of one of their relations. Among the Big Nambas, in particular, women were held in low esteem and were not as ‘strong’ as men. Like pigs with circling tusks they were considered as part of a man’s wealth, their possession adding to his prestige. Thus it is not surprising that it was young men and women who left the islands when they were later provided with the opportunity. Children, who had no such opportunities, died in great numbers. Only a small percentage reached adulthood. The Earliest White Explorers It was into this world that Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, one of the last great Spanish explores, sailed with 130 men, six Catholic priests and three ships in May 1606. Anchoring in Big Bay, he thought he had discovered the edge of the long sought ‘southern continent’, which he named ‘Terra Austrialis del Espiritu Santo’. Initial contacts were not good; one sailor shot a Ni-Vanuatu, cut his head and foot off, and hanged the body from a tree for all to see. The men of Big Bay tried to limit the advance of the new arrivals, but fled under attack from musket fire. Quiros built a wooden settlement, ‘Nouva Jerusalem’, held a day of jubilant celebration to commemorate the colonisation of the continent for Spain, granted many knighthoods and appointed ministers and officers to administer the new ‘city’. One of the priests thought Quiros was getting carried away with his own excitement: It was a marvellous thing to see such a diversity of knights, for truly nothing like it has been seen since the world began, because there were sailor-knights, grummet-knights, ships’ page-knights, mulatto-knights and Indian knights and knights who were just knight-knights. Kelly, C. (ed and trans). La Austrailia del Espiritu Santo . . . p. 223. I must thank Dorothy Shineburg for bringing this paragraph to my attention. Quiros’ difficulties grew. His men made many forays into the bush, shot and killed several people, stole pigs and food, kidnapped three boys and were met by continued and increasing local resistance. Fifty days of disillusion and little success later, Quiros’ men sailed his ships out of Big Bay, and Vanuatu, while he slept in his cabin. They returned to Europe with stories of a new continent they had discovered. The people of Big Bay were left with the memory of white-skinned men in strange clothes, who traveled in floating villages, killed others in a mysterious way and stole pigs, boys and food. One hundred sixty-two years passed. People continued with their tasks, just as before. And then, in May 1768, a fleeting visit was made by Louis Antoine de Bougainville with two ships under his command. Coming from the east, he sailed along side two thin islands which he named Pentecôst and Aurora (now called Maewo), landed briefly on Ambae and Malo, and went on to finally reach Austsralia, where he could explode Quiros’ story about the existence of a south Pacific continent. Six years later, the full extent of the islands was discovered by the white man, Captain James Cook, in HMS Resolution, navigated around all the major islands, sprinkling names as he went. Some are still used today—for instance, Tanna, Malakula, the Maskelyne Islands, the Shepherds. Others are not; Hinchinbrooke Island is now known as Nguna. Cook came only to explore, not to conquer. When he landed on a new beach, he sought out the ‘chief’ and traded cloth and medals for fresh water, yams, coconuts and pigs. To the Ni-Vanuatu, Cook and his men, like previous explorers, were the reincarnation of their ancestors. They could not be ordinary men as their skins were not black and their ship came from no known part of the world. They had to be the dead, returning in bodily form, sailing in floating villages which had been manufactured out at sea. When he landed at Port Sandwich, Malakula, on July 22, 1774, several canoes came along-side his ship. Cook had one man come aboard ‘followed by more than we desired . . . . so that not only our decks but rigging was presently filled with them ..... repeating the word Tomarr or Tomarro continually’. (Temar means ancestor in the language of southeast Malakula). Cook sailed onto Tanna stopping in Port Resolution for two weeks. The Tannese greeted him but did not seem very surprised. After all, when a long-awaited quest arrives, the host is pleased but not astounded. Cook, not allowed to visit the volcano, paid for wood and food and finally sailed away on August 19th. There is a large rock still out in the bay of Port Resolution which the Tannese call ston belong Kuk. His men shot a Tannese in one tight moment. Years later, a visiting missionary was told the man had been killed because he was practising sorcery against an ailing big man that Cook had met. Cook sailed past Erromango, Malakula and Santo, leaving the group on August 31st, having spent a total of a month and a half there. In his Journal, he named the islands ‘the New Hebrides’, but did not give a reason why. 1825 - 1865 The first white arrivals, Quiros, Bougainville and Cook, had come in search of ‘unknown’ lands. Their successors, the whalers, sandal-wooders and missionaries, had very different interests. Thanks to their actions they managed to dispel the notion that white men were returning ancestors. By the 1860s, all the islands of the group had been visited. All Ni-Vanuatu, except those living deep in the interior of the larger islands, had grown used to the idea, if not the continued presence, of white men. People had been taught the value of iron tools and muskets; and Vanuatu had gained a popular reputation as a collection of fever-ridden islands inhabited by unfriendly cannibals. The Sandalwood Trade Almost all of this account is based on Dorothy Shineburg’s book, They Came for Sandawood. Chinese Buddhists have always valued sandalwood, which they burn in their religious ceremonies for the sake of its sweet smell. But the wood does not grow in large quantities in China and Australian traders were keen to find forests of it for export to China so as to offset their enormous imports of Chinese tea. By 1825, most of the sandalwood forests of the north and east Pacific had already been depleted. American sailors had discovered the abundance of the wood on Erromango but, mysteriously, they kept the secret to themselves and did not exploit their discovery. However, it was in that year that Peter Dillon, the great trader-cum-explorer, sailed through Vanuatu searching for ‘unknown’ sandalwood forests. He did not find any on Tanna but met one man there who had a stick of the wood wedged under his armlet. The man said that he had traded it from Erromangans. Dillon quickly lifted anchor and sailed north. But the Erromangans refused to work for Dillon and did not want to trade; not knowing the value of iron axes and knives, they were not interested in them. Dillon sailed away without any wood. The sandalwood trade, inauspiciously perhaps, had started. Sandalwooding has often been characterized as a bloody business, run by ruthless men who treated islanders badly, committed atrocities, and pursued the prospect of large profits at the expense of humane ideals. The captain of a sandalwooder in the nineteenth century had to be brave and daring, though this did not necessarily prevent him from also being ruthless and foolhardy. Most ships were small, unsafe and unfit for almost any other kind of trade. Crews had passions for both alcohol and island women. They were unruly and brutal, and considered themselves beyond law and order once out of Australian waters. But it is both contrary to the evidence and insulting to the islanders to assume that they were passive partners in the sandalwood trade, allowing the Europeans to steal their wood and fire on them at will. When a trader went ashore with a few of his crew, the islanders held the tactical advantage: there were many more of them, they knew the lay of the land and could retreat into the bush. A man with a musket might have been able to shoot from a distance, but it took 20 seconds to reload and, in an ambush, every second was important. The trade was marked by a long series of deaths and killings. Atrocities were committed, but not always by traders; missionaries now resident in the islands, trended to seize on one or two sell-known incidents and claim that they were indicative of the trade in order to arouse the public. One expedition remained particularly infamous; three ships, one American and two Australian, under the command of Captain Samuel Henry, sailed to Dillon’s Bay on Erromango, from Tahiti carrying 67 Tongans. While cutting and loading the sandalwood one of the Tongans shot an Erromangan, an alleged thief. Everyone was quickly taken back on board and the expedition proceeded to northwest Efate where the Tongans began to collect sandalwood after agreement had been reached with the Efatese. Quarrels started and the Tongans shot several Efatese. The remaining islanders fled to caves, chased by the Tongans who made fires at the entrances to the caves, suffocating the men inside to death. Estimates vary considerably, but at least 68 Efatese died in this atrocity. While the white men had not come ashore with the Tongans, they had supplied them with guns. There were also a number of massacres of white men by islanders. In 1847, the British Soverign was wrecked off Efate. The crew of 20 escaped in a small boat and made for the shore where they were welcomed by the people of Eratap. The welcome was rather different to the one they expected; most of the crew were killed and eaten, only two of them managing to escape. Massacres may have started because of any one of a thousand different motives. We can only guess at what some of them were: revenge for earlier killings by other white men; desire for European goods (a desire created by Europeans); the belief that the white men were sorcerers who had caused the epidemics, which were beginning in the islands; traditional fear and hostility towards strangers; simple misunderstanding. Missionaries tried to influence the English-speaking public to oppose the sandalwood trade. Sometimes sandalwooders helped missionaries, but most objected strongly to the trade and claimed that the traders were committing atrocities. Both traders and missionaries appealed to the Royal Navy for assistance and protection. H.M.S. Havannah was the first warship to visit Vanuatu. Under the command of Captain Erskine whose brief was the investigation of incidents apparently caused by the sandalwood trade, she sailed through the islands in 1849. As a result of his voyage, British warships annually visited the islands during the 1850s; but these visits did not satisfy anyone; missionaries, traders, islanders, all complained. It was simply very bad business for a regular trader to treat or cheat the islanders badly, though that would not have prevented a greedy entrepreneur with a short-term interest in the trade from indulging in skulduggery and committing acts of violence. To obtain sufficient wood, a captain had to make friends with local men of authority and come to an agreement with them over the price of the wood to be collected. However, both sides indulged in trickery, some traders sailed away with a full cargo without paying; sometimes islanders gathered sandalwood, piled it on the beach, sold it to the trader and then stole it before it was loaded, so that the same cut wood could be sold several times. Mixing hollow logs with the sandalwood was also not unknown. Trading sandalwood was a very risky business. Even when the trader had overcome all the difficulties and sailed away with a full cargo, it was not certain that a good price could be had for it in China. Large profits were only made occasionally. Towns and Paddon, businessmen both with a large interest in the trade, prospered, but it was not a particularly profitable business compared to other opportunities of its time. Most of the myths propagated about the enormous profits made by sandalwooders are simply not true. For years after Dillon’s voyage, Captain Samuel Henry landed a workforce of 110 Tongans at Dillon’s Bay. But the Erromangans stayed away from the new arrivals, remained uninterested in trade, and only cooperated with the Tongans when they wanted help in their wars. After a month of such discouragements, Henry’s ship returned to Hawaii with a disappointed and bewildered crew. In Honolulu, the news of a Pacific island rich in sandalwood caused a rush of activity. Within four months, four ships carrying a total of 600 Polynesians left Hawaii and sailed to Erromango. Once again, difficulties arose: war broke out between the Polynesians and the Erromangans; the former were stricken with fever, many died. Before losses became any greater, the remaining Polynesians and the sandalwood they had collected were taken on board the ships which returned to Honolulu. This initial flurry of sandalwooding did not last long; the islands and occupants of Vanuatu had proved inhospitable and a drop in the price of sandalwood on the Chinese market removed any further incentive. Trade revived in 1842. But the consequent, increased export of sandalwood glutted the Chinese market, the price dropped and there was little sandalwooding in Vanuatu for the next two years. Up until this time, the white men involved in the trade had been speculators without any exclusive interest in sandalwooding. They gathered and sold beche-de-mer (the sea cucumber after which Vanuatu pidgin is named), pearls, tortoise-shell, whales, or sandalwood according to the vagaries of the market. When the price of one item was low, they speculated in something else. But, in 1843, Captain James Paddon entered the sandalwood trade and was soon followed by Robert Towns. Both men had diverse business interests and regarded their commitment to the trade as a long-term one. Paddon, the first white settler in Vanuatu, built a station on Inyeug island in Anelghowhat harbour, southwest Aneityum. From there he directed his sandalwooding operations, reared cattle which he had brought out from Sydney, and sold supplies to visiting whalers and traders. Both firm and honest, Paddon was respected and well-liked; Bishop Selwyn of the Melanesian Mission called him his mentor and followed his advice on how best to deal with the islanders. When priests of the Catholic Marist Mission and the Rev. John Geddie arrived on Aneityum, Paddon received both well and helped them to establish themselves on the island. Despite insecure financial support, Paddon survived and looked as though he was to become very prosperous. But within two years of basing himself on Aneityum, he was faced with competition. Robert Towns began buying ships and sending them to Vanuatu to collect sandalwood. His first venture into the trade was an extraordinary success. His ship, the Elizabeth, carrying 100 tons of Erromangan sandalwood, reached China at a time in 1845 when good wood was being bought for £50 a ton. While he remained a major participant in the trade for the next 20 years, Towns never equaled this singular success. A new boom in the trade occurred in 1846, which lasted for the next three years. In 1847, more ships than ever before visited Vanuatu for sandalwood. But their captains had to contend with the operations from the various newly build stations. Competition became fierce. Erromango, with the largest forests and the best sandalwood, remained the most popular island for traders, though Efate and Aneityum were also visited for their wood. Yet again, the boom was followed by a drop in price. By the end of 1849, sandalwood was selling on the Chinese market for £8 to £10 at the most. So many traders left for California in USA, where gold had recently been discovered, that from 1850 to 1852, Paddon and Towns were the only traders in the islands. Sandalwood was gradually becoming more and more difficult to find. Aneityum had been completely stripped; the forests of Efate had been greatly depleted; only Erromango still had large amounts of wood, but it was not easy to obtain. And then, in 1853, Paddon discovered sandalwood forests on Santo. Within a few months, his secret was out and in the following years the sandalwood trade regained some of its former activity as ships made their way to Santo’s shores. Australians had thought of the trade as romantic adventure but now it became far more businesslike. Henry Burns, one of the founders of Burns Philp, made contracts with several captains to collect sandalwood for him. Paddon had quarreled with Geddie, left Aneityum and by 1853 had gained many other business interests. Towns suggested that Paddon and another European should take over his sandalwood stations and ships, while he acted as financier and Sydney agent for them. Paddon agreed. Towns then made similar contracts with other Englishmen and set them up in the sandalwood trade. A model capitalist, Towns profited handsomely from the contracts while his contractees fell into his debt. Sending large ships out from Sydney on speculative voyages had become expensive and risky. Instead, Ni-Vanuatu were recruited and paid to cut and gather sandalwood, though missionaries tried to dissuade them from working at the trade. The wood was transported by a small ship to a station where it was processed. Life on the stations was hard for Ni-Vanuatu labourers; managers were often cruel and harsh. Away from their gardens, the labourers were dependent on their managers for food. If supplies ran low, some labourers sometimes stole from local gardens. Theft carried the risk of retaliation by the owners of the gardens and several labourers were attacked and killed by other Ni-Vanuatu while working on stations. Ni-Vanuatu preferred to work on ships, employment that had been open to them since the 1850s, when a shortage of white labour led many captains to recruit islanders as crew. They were found to be natural seamen and the Tannese in particular gained a high reputation: [they] seem to have a natural gift for pulling; they have a long sweeping stroke, and pull with a dash and vigour that would warm the heart of a ‘Thames waterman’, reaching well forward and picking up their stroke from the start . . . . I think the four natives I had in my boat would have showed creditably in any Thames regatta, and in the fearful heart of a South Sea calm would have astonished a few very good English Amateurs. Howe, K. R. Tourists, Sailors and Labourers: A survey of Early Labour Recruiting in Southern Melanesia. JPH, 13, 1-2 (1978). Islanders had begun to realise that the demand for sandalwood exceeded the supply and that they could raise the prices to traders, which they did. Profits fell. By 1865, the cost of collecting the remaining sandalwood was thought to be as much as it could be sold for. Little more wood was taken from Santo and the trade decreased into insignificance, though a small quantity is produced and exported to this day. Towns went on to become founder of Townsville Queensland and a life member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, Australia. Paddon, now married to a Tannese woman, left Vanuatu in 1854 for New Caledonia, where he was to play a very important role in the French colonisation of that island. The trade may have finished to all intents and purposes by 1865, but its effects were to last much longer. It had been very difficult at first to trade with the people of the islands. Since there were no chiefs in the islands, sandalwooders had to negotiate with a number of different big men. However, with villages traditionally hostile to one another, entering into an agreement with the people of one village was often seen as an alliance between the ship’s crew and the men of that village. So anyone at war with that village would also attack the ship’s crew. Once people had been taught to appreciate European goods, sandalwooders could trade with them. Brought up in an atmosphere of continual bargaining, Ni-Vanuatu made sure that they were not done down over any deal and as the trade progressed, they became more and more discriminating. After a while, only items of high quality could be traded. As Dorothy Shineburg has shown, there was a well-marked evolution in the islanders’ demands: at first, hoop- or bar-iron, metal fishhooks, beads, cheap ironmongery (tomahawks, adzes, iron posts), glass bottles and calico were traded for sandalwood. Once the demand for these had been met, a wider range of metal tools (scissors, knives, saws), as well as adzes and adzes, cloth and drapery of all sorts were used for trade. Stick tobacco and clay pipes were introduced later. People rapidly acquired a taste for tobacco—to a sandalwooder, the perfect article of trade, since it was relatively cheap and did not last. Unlike an axe, tobacco can only be used once. Muskets and powder were only introduced by traders as items of exchange in the later days of the trade because of their high cost. It was only when people’s price for sandalwood rose greatly that it became profitable to trade in them. (Photograph) A man from the Lenakel area, West Tanna, (E.K. Langidge) Traders did not only create new demands, but they also exploited old ones. Tortoise-shell bought from Solomon Islanders was exchanged for pigs on Tanna which were then traded with the men of Santo for sandalwood. Nunpuri shell, a form of custom money, was collected in New Caledonia and exchanged with the Erromangans. One or two ships also exploited long-standing enmity between certain islands. In 1848, the crew of the Terror kidnapped men from Erromango and sold them to their traditional enemies, the Tannese, for sandalwood. Tannese men, in turn, were kidnapped and sold to the Erromangans. The introduction of European materials into the villages did not cause a change in what Ni-Vanuatu did, but how much time they spent doing different things. Most tasks could now be completed in a much shorter time; it is far easier and quicker to chop down a tree with an iron axe than a stone one. Men spent less time working in the gardens, building houses and hollowing out logs for canoes or slit-drums. Their new freedom from the burden of traditional day-to-day tasks allowed them to spend more time on disputes, politics, inter- village wars and rituals. On Tanna, there was a change in the balance of power, the coastal peoples, now armed with muskets, becoming much stronger than the inland ones. Women also benefited from European goods, though not to the extent that men did. Iron pots made it possible to boil food, instead of only baking in earth ovens, and the introduction of machine woven cloth saved them from having to spend time making bark and leaf clothes. People’s knowledge of the world was greatly increased by the trade, ships taking men on board and carrying them to places they had never seen before, and not just to other islands of Vanuatu. In 1847, 65 Ni-Vanuatu were taken to New South Wales to work on a grazier’s property. They did not like the work and, nambas-clad, walked the 400 miles back to their manager’s office in George Street, Sydney—to the horror and consternation of Sydney-siders. To everyone’s relief, their manager booked their passage home as soon as possible. The Coming of Christianity In the first quaerter of the nineteenth century, the London Missionary Society (LMS) had managed to convert most of the eastern Pacific’s people to Christianity. No great difficulties were encountered there and the LMS hoped to convert Melanesians just as easily. They were to be disappointed, and the first 25 years of missionary endeavour in Vanuatu is a tale of tragedy, martyrdom and clergical persistence. John Williams was the first missionary to Vanuatu in modern times. Six Catholic priests had landed in Big Bay with Quiros over two centuries before, but like the rest of his crew, they had not remained. Williams sailed in the LMS ship, the Camden with his assistant, Harris, and three Samoan teachers. They teachers were landed at Port Resolution, on Tanna, on November 18th 1839 and the Camdon then sailed on to Erromango. The ship dropped anchor and a small boat carrying Williams and Harris was rowed towards the shore, where a crowd of interested people were already gathering. The two missionaries went ashore to greet them, but a misunderstanding must have arisen, for within minutes the Erromangans became hostile. The two white men ran back, but were struck down by bows and arrows. They did not reach their boat. Vanuatu had gained its first martyrs. The Australian and English press reacted with horror. The churches, instead of withdrawing, redoubled their effort and changed their tactics. Rather than having white missionaries open the way, Polynesian teachers were sent. Once they had become established and begun to spread the Christian word, they were to be joined by their white brethren. The churches thought Polynesians would have less difficulty than white missionaries and would be more immediately acceptable to Melanesians. But Polynesian languages are very different from Melanesian ones and Pidgin had yet to be invented, so communication between islanders and teachers was very difficult. Moreover, the teachers, unprepared for the colder climate, had not been provided with sufficient clothing or shelter. To the surprise of the white missionaries, the Polynesians were not immune to fever and many died of malaria. Many islanders did not respect the teachers because they had neither the strangeness of white men nor any position in Vanuatu society. It has also been argued that the churches had not taught them what they needed to know for the job that they were sent out to do. There is no doubt, however, of their bravery and it is sad that their contribution to the conversion of Vanuatu to Christianity has been so long neglected. Six months after the deaths the Camden returned to Erromango and two Samoan teachers landed. On its return, two years later, the white missionaries found them very worried since they had been held captive by the Erromangans. They were taken back on board, and Christianity did not return to Erromango for ten years. Teachers also landed on Futuna, Aniwa, Aneityum and Tanna. Then on July 1st 1842, two LMS missionaries, Revs. G. Turner and H. Nisbet, joined the teachers already based at Port Resolution. They set to work, built houses for themselves and began to learn the language. By October, they had started a school for adults. However, few Tannese attended regularly and the class was once suspended when the pupils went of to fight a war. With Pidgin still so rudimentary, Turner and Nisbet tried to learn Tannese as quickly as possible, and they were soon able to write short services and prayers in it. But satisfactory translation remained difficult; Tannese words could not be found for central concepts such as original sin, repentance and redemption. Words from Hebrew were used for the deities. ‘Ghosts’, ‘spirits’ and ‘sacred’ were translated into the most similar words in Tannese. But Tannese ghosts act differently to Christian ones, so Turner and Nisbet’s translation led to some confusion. The Tannese came to understand that the God the missionaries described was merely one very powerful spirit among others in the indigenous pantheon. Since the missionaries had privileged access to God, they were thought of as magicians. According to custom on Tanna, major illness is always caused by someone, and the person who causes it can also cure it. So when Turner and Nisbet visited villages trying to treat the sick, the Tannese understood that the missionaries had caused the diseases. In October, there was an outbreak of dysentery, which grew to epidemic proportions. Many died. The Tannese thought the missionaries had caused the epidemic and regarded it as a sign of the magical powers of the missionaries who did not stop the disease they had started. To the Tannese, here were irresponsible and powerful sorcerers. They had to be got rid of. Opposition against them mounted and their position became critical. Just at this time (late December), a whaler happened to call at Port Resolution. Turner, Nisbet and the teachers did not delay; they left with the whaler and returned to Samoa. Three years later, Polynesian teachers were re-introduced. The Tannese thought of them as sacred and held them in the highest regard. But disease broke out again, the teachers were blamed and one was clubbed to death. The mission was abandoned and the remaining teachers left in mid-1846. However, it was restarted a few months later by more Polynesians. They continued the work of their predecessors and managed to remain on the island for seven years until forced to leave because of an outbreak of smallpox. An epidemic also occurred on Futuna in 1845. The resident teachers were blamed and, following the example of and encouraged by the Tannese, the Futunese killed all of them. Polynesian teachers also landed at Erakor, south Efate. They made good progress and, within a short time, 100 people were attending church services. Another teacher was sent to work on Mele island, but he died within a matter of months. Polynesians sailed from Erakor to Havannah Harbour to preach the gospel to the people of north Efate; one died and the other was killed. Other teachers replace them, but Havannah Harbour was a feverish place and many teachers died of malaria. The mission was closed in 1849 and two Ni-Vanuatu were taken to Samoa for training. They returned after a few years and finally established the church on north Efate. On May 28th 1848, Rev. John Geddie, the first Presbyterian missionary, arrived on Aneityum with his wife and two assistants, Powell and Archibald. Geddie, one of the most effective of the early missionaries, was a strict but kindly Sect, full of evangelical zeal. Aided by Paddon, he acquired a plot of land in south Aneityum and began to build a church and house for himself. Eight Catholic priests and eight laymen had come to live in the south of the island exactly two weeks before Geddie’s arrival. They also bought land from Paddon, built a small chapel and finally opened their mission in February 1849. But a lack of staff and insufficient resources led to the mission closing within a year. Geddie and his wife were now on their own. Powell had gone earlier because of fever and Archibald forced to leave because he had slept with an Aneityumese woman. Though perturbed, Geddie was undiscouraged; conversion and contsruction went ahead. In 1852, he was joined by Rev. J. Inglis, who went to live in Aname in the north. Together with the Polynesian teachers, they spread the word and built schools and chapels. Boys, girls and adults learned of Christ and how to read and write in Aneityumese. Carpentry, bricklaying, cooking and sewing were also taught. Geddie and Inglis both learnt Aneityumese and began translating the Bible. By 1860, Geddie,using a press given by the Presbyterian Synod, had translated and printed all of the New Testament in Aneityumese, the cost of the printing being met by the sale of arrowroot collected by converts. Although sensitive to custom, Geddie strongly opposed many aspects of it. He tried hard to stop the constant wars and the strangling of widows. He considered ceremonial exchanges of yams and taro ‘wasteful’ and persuaded people to hold fewer of them. Converts were forced to wear some article of European clothing and were not allowed to dance, drink alcohol or kava, or smoke tobacco. Women had to cut their hair short. Converts’ days were taken up attending classes and building houses and schools in Geddie’s attempt ‘to occupy their spirit’. The results show Geddie’s efforts were successful. By 1854, most opposition had been overcome and two-thirds of the island’s in-habitants had converted. Promising male converts were trained to be teachers themselves. Requirements were exacting, though: prospective teachers had to be from a prominent family, middle-aged and preferably married. Geddie himself voyaged throughout the other islands encouraging large groups of people to come to Aneityum and see Christianity in practice. He hoped to convert the population of the whole island and worked tirelessly to achieve this. By 1859, there were 56 school houses, 11 chapels and 60 Aneityumese teachers and assistants. But measles and dysentery broke out in the first five months of 1861, and a third of the population died. Further epidemics a few years later aggravated the decline in population. The great stone church at Anelghowhat, able to seat 1,000 that Geddie had had built would now never be fined. Today it lies in ruins. When Geddie visited south Efate in 1861, there were two teachers at Erakor, two at Pango and 14 converts – the total achieved by 11 visits of LMS ships and the death of 20 Polynesian teachers, their wives and children. Two teachers were landed in south Epi; they died there, probably from malaria. Three teachers were landed near Cape Lisburn, southwest Santo; two died and the survivor was taken away a year later. Two Aneityumese teachers were landed on Aniwa in 1858. One was killed and was soon replaced by another. A church and school were built at Dillon’s Bay, Erromango, served by Polynesian teachers. In 1857, Rev. George Gordon and his wife, Canadian Presbyterians, arrived. They did not co-operate with the teachers already established on the island, preferring to teach and convert Erromangans by themselves. For the sake of their health, they built their house on the coast in a depopulated area. Gordon preached of a wrathful and vengeful Christian God who would bring calamity upon the Errornangans if they did not renounce heathenism. When measles broke out in 1861, Gordon claimed that it was Jehovah who had brought it to Erromango. Socially and geographically isolated as the Gordons were, without the support of the important men of the island, it is not completely surprising that they were blamed for the epidemic and, for this, they were both killed. (Photograph) Anglican missionaries embarking at Vipaka, Loh. (J. Beattie 1906, courtesy National Library of Australia) John G. Paton, one of the best known, if not also one of the most notorious, of the Presbyterian missionaries arrived with his wife in Port Resolution in 1858. His autobiography racially describes how he proceeded with his work; how his wife and child and a colleague, Mr. Johnstone, died within three years; how he fared under difficulties; or how he and the Mathiesons, fellow missionaries, were forced to leave the island on a passing ship in 1862, because of marauding bands of warriors bent on death and retribution. His story is such a good one: constantly battling against bouts of fever, spreading the Gospel in the face of strong opposition, pitting the power of God against that of the Tannese sorcerers, dueling with death almost every day, having his house burnt down and all his belongings stolen, and finally surviving to tell the tale only through the continued personal intervention of God. It is such a good story, and also such a pity that so little of it can be believed. Paton was a brave and determined man, but there is no doubt that he embellished the truth. He sailed to Australia to tell his story wherever he found an audience and collected £5,000 for the mission. Four years later, he returned on a British warship, HMS Curaçoa, which had come ‘to inflict punishment on the natives for murder and robbery of traders and missionaries’. At first, Paton pleaded with the Tannese to surrender the ‘guilty chiefs’ and pay £ 1,000 compensation. But they laughed at him and said they were prepared to fight. One of the ship’s crew has described in a famous passage what happened next: Very soon our big guns loaded with shell began to carry very unpleasant messages to the culprits, while our cutter further enlightened them by discharging rockets among a great crowd of natives that clustered about the harbour. This overture continued for some hours, when the more serious business of the day began by the landing of some 170 men who were to penetrate into the island, and commit such destruction as was in their power. Brenchley, J.L. Jottings During the Cruise of H.M.S. Curacoa, p. 201. The 170 men smashed 23 canoes, burnt villages and destroyed gardens. Four Tannese died as a result of the attack. Geddie, who had been in New Caledonia at the time, strongly disapproved of such action while the Foreign Commission of the Reformed Presbyterian Church considered it laudable. The seamen of the warship were not impressed. They thought Paton crude, a liar and a blind zealot. His reputation diminished, he was sent to Aniwa in 1866. Geddie and Paton were not alone in their efforts; since 1849, Bishop Selwyn of the (Anglican) Melanesian Mission had been taking annual voyages through Melanesia visiting villages. Selwyn, an old-fashioned High Churchman, prided himself on his moderation in theological matters. He, thought that the greatest number of converts could be won in the most economical way by picking up students from villages and taking them to a central college in New Zealand (later moved to Norfolk Island), where they would study for six months each year. (Photograph) After the day’s work : Melanesian at Norfolk Island. (J. Beattie 1906, courtesy National library of Australia). Then they would be returned to their villages to spread the knowledge they had acquired. Selwyn faced the same difficulties his Predecessors had: local indifference, small populations, little political cohesion between village, in adjacent valleys, the multiplicity of languages and the islanders’ firm belief in their traditional religions. As one Tannese big man said to John G. Paton, Christianity “condemns the things we delight in”. Islanders used to trading for high-quality metal tools and tobacco found Selwyn’s fishhooks less than perfectly enticing. To avoid competing with Presbyterians, Selwyn worked mainly in northern Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. On his voyages, Selwyn’s ship, the Undine (later replaced by the Southern Cross), was often accompanied by a British warship, which contributed to the islanders’ belief in the missionaries’ power. On anchoring off an island, Selwyn and some of the crew set off in a small boat and rowed close to the shore. Then Selwyn, unarmed, swam alone to the beach, traded items with the people and delivered his message. The idea of sailing away in the large ship to the land of the white man may well have been very attractive to many young men, and not for religious reasons. That curiosity and a desire to obtain the white man’s goods were important considerations to many of the first students was shown by the fact that few wished to return to the central college after one or two trips there. Routine at the college, so very different to the pace of village life, was not liked. Most students did not teach the new religion on their return home; either they did not speak about it or went back to their traditional religion. Between 1849 and 1860, 152 Melanesians were taken to the college, of whom 11 were from Mota and 10 from Emae. It was intended that some of them should become native teachers and clergymen. All teaching was in the language of Mota and was not intellectually demanding. John Coleridge Patteson became Selwyn’s secretary in 1855. Both men, unlike the Presbyterian missionaries in the islands, were of the English upper classes and had been educated at Eton – Britain’s most renowned school. Six years later, Patteson was ordained first Bishop of Melanesia, an event which coincided with a change in the policy of the mission. English clergymen were established at one centre in each group of islands for the three or four cooler months of the year – one on Ambae and another on Mota – from which the clergymen made regular visits to the neighbouring islands. Students were sent to work in the more accessible and populous regions from where had come the greatest number of good scholars. Eleven were sent to Mota, but little headway was made; some of the students returned to custom, others went off to work in their gardens, white the people of Mota refused to give up their religion. A great setback for all was the death of so many people (10% of the island’s whole population died from influenza and dysentery in 1863). * * * In September 1853, the French Government annexed New Caledonia. Iglis, representing the Foreign Missions Commission of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland, was afraid that France would annex Vanuatu next and asked the British Government to make Aneityum a British Protectorate. A memoire demanding British protection for the whole of Vanuatu and nomination of a consul was sent to the British Government in 1859; Inglis returned to England that year to present a petition from the chiefs of Aneityum asking for the protection of their island by the British. Both memoire and petition were rejected. 1866 – 1906 In the second half of the nineteenth century thousands of people recruited as indentured labourers left for Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia and Samoa. White men settled in the islands, traded and planted cotton, maize and other crops. Settlers and missionaries involved the French and British Government in Vanuatu; the two Powers eventually decided to rule it jointly. Missionaries continued to preach and convert. Ni-Vanuatu died, all the while, in a long series of epidemics. The Labour Trade The labour trade is popularly remembered by Melanesians as a time of exciting opportunities tempered by the hardships endured while working on the overseas plantations. Most Australians remember the trade as the kidnapping and enslavement of islanders by hard men who stopped at nothing to gain full cargoes. Once on a plantation the labourers were driven mercilessly, suffered many cruelties and died in their droves. Both pictures are partly true. In the 1860s the sugar industry of Queensland, Australia, needed cheap and reliable labour for its plantations if it was to continue expanding. So, in 1863, Robert Towns hired Ross Lewin to recruit islanders. 65 ‘kanakas’, as island labourers were then called, were brought back to work on Towns’ plantation. They worked hard for little money, other recruiting followed and the labour trade, or ‘blackbirding’, quickly grew. In recruiting, the normal course was for a ship to anchor or stand off an island. The recruiter was rowed over by his Melanesian boat crew, most of them armed. At the shore, he tried to explain to the assembled crowd what work he was offering, where they would be taken and how long they would be hired for. With often no big man available to negotiate with, enterprising recruiters had to learn to entertain their audience, cajoling and captivating their listeners with their exaggerated displays of character, their rhetorical gifts and any tricks they could think of. James Proctor used to fascinate people by stabbing his wooden leg with a dagger until the day a native scientist tested his apparent indestructibility by sticking a knife in his backside. Still, many people did not understand the terms of their contracts or where they were going. The kin of a would-be recruit were given some trade-goods to compensate for their temporary loss, and the recruiter returned to his ship with his latest recruits. A shrewd recruiter knew the particular desires of people of different islands: Erromangans valued tobacco very highly; Tannese had all their purchases weighed; Maskelyne Islanders slept on board the labour ship for a night to see if they liked it; muskets were greatly prized everywhere, especially ‘Tower’ ones. If the elders of a village opposed a young man or woman going, the ship lay offshore close to the village at night and waited for the intending recruit to paddle over in a canoe. In order to attract bushmen, a ship, once anchored, fired a cannon or set off sticks of dynamite and waited for the recruits to come down to the coast. Displays were sometimes more spectacular: We fired off our usual salute with our cannon at sunset, and when the night became darker we sent up rockets and illuminated the ship with blue lights. Rannie, D. My Adventures Among South Sea CannibalsI. At first, most recruiting was from the southern islands whose inhabitants were used to white men from sandalwooding days. In the northern islands, recruiters only went to certain anchorages in the big islands, though they often visited the small ones, like Wala and Tomman. Their inhabitants could not easily flee into the bush. To begin with coastal peoples were recruited. It was only later that bushmen were especially sought after – a time when most coastal dwellers had had enough of recruiting. Men and women willingly left the islands for a variety of reasons they wanted to work in the white man’s community, to see his way of life, and get some of his goods, above all a musket; there was a promise of adventure; they wished to elope with a forbidden lover, or to escape vengeance. Some women left because they were ill-treated by their husbands. Flight was not always successful. Some Melanesians were killed on the plantations because their death had been decided in the islands; a finger or bone was sent back to Vanuatu as proof. People’s recruiting preferences slowly developed as they began to learn of the conditions on different plantations and would often wait for the arrival of a certain ship, refusing all other offers. New Caledonian nickel mines were not popular; Queensland plantations were better than Fijian ones where there were lower wages and only poor quality, but expensive, trade-goods to be bought; Maryborough, Queensland, was better than Mackay. Recruiters’ ships were small, old, often unseaworthy, and not fit for the passengers who were cooped up in over-crowded holds, did not have enough to eat, were unused to the cold and often fell ill. Dysentery was endemic on many ships, people dying before they reached their destination. In Queensland labourers worked on sugar cane, or cotton, plantations, or graziers’ land. The normal routine was a ten-hour day in the fields working from dawn to dusk with an hour’s break for lunch. In the evenings there were often songs and dances accompanied by concertinas, jew’s harps and tin whistles. Leisure was spent tending private gardens, hunting, fishing, going to racecourse meetings, or visiting friends on other plantations. Saturday evenings many labourers walked miles to the nearest town where they illegally bought drink, frequented gambling dens and went to brothels where there were European, Japanese and Australian Aboriginal women. Though fascinated by the white man’s way of life, labourers did try to maintain some semblance of custom; they did not simply pass from one world into another. Custom tabus were observed on the plantations, traditional medicines used, sorcery invoked and some rituals performed. There were very few Ni-Vanuatu women, so love magic was in great demand. Traditional hostility towards other groups was also kept up; if possible, labourers from different islands were housed in separate quarters. While it was a life more varied and exciting than that in a Melanesian village, labouring on a plantation was not easy. Islanders were not used to working ten hours a day five days a week. Back home the pace of work had been far more relaxed and carefree. With the lack of proper government supervision, plantation managers could be as cruel or as humane as they liked; often they were harsh. As Meea, a Santo Islander, who successfully sued his manager, Mr. Goodlift, for assault, testified: “Me split him firewood.. Mr. Goodliff he no talk to me, and then he said, ‘Don’t you stop. You work now. Don’t you stop. You look sharp’. Me nearly die. Me plenty tired. . . . he say I been sleep along sleep. Then he hammered me on face three times”. Saunders, K. Troublesome Servants, JPH, XIV (1979), p. 171. A commission in 1881 reported that labourers suffered greatly from the petty economies of managers. They were given too little food, dirty water. They were poorly clothed and many died of disease. Managers were often sceptical and thought their labourers used sickness as an excuse for not working: “The Melanesians often gammon to be ill, but we take a whip and they soon get well”. Ibid. Doctors visited rarely. The hospitals that were eventually built for the labourers were poor compared to their segregated, Australian equivalents. The Act passed as a result of the Commission’s report forced managers to improve conditions. The mortality rate did decrease, but only very slowly. A labourer who managed to last the first, hardest year on a plantation had a reasonable chance of living until the end of his contract. On Fijian plantations, overworked men who caught measles or dysentery died from physical exhaustion. A common punishment was supposed to be to tie the offender to a tree, whip him, or her, until he, or she, bled and then to squeeze the juice of chili pepper into the fresh wounds. (Photograph) Recruiting near Pangkumu, east Malakula. (Lindt 1890, courtesy National Library of Australia) In their first few months, men who had been kidnapped or not properly informed what three years on a plantation actually involved were often sullen, or prepared to malinger and fight back. Some simply refused to work. When all failed, a labourer could flee and live as a thief, terrorizing local European communities. It was a time, and Queensland was a place of, racial inequality and prejudice. Though labourers could bring charges of assault, or cruelty, against their managers, they had to face an unsympathetic, biased bench at the courts. If one Melanesian killed another, he was charged with manslaughter; but if he killed a European, with murder; for the latter, the death sentence was often imposed. Generally, Queenslanders at that time did not like Melanesians living in their colony. The labourers were regarded as a necessary evil to be tolerated, not liked. Seeing kanakas enjoying themselves in town on Saturday evenings offended the sensibility of most Australians. Perhaps the worst cross cultural clash occurred at Mackay race course on Boxing Day 1883 when a barman refused to sell alcohol to Boslem, a time-expired Tannese labourer. Angry, he hurled abuse and bottles at the barman and was quickly joined by 40 sympathetic islanders. In reaction, a group of white louts, armed with sticks, rushed the Melanesians hitting out in all directions. Then a mob of horsemen charged the crowd and trampled the black bodies. Luckily, only one islander was killed, though many were wounded. The labour trade itself quickly gained a notorious reputation. Within a few years, there were reports of atrocities and kidnappings committed by recruiters. Ni-Vanuatu, scared of being caught while out at sea, stopped making voyages by canoe between the islands. Under pressure from the Presbyterian churches and the British Government, the Queensland government passed the Polynesian Labourers’Act in 1868, which was intended to restrict the complete freedom recruiters had. The act turned recruiters into agents who had first to collect applications from prospective employers before sailing away to Melanesia. They had to lodge a bond of £500 as a guarantee that they would not kidnap and had to provide adequate accommodation and food for the recruits. On arrival, the recruited labourers were checked medically and asked if they were coming to Queensland voluntarily. No longer could the recruiters collect islanders and sell them in the market of a Queensland port as though they were mere articles of trade, like beche-de-mer or pearls. The attitudes of many Australians were rather different from those required by the Act. In 1869, Captain George Palmer in HMS Rosario seized the Daphne in Fiji and commanded her crew to sail her to Sydney. She was licenced to carry 58 labourers to Queensland but there were 108 on board and she had sailed to Fiji, not Queensland; also, many of her records were incompletely filled in. In Sydney, her captain and supercargo were charged in court with kidnapping islanders ‘with a view to their being treated as slaves’. But the recruited Melanesians were not allowed to give evidence, and the magistrate stated that there was no evidence that the islanders had been recruited against their will or that they had been treated as slaves. Palmer lost the case and, in a later hearing, it was decided that the Daphne had been unjustly seized. Palmer was ordered to pay costs. This court case was virtually legal approval of blackbirding, the labour trade boomed and there was great rivalry between recruiters hiring labourers for Fiji or Queensland. Over 20 regular recruiters visited the islands every year. But a further restriction on thse trade was soon introduced. As from 1871, every ship had to carry a Government Agent (GA), who would see that returned labourers were landed at their own island, that recruits understood their terms of contract and that no one was kidnapped. Further clauses were added over the next few years. GAs had to accompany the recruiting boat itself; islanders employed on Vanuatu plantations were not to be recruited; and no trade-goods were to be given to the kin of recruits so as to avoid the imputation that people were being exchanged for goods. Few of these regulations were enforced. GAs were often drunken and incompetent. Commonly appointed through the influence of local politicians, agents and owners of the ships, they frequently turned a blind eye to recruiting abuses. They were hated by recruiters, who did everything they could to prevent them from carrying out their duties. Even if a conscientious GA did report infringements of the law, his statement was often ignored by the Queensland Government. In 1883, Samuel Griffith was elected Premier of Queensland. A racist and under pressure from humanitarian lobbies, he wished to end the labour trade. So he proposed, and saw passed, acts of Parliament in 1884 and 1885, which restricted the employment of indentured labourers to sugar cane fields. GAs were chosen much more carefully and usually carried out their instructions. Griffith’s government did not ignore their reports of abuses. The Act of 1885 stated that no more licenses for recruiting would be issued after December 31st 1890. Blackbirding was to end. Recruiters faced difficult times. Many licenses were withheld. Many islanders, prompted by missionaries, refused the recruiters’ offers of employment and so many people had died on some islands, such as the Torres, that recruiters no longer visited them. Other people were very hostile because of earlier recruiters’ crimes against them. Coastal peoples were no longer recruited but sold copra to traders and acted as middlemen between the recruiters and the bushmen who still went overseas to work. And then, in 1885, the price of sugar dropped sharply. Many planters went bankrupt and only the economically minded survived. Queensland, moreover, relied on the sugar industry. If it collapsed, its economy would be severely depressed and many Queenslanders would become unemployed. So in 1892, Griffith was forced to repeat the Act of 1885. After a brief interlude, recruiting had begun again. The number of labourers living in Queensland had declined only very slightly during the short time there was no recruitment, however, since many islanders were now signing on for a second or third term. From 1893 the Queensland Government financed the building of many central sugar mills. Their construction, and a rise in the price of sugar, attracted many farmers and their families to the colony where they grew sugar cane on small holdings. In the closing years of the century, as the number of island labourers decreased the acreage of land devoted to cultivation doubled. The sugarcane industry was becoming less and less dependent on island labour. The ‘White Australia’ Policy, made law in 1901, severed the remaining dependence; recruiting was to end on December 31st 1904 and all islanders were to be deported by the same day two years later. Old men, landowners and islanders who had lived in Australia for over twenty years were allowed to remain. In all, 1,700 islanders did stay; some formed Ni-Vanuatu communities which still exist today. But the mass deportation was carried out and, by the end of 1906, the Queensland labour trade had ended, though recruiting for Fijian and Samoan plantations did not stop until 1910 and 1913 respectively. The kidnappings, for which the trade is notorious, marked only the earliest years of the labour trade. There was particularly little in the southern islands. Though a number of murderous rogues, such as Floss Lewin, Dr. Murray, and the American Bully Hayes, did work the trade, there is simply not enough information now available for generalizations to be made about the character of recruiters and their crews. The worst kidnappers were reputed to be the recruiters for Samoa and New Caledonia. Until the 1880s, however, the latter tended to be British ships and British crews sailing under the French flag. People were kidnapped in a variety of devious ways: recruiters, or sometimes their Melanesian boat’s crew, grabbed those who came alongside and locked them in the hold. Others enticed people to come on board for gifts and then captured them. Occasionally, a recruiting captain dressed up as an Anglican clergyman, swam to the share and told people on the beach that Bishop Patteson was lying ill in his cabin, but would be happy to receive guests. While his crew held books on deck and sang hymns loudly, people paddled their canoes up to the ship, climbed on board to meet the bishop and were grabbed. Douglas Rannie, a Government Agent, described one incident that he saw: The recruiters of the other vessel, by holding up some sticks of tobacco, had induced a lad... to approach the boat; and when stretching forth to receive the tobacco he expected, the recruiter seized him by the waist and dragged him down from the rocks into the boat where he was thrown into the bottom; and the white man, who pulled stroke car, knelt on him to keep him down. Some shots were fired, possibly only to frighten the natives ashore, and then the boats pulled out and made for the ship. Rannie, D., p. 96. Clever recruiters made friendships with important islanders who secured recruits for them. Nevertheless, the labour trade remained a dangerous business. In revenge for earlier kidnappings on their shores, people hailed recruiters’ boats, only to fire on them as the boat came near the beach. Returned labourers, in particular, often engineered attacks on recruiters who were at a tactical disadvantage on the beach – a situation some exploited. In November 1878, Sikeri, a man of high grade and in need of a human victim for his next nimangki ceremony, led fellow Longanans, men from northeast Ambae, to kill the GA, the mate and four of the boat’s crew of the recruiting vessel the Mystery. This attack was not an act of revenge but a way for Sikeri to increase his reputation as a warrior, display his mana and gain further renown, all essential qualities for a Longanan who wished to add to his influence. When it was realised by the Longanans that they were not to be heavily punished, they came to regard the killing of white men as an easy avenue to renown and power. So, three years later, when another big man, Taritouri, wanted a fresh corpse for the ceremony celebrating the death of his child, he and his followers attacked and killed one European trader and two boats’ crew from the visiting May Queen. But this time, in reaction, a British naval expedition sailed to Longana, shot one man and burnt a village to the ground. After that incident, Europeans were no longer considered easy prey. The legal decision in the Australian court case over the seizure of the Daphne had made it very difficult for the courts to intervene in the labour trade until legislation was passed in the early 1870s by the British Government, defining the duty of the Royal Navy as the Protection of islanders from British subjects. Vanuatu was regarded as a collection of communities with internal self-government. Since Ni-Vanuatu were foreigners who could not be tried legally in British courts, captains could only punish them for killing or robbing British subjects by an act of war. The killing of an Englishman whose conduct was notorious was usually not avenged, particularly if he was killed while recruiting, since captains regarded the labour as immoral. When investigating an offence, captains first, demanded that the village surrender the culprits; if they did not, the whole community was regarded as responsible and the village shelled. Captains found their tasks distasteful, difficult and dangerous: landing parties were often ambushed; where and by whom the crime had been committed was often well nigh impossible to discover. In 1877, a Ni-Vanuatu was hanged by the Navy off Tanna in retribution for the death of William Easterbrack, an English trader. But the hanged man was not the killer himself, only his accomplice, and questions were asked in the English Parliament about this incident. The British Government was reluctant to annex Vanuatu because they thought the islands would be an economic liability. So use of warships was the only way it had to try to control the violence of the South Seas. This ineffective policy only lead to more hostility between islanders and white men. When warships did wage war against Ni-Vanuatu villages, they sometimes shelled the wrong ones and, if shelling did not follow a naval investigation, people thought the Navy weak. The general feeling was: ‘Man-o-war, hem i olsem woman’. Long before the end of the labour trade, returned labourers, dressed in European clothes, each carrying a box full of trade-goods and a prized musket, were often seen on the shores of the islands of Vanuatu. Following custom, most of these goods were freely given to kin as soon as they landed. Some people were landed at the wrong beach and were killed by enemies. Douglas Rannie, on Tongoa in 1884, discovered a woman had been hanged on her return because she had left for Australia without permission. It is difficult to isolate and hard to imagine the effect the labour trade had on Ni-Vanuatu. For the first time young men and women had had a chance to leave the islands and live for years among white men. Away from their parents, they had the opportunity to taste another way of life, and so compare it with custom, to observe how white men really treated one another, to see their cities and how they spent their time. No longer could Ni-Vanuatu be easily fobbed off with missionaries’ and settlers’ stories about how grand it was ‘back in their countries’. Some liked Queensland so much that they indentures themselves again and again until eventually they had stayed away so long that, by now culturally divorced from their island decided never to return but bought land and settled. Returned labourers must have caused hundreds of minor and major changes in their island communities. What most of them were we do not know. Some came back zealous Christians, others confirmed followers of custom with a justified hatred of the white man. Having had a vision of a different order of things, many found it hard to reintegrate themselves back into village life. Their gardens had been overtaken by the bush. Kin and in-laws were dead. And in the northern islands, they had fallen behind their contemporaries in the taking of nimangki grades. Those who could not cope with the transition went to work on Vanuatu plantations. On Atchin the returns killed pigs to cleanse themselves of European pollution and rapidly took several grades. They also forced a change in the system of ‘chieftanship’; men who had had a taste of independence were not prepared to give it up easily. In Nduindui, west Ambae, it was the returned Christian labourers who, separated from the followers of custom, grew coconuts, sold the copra to traders and accumulated wealth. Some bush-people did not want to return to the interior of their island but settled in friendly villages. Some returns went to live on Lamen Island, Epi, from which they lead a bandit life attacking villages and stealing women. One man returned to his village on Erromango only to find the houses empty and all his kin dead. He hanged himself. Bislama Labourers had also returned speaking a new language: pidgin. While its exact origin’s are still matters of debate, linguists have been able to reconstruct the outlines of its development. On the Queensland, Samoan and Fijian plantations and in the New Caledonian nickel mines men and women from different areas speaking mutually unintelligible languages were mixed together for years at a time. Pidgin, essentially uncorrected English grafted onto a Melanesian syntax and learnt from conversations with managers, was the only means by which islanders could talk with one another. This pidgin was certainly influenced, but to an unknown extent, by ‘Sandalwood English Pidgin’ which was used in the first half of the eighteenth century throughout the southwest Pacific. It did contain a few Polynesian words such as kakae (to eat and food), kanaka (a person), and tata (goodbye), which were retained in Ni-Vanuatu pidgin. But with its small vocabulary, ‘Sandalwood Pidgin’ was only spoken between islanders and traders in the course of their deals, in sandalwood and whaling stations in commercial centres and on boats with islander crews. It was a jargon, not a proper language. Once back in Vanuatu, the returned labourers spoke pidgin when working on plantations and when talking with administrators and traders. Slowly Ni-Vanuatu pidgin, or Bislama, evolved independently from New Guinean and Solomon Island pidgins. Ni-Vanuatu words, like natanggura (sago) and nambembe (butterfly), were incorporated into Bislama. The pronunciation of certain words—like milik (milk) and aelan (island)—was changed to make them easier for people to say; and the meanings of other words were altered. Pidgin means a ‘bird’, not just a pigeon, and helicopter, a ‘dragonfly’. While a few French words, like lafet (party) and kermes (fair) were introduced into bislama, the number of words in bislama derived from English did not increase greatly because most settlers were French and most English missionaries could speak at least one Ni-Vanuatu language. With the slow rise of education and the increase of travel between the islands, the use of Bislama spread and its vocabulary developed until it came to be recognised as the only tongue spoken by everyone. No longer regarded as a language only used when dealing with white men, Bislama is now seen as one of the few ways by which Ni-Vanuatu identity can be easily expressed. Trade, Settlement and Politics The British Government did not want to spend money on a new, economically uncompromising colony and was indifferent to the fate of Vanuatu. The French Government, however, regarded Vanuatu as a valuable future possession. The islands, with their fertile soil, had commercial possibilities and would be a suitable home for convicts who had served their time in the New Caledonian penitentiary. It also wished to strengthen its strategic position in the Pacific and wanted to eventually annex the islands. If another Power annexed Vanuatu, New Caledonia would be surrounded by non-French colonies, threatening its future. The Australian colonial governments did not want French ex-convicts colonizing Vanuatu and feared that French annexation of the islands would stifle possible trading opportunities for Australians and would leave the north-eastern coast of Australia vulnerable to attack in the event of an Anglo-French war. But the Australian governments could not afford to annex Vanuatu themselves and, agitated by constant Presbyterian demands, called for British annexation of the islands. It was the conflicts between the different aims of these governments and the abuses they led to which finally made the British and French governments agree to the formation of a condominium. Europeans first began to acquire land and plant crops in the late 1860s. By 1873, there were 28 Englishmen and 3 other Europeans at Havannah Harbour, Efate, growing cotton which up to then was fetching a good price thanks to a world shortage following the American Civil War. Planters hired labourers from other islands to gather the crop because Ni-Vanuatu did not like working on plantations near their own villages and because it was more difficult for a labourer to leave before his contract had finished if he came from another island. Cotton prices dropped in 1873, so settlers planted cocoa, maize, coffee, bananas, vanilla and coconuts instead. There were a few plantations on Tanna, but in 1874, a Tannese man shot the infamous blackbirder, Ross Lewin, dead while others threatened the remaining settlers. Scared, most foreigners had left the island by the end of the year. The Western Pacific High Commission, based in Fiji and created by the British Government, feared that the ill-treatment of labourers on Vanuatu plantations would be even more difficult to prevent than in Fiji and discouraged British settlement. Englishmen were not allowed to sell arms or alcohol to Ni-Vanuatu or to recruit labourers from other Vanuatu islands. The High Commission regarded Vanuatu land as inalienable and, wishing to safeguard the interests of Ni-Vanuatu, was very reluctant to register the land titles of British settlers. Registration would encourage European buyers, promote land speculation and imply official validation of title. British settlers attempted to bypass these restrictions by hiring labourers from other Europeans or by sailing their ships under a foreign flag, so putting themselves under bathe jurisdiction of another Power. John Higginson, a naturalised French citizen who had been born Irish and, like many Irishmen, had a justified dislike of the English, wanted France to reopen the New Caledonian labour trade and annex Vanuatu. In the 1880s his company, Cornpagnie Caledonienne des Nouvelles-Hébrides (CCNH), acquired large areas of land and he encouraged Frenchmen to settle on its land around Vila. Most British settlers, struggling since the fall in the price of cotton, unable to get their maize to a market and suffering from the combined effects of hurricanes, drought, malaria and the shortage of labour, sold out to CCNH. Soon Robert Glissan at Undine Bay was the only English planter left in Vanuatu. The company also acquired land from Ni-Vanuatu and, on one spending spree that year, an expedition of theirs affected to purchase over 95,000 hectares (about one-twelfth of the total land area of Vanuatu) in 14 days from islanders. In 1878, the British and French governments agreed not to annex Vanuatu without the agreement of the other. Eight years later the French government offered to stop the transport of convicts to New Caledonia in return for annexation. The British Government re-commended this solution to the problem of the islands to the Australian colonial governments who, because of pubic outcry, rejected it. In reaction, contingents of French troops landed at Port Sandwich and Havannah Harbour. This caused a great scare among the British and, under pressure from Australia, the High Commission accepted the registration of British land claims. Registration did not mean the conferring of titles, however. The HighCornmission had no means to question whether the land had originally been acquired from Ni-Vanuatu in an acceptable way or not, but wanted only to protect subsequent buyers from fraud or uncertainty. The French troops finally returned to New Caledonia in 1888. Leading members of Victorian colonial society formed the Australasian New Hebrides Company (ANH) in 1889 in order to compete with the French. Enthusiastically supported by the Presbyterian churches, the ANH quickly gained the bulk of the Vanuatu overseas trade. CCNH, with its badly managed plantations and highly priced goods, offered little competition. The ANH acquired land from Ni-Vanuatu and bought old plantations. It tried to attract Australians to settle in the islands, but the insecurity of land titles discouraged prospective migrants. By 1891 the company had only two plantations on which nine planters grew coffee and maize. One was killed by islanders, the others left because of the shortage of labour. The plantations were closed the following year. By 1893, the ANH was in financial straits; there was a world depression and the company had invested too much money buying land, which was not being used. Burns Philp (BP) took over and reorganised the company. It was finally liquidated in 1897, and its assets and business taken over by BP. The Australian attempts to increase the number of British subjects in the islands had not been very successful. By 1897 there were 151 French settlers in Vanuatu, most of them on Efate, none in the southern islands; 55 British settlers were scattered throughout the group. In the early years of the twentieth century, the newly established Australian Commonwealth Government, in an agreement with BP, promoted another settlement scheme. But, like the ANH, it too failed and for much the same reasons. (Photograph) Ambaeans trading copra 1894. (R. Discombe collection) CCNH, with its continual financial problems, was liquidated in 1894 and reformed as Societé Française des Nouvelles-Hébrides (SFNH) by the French Government who, in return for effective control of the company, granted it a large subsidy, recognised all its land titles, and excluded Higginson from the board of directors. Like its predecessor, SFNH had many financial difficulties. By 1899, its plantations along the Segond Canal, Santo, and around Port Sandwich were deteriorating, and production on Efate was low. The shortage of labour, the high price of their goods, New Caledonian protective tariffs, and inefficient management all contributed to the company’s difficulties. In 1900, the French Government waived French and New Caledonian custom duties on Vanuatu goods and gave SFNH more money. The policy was successful and by 1906 there were 401 Frenchmen in the islands cultivating 20,000 acres, as compared to 228 Englishmen cultivating 7,000 acres. This political rivalry meant fierce competition in the copra trade and for Ni-Vanuatu labourers. The rivalry was seldom violent, but the vaneer of friendliness could easily be broken. Romilly described the scene in Port Sandwich in 1888: We have just celebrated Christmas, and Christmas in the New Hebrides is a fearful and wonderful sight. Thank God it only comes once a year. The French and the English had a pitched battle but luckily they were all too drunk to shoot straight. Romilly, H.S. Letters and memoirs of H.H. Romilly, p. 347. The only kind of effecive authority in the islands, the French and English naval commanders of the Joint Naval Commission, constituted in 1887, could only deal with cases requiring act of war. Moreover, their ships did not even sail to Vanuatu during the six-month hurricane season. The British and French High Commissions, by not providing any civil authority in the islands, and by refusing to oversee properly the actions of the settlers, indirectly allowed a state of anarchy and lawlessness to develop in Vanuatu, one that was to characterise white settlement for the next four decades. Disputes that could not be settled were decided at gunpoint. An early trader or planter lived a dangerous, and often financially unrewarding, life. There were business difficulties, fever, the weather and the hostility of Ni-Vanuatu and other Europeans to contend with. Traders, in particular, had to make friends with their customers. Otherwise they might be stabbed or poisoned for plunder or revenge. Between 1883 and 1886 alone, 13 traders were killed by Ni-Vanuatu. Disagreements between Europeans ended the same way; one French planter on Ambrym slowly poisoned a French competitor with arsenic. He then paid some Ambrymese to club another French competitor to death. The Western pacific high Commission’s fears that British settlers in Vanuatu would abuse their labourers were not unfounded; in 1890, Romilly could find only one planter, a Frenchman, who did not treat his labourers badly. One English settler on Aore, George de Latour, displayed on his fence the notice: Dogs and Niggers are forbidden to enter inside the Portals of these Gates. Any Dogs or Niggers found therein will suffer the Penalty of Death. Latour interfered in the affairs of islanders, even persuading one British warship to bombard a village on Aore, and was finally killed by a man from Santo. (Photograph) A trader on Ambrym. (R. Discombe collection) Traders, mostly living in the northern islands, did not make a large profit. Hard hit by the depression in 1895, most found their returns scarcely sufficient to provide the barest necessities. Many settlers struggled, but eventually gave up. A few prospered. In 1884, Douglas Rannie was invited to lunch with François Rossi, a Corsican planter: The room was delightfully cool, the walls being made of plaited cane; and the floor was made of cane also, but of much stronger make, and stood about 3 or 4 feet above the ground. The dishes and vegetables served up appeared to be endless. We started with soup, then followed fish of various kinds and cooked in various ways, followed by plover and pigeons, broiled, stewed, and roasted; then fowls, suckling pigs, not forgetting ham and eggs, boiled eggs, poached eggs, with vegetables and salads of various kinds interspersed. . . . The fruits, too, were of great variety, as we afterwards saw in the garden, growing in great abundance, oranges, lemons, limes, granadillas, passionfruit, mangoes, custard apples, rose apples, pineapples, figs, bananas, and several indigenous fruit trees; beside the native chestnut and the nangi nuts. Rannie, D. p. 88. Others did not live in such style: When I first came to the plantation, I found as dwelling-house an iron and weather board four roomed cottage with verandah in front. There were four, two 14 by 14, two 14 by 9. The outside walls were galvanised iron, the inside undressed weather board. . . . It is hellishly hot on account of the iron and also because the mousquito gauze shuts any breeze that might be. But it makes sitting out at night possible. Fletcher, R.J. Isles of Illusion, p. 196. There were frequent disputes between Ni-Vanuatu and settlers over land. British planters desperately wanted their land titles validated, but there was no British authority to do so. With British annexation unlikely, British settlers wanted the French government to annex the group so as to be such an authority. Settlers’ attempts to clear the bush and plant crops on the land acquired by SFNH and its predecessor, CCNH, led to many disputes with Ni-Vanuatu who had apparently not understood the terms of the agreements they had entered into. In 1878 the disagreements between the French settlers and the people of west Epi reached such a pitch that the settlers even burnt a few villages in the assertion of their claims. Land links past, present and future generations, which are all nurtured by its products. It was not owned, so could not be sold and Ni-Vanuatu engaged in land deals with Europeans did not think they were selling their land, but only the right to use and take its harvest for a certain time. As Codrington wrote in 1891: In a true sale the consent of all who have an interest in the property must be had, and the exact boundary of each parcel of the land defined; then the value of each piece of each fruit-tree has to be ascertained, and the claim of every single individual discussed and satisfied. Codrington, R.H. The Melanesians, pp. 60-1. Selling the rights to use land is not quickly settled. It takes time to reach consensus which strongly suggests that many of the land-titles held by SFNH which had been rapidly agreed upon with one or two Ni-Vanuatu in each region and which describe very vague boundaries were not as valid as the company would have liked to think. Since consensus is necessary before a sale, it is also suspicious that the signatures, or fingerprints, of only one or two Ni-Vanuatu are to be found on each of the land-titles of the Efate plantations. These land disputes and British settlers, complaints induced the British Government to try to persuade the French Government to agree to joint action to settle disputes locally and to prohibit the sale of arms and alcohol to Ni-Vanuatu. Britain wanted to establish a land claims commission to investigate all the claims. In reply, the French Government proposed that land disputes should only be investigated as they arose. The appointment of British and French Deputy Commissioners in 1902 and 1903 respectively had done little to alleviate these problems. Following these discussions, a joint conference between the two Powers was held on London in 1905. The British delegates demanded a full-scale land inquiry. The French, with a controlling interest in SFNH, the largest land holder in the islands, wanted a court that ‘would settle titles on fixed principles and according to the Torrens system, by which titles would be registered unless they were successfully challenged’. Scarr, D. Fragments of Empire, p. 225. The British Government, still indifferent to the future of Vanuatu, and acting ‘solely at the wish of Australia’, was unwilling to put great pressure on the French delegation who had the added advantage of having the only person at the conference with extensive experience of the islands. The British conceded on all major points. By the Convention of 1906, Vanuatu was an area of joint influence over which neither Power had sovereignity; two resident commissioners were heads of their national administrations; the Joint Court was organized in accordance with French proposals: land-titles registered before January lst 1896 could not be challenged. Land registered after that date could be challenged but the burden of proof rested upon the plaintiff, a virtually impossible task for an illiterate Ni-Vanuatu. So 600,000 hectares (about half of the total land area of Vanuatu) held by French owners were secure from dispute in the courts; one of the major goals of the conference, the settling of land disputes in a way fair to both Ni-Vanuatu and Europeans, was not reached. The penal powers of the Joint Court were few. The licensing and registration of recruited labour was allowed but the sale of arms and alcohol to Ni-Vanuatu was prohibited. Since National Courts tried English or Frenchmen, these prohibitions were ineffective if either of the administrations ignored the crimes committed by its nationals. Foreigners of other nationalities had to opt for the jurisdiction of one of the two powers. Ni-Vanuatu not given the nationality of either Power were left stateless. The Convention failed to bring law and order to the islands. Anarchy and violence continued in Vanuatu. Missionaries Christianity, like all other world religions, changes when it comes into contact with other cultures. People adapt it to their own ends and understand it in their own terms. Ni-Vanuatu did not suddently lose all their custom on their conversion to Christianity. People merged the two believing in both the power of God and spirits, ghosts, sacred stones and sorcery. Many thought God a white man if not also an Englishman. In the Banks, Anglicanism and the graded society were practised alongside one another. Some Christian festivals fitted easily into the Vanuatu ritual calendar: the harvest festival replaced the autumn life-giving ritual; Christmas fell very close to the coming of the palolo sea worm to the shores of north Malakula, which heralds the New Year. Some missionaries, especially the Presbyterians, did not bother to understand properly the custom way of life but spoke of a ‘time belong darkness’ when natives lived under the constant threat of attack by ‘devil-devils’ and taught a confusing mixture of simple Christian truths and British middle-class values. The outward sign of a convert became the wearing of European clothes – for men, a shirt and long trousers, and for women, ‘mother hubbard’ dresses (still so popular today). Equating ‘blackness’ with ‘badness’ and ’whiteness’ with ‘cleanliness’, they regarded Ni-Vanuatu as indolent and weak. Maggie Paton, second wife of John G., strove to prevent her children from learning Aniwan ‘for the same of their morals’. It is often pointed out that communities began to ask for missionaries. Certainly, many saw the attractive association of Christianity and peace, regarding the missionaries, still commonly thought of as ‘sacred men’, as in league with the captains of warships – a view sometimes promoted by the missionaries themselves. While it is very likely that many people asked out of curiosity and a desire for European goods, others, especially those without any standing in their community, saw Christianity as a means by which they could create a different organisation of authority and prestige, one in which they could advance themselves. Some labourers returned from overseas as Christians, having been converted in Fiji, or by Florence Young’s Queensland Kanaka Mission. Social revolutionaries, they had a vested interest in the destruction of traditional ways and the triumph of Christianity. Their return gave renewed vigour to the missionaries, helping them set up churches in areas previously controlled by custom. Others came back versed in the ways of the white man and obstructed the work of missionaries. Two common phrases heard at this time were ‘white man no good’ and ‘country belong us’. On Tanna a few returned labourers led young men in a movement against the Presbyterians. The labourers had been deported from the land of the white man and they wanted to do the same with the missionaries in their land. Two Banks Islanders, back from Queensland, claimed to have been ordained and that, therefore, they had a right to hold services. One of them told of a coming flood that would engulf everyone on Vanua Lava and that the ‘Americans’ were on their way to expel the English. It is unsurprising that many missionaries wandered if their converts were really understanding the message of God. Those who tried to ensure that people did understand their teachings did not convert islanders quickly. Mass conversions were inimical to a conscientious clergyman: Rev. Neilson was 15 years on Erromango before he converted anyone; the Catholic mission made no converts at all in its first seven years in the islands. Doubts about the ‘quality’ of converts made many missionaries highly reluctant to ordain Ni-Vanuatu into the priesthood. Bishop Cecil Wilson, of the Melanesian Mission, ordained only three Ni-Vanuatu priests during the twenty years of his incumbency and the Catholic Church had no Ni-Vanuatu priests even by the end of the Second World War. Western observers of the time thought most converts only ostensible Christians. Churches of different denominations compounded their problems by regarding one another as competitors, not allies. Geddie saw the Catholic priests an Aeityum as he rowed in, in May 1848: By the aid of a spy-glass we noticed some persons walking in front of it (an iron house), dressed in long priestly robes. In this we recognised at once the mark of the beast. . . . A new enemy has entered the field. The battle is no longer to be fought with Paganism alone, but with Paganism and Popery combined. The struggle may be long and severe, but victory for the cause of truth is certain. Quoted in Harrison, T.H. Savage Civilization, p. 156. The Anglicans, however, remained friendly with the Presbyterians, agreeing in 1881 to restrict their activities to Ambae, Maewo, Pentecost, the Banks and the Torres, while the Presbyterians looked after the spiritual needs of the peoples south of these islands. The only tense incident was Peter Milne’s unauthorised landing at Nduindui, west Ambae, in 1901. His attempt to combat what he thought of as the lethargy of the Melanesian Mission was not supported by members of either church and he returned ignominiously to Nguna the following year. Paton’s efforts abroad had brought the Presbyterian churches reputation and riches. So much money was collected that the John G. Paton Mission Fund supported two hospitals (at Vila and Lenakel, Tanna), five white missionaries and over 100 Polynesian and Ni-Vanuatu teachers. Seventeen new teachers arrived during this period and set up churches on Aniwa, Futuna, Tanna, Erromango, Nguna, Epi, Malakula, Ambrym, Tongoa, and Tangoa. By 1900 only a few islands had no resident missionary or teacher. There were fewer wars on Tanna and most Tannese knew about the church, though many did not accept its teachings. The people of Aniwa, Futuna and Erromango had almost all converted. Five missionaries tried to convert the Malakulans, but they refused to stop following custom and the Big Nambas, in particular, resisted missionary influence. Few people on Santo converted. Most people on Paama were quickly converted by Rev. Frater. Oscar Micheisen, on Tongoa, and Peter Milne, on Nguna, persuaded the whole population of each island to join the church. Rev. James Gordon, younger brother of George, was killed on Erromango in 1872. Geddie died that year, his translation of the Bible intoAneityumese completed. It is unfortunate that the language has changed so much that today the people of Aneityum are unable to read it. Some of the best-known Presbyterian missionaries worked in the islands between 1865 and 1906: Frank Paton, son of John G., with his wasted arm and wooden leg was visiting the villages of Malakula. Paton himself, the best known of all, was lecturing abroad, on his brief periods away from Aniwa. Peter Milne, strictest of a strict church, was converting the Ngunese and their neighbours to his set of rules: people who washed in the sea on Sundays were not allowed to keep more than their head out of the water. Otherwise they would be playing, and play was banned on Sunday. Milne sat on an overlooking hill with his telescope to see his regulations obeyed. Strict, zealous, brave and righteous, the Presbyterian missionaries did not fail to impress others: Romilly thought they would ‘cheat and drive as hard a bargain as any worthy landlord himself could do. They are a curious mixture of the sanctimonious Scotch Presbyterian, with an admixture of colonial cunning and “cuteness”’. Romilly, H.S., p. 364. Presbyterian missionaries disliked the influence of other men; they tried to dissuade members of their congregations from doing to work overseas. In turn, the recruiters loathed the missionaries because they so exaggerated reports of kidnapping. (Photograph) Ra church. (J. Beattie 1906, courtesy national Library of Australia) The gentlemanly Anglican missionaries did not make as much headway as their more aggressive Presbyterian counterparts. Enthusiasm for Anglicanism reached a height in 1870-1872 with over 600 people baptized and several flourishing church villages. But the effects of hurricanes, dysentery and influenza epidemics, the rival attractions of the ceremonies of the graded and secret societies, and the loss of Bishop Patteson, killed in the Reef islands in 1871, were soon felt and enthusiasm ebbed away. John Selwyn, second son of George, became Bishop in 1877. Overshadowed by the fame of his father and Patteson, he made no major changes in Anglican policy and the mission was noticeable for its lack of vigour during his incumbency. The Norfolk Island trained teachers did establish schools throughout northern Vanuatu however, and Ra, a model village on an islet near Mota Lava run by Tagalad (one of the first Ni-Vanuatu to be ordained), was particularly successful. A great number of the mission’s teachers came from there and, by 1908, 34 of ‘Tagalad’s Boys’ were teachers on other islands. Schools were also started on Pentecost, Maevo and in northeast Ambae. In 1905, permanent schools were constructed at Vureas and Vanua Lava, and promising students sent on to Norfolk Island. The arrival of Roman Catholic priests on Pentecost precipitated a change in policy: missionaries were now to reside permanently on the islands, not just remain there for a few months at a time. Compared to the white clergy of other denominations, the Anglican missionaries had a gruelling and spartan life. Overworked, poorly housed, badly fed, often stricken with malaria and other tropical diseases, several broke down physically and died early deaths. In 1891 fifteen white men were recruited after the public appeal of Cecil Wilson, Selwyn’s replacement. Their addition strengthened the church and mass conversions occurred, especially in Pentecost and the Torres. On Ambae Rev. A. Godden spent the first six years of the new century trying to revive Anglicanism, interest in which had declined after the departure of Rev. A. Bice a decade before. But he was killed by a Ni-Vanuatu in 1906 and the mission on Ambae stagnated – an unexceptional situation: after 1904 the number of new converts dropped sharply and the mission entered a period of quiet langour. The Anglicans did not call for the end of the labour trade. Like many of their contemporaries, they thought that the contact with European culture would have a ‘civilising’ effect on the labourers. What was needed, they thought, was British regulation of the trade and, until that was put into effect, they tried to persuade people not to be recruited. The Anglicans also did not clamour for British annexation of Vanuatu since they thought that it would be carried out without consulting the islanders. Policing, not ruling, of Vanuatu by a European Power was the most desireable outcome to them. Trading was also not automatically despised. The Anglicans were only concerned that traders maintained Christian morals in their dealings with Ni-Vanuatu. Most traders did not reach this ethical standard and their presence in an area increased the difficulties missionaries had to overcome. A local trader provided people with an opportunity to make money and acquire goods without destroying their custom: to many this was preferable to what they regarded as the dubious benefits offered by a missionary. In 1887 Roman Catholicism returned yet again to Vanuatu, this time to stay. Priests and New Caledonian catechists based themselves at Baniam Bay, just north of Port Sandwich; Port Olry, north Santo; and Mele Island. Port Sandwich became the church’s administrative centre and priests went to live at Olal, Craig Cove and Sesivi, Ambrym; at Unua and on all the small islands, east Malakula. Competing against the ‘Protestant heretics’ at Unua, the Catholic Mission did not convert many because of its shortage of priests and catechists. Intermittent wars interrupted the work of the church while the people of Malakula refused to believe, or did not understand how, any man could remain celibate all his life: he had to be interfering with women. So to allay suspicion, the priests never spoke to women, only men. But Malakulan males always carried rifles, which were strictly tabu, inside the church compound. Thus, at first, children were the only possible converts. People saw the church and the navy as connected and brought their children to the mission because they were scared of warships. So, when sailors shot a Malakulan of high grade in 1896, many stopped attending services and classes. Slowly, very slowly, the priests’ efforts began to produce results. By 1903, missions had been started at Melsisi, Namaram, Loltong and Wanur, Pentecost; Nangire, Ambae; Southwest Bay, Malakula; and on Epi. The administrative centre had been moved to Port Vila, where four Catholic nuns, brought by SFNH, worked in the company’s hospital, and a school had been built for orphans and the children of colons. A school for catechists had also been constructed at Mele, later moved to Montmart. The mission became authonomous in 1901, and was elevated to the status of Apostolic Vicariat two years later with Mgr. Doucere as its first bishop. In 1896, there had been 20 Ni-Vanuatu converts. By 1903, their number had risen greatly thanks partly, to people who had been converted while labouring overseas. Depopulation Recruiters, traders and missionaries did not bring only Western ways and goods with them; they also carried strange germs to which Ni-Vanuatu were not immune. Spirits and custom medicines were impotent against these unwanted gifts. Men, women and children died in their thousands from pneumonia, dysentery, influenza, measles, diptheria and whooping cough. People saw their kin and in-laws dying around them in epidemic after epidemic. Missionary diaries relate the depressing tales of days spent in burying people and conducting funerals. Pagans took the high death rate among the converts to be a sign of the weakness of God and so mocked missionaries whenever they spoke of God’s power: “For the worship is lies, it makes all sick and kills us”. Once the women of reproductive age had died, the rate of depopulation accelerated. Exactly how many people died is unknown; there are few trustworthy records and there is no way of calculating how many people lived in Vanuatu before the white man came. The causes and timing of the deaths on each island are peculiar to it alone. Generalisations are impossible. The best documented case and, perhaps, the worst example is that of Aneityum. There were 3,500 people on the island in 1850 and very likely many more 20 years before that. By 1905, there were 435, a drop of 95%. Erromango had supported more than 4,500 people before the discovery of sandalwood; by 1930, less than 500 lived there. Of the 40,000 Ni-Vanuatu who went to work in Queensland only 30,000 returned. How many of the 10,000 who went to labour in the New Caledonian mines or the Fijian, or Samoan plantations did not return is unknown, though the number of deaths of miners was said to be ‘appalling’. As one recruiter stated after a successful trip: “By Jove”! I said to myself, “this is easy work. If it was all like this, I would depopulate the group, and then come back and shift the islands themselves”! Wawn, W.T. The South Sea Islandersi, p. 89. Other contributory factors were the introduction of alcohol and muskets and the increased use of birth control. Ni-Vanuatu thought their race doomed to extinction, as did many European observers, and that it was useless to struggle against the inevitable. As one Vao woman said at the time, “Why should we have any more children? Since the white men came they all die”. Speiser, F. Two Years With Natives in the Western Pacific, p. 108. A.B. Deacon, an anthropologist working in south Malakula, thought other factors the cause: The present appalling death-rate is a consequence of the lapse of the performance of the Nogharo ceremonies in this district. . . . The Nogharo were life-giving ceremonies which occurred every 8 years the object of which was to ‘make man’, i.e. invigorate and increase the district. . . . On them depended the maintenance of the life of the district, the birth of children, the invigoration of adults, the power to resist sickness (magic) . . . In the village where I am living one died of dysentery yesterday, another last week. And so many, so terribly many, are the old men, the last men who ‘know’ . . . At every turn it is ‘the men who knew are dead’ . . . But the most terrible thing to work against is the hopeless, fatalistic apathy of the people. I was asking for skulls the other week and received the ironic reply, “in a little while the white man will be able to take all ours”. Deacon, A.B. Malekula, pp. xvii-xix. (Photograph) Hunting wild pigs with muskets, near Hog Harbour, Santo. (Douglas Fairbanks snr 1935) 1906 – 1939 1906 - 1914: The Early Years of the Condominium The Condominium was proclaimed in December 1907. It satisfied no one and most Ni-Vanuatu did not hear about the arrival of the new administration. The French Government regarded it as a temporary expediency. They aimed to annex the islands ultimately and did their utmost to encourage Frenchmen to settle on land acquired by SFNH, especially in Epi and along the Segond Canal. Englishmen, without the assistance of large foreign companies, such as SFNH, did not want to settle in Vanuatu. The Australian Government, who wanted the British Commonwealth to annex the islands, continued to subsidize Burns Philp shipping services, paid a surveyor to work in the group and provided tariff relief for British settlers; i.e. the produce they exported to Australia was not taxed heavily and could be sold at competitive prices on the Australian market. But BP charged high freight rates and, by 1910, only a few British settlers were making much money. Some islands, such as Tongoa, had too many traders, none of whom made a large profit. On Tanna there was little competition and traders there did quite well. Between 1906 and 1910 the number of Frenchmen, who settled on Efate, Epi, Ambrym, Malakula, Santo and Pentecost, increased greatly while the number of British settlers, living mainly in the small islands north of Efate, the Shepherds, Paama and the Banks, remained the same. Many Europeans exploited the lack of Western law in the islands. Alcohol was illegally sold: patients were admitted to the Presbyterian hospital on Ambrym suffering from alcohol paralysis and delirium tremens; one settler saw a man drop dead after drinking a whole bottle of absinthe. Some recruiters got people drunk; others falsely promised Ni-Vanuatu wives to the prospective recruits, some kidnapped people at gunpoint. One recruiter tricked people by having them come on board his boat to help shift the tank and then capturing them. Jean Cassin, a French planter on Santo, exploited the resemblance of his vessel to that of the French administration. In 1911, while anchored at Espiegle Bay, north Malakula, Cassin dressed in pseudo-military gear chucked sticks of lighted dynamite into the sea and then proceeded to ‘arrest’ the Malakulans who had paddled out to collect the dead fish. Dumbfounded they were each sentenced to three years’ ‘prison’, i.e. plantation labour. Managers of plantations gained a reputation for brutality. Labourers worked long hours and were treated like animals. They were often not fed on Sundays and were given such small rations the rest of the week that they had to buy food from the plantation store. Many French planters, chronically bankrupt, did not pay their labourers because they often could not. Unlike the British administration, the French ran a settlement scheme so that its nationals could start a plantation without much personal capital. On one plantation an Inspector of Labourers found that over 70% of the workforce were kept working on agreements that had long expired. Ni-Vanuatu did not all passively accept these abuses. Some fought back. Nine settlers were killed in 1904 alone and three of the crew on a recruiting trip were killed by Malakulans in 1910. Most English accounts of the early years of the Condominium condemn Frenchmen for the crimes they committed. It is highly important to remember, though, that several French plantations were managed by Englishmen and if recruiting abuses or acts of brutality were committed by both nationals, the actions of the French would have been more obvious simply because there were more of them. One English planter of the time thought that ‘the British are only slightly better than the French’. Fletcher, R.J., p. 196. While the French administration was more concerned with the French settlement of the islands and did not attempt to control the excesses of its nationals, the English administration wishing to safeguard the rights of Ni-Vanuatu, had such an inadequate police force that it could not properly enforce its laws on its nationals. Moreover, Merton King, the British Resident Commissioner (BRC) was extremely careful not to upset the entente cordiale. He preferred not to further British interests rather than disturb his colleague, the FRC. Presbyterian missionaries had originally welcomed the Condominium, thinking that it could bring orderly government to the islands. But, disappointed by its results and outraged by recruiting abuses, they became strongly opposed to it and aroused public opinion in Australia for British annexation, persuaded people not to be recruited and urged a total ban on the recruiting of women. The British administration bowed to the last demand. Understandably British settlers felt that King was not looking after their interests. French administrators saw themselves as protecting followers of custom against the advance of militant Presbyterians, while the Presbyterian missionaries had converts’ land registered in the name of their home churches to prevent Europeans from acquiring it. The Joint Court finally opened in 1910. It proved to be as much a disappointment as the rest of the Condominium. The French, British and Spanish judges did not speak one another’s languages fluently, and court cases were conducted mainly in French with only occasional translation into English. The increasing deafness of the President of the Court, Count Buena de Esperansa, was an added complication. The court, severely restricted in its powers by the 1900 Convention, could only treat serious offences as ‘infractions’. Kidnapping a Ni-Vanuatu in the course of recruiting, for instance, could only be dealt with as an illegal engagement. It was in the National Courts that it was tried as a felony, and the French judge was extremely lenient towards his nationals. Two Frenchmen were tried in the Joint Court for recruiting eight Ni-Vanuatu at gunpoint and were given a total of 35 days’ imprisonment and a fine of £30. Criminal action against them was to have been taken in the French Court; but none was. The British judge, much stricter with his nationals, wondered “if he was living in the twentieth century”. A Dutch lawyer was made Native Advocate in 1911 to represent islanders’ interests in the Joint Court. The French administration worked hard to prevent him gathering necessary information or exercising his powers since most of his cases were to be over land claims and any contesting of titled-deeds endangered the enormous holdings of SFNH. It ensured that there was no boat available whenever he wished to tour the islands, and argued that he could only act officially in court. In the meantime, however, Edward Jacomb, a private lawyer in Vila, traveled through the islands telling Ni-Vanuatu their rights under the Condominium, collecting information about land disputes and warning white people who had settled in disputed areas. People on Ambrym still remember paying his fees. He returned to Vila to represent islanders in Court. In reaction, the French warship Kersaint toured the islands the next year, arresting large numbers of ‘native agitators’. They were imprisoned in Vila, charged with offences against other islanders (mostly extortion of money by threats) and waited months until tried by the Joint Naval Commission. Some died in jail while waiting. With so many men in prison, planters’ hold on the land was strengthened and the Presbyterians weakened. (Photograph) Melanesian girls landing at Vila (J. Beattie 1906, courtesy national Library of Australia). It was clear that something had to be done to arrest this farcical, rapidly degenerating state of affairs. In 1913, the British Government, acting primarily on information received from its own officials (Australian and Presbyterian petitions had had little effect on the attitude of the British Government), called for a conference with the French. The 1914 Conference was very different to its predecessor. The British delegates were very well informed, putting the French (who were not) on the defensive. The resulting Protocol was practically a re-writing of the earlier Convention. The assumed jurisdiction of the Joint Naval Commission was abolished. The Joint Court was given jurisdiction for serious crimes committed by natives against other natives in the islands south of Ambrym and serious offences between natives in the islands north of Paama. A Native Court was formed to deal with minor offences. Throughout the islands, the number of Condominium Agents (CAs), posts first instituted in 1911, was increased. Judgements of the Joint Court were to be put into effect by both resident commissioners acting together and the approval of botyh was necessary before any sentence could be reduced. The scale of penalties was increased. The Public Prosecutor gained the right to act independently, if one of the national administrations failed to bring an accused party to trial within a reasonable period of time. While it was a considerable improvement over the 1906 Convention, the Protocol still relied on the willingness of the two administrations if it was to work. Delayed by the upheaval of World War I, it was not ratified until 1922. None of the land clauses changed, however, and Deryck Scarr has well described how the law operated in this area: Surveyors went out to locate blocks of land which were often described merely by a name and a few references to the points of a compass. . . When the deeds with their supporting surveys came before the Joint Court, the tests applied were three years’ occupation or pure antiquity coupled with registration. Where villages were still established on land awarded to a European, provision was made for a reserve; but since the Court itself never stirred out of Vila it could not be sure; hat the land awarded to New Hebrideans was cultivable. Even at Havannah Harbour a reserve on the mainland awarded to the Moso people was apparently so inadequately surveyed that when they wanted to make use of it, it could not be located. . . . The Joint Court had not been hearing land cases long, indeed, before it became apparent that any piece of paper of whatever date, if it was duly registered, constituted valid title and could not be upset by native caveators. Occupation, on however unsatisfactory a written title, constitued inalienable right as against New Hebrideans, although as against other Europeans it might involve the occupant in the obligation to pay compensation. Scarr, D., pp. 249-51. So, large tracts of land, originally obtained in a highly dubious manner from Ni-Vanuatu, remained under the control of white men. Settlement: 1914 – 1939 The Australian Government, unable to buy out French interests and satisfied with its colonial gains from the war, accepted the continuation of the Condominium. The Presbyterian missionaries did not and made repeated calls for British annexation. English settlers found little attractive in the continuing British official presence in Vanuatu and some joined French settlers in petitioning the French Government in 1920 to take control of the islands. Britain became the minor partner in the Condominium as an increasing proportion of Vanuatu exports went to France and more Frenchmen settled. In 1910, there were 566 French citizens to 288 British subjects. By 1939, the French out numbered the British ten to one. Vanuatu had become a French colony in all but name. The newly settled Frenchmen tended to be poor, inexperienced and ignorant of tropical conditions and agriculture. Many had been granted small plots of land, which had already been worked haphazardly by several predecessors. One planted the same field of maize 16 times because of greedy wild pigs. Another had his crops destroyed by land crabs. Most, at first, cultivated their own gardens and recruited local labour. To obtain cash some bought pigs on Aoba and resold them on Santo. Others dived for trochas shell, collected beche-de-mer or caught fish. One short-circuited traditional trading routes buying nese leaves in south Santo and selling them directly to the Big Nambas. Once they had enough money settlers bought boats in order to do their own recruiting from islands other than the one they were living on. Labourers from other islands found it difficult to evade their contractual obligations whereas locally hired labourers could return home if they disliked the work and often had to go tend their own gardens or fulfill kinship obligations. So new settlers, relying initially on local labourers, treated them well and shared their food with them. Until proper houses were built, everyone lived together in the same shelter. People had become more and more reluctant to work on plantations for long periods. Instead they preferred short-term contracts. Even though recruiting abuses had decreased after the war, the Presbyterian missionaries continued to vehemently oppose recruiting. It was not worthwhile for recruiters to even visit regions controlled by Presbyterians. In north Pentecost big men, sickened and outraged by kidnappings, banned people from going down to the shore whenever a ship appeared. Recruiting was concentrated in areas where there was little contact with Europeans and/or where fighting continued: the warriors needed muskets in their constant struggles for power. The Big Nambas, most ferocious of all to the white man, were reputed to be the hardest workers. Planters who treated their labourers well, though, had a steady supply of labour and the people of some villages always went to certain plantations to work where they could be sure of staying with kin in a friendly atmosphere. (Photograph) The Ringdove, a typical trading vessel. C. 1910. (Nabanga) Work was from six to eleven in the morning and one to five in the afternoon. Saturday was a half-day. The weekend was spent relaxing, hunting, fishing and going to church. Labourers lived in large communal houses, ten or twelve to one, and were fed meals of boiled rice and tinned fish, often supplemented by crops from the planters’, or the labourers’ own gardens. Hospitals were few and difficult to reach quickly. Planters had to use crude medicines to treat any cases of tuberculosis, colds, indigestion, fever and infection. Despite their making many small economies, most settlers, managing small and remote plantations, balanced precariously between bankruptcy and profit. Many had turned their land over to coconuts, which required less cultivation than coffee or cocoa. Competition for the few available labourers kept wages high. Planters tried to save money and vary their diet by making their own bread, butter, cheese, soap (from beef dripping), corned beef, ham, sausage, lard, curry powder and oil (from nangi or sea almonds). Those who came to the islands in the hope of quickly making a large fortune without much effort were soon disappointed. Europeans had to be hardy and independent if they were to cope with the loneliness and violent monotony of plantation life. The day-to-day routine was only broken by the brief, irregular visits of the copra boat. Though planters did visit and help one another in times of need, most lived an essentially solitary existence—a solitude made all the more intolerable on the departure of guest! When one settler was asked to dinner by a visiting insect collector, he exclaimed, “A party! I haven’t been to a party in twenty years”. Some could not cope and turned to drink for solace. A visiting gentleman and the FRC made a surprise call on one planter: We landed, to find the agent (of the plantation) in a peculiar, half-mad condition. He pretended to suffer from the fever, but it was evident that alcohol had a good deal to do with it, too. The man made strange faces, could hardly talk and was quite unable to write... He was asked to dinner on board (the FRC’s boat), and as he could not speak French nor the Resident Commissioner English, negotiations were carried on in beche la mar... Things got still worse when the agent became more and more intoxicated, in spite of the small quantities we allowed him. I had to act as interpreter, a most ungrateful task, as the planter soon began to insult the Resident, and I had to translate his remarks and the Resident’s answers... happily, matters came to a sudden close by the planter’s falling under the table. He was taken ashore by his native wife and the police-boys who enjoyed this duty immensely. Speiser, R. p. 28. One planter wrote, “To the mere idle spectator the planter’s life is heaven. To the initiated it is very nearly hell...the working and driving of kanakas is full of beastliness. One must drive them like beasts and one must also care for them like beasts”. Fletcher, R.J., p. 35. The relation between a masta and his boys must have been full of mutual incomprehension. The masta wanted his labourers to work hard for set hours every day, but most islanders were not used to routine work. They were there for the money and a chance to get away from home. They did not see why you had to work hard. Once their contract was finished they could return home with a prized bokis of goods and some cash. White and black—the distinction so strong and so important, that American Negroes would refer, when in conversation with fellow traders, to ‘we whites’. Many settlers at that time believed, like most of their contemporaries in the evolutionary backwardness and intellectual inferiority of Ni-Vanuatu, the more conservative of them refusing to eat at the same table with Melanesians and half-casts. Though many planters lived with Ni-Vanuatu women, they were all astonished when H.W. Dairymple, a British settler, took his black wife back to England with him. To most settlers custom was silly superstition, any sign of it only serving to strengthen their belief in the childishness of most islanders. Maurice Witts, a British planter at Hog Harbour, Santo, thought his labourers were trying to evade work when they complained of cuts received while labouring yet were prepared to put up with ritual scarification. Many settlers, weakened by malaria, frustrated by the constant rise and fall in the price of copra and annoyed by the seemingly irrational behaviour of their labourers, treated their boys brutally. Old plantation hands can tell tales of being whipped, kicked, cursed or fined for being late or not working as hard as possible. One story tells of the building of a plantation road in one of the northern islands; 60 posts were to be seen along its two-mile length when the road was finished. There were, of course, many exceptions. Certainly not all planters were brutal and ignorant of native ways, some got on very well with their labourers and indigenous neighbours, even taking grades in the nimangki of their local community. People, encouraged by missionaries, cultivated coconut trees and sold the copra to traders who offered a wide range of goods. Some became traders themselves. Able to pay a good price for copra because of their cheaper standard of living compared to Europeans, they did quite well. By 1930, about one-sixth of all copra exported was produced by Ni-Vanuatu and it was common for them to employ other Ni-Vanuatu, especially on Ambae. When the price for copra was high people preferred to work in their own coconut groves. Only when the price fell drastically did they seek contract employment—the very time planters did not need to hire many labourers. Tonkinese, people from Tonkin, a northern province in Vietnam, first came to work on Vanuatu plantations in 1913. But it was not until ten years later that the French administration, persuaded by planters of the shortage of labour, allowed their regular recruitment. The Tonkinese were only to be employed by French nationals, the British administration refusing for several years to permit its nationals to hire Oriental labourers. The security their five-year contracts gave planters offset the cost of their high wages and by 1925 there were 5,000 in the group. Though they were housed in segregated, individual quarters, planters did not discriminate against them. The Tonkinese were treated just as well, or as badly, as Ni-Vanuatu. Some Frenchemen complained, saying that the Tonkinese they had received were bandits and undesireables, ‘murderers and recidivists for the most part’. Violence and killings were not unknown. But settlers had to admit that the arrival of the Tonkinese with their legendary capacity for hard work had saved the plantations from ruin and most large plantations in existence today were started and maintained by Tonkinese. A culture unto themselves, the Tonkinese celebrated their own religions (Catholic and Buddhist), grew their own crops and cooked their own food. On the annual feast of the Tet, those on the Plantation Colardeau, just outside Vila, held a large festival to which they invited many outsiders. Dressed in elaborate costumes and heavily made-up, the Tonkinese put on a lengthy floorshow of traditional dance, music and drama. In the ’20s, SFNH began to invest money in the growing of cotton on Malakula despite Melanesian opposition; armed guards had to patrol the land, which had been taken at gunpoint. Unlike other crops cotton can be picked a relatively short time after planting. But only a coarse variety could be grown, and pests and disease destroyed some of the crop. Investment did not stop, however, and credit was freely given to French settlers against promises of future high production. Three cotton-ginning works were built for the Malakulan plantations, with a combined capacity of 5,000 tons a year. The promises were not fulfilled. High recruitment costs had prevented planters from hiring as many labourers as they wanted to. Then prices began a catastrophic fall in 1929, with the beginning of the worldwide depression. The price of copra dropped from £22 a ton in 1925 to a low of £3 a ton; cotton from £78 to £17; cocoa from £54 to £15; coffee from £57 to £32. Many traders reduced their profit margins in order to boost turnover. Several went bankrupt. Only those living along the Segond Canal where there was little competition continued to make much profit. One French trading company, Bechade, was liquidated. Many planters were ruined, the surviving settlers virtually stopping all work on their plantations. With sacks more valuable than the copra they contained, it was not worth paying people to collect it. Unable to pay their labourers, they sent Tonkinese and Ni-Vanuatu back to their homes. Ni-Vanuatu, suspicious in the fall of prices, thought it a conspiracy by Europeans to rob them. The French planters, no longer supported by the trading companies, crippled by the high rate of interest on their debts, and with their crops partially destroyed by recent droughts and hurricanes, appealed to the French administration for aid. The administration had five million francs advanced for their relief and had most debts written off. In return it took over large areas of land from SFNH, effectively gaining control of the company. It also increased the price for copra produced only by Frenchmen. So astute Ni-Vanuatu and Englishmen got their nearest friendly French planter to sell their copra for them whenever the French copra boat called. Prices slowly rose again from 1935. Production of coffee, coconut and copra, all of which were exported to France, expanded reaching pre-depression levels by 1937. The production of cotton, which had never passed 1,000 tons a year, ceased; coconuts were now cultivated on the Malakulan plantations. Recruitment of Tonkinese was restarted, now for both British and French planters. Ni-Vanuatu re-entered employment on the plantations but for low wages. Most now worked casually, not on contract. Only recruiting from the drastically depopulated Torres Islands was forbidden. Vila and Santo Though Vila had been recognised as the commercial and planting centre of Vanuatu since the 1880s, it was only with the coming of the administrations that it became a town. A motley collection of wood and corrugated iron buildings, Vila was a quiet, isolated place where news of the First World War tour three months to arrive from Europe. The main, and only, street was practically a jungle path hiding the stores of BP and CFNH. All government officials and ‘the better class residents’ lived on the slopes immediately above the waterfront. There was also a butcher, a baker, a plumber, a barber, a blacksmith and an aerated water factory. Monthly or two-monthly shipping services connected Vila, in principle, with France, Noumea, Sydney and Saigon, French Indo-China (now called Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). Lighters ferried passengers and cargo from the ships to the waterfront. Born out of necessity not for elegance, Vila was a town for pioneers and beachcombers. Convicts who had served their time in the prison at Noumea ‘haunted the beach’. Exiled from France, unfit for work and ‘with every man’s hand turned against them’, they earned a living selling grog to Ni-Vanuatu and gambling, fortifying themselves with absinthe and cigarettes. The hotel, known as the ‘bloodhouse’ because of its past gory history, was ‘of unprepossessing appearance. The society there is not of the choicest’. One lady visitor found the sight of the barmaid propped against the door-post and the blast of stale beer too much for her refined sensibility. She departed stating, “I have seldom left a place with such relief as Port Vila and fervently hoped that I should never see it again”. Settlers and recruiters thought differently. They came to Vila for supplies and a chance to briefly relax. With characteristic exaggeration, R.J. Fletcher describes one evening at the ‘blood-house’: I have seen recruiters playing poker after a successful season. The drink is champagne... ordered in cases. The regulation method is to shout for a case, kick the lid off and open the bottles with an 18" knife. The stakes are merely the recruited niggers who are ranged solemnly round the wall of the room and change hands many times a night. Fancy the excitement of a jackpot of four stalwart niggers and two women (total value £92) in the pool. “Years of labour” is a unit of currency here. Fletcher, R.J., p. 142. The main street was closed for horse races though a joint regulation had to be issued banning people from bringing in horses and other animals in the centre of town. On stormy nights the only sound was the crash of waves blown onto the street. (Photograph) Rue Higginson 1929. (Rev. Jim Jones, courtesy E. Dougall) (Photograph) The original Post Office. (R. Discombe collection) By the ’30s Vila, with a population of 1,000, had grown larger and more sedate. The newly arrived Tonkinese lived at one end of the town in quarters ‘like stables without any sanitary arrangements’. A few Chinese and Japanese (never more than 200) who had originally come as stewards on stray ships or as accountants for one of the Efate plantations, collected in small colonies. The Japanese dived for shell, fished, made clothes or tin-smithed, while the Chinese cultivated Western vegetables for sale in town or worked as artisans for the Europeans. Most small shops were run by the Orientals, who offered goods at cheaper prices than their European competitors. The tall houses of the Joint Court officials marked the upper boundary of Vila which was ringed by bush and the coconut groves of several plantations. A narrow gauge railway was used for the transport of freight from Tagabe to town and the telephone service extended out to Devil’s Point. There were no tarred roads for the few cars registered by 1938 and planters could only drive into Vila during the dry season. No longer a mere resting-place for recruiters – the blood-house long gone – Vila had become a relaxed white town where official functions were the order of the day. British residents were rowed over to Iririki every Sunday for the BRC’s formal cocktail party. Divided by language and administered by separate bureaucracies, the British and the French of Vila even spent their time differently; the British swam at Pango, the wealthy ones with their own beach-huts, while the French picknicked at the lagoon. Planters rode into town, tied their horses up outside the New Hebrides Club and went inside to meet their friends for a drink while their wives played tennis and met one another at afternoon tea parties. July 14th was an annual event to be enjoyed by all, with sports events, canoe races, a ball and a night parade through town by all the indentured Tonkinese on Efate carrying intricate lanterns, banging their big bass drums made of wine-cases and cowhide, playing flutes and dancing together in paper-mache dragons. A travelling cinema came for month spells three times a year from Noumea. The Chinese relaxed with opium and a Japanese union, Nippon Do Shi Kai, annually celebrated the birthday of the Emperor. Unemployed Ni-Vanuatu not from Efate were not allowed to live in Vila for more than 15 days. Otherwise they could be sent home. All Ni-Vanuatu had to be out of town by nine in the evening unless they wished to have to report to the DA next day. A store manager who had his men work overtime had to write out an explanatory note for them to carry so they would not be arrested on their way home by the police. A grimmer side was shown between 5.30 and 6.00 a.m. on 28th July 1931 – six Tonkinese were publicly guillotined outside the French barracks. Two had killed another Tonkinese, the others their French manager. After their sentencing, they had converted to Catholicism and ‘went to the guillotine praying loudly, declaring that they were dying voluntarily in order to expiate for their crime’. Three years earlier the store of CFNH, a few wharves, several depots and nearby houses had burnt down. When the fire reached the ammunition section of the store, there was a great explosion and large chunks of flying debris thrown out into the street killing 16 onlookers and wounding 20 others. Rumours at the time claimed that Tonkinese had started the fire in revenge for the official ignorance of their grievances over wages and living conditions. The new building, put up the next year, was used by CFNH until the mid-1980s when it was demolished. Santo, unlike Vila, was not a town, but two small clumps of buildings. The FDA with the Catholic mission and hospital were located halfway down the Canal (the BDA was at Hog Harbour) and CFNH and several warehouses at the mouth of the Sarakatta River. Plantations filled the gap between the two encampments. Roads were few and most people got about by boat or on foot. Even quieter than Vila, Santo’s only festive moments were the occasional wild poker parties or the arrival of a steamer. One visitor witnessed : [The steamer arrives]... in all directions we can see the lights of the approaching boats of the planters, who come to announce their shipments and spend a gay evening on board. There are always some passengers on board the steamer, planters from other islands on their way to Vila or Sydney, and soon carousing is in full swing, until the bar closes. All next day the steamer stays in the channel, taking on produce from every plantation, and for two days afterwards merrymaking is kept up, then the quiet monotony of a tropical planter’s life sets in once more. Speiser, F. pp. 44-5. Law and ‘Order’ Many saw the physical siting of the two Residencies, so close to one another, yet separated by a gully, with the Union Jack fluttering in the long shadow of the Tricolour, as an appropriate symbol of the Condominium administration that had come to Vanuatu. The splendid isolation of the BRC’s house on Iririki Island completed the image. Visiting journalists found the bizarre workings of the joint administration easy copy for a humorous article with its duplication of services, two police forces, postage stamps officially sold at other than their face value and different exchange rates of the English pound to the French franc depending on what was bought. (Photograph) French officers relaxing. (Nabanga) (Photograph) Inside the British Residency. (Nabanga) Geared for relative inactivity and the product of a diplomatic compromise, the Condominium was a frustrating system for any earnest civil servant who wanted to get things done. Both RCs had to agree on any decision before anything was carried out. A lengthy process, open to many delays, it ensured that little was carried out. If a problem had to be referred back to the metropolitan governments in Europe, it would be at least a year before the ACs received a reply. The national administrations’ lack of expert translators and the consequent, frequent misunderstandings of misinterpretations compounded difficulties. The joint administration, supported by income from taxes and import duties, was so poor that its staff was kept to the absolute minimum. Offering low salaries and unattractive conditions of service, it did not gain able recruits. Indeed, the depression of the ’30s was so economically crippling that the administration come very close to completely withdrawing. Only joint Anglo-French subsidies kept it going. The British Government yacht, Europhrosne 2, was destroyed by fire and not replaced, the BRC having to use a local steamer or see if he could borrow the FRC’s boat whenever he wished to tour the islands. With no surplus cash and uninterested in the intellectual development of Ni-Vanuatu, the joint administration left the tasks of education and medical care to the missions. Many people resented and feared the arrival of western government in their islands. Angry at the alienation of their land, they wanted to keep the white man out at all costs, disliked interference in their affairs and regarded the actions of the Condominium with suspicion and hostility, though they quickly learnt to exploit Anglo-French rivalry to their own advantage. When a British High Commissioner tried to give out coronation medals, he was met with great hostility since people thought it the advent of the introduction of poll-tax. Technically, Vanuatu was never a colony: it was a ‘region of joint influence’. Neither Power ruled or governed the islands, they merely administered them. And for many years the national administration stayed very close to the spirit of this distinction. Essentially the administrations remained in Vila and rarely stirred outside, though the two Powers did appoint Condominium Agents (CAs), later renamed District Agents (DAs), in an attempt to administer the islands. Their duties were ‘principally to control recruiting, supervise labour and make inquiries into reports of abuses and other claims’. CAs could exercise authority only over Ni-Vanuatu and their own nationals. Four (two French, two British) were initially appointed. Based in island stations, they occasionally toured the villages in their allotted areas. Generally disliked, they were thought of as only coming to villages to collect licence money, to prosecute violations of the alcohol regulations, or to take wrongdoers to prison; people had not forgiven earlier punitive expeditions with man-o’-war shelling their villages and captains arresting culprits. Villagers dealt with criminals themselves, according to the traditional code, as they had always done. They only referred a very serious case to the CA when they wanted the guilty person got rid of. Assessors, prominent men often elected and dismissed by the people of their own area, sat on the Native Court and helped the CA, its President, reach decisions over cases. With privileged access to an important white man, some assessors abused their influence. One taught people table manners so that ‘they will be able, next year, to eat with the whites’; a person caught eating pawpaw with only a knife and his hands, i.e. not on a plate, was sentenced to clearing the bush and road-building. The islands were gradually becoming more peaceful, thanks to the efforts of missionaries and punitive expeditions, though traditional life was breaking down in many areas because of the deaths of so many people, the conversion of others to Christianity and their resettlement in large coastal villages, the introduction of money and the continued absence of men away on plantations. Big men became less powerful. Some rituals were no longer performed. One visitor described the scene in Southwest Bay in 1926: Everyone has been led away by the glitter of civilisation—rifles guns, rum, watches, electric torches, condensed milk, tinned meat . . . The price of cotton, the doings of the traders, these are becoming more and more the principal interests of the natives. Deacon, A.B., p. xxi. Big men, worried by the number of people buying their way into the nimangki, increased the number of pigs to be killed in each grade, so inflating the system and hastening its imminent destruction. In Longana, northeast Ambae, people reacted against the greed of their warrior-leaders and, no longer in need of their protection, opted for European jurisdiction. They left the leaders’ large villages and formed new, smaller ones nearer their coconut groves and the traders. Big men had now to follow the will of their adherents if they wished to retain their following. In Nduindui, west Ambae, the local trader, a member of the Church of Christ, acted on the wishes of local church leaders and had three prominent followers of the church set up as district chiefs to oversee the actions of appointed sub-chiefs and the 15 recruited ‘policemen’. Pagan big men refused to recognise the authority of the new organisation and French traders complained that the chiefs and their policemen were preventing others from coming to their stores. The FRC protested to King who had originally agreed to the establishment of the system. King backed down, the organisation was dismantled and a warship sent to arrest Sale Bani, one of the chiefs. He was held unchanged in Vila for two years and only returned to west Ambae after protests to the RCs. West Ambaens, very bitter over the mishandling of this affair, determined that they would have nothing to do with the Condominium in future and set up their own, independent Church Council system: church titles replaced traditional grades; deacons were the most important heads of households, teachers the village leaders. All major decisions were taken in Church Council, composed of elders, teachers and deacons. Pagans lost both prestige and pigs - any caught wandering in the Christians’ gardens were killed. The task of the CAs was lightened somewhat by the missionaries setting up local government systems, petty theocracies, in the areas they controlled. Among the Presbyterians, senior men met as a ‘court’ to try the immoral conduct and petty offences committed by sinners. Those found guilty were fined or made to clear the bush and build roads. On Tanna, pacified since the turn of the century, the missionaries installed two coastal big men, one from the east, the other from the west, as ‘Paramount Chiefs’ (a status unknown in Vanuatu) to rule the island. Officially recognised by the Condominium, ‘Tanna law’, with its own police force and courts, flourished. Kava drinking and some rituals were banned. Marriage was declared ‘free’: people did not have to follow custom when choosing a spouse, but men could only take one wife. Magic stones, prized by their hereditary owners, were thrown into the sea. Pagans tried to draw converts back into the fold by drinking kava any time of the day, not just at dusk, and by holding an extraordinary number of feasts. Wilkes, appointed CA for southern Vanuatu in 1912, investigated. He found the Tannese pagans and Christians bitterly divided. The missionaries thought custom had to be destroyed since it promoted the forces of evil and obstructed the work of conversion. Militant teachers, rather freely interpreting what they had been taught, hunted the bush for pagans to convert and bring down to the coast, while the police, appointed by the chiefs and not by the missionaries, over-extended their duties. Wilkes heard of one man who had been threatened with a knife by a teacher if he did not join the church. Another had been put to work on road building for collecting wild honey on a Sunday. Other ‘malefactors’, whether pagan or Christian, were made to walk up and down beaches carrying heavy stones for hours at a time. Christian men caught drinking kava were beaten until they bled. The missionary courts were closed and replaced by one on which Wilkes and four Tannese sat. But Wilkes left to fight in the war and his successor, Nicol, a ‘rough and ready’ Scot, ex-engineer on the BRC’s yacht, allowed the Presbyterians to regain their hold over the island. By 1930, the pagans were outnumbered by three to one. Some Tannese seeing their custom slowly smashed and oppressed by the local government system began to look for a means of escape. To some, the retention of custom was a political stance, a declaration of faith in self-determination. They continued to resist any government supervision or any missionary encroachment. They wanted to keep away from the white man; in turn they were rarely disturbed. CAs did not visit their villages. When a punitive expeditionary force was led against the Tiragh of north Malakula in 1916 in retaliation for the killing of a trader and his four children and the eating of another child, it was ambushed and had to retreat back to the coast with its wounded. Seventeen years later Tom Harrisson, acting CA for Malakula, tried to visit the Big Nambas but one chief sent him the message, “You are the government of the saltwater; I am the government of the bush. If you want to see me, come and see me, but come alone”. He did. (Photrograph) A warship of the ‘Dreadnought’ class. (Nabanga) In the early ’20s, Rongofuro, a Santo bushman, inherited the ability to raise people from the dead by inhaling the last breaths of his dying uncle. For payment of one pound he claimed to be able to raise any particular ancestor from the dead. Soon many were making their way to his village with their shillings. On the seventh day of one long festival, he spoke, saying that his wife had recently died because an English planter living on the coast, Clapcott, had slept with her and then killed her with poison. Unless Clapcott died the ancestors would not return. Rongofuro descended to the coast with two accomplices, Asepere and Lolorave. They shot Clapcott, cut up the body and distributed bits of it in the bush villages. Santo settlers, scared that this was the sign for a general massacre of all whites, petitioned the Condominium to arrest the killers. However, the British police did not have to hunt for Rongofuro and his followers. They gave themselves up willingly. Rongofuro, unperturbed, said that his death would not stop the imminent return of the dead. He was hanged along with his two accomplices but the others arrested were all freed despite planter’s protests. The Condominium heard little more about the movement though it was known to be continuing in the bush. Missions Compared to the previous fifty years, there were not many converts to Protestantism in the early twentieth century. Dissatisfied Christians converted to a different church: Seventh, Day Adventist pastors and Catholic missionaries were invited to Tanna by people who wanted an alternative to the excesses of Presbyterianism, while the people of Walaha, Ambae, changed to the Apostolic Church because they did not want to be under the control of Nduindui, the centre of the Church of Christ in Ambae. Presbyterian missionaries made few converts in newly missionized areas, such as Malakula and Santo, while revivals of custom and a common lack of interest among converts added to their difficulties. Older men often thought the young rabis pipol because they were ignorant of the traditional ways that had been smashed yet did not wholeheartedly follow the teachings of the church. With a drop in the number of European missionaries, from 23 in 1900 to 10 in 1930, Ni-Vanuatu teachers, poorly paid and trained at the Tangoa Teaching Institute, became much more important in the organisation and running of the church. But the Institute had inadequate resources, was insufficiently staffed, did not provide any technical training and only educated people to read the Bible and discuss ecclesiastical matters. However the Presbyterian schools were the only ones available to many people for a long time; the church did run a number of valuable hospitals and the lot of women were made much more tolerable. People were generally very pleased with the missionary-imposed banning of wars, pagan families even earning to live close to Christian villages because of their greater safety. Anglican missionaries, now permanently resident in the islands, discovered that much custom previously unknown to them from their three-monthly sojourns, was detrimental to the propagation of the gospels. Though tolerant of many of the traditional ways and wanting to adapt Anglicanism to Ni-Vanuatu rather than the other way round, they did not want Anglicans ritually secluded in nakamals for weeks on end, unable to go to church. So, in a bitterly resented move, they prohibited the performance of sukwe rites in the Banks. More Ni-Vanuatu priests were ordained, to make up for the lack of clergy. They acted as pastors in villages while white missionaries were almost exclusively based in central colleges and schools (the central training school had been transferred from Norfolk Island to the Solomons). An unexpected movement started on Easter 1931 in north Pentecost, when Daniel Tambe, a village teacher, told his congregation that he had heard a voice from heaven. God had told him personally to cleanse Pentecost of any remnant of custom. Kava-drinking, dancing at night, the performance of sukwe rites, the payment of bride-price, infant baptism and the eating of pigs must all stop and be replaced by Biblical study, going to school and the cultivation of coconuts. He prophesized that black men would rule themselves, with white men under them; Simeon Langlangmele, a Pentecost priest, would leave his village but return before his death; a war was on its way. The Danielite movement, strengthened by the fulfilment of the last two predictions and Langlangmele’s joining, gained hundreds of followers and by 1940 the Anglican community on north Pentecost was deeply split into two mutually hostile groups. One Danielite was kidnapped from her wedding and hidden in a hole for a year. War finally broke out with a week of open fighting. The Danielites, defeated, left the district, established villages elsewhere and the movement slowly diminished. The Catholic mission got its own boat in 1927. Mgr. Douceré, with his ‘floating mission’, was now able to tour the islands at will and visit his subordinates. They were regarded by many observers as the most humanitarian missionaries of that time. For instance, Pere Jammond was described by one visitor as the ‘only white man I heartily respected . . . owing to his humour and understanding and quite obvious sincerity, the natives regarded him with affection’. Pere Bancarel, was mentioned by one English agnostic as: the loveliest Frenchman I ever met and about the only white Christian . . . He has given 35 years of his small body to his work, never taking a holiday for one day; receiving only a nominal wage and some wine; celibate; in this land of a thousand false accusals and lies, accused by no one; in a tiny hut by a great church. Harrison, T.H., p. 39. The mission, caring for the Catholic Ni-Vanuatu, Tonkinese and Europeans in the group, made ‘real progress’ from 1922. But any development was hampered by the lack of priests; there were 28 in 1914, only 18 in 1933, most of them over 50 years old. * * * The whole community, though divided by nationality, creed and colour, was capable of concerted effort. On December 7th 1913, the Ambrym volcano finally erupted after days of rumbling. Six craters suddenly opened, spitting out red-hot pumice stone, which fell on the land and sea; bubbling crimson lava flowed down the volcano’s western side, destroying everything in its path. The sea boiled shooting off jets of black and white steam. On the shores lay dead boiled fish and turtles, and birds with their feathers burnt off. Three or four villages, the stately Presbyterian hospital and a large trading-station were all buried under 30' of lava (the Catholic Mission was untouched). Settlers from nearby islands made trip after trip evacuating people. Others escaped on canoes and rowed to Paarna. Some went over to north Ambrym and settled there. Twenty west Ambrymese refused to leave their villages and so died. News of the disaster reached Vila on the 10th. The FRC left immediately for Port Sandwich, where many refugees wore put up, on the France, carrying food and medicine. The BRC left next day. Only when volcanic activity had stopped could the Ambrymese return to their devastated island. The Condominium supplied them with rice for the next three months. * * * 1939 – 1970 The Second World War German armies invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Next year the Germans invaded and quickly overran Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and France. The French Government surrendered and a new one was set up headed by Marshal Pétain. Some Frenchmen in Vanuatu refused to associate themselves with Pétain and pledged allegiance to the forces of Free France, led by General de Gaulle. Followers of Pétain, without the support of either administration, were put on a list of suspects, had their houses searched by the police, were banned from social functions and swamped by a flood of British propaganda. After the exiling of four Pétainists, the French administration, led by Inspecteur-General Sautot, and most French settlers declared their support for De Gaulle. Vanuatu was the first French overseas territory to do so. Estranged from their metropolitan government, the French administration became virtually powerless and the British administration effectively ran the group for the next year. After their surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbour on 7th December 1941, Japanese forces swept rapidly through the South Seas crushing all resistance and reaching the Solomons by April 1942. Europeans fled to Vanuatu in a flotilla of small ships. Invasion of Vanuatu seemed imminent. Many Europeans in Vila left for Noumea and Sydney after hearing rumours about the Japanese ill treatment of prisoners. Ni-Vanuatu, mostly from north Malakula, and Europeans enlisted in the New Hebrides Defence Force. Trained by Australian soldiers, they performed sentry duties, carried out jungle training and went on patrols through the bush. Men too old for active duty joined the New Hebrides Civil Defence Unit. They built and manned machine-gun posts throughout Vila. A plan for the evacuation of all settlers was drawn up in case the town was attacked by air. Medicines were hidden in the bush. Resident Japanese were arrested and their possessions confiscated. Shipped to Australia, they were interned in camps for the duration of the war. And then in May 1942, a fleet of ships appeared in Mele Bay. Unsure whether they were American or Japanese, people gathered anxiously at the waterfront. Arranged in battle formation with cruisers in the distance and destroyers in the background, smaller craft approached the beach. The US Navy, for the ships were American, thought the Japanese already in possession of the islands and had prepared themselves for a bloody beach assault. After landing, the Americans, still fearing Japanese invasion, immediately set up artillery units at Pango lighthouse and Devil’s Point, batteries at Rentabao and Forari, and sentries at all crossroads in town. They also took over the Courthouse area and the houses along the waterfront, billeting their doctors in the British residential zone. An airstrip, Bauerfield, was promptly built at Tagabe in spite of planters’ protests about the destruction of their crops. Heavy bombers took off early in the morning bound for Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, scene of one of the war’s most gory battles. Light fighters left next, leaving the airstrip free for the landing of transport aircraft carrying the wounded and the sick back from the battle. Patients were treated in the large Navy Hospital on the Bellevue plantation. At first a front-line airfield, Tagabe was later used for stopovers. Havannah Harbour became the Navy’s home with two small fighter airfields constructed nearby. The roads to Teuma and Devil’s Point were re-built and a new one made, connecting Vila to Havannah Harbour via Klem’s Hill. In Santo the Americans constructed an enormous major aviation and supply base, the size of a small Western city. There were: three bomber airfields (one of them built in two weeks); two fighter airstrips; patrol torpedo boat maintenance and repair shops; an immense Navy yard; over 50 kilometres of roads; six wharves; and a comprehensive telephone system. The bases stretched from the western end of the Segond Canal to Turtle Bay in a very dense fringe a few kilometres wide. There was some building or another every 100 yards in any direction, whether aircraft hangars, offices, camps, quonset huts, tennis courts, sports grounds or workshops. Over 100,000 men were permanently stationed in Santo and over 500,000 passed through during the war. At any time between 1943 and 44 there were over 100 ships in the Canal and many anchored in Turtle Bay. In Palekula Bay was an enormous dry dock, then the largest in the world. One ship stayed longer than intended, the President Coolidge, a large cruise ship used for transporting troops, which hit a mine in the Canal in December 1942. Her captain tried to run her ashore to save the cargo, but the tide was out and she scraped on the reef. Badly torn, she slid backwards into the Canal, hit another mine behind and rapidly keeled over and sank. All men on board, except the captain, struggled ashore through the thick film of escaping oil to safety. Only sixty feet down, her wreck can still be viewed by divers. The threat of invasion slowly disappeared as the Japanese were pushed back in the Pacific. The Japanese bombed Santo once, but there was only one casualty – Bossy, a cow. (Photograph) The New Hebrides Defence Force drilling c. 1942. (R. Discombe collection) Every camp had electricity and running water, NCOs and officers their own refrigerators, and loudspeakers played music and relayed news daily. Aore held a vast rest and recreation camp, described so attractively and renamed ‘Bali Hai’ in James Mutineer’s Tales of the South Pacific. 54 cinemas put on different shows every night, such as Sex Takes a Holiday and Withering Tights. Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Larry Addler, Jack Benny and Poogie Poogie, among others, came to entertain the troops. Even so, most troops were bored and homesick. Some did not, even know where in the world they were. A few went on unguided bush treks, got lost and died – some within three miles of the camps. Alcohol was rationed so troops made ‘jungle juice’ from mangoes or pawpaw in illegal stills hidden in the bush. Some stole ‘torpedo juice’ (torpedo engine fuel), though a drinking bout of that usually ended with the revelers in hospital. (Phlotograph) The sinking of S.S. President Coolidge. (NFEC/CEC Scabee Archives, California) 10,000 Ni-Vanuatu, conscripted on three-month contracts to unload cargo, wash uniforms and work as domestic servants for the troops. So many men left certain areas, such as West Ambae, that their families, unable to tend their gardens properly, became dependent on the regular return of the labourers for food and cash. Paid relatively high wages, they were astonished at the wealth and number of the Americans. Never before had there been so many men and so much material goods in Vanuatu, let alone in one place. The friendliness and generosity of the troops and the sight of Negroes working alongside other Americans greatly impressed people. Those who stayed in their villages saw lots of ships sailing past their shores and hundreds of planes flying overhead. People on islands near Santo were visited by officers buying custom objects, while the pilots of ditched aeroplanes owe their lives to the courageous villagers, who swam out to save them. Tonkinese and settlers opened laundries, curio shops and 30 restaurants in Vila and Santo. Selling alcohol illegally was particularly profitable. Other settlers stayed on their plantations, rented out their horses, sold fresh meat and had officers back to their homes for dinner. With so much equipment in the camps and so little accounting, it is not surprising that some was waylaid. Troops sold cigarettes and petrol in large quantities. One planter’s trick was to walk into a camp, drive off in a jeep, park it under a large, isolated banyan tree and have labourers haul it up on ropes into the branches. Later, when the theft had been forgotten, the jeep was hauled down. As the war drew to a close, the troops in Vila were gradually withdrawn and all the wartime buildings taken down. In Santo, impatient Americans rioted in some of the camps and the withdrawal was much more hasty. While some military equipment was flown off, all middle-quality jeeps, trucks and boats were sold. Santo became an enormous scrap-metal market in August and September 1945, with buyers coming from New Caledonia, New Zealand and Australia. ‘The bigger the vehicle, the cheaper the price’. A ten-ton truck cost 25 dollars; a jeep in good condition with five new tyres and full of petrol, 5,000 New Hebridean francs; a PT boat, a few hundred dollars. The Condominium administration bought the entire contents of two large docks, not really knowing what was inside. They turned out to contain an incredible collection of office furniture, washing machines, tools, refrigerators, and even the silver cutlery used by admirals. New equipment was destroyed to protect American markets. Whole camps and workshops were emptied, trucks dumping their loads at the water’s edge where cranes hoisted them into the sea. Eventually truck-drivers did not even bother to switch off their engines or unload but let the cranes grab the loaded, running trucks and drop them into the saltwater. Anything on wheels was driven into the sea: earth-removing machinery, ambulances, mobile canteens, tanks, trucks – anything. No one told Ni-Vanuatu spectators why everything was being thrown away. They just saw the apparently senseless destruction of goods go on and on for days. People came at night to ‘Million Dollar Point’ to pick up what they could. The west Ambaens, for instance, collected lots of building materials, dozens of jeeps and piles of crockery and cutlery. Years later it was still possible to find ammunition boxes, army blankets and clothing, and gasoline drums in Santo bush villages. Efate and Santo were left with good bridges, many miles of new roads, rows of quonset huts and the ubiquitous marston matting, used for fencing, bridges, road safety barriers and housing. Crashed aircraft were left decaying in the bush. Vila returned to its earlier relaxed pace, now seemingly more slow than ever. Settlers survived on the money they had made and suffered the strong American accents of their children. The war had been all too much for the beleaguered Condominium administration. Its progressively reduced staff had had to cope with a greatly increased workload and most services had shut down. The post-war decade was spent slowly and tediously reorganising and reconstructing Condominium services, but the Joint Court remained without a President or a Native Advocate from 1939 to 1953. Britain returned to its position as the minor influence; even in 1950 the posts of the British District Agent for Central District No. 1, the Acting Judge of the lower court, the British Commandant of Police and the British Immigration Officer were all held by one man. There was no resident British District Agent at all for Central District No. 2 between 1948 and 1962. The administrations, suffering from an acute housing problem and the heightened (and still rising) cost of living did little. The unwanted airfields fell into disuse, their strips steadily covered by weeds and grass. Some of the bridges collapsed from neglect and the roads became pot holed and dangerous. Most Ni-Vanuatu continued to regard the Condominium negatively and had as little as possible to do with it. In turn, they were very rarely disturbed. The administration remained a small body of officials centred in Vila. Indigenous Movements For over a century people had had to contend with the wealth, advanced technology and different beliefs of the white man. Some had converted to his religions. Some, following his advice, had entered the cash economy cultivating coconuts and buying goods from the profits of their sales. But certain people did not want to see custom die or made nonsense of. They sought to reassert their independence by the creation of a new social and moral order. The message some prophets preached to their followers was of the imminent return of their ancestors or the Americans, bringing for them alone, the goods the white man had so covetously retained for himself. It is a distortion of what happened to regard these movements as merely early attempts at democracy. Rather, they were a break with the white man, the recent past and certain traditional ways. While the number and size of these movements (common to all Melanesia, not just Vanuatu) increased soon after the Second World War, the coming of the Americans did not cause the following events, it only precipitated them. On Tanna, John Frum, the brother of Karapnum, god of the island’s highest mountain, had been secretly appearing at night before Presbyterian men at Green Point, just after they had drunk kava. A dim figure talking from the shadows, he prophesized great upheavals of the earth in which Tanna would become flat and join with Erromango and Aneityum to make a single island. Then John Frum would show himself properly, bringing lots of money so that everyone would be rich; no one would be sick or die. But first, the Europeans had to go. Messengers passed the news around the islands. John Frum said that the government had to be resisted; that people should leave the Christian villages and set up their own small homes or join the pagans in the bush; that European money should be got rid of. One Sunday in May 1941, the Tannese struck; clergy went to their churches only to find no one there – the schools and villages were empty. The Tannese accused the missionaries of hypocrisy: “They preach brotherly love, but eat separately at tables. The missionaries retaliated, saying the cargo-cultists stank before God. People spent all their money in the stores or threw it into the sea. What was the point of money, if the millenium was imminent? The number of lavish feasts and the degree of spending reached such proportions that Nicol, the BDA, arrested the John Frum leaders. The movement persisted and red crosses, the sign of John, were erected in villages throughout Tanna. So Nicol arrested another twenty men. By now the war in the Pacific had begun and Joe Nalpin, one of the leaders imprisoned in Vila, sent messages saying that John Frum was King of America. When the Tannese heard that American troops were living in Efate and that some of them were black, hundreds of them eagerly went to work for the troops. Then in the north of Tanna, men under the command of Neloaig, a new leader, began to build an airstrip for the expected American aeroplanes carrying goods from John Frum’s father. Nicol arrested Neloaig and radioed Vila for more police. In Neloaig’s absence, men continued to construct the airfield and some tried to get him out of jail. The police reinforcements arrived, seized the muskets of Neloaig’s followers, burnt down a John Frum hut and imprisoned 46 Tannese. All were sentenced to at least three months’ prison, Neloaig receiving two years. The leaders, their prison sentences completed, were exiled to Port Sandwich, Malakula, where they spoke to others about John. The word soon spread around Malakula and over to Epi, Paama and Ambrym. People rushed to the cause of John, ignored the rules and teachings of missionaries, threw their money into the sea and waited for the prophesized arrival of a white steamer carrying American goods. ‘Compulsory Stop’ and ‘Halt!’ notices were put up at the side of newly-cleared roads and the entrance to Uro village, Ambrym, was guarded by uniformed sentries. (Photograph) The John Frum soldiers parading on February 15, 1979. ( Jean-Michel Laffont) In 1946, a store on Tanna was raided and the latest man to proclaim himself John Frum was arrested along with 14 others. When the price of copra fell by half six years later people blamed the missionaries and traders, and boycotted all European stores. In 1957, the exiled leaders returned to Tanna and helped revive the movement. Men were trained to be soldiers by Nakomaha, one of the leaders, drilled with wooden muskets and made route marches through areas not controlled by the John Frurn leaders. The worried RCs met the leaders after they had barricaded the BDA out of Sulphur Bay, the centre of the movement. The commissioners persuaded them to stop the marching and to hand over the muskets. This time no one was imprisoned – the administration had decided to leave the movement alone from then on. The Presbyterian mission improved the standard of education in their schools, relaxed their rules on kava drinking and dancing, and started a programme of economic development. Today, many Tannese have returned to their custom, or Christian religion, but the movement lives on. American flags are raised and lowered every day at Sulphur Bay by the John Frum police, while his soldiers, with ‘USA’ painted in large red letters over their chests and backs, parade annually on February 15th. In 1946 Tsek, a Santo islander, declared that disputes were the cause of the dreadful depopulation that all had witnessed. If the disputes, whether over possessions, marriages, or illicit love affairs, were to stop, everyone had to cast off their clothes, destroy their goods and livestock, drop their taboos, speak a new, common language, ‘Maman’, and have sex publicly and freely with everyone. ‘America’ was coming soon; everyone would be wealthy and never die. The ‘Naked Cult’ quickly gained a large following, with the whole of Santo bush strictly divided into cult and non-cult areas. A road was built to Tasmalum to transport the awaited goods and a dock constructed. The Condominium, informed by alarmed missionaries, tried to suppress the cult by having the dock burnt down. But the movement ended of its own accord when Tsek died six years later. In West Ambae, many people believed in a supernatural world full of desirable goods. Men wandering in the bush could hear the noises of aeroplanes, jeeps and guns being made in the underground factories near the Ambae volcano. Several prophets spoke of the imminent arrival of the goods. But mistakes and disobedience on their part angered the spirits, so the goods did not appear. People thought that the cargo would eventually come if only a proper messiah would appear. None did. In 1939, the ‘Malakula Native Company’, or ‘Malnatco’, started in northwest Malakula for the production and sale of copra, all profits going into community projects. Many coconut seedlings were planted but activity died down after men left to work on the Santo bases. The company revived at the end of the war, but now men spoke of the goods America was going to bring. Numbered ‘Malnatco’ medals were issued, roads constructed, men taught to drive trucks and an aerodrome marked out for the expected aeroplanes. Ex-members of the New Hebrides Defence Force acted as soldiers, supervising labour. The company spread to Ambrym and Pentecost, where roads were also built. Ragh Ragh, Paul Tamlumlum and John Bula, a Pentecost islander, had already been imprisoned for spreading rumours about the arrival of the ‘cargo’. When the planes did not appear, most members of the company began to spend more of their time cultivating and selling the copra to a British trader on Santo who, according to many, proceeded to grossly exploit the Malakulans. Development Economic development of the islands was finally encouraged from the late 1950s, stimulated, in part, by the newly recruited colonial administrators who had lost their previous positions with the independence of African states. Experts of every sort came and studied Vanuatu: anthropologists, archaelogists, architects, archivists, bacteriologists, botanists, cartographers, codologists, consuls, ecologists, economists, educational advisors, forestry advisors, geographers, geologists, government photographers, guide trainees, health inspectors, historians, housing consultants, librarians, linguists, medical advisors, members of parliament, meteorologists, ophthalmologists, policemen, seismologists, statisticians, soil scientists, veterinarians, vulcanologists and zoologists, among others. Most remained for only a few days; some wrote reports several months later; the advice of few was followed. Major developments were financed by the two colonial powers and the cost of small-scale projects met by Condominium funds. Almost all medical services were orignially provided by the missions, which had put up a few hospitals and many village dispensaries. The British administration partially subsidised the Presbyterian and Melanesian missions while the French ran hospitals of their own in Vila, Norsup and Santo. In the 1950s and 60s, both national administrations increased the number of doctors and medical staff, built new hospitals and village dispensaries and clinics, refurbished old ones, and had Ni-Vanuatu trained to become dressers and nurses. Doctors toured the islands carrying out mass immunization, tuberculosis control and yaws eradication programmes. The awful number of death for which the islands had been so notorious had declined greatly and the population of Vanuatu began at last to increase. Since the settlement of Europeans, Western education had been almost totally run and mainly financed by the missions. By the 1950s, all churches, especially the Presbyterians, ran elementary primary schools. A few taught some technical education and skills. But the level of education was generally very rudimentary and restricted – most people thought of school as baebol baebol singsing, no moa. Even the Presbyterian missionaries admitted that the education offered was ‘barely adequate’ and biased towards men. Without government aid, missions had to accept low academic standards as tolerable and inevitable. Few teachers were qualified; all were poorly paid; and many parents were reluctant to send their children to school. So few jobs were available to Ni-Vanuatu which required some education (most worked as ships’ crew, stevedores, on plantations, in stores, or as domestic labour) that there seemed little point in going to school. Working independently of each other, the different missions had put up schools in a haphazard fashion, governed by no overall plan. In the ’60s, the national administrations finally decided to properly develop this educational mosaic. Acting separately, the two administrations, especially the French, had new schools built and old ones renovated and extended. The British administration continued to subsidize some Anglophone Protestant schools, while the French began to give the Catholic church aid with building costs and later provided subventions to help meet the cost of teachers’ salaries. By 1970, full primary education was available to all the school-age population. Only people living in small, remote and scattered groups found it very difficult to send their children to school; others chose not to. The British administration paid for the construction of a primary teacher training college, Kawenu, in 1962, and its graduates slowly replaced the unqualified teachers in schools throughout the islands. Kawenu later amalgamated with the British Secondary School to form Malapoa College. The French administration, who had had their teachers trained abroad, paid for the construction of the grand, well-equipped Lycee Bougainville. Many churches built high schools of their own. Several countries offered overseas scholarships and a few were created by the administrations to give successful students the opportunity to continue their education. Morrison Tangarasi from Pele Island became the first Ni-Vanuatu Bachelor of Arts, when he graduated in 1972 from the University of Papua New Guinea. Copra was still the major export of Vanuatu and a soap factory in Marseilles, France, remained its major customer, despite great price fluctuations and its low quality (because of smoke drying). Production, stimulated by record prices, had reached double pre-war levels by 1947. Planters, benefiting from the technical knowledge of the Americans and inheriting ex-US Army jeeps, trucks, machines and compressors, were forced by their labourers to follow, temporarily, the example of the Americans, and promise provision of shoes, khaki shirts and trousers, and leather gloves for laying barbed wire fences. With the changes in attitude following the war and with ‘colonialism’ fast taking on pejorative connotations, planters, under pressure from missionaries and the Condominium, were learning to treat their labourers well. Wages, which had been £1 a month before the war had risen to £12 a month by 1948. No new coconut trees were planted on European plantations because the cost of labour was so high, compared to the price of copra. The Ni-Vanuatu share of the copra exported rose to 60% by the 1960s. With the arrival in 1963 of a veterinary surgeon able to cheek the hygiene of livestock, meat could now be exported. People who had previously only kept cattle for eating the grass in their coconut groves and as a ready supply of meat were encouraged to increase their herds by the Agriculture Department, which introduced new breads of cattle, such as Charolais, to raise the quality of stock. Abattoirs and freezers were built in Santo, and Vila, and Vanuatu corned beef appeared in the stores for the first time. (Photograph) An Air Melanesiae Islander taking off from Emae airfield. (Nabanga) The boats of the South Pacific Fishing Company, started in 1957, to catch fish throughout the South Pacific and land them frozen at the company’s Palekula, Santo, base from where they are shipped to overseas markets. Though only a few Ni-Vanuatu were employed by the company, taxation of its produce was the second largest source of revenue for the Government by the time of independence. The manganese mine opened in Forari, north Efate, in 1961, originally employed many people and extracted good quality ore for export to Japan. Within five years it had become the second largest export from the islands. But after difficulties in finding a suitable market and a drop in the price for manganese, the mine closed. Bought by a new company five years later, mining resumed but at a reduced level. Many people had their first real chance to find out what was going on in other islands and, especially in Vila, when Radio New Hebrides was formally opened in 1966. Communications were further improved by the rise in the number of small ships, the formation of Air Melanesiae, the tarring and extension of Bauerfield to accommodate international flights. The Department of Public Works built new roads, airstrips and bridges, including the one over the Sarakata River reputed at the time to be the longest single-span bridge between Sydney and San Francisco. Most Tonkinese, after years of waiting, were finally repatriated in 1963. Two thousand had already been repatriated in 1946. Those left behind, their contacts expired, grew more and more impatient. The next year they demonstrated in Vila and occupied the French District Agency in Santo for three days demanding their immediate repatriation. A syndicate of alarmed Santo colons telegrammed the French Minister for Overseas Territories in Paris calling for immediate acceptance of the Tonkinese demands. Instead, a French warship, the Dumont d’Urville visited Santo, Norsup and Vila. Her wily captain said that another warship would come if the disturbances did not stop. They did. Some Tonkinese returned to work on plantations. Others opened stores, ran taxis, or became market gardeners, traders, or barbers. In 1963, just before leaving, they indulged in an orgy of spending, buying trucks, vans, jeeps, tourist cars, motorbikes and so on, only to be stripped of the lot when they landed in Hanoi. The children of some Tonkinese, born and bred in Vanuatu, did not want to leave for a strange land. They hid in the bush when the ship came. The 1963 repatriation, delayed because of the continuation of the India-Chinese War, led to a temporary shortage of skilled workmen in the building industry and artisans from other Pacific Islands were introduced to fill the gap. Generally, Ni-Vanuatu did not take up paid employment because there was little need for them to do so except for those from the few over-populated areas where there was insufficient gardening land to support everyone, e.g. Paama and Tongoa. The cost of living was so high compared to possible wages that it did not pay most people to abandon their villages and gardens to come and work in the towns. Most went to Vila or Santo for a few months at times when they did not need to tend their gardens. Custom, Cash and Councils With the improvement of communications both between and within the islands the administrations slowly began to effectively govern Vanuatu, though many people remained suspicious of their intentions. The West Ambaens, successful in their policy of keeping the white man out, made their own roads and financed the building of their own schools. Thanks to the persistent efforts of missionaries war had completely stopped, even in the few remaining isolated pockets. The proportion of Christians rose as indigenous clergy, rather than white missionaries, converted the people of whole areas. Southeast Ambrym, Malo, Tomman island, Epi and parts of Malakula were all missionized by Presbyterian pastors, teachers and deacons. Ni-Vanuatu also gained a greater say in the running of the churches themselves and assumed more important positions. The independent Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides was formed in 1948; the first Ni-Vanuatu Catholic priest, Cyriaque Aden, was ordained in 1955 and the first Ni-Vanuatu Anglican bishop, Harry Tevi, in 1979. Some Christians, disenchanted with the established forms of Christianity converted to other, newly arrived churches, such as the Assembly of God and Mormonism. It would be an exaggeration to think that the missionaries and the administration had together smashed custom. While traditional political structures were weakened, most Ni-Vanuatu still upheld traditional values and honoured kinship obligations. They still do. People in certain areas, however, such as parts of north Ambrym, remained resolute followers of custom. They did not see the arrival of medical missionaries as a god-sent opportunity to arrest the appalling number of deaths, but as the thin edge of the wedge, the apparently innocent means by which Christians could infiltrate into their region. In the large northern islands pagans had also to guard their valuable pigs against Christians who kept theirs in fenced enclosures and killed any found wandering in the bush or destroying their gardens. With the banning of warfare and the surrendering of their musket collections the Big Nambas chiefs lost their absolute authority and followed their subjects in the descent to the coast and conversion to Christianity. After Jean Chavereau’s murdering of two labourers on his plantation in Big Bay, Santo, in 1954 all Santo bushmen refused to come down from the highlands. Jean Guiart, an anthropologist working for the Condominium, was sent to try to re-establish relations between the bushmen and the administration. He found that after the decline of the Naked Cult, Mol Valiv had emerged as the most prominent big man of the Santo bush. Mol Valiv claimed that the awful depopulation had not been caused by disputes, as Tsek had said, but was a punishment from Taetae, the god of the Santo bush, for following the missionaries and deserting to the coast. People had to break totally with Christians and also not work for Europeans. People’s new dependence on money led to a loss of autonomy. Instead they had to grow all their own food and not hunger after the unnecessary luxuries of the white man. Guiart persuaded him and some other bushmen to go on a Condominium-paid trip to New Caledonia to study coffee planting. Subsequently some bush people did descend to the coast and start to grow coffee, the French administration setting up a co-operative for them to market the crop. In many areas, Ni-Vanuatu tried to adapt to the coming of the white man, not by joining cargo cults, but by entering the cash economy. In Erakor village, near Vila, people consciously broke with the past, moving straight from a custom-bound society to an urban one and investing their energy in the prospect of a future ‘good life’. In Central Pentecost and west Ambae, people living near the coast planted so many coconuts that they have insufficient land left over for their gardens. Able to cultivate only a few manioc roots and some beds of sweet potatoes, they have to buy other root crops from the people living higher up, away from the coast, where conditions are better for gardens, not coconuts. Some people entered the cash economy in a more organised way. They grouped together to form kompanis, or co-operatives, so as to be independent of European traders, the ‘little kings’ of the areas they supplied. But there were many difficulties in the organisation of kompanis, whether started by Ni-Vanuatu or Europeans, and most fell deeply into debt. Often the property of a kompani – a truck, boat, or store – was destroyed by a hurricance and not replaced. Sometimes the person put in charge of the boat or store appropriated the profits and claimed the boat or store as his alone. The British administration, and later the French, set up co-operative federations to assist the development of individual co-operatives by giving advice and training people to run them. Both federations, now almost completely run and managed by Ni-Vanuatu, provide wholesaling, retailing, shipping and banking services, though both have also been involved in a number of enterprises which have failed. The British-supported Fedco had to be given a one million dollar grant in 1976 to cover debts caused by a sudden drop in the price of copra, unwise investments and poor management decisions. The individual co-operatives, many of them quite prosperous, have been a popular success and have grown rapidly in number with 181 of them by 1977. They seem to have been a success because they are organisations that Ni-Vanuatu can themselves control and because they utilise existing social structures instead of imposing a different alien one. In areas where there is much cash cropping or few co-operatives, such as west Ambae, east Santo, north Efate, Malakula and central Pentecost, a new kind of big man has emerged. Backed by a kompani of kin, he produces, collects and re-sells cash crops to trading firms, uses his truck as a taxi, raises cattle for sale to schools or people about to hold a ceremony, and runs stores. With his central shop supplying the local populace and smaller, isolated stores, he plays much the same role as co-operatives do elsewhere in the islands. The joint administration set up an advisory council (Adco) and local ones in the fifties. It saw them as a first step towards eventual self-rule of the islands. While a number of local councils were set up and development projects started by them, many people opposed their formation. They saw them as a means by which the Condominium could impose taxes and interfere in their local affairs. Francophone Ni-Vanuatu thought that they were part of a plan by the British administration to take over the ruling of the islands and so set up their own ‘Community Councils’. Many of the smaller local councils were failures, some existing in name only. Others, especially the larger ones, were quite successful and continue to play an important part in the communities they serve. They had small wharves and dispensaries built, maintain roads, and bought and operate tele-radio sets. The Advisory Council, set up in 1957, was originally composed of both RCs as Joint Chairmen, the Head of the Public Works and the Condominium Treasurer as official members, and 12 nominated members (four Ni-Vanuatu, four French and four British). Though the composition of the Council was changed and its size increased over the years, Ni-Vanuatu, who had had parity of representation since 1959, did not hold a majority until the Council’s last two meetings in December 1974 and April 1975. With no legislative or executive authority the, Council was mainly concerned with estimates of revenue and the expenditure of the Condominium. It was an advisory body only, with some influence and powers of embarrassment; its members rejected the projected Condominium budget in 1972. Some members had been calling for constitutional advance and the establishment of a Legislative Council since the mid-60s. Frustrated at the slowness of steps towards any reform, they walked out of a meeting of Council in 1974. While Adco was a tentative move towards self-government, it was obvious by the early 1970s that a more representative body was needed in Vanuatu. As Gerard Leymang, a Catholic priest, said in one meeting: The Protocol oozes from every pore the stench of an antiquated colonial policy, which inevitably bears no relation to the aspirations of the younger generations of New Hebrideans. While the Melanesian New Hebrideans are numerically in the majority, being dominated, they form an isolated, not to say, apathetic majority. . . . The Condominium is unity founded on apathy. Quoted in Jackson, A.L. Towards a Political Awareness in the New Hebrides, JPH, 7 (1972). Further Reading Vanuatu, long the centre of controversy, has not had its history written in a way it deserves. Authors, whether English- or French- speaking, have been as prone as other human beings to bias and petty patriotism. Most have written their books or papers from a certain political position. Few are exceptions to this rule. Reader beware! GARANGER, J. Archéologie des Nouvelles-Hébrides. SHINEBURG, D. They Came for Sandalwood. HILLIARD, D. God’s Gentleman : a history of the Melanesian 1849 - 1942 THOMPSON, R.C. Australian Imperialism and the New Hebrides: 1862 - 1922. Available at the Cultural Centre, Vila. SCARR, D. Fragments of Empire: a history of the Western Pacific High Commission: 1877 - 1914. * * * FLETCHER, R.J. Isles of Illusion. Bohun Lynch (ed.). A highly personal account of life in the islands in the early twentieth century, written by an educated English settler. Perhaps the most revealing book on Vanuatu. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Articles and books are classed in the first chapter that they refer to. Abbreviations: GJ : Geographical Journal, London. JPH : Journal of Pacific History, Canberra. JPS : Journal of the Polynesian Society JSO : Journal de la Société des Océanistes, Paris. Almost all the following texts can be read in the Cultural Centre, Vila. Chapter 1: Beginnings BARRAU, J. (1956) L’Agriculture vivrière indigène aux Nouvelles-Hébrides, JSO, XII. DIAMOND, J.M. & MARSHALL, AG. (1977) Niche shifts in the New Hebrides. Emu. ENCLYCLOPEDIA BRITANICA. (1963) Pacific Islands: Flora and Fauna. PHIL. TRANS. ROY. (1975) Royal Society Expedition to the New Hebrides. Soc B.. Biol. Sci. pp. 267-486. WARD, G. (Ed.). (1972) Man in the Pacific Islands. Oxford University Press. YEN, D.E. (1973) Ethnobotany from the voyages of Mendana and Quiros in the Pacific. World Archaeology, 5 (1). Chapter 2: Custom ALLEN, M.R. (1967) Male Cults and Secret Initiations in Melanesia. Melbourne University Press. BEAGLEHOLE, J.C. (ed.). (1969) The Journals of Captain Cook Vol 2 The Voyage of the ‘ResoIution” and the “Adventure’, 1772-1775. Cambridge University Press. BRUNTON, R.; LYNCH, J.D.; and TRYON, D. (eds.). (1978) Man, Langwis mo Kastom long Niu Hebridis. Australian National University. CODRINGTON, R.H. (1981) The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. CROCOMBE, R. (1971) Land Tenure in the Pacific. Oxford University Press. DEACON, A.B. (1934) Malakula. C.H. Wedgwood (ed.) London. DRILHON, F. (1958) Le peuple inconnu. Paris. DUNMORE, J. (1965) French explorers In the Pacific, Vol 1. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. GARANGER, J. (1970) Archéologie des Nouvelles-Hébrides. ORSTOM, Paris. GUIART, J. (1951) Sociétés, rituals et mythes du Nord Ambrym. JSO, VII, p. 5-104. _________. (1952) L’Organisation sociale et politique du Nord Malekula. JSO, VII, pp. 149-259. _________. (1956) Un siècle et demi des contacts culturels à Tanna, Nouvelles-Hébrides. Paris. _________. (1956) Unité culturelle et variations locales dans le centre nord Nouvelles-Hébrides. JSO, XII, pp. 217-27. _________. (1956) Espiritu Santo. Paris. _________. (1965) Nouvelles-Htébrides : arts et cultures. Paris. Harrission, T. (1935) Quarterly Report for Malakula (CD2). _________. (1937) Living with the People of Malakula. GJ. _________. (1937) Savage Civilisation. London. KELLY, C. (ed. & trans.) (1966) “La Australia del Espiritu Santo” The Journal of Fray Martin de Munilla O.F.M., Vol 1, Cambridge. LAROCHE, M. & DRILHON, F. (1956) Notes sur une cérémonie de grades chez les Big Nambas, JSO, XII, pp 227-45 LAYARD, J.W. (1942) Stone Men of Malekula. London. MICHELSEN, O. (1896) Cannibals won for Christ. London. RODMAN, M. (1979) Following Peace: indigenous pacification of a Northern New Hebridean society, in Rodman, M. & Cooper, M. (eds) The Pacification of Melanesia. Michigan. SUTLER, R. (jr.), & SHUTLER, M.E. (1975) Oceanic Prehistory. New York. SOPE, B. (1974) Land & Politics in the New Hebrides. South Pacific Social Sciences Association, Suva. TRYON, D. (1977) New Hebrides Languages: an internal classification. Australian National University. Chapter 3: 1825 – 1865 ADAMS, R.W. (1978) In the Land of Strangers and Degrated Human Beings. Unpublished PhD thesis, La Trobe University. BRENCHLEY, J.L. (1873) Jottings during cruise of H.M.S. Curacoa among the South Seas Islands in 1865, London. CAMPBELL, A.J. (1873) An account of the early history of the New Hebrides Missions, in F. A. Campbell A year in the New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands and New Caledonia. Melbourne. DAVIDSON, J.W. (1956) Peter Dillon and the discovery of sandalwood in the New Hebrides, JSO, XII, pp 99-107. ERSKINE, J.E. (1853) Journal of a cruise among the islands of the Western Pacific including the Feejees and other inhabited by the Polynesian negro races in Her majesty’s Ship“Havannah”. London. HILLIARD, D. (1978) God’s Gentlemen: a history of the Melanesian Mission 1849-1942. University of Queensland Press. MILLER, J.G. (1978) Live. A history of church planting in the New Hebrides. Book 1. Sydney. O’REILLY, P. (1956) Essai de chronologie des Nouvelles-Hébrides, JSO XII, pp 5-63. _________. (1957) Hebridais. Répertoire bio-bibliographique des Nouvelles-Hébrides. Paris. _________. (1958) Bibliographic des Nouvelles-Héhrides. Paris. PARSONSON, G.S. (1956) La mission Presbyterienne des Nouvelles-Hébrides. Son histoire et son rô1e politique et social, JSO, XIII, pp. 107-38. PATON, J. (1889) John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides. An autobiography. London. SHINEBURG, D. (1967) They Came for Sandalwood; a study of the sandalwood trade in the South West Pacific 1830-1865. Melbourne University Press. Translated (1973) as Ils étaient venus cherchez du Santal. Nouméa.. Chapter 4: 1866 – 1906 ALLEN, M.R. (1968) The establishment of Christianity and cash-cropping in a New Hebridean community, JPH, 3. _________. (1969) Report on Ambae. Leany, C. (ed) The British Residency, Vila. BEDFORD, R.D. (1973) New Hebridean mobility: a study in circular migration. Australian National University. CAMDEN, W. (1977) A descriptive dictionary. Bislama to English. Vila. CHARPENTIER, J-M. 1979) Le Pidgin Bislama (u) et le multilinguisme aux Nouvelles-Hébrides. Paris. CORRIS, P. 1970) Pacific Island labour migrants in Queensland, JPH, 5. DOCKER, E.W. (1970) The Blackbirders. Sydney. DOUCERE, V. La mission catholique aux Nouvelles-Hébrides. FLETCHER, R.J. (1925) Isles of Illusion. Bohun Lynch (ed), London. GILDING, M. (1978) The massacre of the Mystery. Unpublished BA thesis, Australian National University. GILES, W.E. (1968) A cruise in a Queensland labour vessel to the South Seas. D.Scarr, (ed.), Australian National University. GRIMSHAW, B. (1907) From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands. London. LANGRIDGE, A.K. (1922) Won by Blood: The story of Erromango the martyr isle. Australia. MACARTHUR, N. (1974) Population and prehistory; the late phase on Aneityum. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Australian National University. MACARTHUR, N. & J. F. YAKLEY. (1967) Report on the first census of the population of the New Hebrides. MERCER, P.M. & C. R. MOORE. (1976) Magic and ritual in Queensland, JPH, 11. MILLER, R.S. (1975) Misi Gete: John Geddie Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides. Hobart. MUHLHAUSER, P. (1976) Samoan Plantation Pidgin English and the Origin of New Guinean Pidgin: an introduction, JPH, 11. PALMER, G. (1891) Kidnapping in the South Seas. Edinburgh. RANNIE, D. (1912) My adventures among South Seas cannibals. An account of the experiences and adventures of a government official among the natives of Oceania. London. ROMILLY, H.S. (1893) Letters and memoir of H.H. Romilly. London. SAUNDERS, R. (1979) Troublesome servants: the strategies of resistance employed by Melanesian Indentured labourers in Colonial Queensland, JPH, 14. SCARR, D. (1972) Fragments of Empire. Australian National University. _________. (1970) Recruits and Recruiters, in Pacific Island Portraits. Davidson, J.W. & D. Scarr (eds.). Australian National University. SPEISERS, F. (1913) Two years with natives in the Western Pacific. London. THOMPSON, R.C. (1970) Australian Imperialism and the New Hebrides: 1862-1922. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Australian National University. WAWN, W.T. (1893) The South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade. London. Reprinted, P. Corris, P (ed.) (1973), Australian National University. Chapter 5: 1906 – 1939 BAKER, J.R. (1929) Man and Animals in the New Hebrides. London. BELSHAW, C. (1954) Changing Melanesia. Oxford. BROOKFIELD, H.C. (1972) Colonialism, Development and Independence. Cambridge. CAMPBELL, M.H. (1974) A century of Presbyterian Mission Education in the New Hebrides: 1848-1948. Unpublished M. Ed. Thesis, Melbourne. CHEESMAN, L.E. (1932) Hunting Insects in the South Seas. London. _________. (1933) Backwaters of the Savage South Seas. London. _________. (1957) Things Worth While. London. _________. (1960) Time Well Spent. London. COATES, A. (1970) Western Pacific Islands. HMSO. DE LA RUE, E.A. (1945) Nouvelles-Hébrides: Iles de Cendre et de Corail. Montrdai. FRENCH RESIDENCY. (1932) Histoire de la Colonisation française. Vila. GILCHRIST, A. (1927) From the Middle Temple to the South Seas. London. JOHNSON, M. (1022) Cannibal Land. Chicago. LAMBERT, S.M. (1941) A Doctor in Paradise. London. LAYARD, J.W. (1936) Atchin Twenty Years Ago, GJ. PUJOL, R. (1956) La codification des couturnes indigènes aux Nouvelles-Hébrides. JSO, XIII, pp. 336-9. SOMERVILLE, H.B.T. (1928) The Chart Makers. London. STEWART, A.G. (1973) In Letters of Gold. California. WITTS, M. (1906-8) Unpublished Diary. Microfilm at Australian National University. Chapter 6: 1939 – 1970 BONNEMAISON, J. (1975) New Hebrides. Papeete. _________. (1976) Circular Migration and Uncontrolled Migration in the New Hebrides, South Pacific Bulletin, fourth 1/4. _________. (1978) Custom and Money: Its Integration or Breakdown in Melanesian Systems of Food Production, in E.K. Fisk (ed) The Adaptation of Traditional Agriculture: the Socioeconomic Problems of Urbanisation. Australian National University. DOUMENGE, F. (1966) L’homme dans le Pacifique Sud: étude géographique. Paris. GESLIN, Y. Les Américains aux Nouvelles-Hébrides. p. 245-287. JSO XII 1956. GUIART, J. (1951) ‘Malekula Native Company’ aux Nouvelles-Hébrides, JSO, VII, pp. 242-6. _________. (1952) Report on North Ambrym, South Pacific, V. _________. (1952) The co-operative called ‘The Malekula Native Company’: A Borderline Type of Cargo Cult, South Pacific, VI. _________. (1956) Le mouvement coopératif aux Nouvelles-Hébrides JSO, XII, pp. 326-4. JOHNSON, I. & E. (1956) Yankee’s Wonder World. London. LUKE, Sir Harry. (1945) From a South Seas Diary, 1938-1942. London. McGEE, T., G. WARD & E. DRAJAKAIS-SMITH, E. (1979) Food-Production in the New Hebrides. With a chapter by J. Bonnemaison. Australian National University. MILLER, J.G. (1948) The Naked Cult in Central West Santo, JPS, 57. PATON, W.F. (1952) The Native Situation in North Ambrym, South Pacific,VI. PATTERSON, M. (1976) Kinship, Marriage and Ritual in North Ambrym. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Sydney. PHILIBERT, J.M. (1976) Le Rêve et La Réalité : La Bonne Vie. Unpublished PhD thesis, U of British Columbia. SIMPSON, C. (1955) Islands of Men. Sydney. TONKINSON, R. (1968) Maat Village, Efate: a Relocated Community in the New Hebrides. Unpublished PhD thesis, Eugene, Oregon. WILSON, J.S.G. (1966) Economic Survey of the New Hebrides. HMSO. WORSLEY, P. (1957) The Trumpet Shall Sound. London. Chapter 7: The Seventies BONNEMAISON, J. (1977) Système de Migration et Croissance Urbaine à Port-Vila et Lugainville (Nouvlles-Hébrides). Paris. BROOKFIELD, H.C. & P.S. GLICK. (1969) The People of Vila. Australian National University. JACKSON, A.L. (1972) Towards a Political Awareness in the New Hebrides, JPH, 7. JUPP, J. & M. SAWYER. (1979) New Hebrides: Self-government by whom and for whom? JPH, 14. _________. (1979) The New Hebrides: From Condominium to Independence, Australian Outlook, April. KELE-KELE, K.M. et al. (1977) New Hebrides. The Road to Independence. C. Plant (ed), Suva. PLANT, C. (1978) New Hebrides 1977: Year of Crisis, JPH, 13. Periodicals Anual Anglo-French Colonial Reports : 1933-1972. Le Néo-Hébridais. Nabanga. Pacific Islands Monthly. Minutes of the Annual Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides. Jeune Mélanésie. Voice of the New Hebrides (renamed Voice of Vanuatu). Vanua’aku Pati Viewpoints. Printed by : lmprimerie Hébridaise December 1980 Back Cover The continuing importance of Kastom : Waiter Lini at his nimangki August 1980 * * * THE SEVENTIES For all the administrations’ inadequate attempts to develop the islands, Vanuatu had remained a quiet archipelago compared to most of the rest of the world. While many other colonies had gained their independence or were actively preparing for it, that of Vanuatu still seemed very distant, if not inconceivable, in 1970. It was the Europeans’ revived interest in developing the land which led to the formation of Nagriamel and, indirectly, to the setting up of the New Hebrides National Party (NHNP). The party’s actions and other groups’ reactions precipitated events, so finally initiating real progress towards independence. Ni-Vanuatu politicians, however, were to discover, as had many civil servants before them, that the Condominium was a sluggish and highly frustrating form of government to deal with. Easy to construct, it proved almost impossible to dismantle. The final legacy of this grotesque system of maladministration was the Ni-Vanuatu taking on a European division, which split the new republic into two bitterly divided camps. * * * In the 1960s, many planters, unable to maintain their plantations because of the shortage of Ni-Vanuatu labourers, who were busy cutting their own copra, began to change over from cultivating cash crops to raising cattle. Copra had been planted on low ground near beaches, but cattle, if they were not to be used as merely ‘grass-cutters’ in nut groves, had to be kept on higher, cooler ground. So settlers began clearing virgin territory, dak bush. While many planters and major companies, had registered claims to large areas of land, they had developed little of it and Ni-Vanuatu, unaware of the claims, regarded dak bush as their custom territory. When they saw the bush being cleared and fences put up, there was great resentment and some confrontations, especially where Europeans tried to evict them from their villages. Buluk, a Santo custom chief, and his followers started a settlement at Vanafo, central-east Santo, to counteract the steady expansion of European bush clearing. A few years later Jimmy Stephens, a local half-cast, joined Buluk to form the Nagriamel movement. They wanted to have nothing to do with the Government, were strongly against Europeans clearing dak bush and advocated a partial return to custom, combined with toleration of the beliefs of Christians of different denominations. If Vanuatu was to change, it had to be done by Ni-Vanuatu themselves. Members of Nagriamel rented plots of land at Vanafo at peppercorn rates and cultivated cash and root crops. One day a week was to be spent on community projects. Nagriamel was the first movement to succeed in unifying Ni-Vanuatu; thousands of people came to stay at Vanafo and the movement’s flag was raised in the villages of many northern islands. Many Europeans regarded it as dangerous and subversive; they were disturbed by rumours circulating at the time that local Europeans were preventing Americans sympathetic to Nagriamel from returning to Vanuatu and that Buluk and Jimmy Stephens received direction from dreams. Both were imprisoned in 1967, charged with persistently trespassing on acquired land. In 1970 Stephens, by then undisputed leader of Nagriamel, petitioned the United Nations, demanding the independence of Vanuatu and denouncing the Condominium Government. While members of the Advisory Council severely criticised the petition, it did raise political consciousness in the group and made people overseas aware of what was going on. In the late 1960s, a number of American businessmen based in Hawaii acquired large areas of land on Santo, Efate, Emae and Pentecost. They subdivided the land they had purchased so cheaply and resold plots at much higher prices to Hawaii residents and American servicemen and war veterans who, in turn, sold their plots to others at even higher prices. Two of the estates were to be transformed into ‘model communities’ where the Americans could retire, in peace and calm. When they discovered what was going on, Ni-Vanuatu bitterly resented these land deals, regarding them as the modern equivalent of the enormous land purchases of the nineteenth century. Many officials were alarmed at the implications of having large expatriate communities spring up. After three years the national administrations finally reached agreement to act. In July 1971, they passed legislation (retrospective to the beginning of 1967) taxing speculative land subdivisions and declaring that all subdivisions not 75% sold must be submitted to the RCs for planning permission. An extraordinary meeting of the Advisory Council was held a few days later at which some European members protested to the RCs against the retrospective legislation. At the same time the New Hebrides Cultural Association (NHCA) organised a demonstration of 500 which marched in Vila to declare its support of the legislation. The Europeans’ protests were to no avail. The legislation was not changed; land subdivision stopped; and many of the speculators lost the money they had invested. The demonstration was the first public manifestation of the NHCA, later to be renamed the New Hebrides National Party (NHNP), which had been formed a few months earlier in Santo. The Party, led by civil servants, teachers and Protestant clergy, was strongly against the alienation of land and stated its concern for the preservation of the traditional way of life. At its first congress it condemned the Condominium system and called for a unified government. Fr. Waiter Lini, President of the Party, petitioned the United Nations in March 1974, criticising the two Powers for delaying moves towards independence. On his return from New York, he demanded that independence should take place in 1977. Urban-based at first, the Party slowly gained followers in rural areas, had 4,000 members by 1972 and 40 sub-committees established in the islands by the end of 1973. Union de la Population des Nouvelles-Hébrides (UPNH) was formed in December 1971. Composed of colons, urban Ni-Vanuatu and half- casts, its aims were the maintenance of the Condominium system until development had reached a sufficiently evolved stage that one could talk about the possibility of independence, the settlement of land disputes, and to allow the individual ownership of Vanuatu land. But UPNH had difficulties gaining followers. Its Ni-Vanuatu secretary resigned and by 1973 it existed in name only. In December that year, the National Party demonstrated against the alleged ill treatment of two Ni-Vanuatu, the Rarua brothers, while imprisoned in Santo by the French police. The brothers were immediately released on the instruction of the resident commissioners. In reaction, Frenchmen, half casts and some Francophone Ni-Vanuatu in Santo joined to form Mouvement Autonamiste des Nouvelles-Hébrides (MANH) to combat what they saw as the politically expedient flouting of law and order. The new party sought ‘the steady evolution of the territory towards an autonomous status’ and the creation of municipal councils. Soon after, francophone Ni-Vanuatu and settlers living in Vila and Efate formed the Union des Communautes des Nouvelles-Hébrides (UCNH). It called for law reform and independence by the early ’80s, by which time there would be sufficient Ni-Vanuatu to properly run the country, and the involvement of all the communities in Vanuatu in the party’s affairs. By 1975, the major political parties had all been formed and the political divisions drawn – divisions which cut across islands, in some places expressing traditional rivalries and in others the separate influence of the national administrations. The National Party was widely regarded as representing Anglophone Protestant Ni-Vanuatu and as encouraged by the British Residency. Natuitano, a ‘custom’ oriented party supported by Presbyterian villages in Santo was associated with the NHNP. MANH was allied with Nagriamel – the two-party alliance making another, looser alliance with UCNH. Also within this grouping were John Frum, Kapiel (a ‘custom’ party based in Middle Bush, Tanna) and Tabwemassana (a francophone party centred around the Catholic village of Port Olry, Santo). Many thought these parties, known collectively as the ‘Moderates’, were supported by French settlers, Francophone and custom Ni-Vanuatu, and the French Residency. The general feeling at that time was that the British administration wanted to get out as quickly and as cheaply as possible. The French administration, on the other hand, was not keen on independence, since it would threaten French opposition to autonomy in New Caledonia, renowned for its rich nickel deposits, and increase pressure against the testing of nuclear devices in French Polynesia. Most churches sought to maintain a neutral stance vis-a-vis these political developments. The first to speak out was the Presbyterian which, in 1973, called publicly for rapid progress towards self-government. Three years later, the Assembly of the Pacific Conference of Churches condemned the continuation of the Condominium government and urged the two Powers to accelerate steps towards independence. Despite the efforts of certain clergy, the relation seen by many people between particular churches and parties made any separation of religion and politics almost impossible. Presbyterians and Anglicans were thought to be automatic supporters of the National Party, and Catholics of the Moderate Parties. In November 1974, French and British Ministers conferred in London to decide on constitutional development. They proposed the establishment of municipal and rural councils and of a Representative Assembly, most of whose members would be elected by universal suffrage and which would have legislative powers. But the Chamber of Commerce Electoral College, a body representing economic interests in Vanuatu, was to elect six non-Ni-Vanuatu to the Assembly and the Co-operatives Federations three other members. A few months later, following suggestions made by prominent Ni-Vanuatu to visiting ministers, the Advisory Council agreed in its final meeting to the inclusion of four chiefs in the future Assembly. They were to be elected by an Electoral College of Chiefs divided into four sections, each chief coming from one of the four administrative districts. But there are no chiefs in Ni-Vanuatu custom, except in a few, specific areas. There are only big men and the English word ‘chief’ has had to be incorporated into many Ni-Vanuatu languages to refer to the most influential man in a village. But that man may well have gained his influence by means other than customary ones. By now, kastom had become a political category and was seen as one of the few ways by which urban-based politicians and villagers could express their solidarity. Left vague and undefined, kastom was exploited by people to mean different things at different times. Heated arguments soon rose over what was true kastom and what was gammon. The number of rural seats in the Assembly was increase, after criticism of the European ministers’ proposals by the National Party. The number of members representing economic interests was also decreased. Thus the Assembly was to have 42 members: 29 elected by universal suffrage, 9 to represent economic interests (six from the Chamber of Commerce, three from the Co-operatives Federations). For Santo and Vila, a complex system of cross-voting was devised so that equal numbers of Ni-Vanuatu, French and British would be elected to represent each town. The first ever Municipal Council elections were held in August 1975. In Vila, 18 UCNH and 6 NHNP councillors were elected. There were no electoral wards for the election in Santo town so that the party gaining the majority of votes won a disproportionate number of seats. The NHNP gained 48% of the vote but only one seat and the MANH/Tabwemassana/Nagriamel alliance with a slight electoral majority won the other 15 seats. The Representative Assembly elections took place in mid-November. The NHNP won 17 of the seats elected by universal suffrage, UCNH 10 and the MANH/Nagriamel alliance two. The nine members representing economic interests and the co-operatives were also elected. However, only two chiefs were elected, those for Central District 1 and CD2. The election of Chief Willie Bongmatur in CD2 was disputed. Given the difficulties of defining a ‘chief’, the District Agents had been unable to agree in time on the membership of the Electoral Colleges for their districts. Since two of the Co-operatives’ representatives were members of the National Party and both elected chiefs also supported the party, the election of the remaining two chiefs became politically important. Their results would decide whether or not the National Party would have a majority in the Assembly. Leaders of the Nagriamel/MANH alliance, with only two members, staged two large demonstrations in Santo and petitioned against the election of National Party members in both Santo Rural and Santo Town constituencies. Then towards the end of December, Jimmy Stephens proclaimed the forthcoming ‘independence’ of the ‘Nagriamel Federation’ (the new name for the two-party alliance). The Federation was supposed to comprise all of Santo island, though any other island would be included if its inhabitants wished to join. Santo was to become independent on April 1st 1976, by which time the British (but not the French) administration had to leave the island. The RCs quickly replied to Stephens’ proclamation: the two Powers would not make any decisions about independence with any one political group, but only with a representative collection of political leaders, especially members of the Assembly. The Condominium would not recognise any independent secession. Threatened by the possibility of Nagriamel seceding and with two chiefly seats still to be contested, the RCs, with the agreement of all political parties, decided to postpone the convening of the Assembly. The RCs proposed increasing the number of chiefly seats from four to eight. The National Party rejected the proposal, correctly pointing out that four seats had been agreed upon by all parties in a meeting of the Advisory Council in April 1975 and had subsequently passed into law. The party called again for the removal of the members representing economic interests and demonstrated in Vila and Santo for the early opening of the Assembly. In Santo, the demonstrators were attacked by members of Tabwemassana, who wounded 45. The general level of anger and bitterness increased. On April 1st, Jimmy Stephens postponed Santo’s independence until August 10th. MANH would have nothing to do with secession and, without its ally, Nagriamel became more and more isolated. It ignored the Condominium and the Assembly, regarding the latter as ‘irrelevant’. Now a nation-wide organisation, the NHNP agreed after much discussion to participate in a special meeting of the Assembly to be held in late June to discuss the problem of chiefly representation. In the meeting, motions were passed fixing the number of chiefly seats at four and proposing the constitution of a Council of Chiefs to act as an advisory body to the Assembly on matters of custom. But still the Assembly did not sit. The elections for two Santo Urban and three Santo Rural seats had been invalidated after the submission of petitions against certain voting irregularities. In the October re-elections, the National Party lost one seat to MANH and Jimmy Stepehens, now back in the political arena, won one of the rural seats. With the loss of the Luganville seat, the National Party had lost all chance of winning a majority in the Assembly. Chief Willie Bongmatur’s election was later confirmed. The President of Natuitano was elected chiefly repdresentative for Northern District and Ringiao, a Tannese big man and then UCNH supporter, for Southern District. The first session of the Representative Assembly finally began in late November. The National Party held 21 seats, exactly the same number as held by all the other groups combined. Neither ‘group’ had a majority. In the course of their week-long session, the members of the Assembly agreed to set up ad hoc committees on administrative and law reforms. The National Party proposed the motion that: We wish to record our strongest dissatisfaction with the governments of France and Britain for their construction of a system of elections and a system of political representation in the Assembly, both of which are blatantly undemocratic, being further attempts by the colonial powers to destroy the strength of the New Hebridean representation in the Representative Assembly. We move that this Assembly set up an ad hoc committee to study the election rules of the next Assembly and recommend changes that there be more and freer representation in the assembly. It was carried unanimously. (Photograph) Mele villagers demonstrating in 1977 for the return of land near Mele to its custom owners. (Nabanga) In mid-January 1977, the National Party held a congress at Tautu, Malakula. Renamed ‘Vanua’aku Pati’ (VP), its members called again for the removal of the six Chamber of Commerce seats from the Assembly, declared that the jurisdiction of the District Agents would no longer be recognised and repeated its demand for independence in 1977. At the first meeting of the Council of Chiefs, renamed Mel Fatu Mari, held two weeks after the congress, a motion calling for internal self-government was passed. Three days later, MANH, Nagriamel and Chamber of Commerce representatives formed the Federation of Independents, FOI, which preferred the prospect of a federation of islands to centralized self-government. The next realignment of parties occurred four days after that: UCNH, Tabwemassana, Kapiel and Fren Melanesian Party (a Francophone party based in Santo) formed Tanunion. It also called for internal self-government in 1978 and for the next elections to be solely on the basis of universal suffrage. The Assembly re-opened on February 21st. The VP boycotted it, since it had not had enough time to lodge a motion proposing the removal of the Chamber of Commerce representatives and the creation of a ministerial system. Without a quorum, the Assembly was adjourned until the next day. But the other 21 members boycotted the Assembly on February 22nd since, following Standing Orders, the opening should have been adjourned until the 24th. Again without a quorum the Assembly was adjourned until the 24th when all members did finally appear. The VP proposed its motion for the removal of the Chamber of Commerce representatives. Voting was split equally: 20 for, 20 against and two members abstaining. Without a majority the VP lost the motion and its members did not return to the afternoon session of the Assembly. Yet again without a quorum, the Assembly was adjourned, only this time, not to re-open. Next week, demonstrations were held by Tanunion and the FOI, the VP, and 1,000 Mele villagers. French planters met with French administrators, demanding the protection of their property. Then in mid-June the VP stated at its sixth congress that English would be the main European language of instruction in all primary and post-primary schools. Horrified at the implications of this proposal, French teachers, the parents of children at French schools and senior school children staged Vila’s largest-ever demonstration on June 25th when they marched from the War Memorial to the VP headquarters where they tried to submit a petition. (Photograph) The demonstration for ‘francophonie’, June 25, 1977. (Nabanga) The two Powers, anxious and not wanting to let the situation deteriorate further, had in March sent their High Commissioners to Vila to confer with leading politicians and chiefs. At the end of the conference the commissioners announced the following resolutions which had been agreed upon by all the groups involved: (1) The holding of a ministerial conference in July, attended by representatives of all parties in the Assembly; (2) The formation of a Provisional Council having only advisory functions, with the RCs as co-chairmen and seven other members (four VP, two Tanunion and one Independent); (3) The holding of elections for a new Representative Assembly before the end of the year (the present one was to be dissolved). The ministerial meeting was held in Paris. After consultation with Ni-Vanuatu representatives, the two Powers agreed to the holding of new elections for the Assembly, the setting up of internal self-government in early 1978, and the holding of further elections and a referendum over the question of independence in late 1980. VP representatives had not gone to Paris because they were disappointed with the High Commissioners’ highly qualified reply to their demands for elections before 1978, immediate self-government after the elections and majority rule. The Tanunion representatives returned angry at the lack of discussion in the conference. They resented the early holding of elections, something they had wanted to delay. The elections were set for November 29th. The VP declared that it would boycott them and set up its own ‘People’s Provisional Government’ (PPG) if the voting age requirement was not reduced to 18 years and if majority rule was not accepted as the basis of government by the two Powers. It also opposed the constitution of a Governing Council with proportional representation – one of Tanunion’s aims. The RCs replied that the Powers could not negotiate with one party alone and that the composition of the Governing Council would be discussed after the elections, in early 1978. A compromise agreement could not be reached despite the holding of many meetings over several months between the various groups involved. As the date for the elections drew near, church leaders and both RCs spoke on the radio calling for calm and restraint; two villages in northeast Malakula associated with the VP had recently been invaded by supporters of other parties. Property was damaged and livestock killed. (Photograph) November 29, 1977: The Moderates... (half of chapter 7 page 12) With no VP candidates standing, all 38 candidates put forward by the other parties were automatically elected at the end of nomination day. Only one seat, in the Tongoa/Shepherd constituency was left vacant, there being no candidate at all for election. Election day, November 29th: the VP immediately declared the formation of the PPG. Its distinctive green, red and black flag with its ‘Seli Ho!’ emblem was raised throughout the islands. In a number of places they were taken down within a few days – either by persuasion or force. In Santo it was hauled down and burnt. The major incident occurred in Vila: ‘Moderate’ party supporters collected outside the VP headquarters while the VP gathered at Tagabe and marched into town. The Moderates wanted to stop the flag being raised; the VP members wanted to see if they could raise it. The crowds increased as the VP drew nearer. The British District Agent, standing with the British police behind the Moderates, not between them and the VP, asked the Moderates to disperse. The British Commandant of Police, fearing an imminent outbreak of violence, ordered his men to fire tear-gas shells to disperse the crowd of Moderate party supporters. The crowd did disperse, but later re-grouped; one Tannese man had been hit by a shell and taken to hospital. After three hours of verbal confrontation between the two crowds, the VP members decided against raising their flag and left for Tagabe. On the VP’s departure, the other crowd marched to the British Residency where a delegation met the BRC. In reply to their protests over the use of tear-gas, the BRC said that a Commission of Inquiry would be set up to investigate what had happened. Both the British District Agent and the British Commandant of Police left the group five days later. Tension remained high throughout December. A contingent of gendarmes was flown in from Noumea and a French Army helicopter flew up and down the group. There were a few further incidents throughout the islands. The new Representative Assembly was rapidly convened. George Kalsakau, a member of Natatok-Efate (a ‘custom’ orientated party based around Vila), was elected first-ever Chief Minister of the Assembly which was composed of 14 Tanunion, 12 FOI, 5 Natatok, 2 FMP and 5 ‘custom’ or non-party members. An alliance between Tanunion, Natatok and two ‘custom’ members held a loose majority in the Assembly and a numerical superiority in the Council of Ministers. In the meantime, the PPG effectively ruled large areas of the islands, especially Tongoa, north Pentecost and north Efate, access to which was conditional on the holding of a PPG Passport. Forbidden to buy the passports, administrators were not able to enter areas controlled by the PPG. District Agents could not complete their tours and in certain districts were virtually confined to their agencies. The party’s commissars, in league with custom chiefs, efficiently ran local administration, granting licences and collecting taxes. Some European-owned plantations were occupied, the copra collected and sold to traders. The VP agreed to the suspension of the PPG in May 1978, after prolonged discussions and negotiations. An ad hoc committee was immediately set up with VP representatives as members. The eventual report of the committee, recommending the lowering of the electoral age to 18, was accepted by the Assembly, except for its proposal of single-seat constituencies, which was rejected. Paul Dijoud, French Minister for Overseas Territories, visited Vila in August to try to break the political impasse: a Representative Assembly with no VP members. In his discussions he made it clear that he wanted a constitution ready by independence – a view also held by the new alliance of Moderate parties and the Federal Party, who were concerned about safeguarding the rights of minorities. The VP thought new elections should precede the drawing up of a constitution, otherwise it would not have been approved by a representative body. All agreed on the necessity of the setting up of a Government of National Unity which would include members of the VP as ministers as soon as possible, disagreements arising over the number of ministries to be held by VP members and who was to be Chief Minister. After much consultation throughout the later months of 1978, agreement on the composition was finally reached. Within the opening week of the second meeting of the Assembly, the Kalsakau ministry fell when it was defeated in a motion of confidence. Next day, December 16th, Gerard Leymang, a member of UCNH, was elected Chief Minister, a move that had been agreed upon previously by the VP. A Government of National Unity was quickly formed in the following week with an enlarged Council of Ministers, half of which (five) were members of the VP. People looked to the new government as a welcome compromise, formed to help solve the country’s immediate problems in its progress towards independence. A census was carried out in early 1979 (there were 112,596 people in Vanuatu on January 15th) and registration of electors took place later. Disagreements over the timing and substance of the constitution were not finally resolved until September during an all-night session of the constitutional committee, which had been meeting for some months. Attended by Dijoud, Professor Yash Ghai (an expert in constitutional law), and all the leading politicians, the constitution was finally decided upon by four o’clock in the morning. The question of the powers of regional councils was left for later discussion. The constitution was publicly signed in early October and elections set for November 14th. The electoral campaign and voting day passed without incident and the results were declared the next week: the VP had won a two-third majority, gaining 26 of 39 seats. The other 13 seats were divided between seven other parties. The VP also won very small majorities in the Tanna and Santo Regional Council elections, which had been held on the same day. At the first meeting of the new Representative Assembly Waiter Lini was elected Chief Minister and VP members were later appointed to lead all of the eight ministries. The Growth of Urban Areas Vila had grown steadily, but slowly, in the 1950s and 60s. After the devastating hurricane that swept across Efate, flattening most of Vila, new buildings for Europeans were made of concrete and steel, not wood and corrugated iron. Land was reclaimed along the seafront and new wharves built further south of the town nearer Iririki. But it was the realization of Vanuatu as a tax haven and the sudden rise of tourism that led to the major building boom of the early 70s. Vanuatu had always been a potential tax haven because British company law existed there and there was no direct taxation. However, it was not until Norfolk Island was closed as a tax haven by the Australian Government that overseas businessmen began to exploit the tax-free status of Vanuatu. Suddenly, many banks and trust companies came to Vila. There had been one bank in 1968, while three years later there were 12. Three new bans alone opened their doors on January 1st 1970. With the completion of the deep-sea wharf in 1972, the number of visiting cruise ships trebled, bringing thousands of day visitors to Vila every year (40,000 in 1977). Building companies took on extra men and had them work overtime to help meet the demand for new offices, stores selling duty free goods, houses and hotels (two of them of international standard). New classes entered Vila European society – Anglophone businessmen and well paid French teachers, all of them transients, not ‘rooted’ to the soil like the earlier settlers. The Club, destroyed in the 1959 hurricane, was not rebuilt; its time had passed. While the creation of the tax haven and the expansion of tourism has led to improved telecommunications and a wider range of stores and services in Vila, it has only marginally increased the opportunities for employment open to Ni-Vanuatu, usually in junior or manual positions. (Photograph) Fr. Walter Lini signing the constitution, Fr. Gerard Leymang at his left, October 1979 (Nabanga) With the increase of air and sea transport between the islands, more and more people migrated to the towns, especially during the building boom, a period which coincided with a great drop in the price of copra. The population of Vila rose from 1,300 in 1955 to 10,000 in 1979 and that of Santo from 1,500 to 5,000. In both towns, about two-thirds of the population are Ni-Vanuatu and over 20% of all Ni-Vanuatu now live in urban areas. Attracted by the ‘bright lights’ of town and looking for an alternative to village life, most migrants came at first for only a few months to do any unskilled labour they could find. Young people mostly, they stayed with friends or kin who had already established themselves. But rents are high in Vila and even the homes on the government’s low-cost housing scheme are too expensive for all but the emerging Melanesian middle class. So people from the same island community clubbed together to buy plots of land in cheap areas away from the centre of town and built shacks out of corrugated iron and waste materials. Tongoans, for instance, live together at Seaside, Vila, and people from near Melsisi, Central Pentecost, at Sarakata, Santo. Friends and kin also tend to work together. In many businesses the majority of the workforce come from the same island: 40% of builders’ labourers are from the Shepherds and the Vila Electric Co. is manned mainly by Tannese. Still linked to their home islands, which they continue to visit, many try to preserve part of the traditional way of life. Some Tannese men have nakamals, tabu to women, near their shacks where they can drink kava every night, while klevas (clairvoyants) and native doctors do a roaring trade throughout town. But the person who is regarded as a big man in an urban community is often the one who has most successfully followed the European, not the traditional, way of life. Many people living in town have nutritionally unbalanced diets: taro and yams are expensive specialities, while rice and tinned fish or meat does not supply all the body’s needs. Heavily dependent on imported foods, people eat too much sugar and starch and only a little protein. With the decrease of building in the late 70s and the newly increased need for skilled labour, many became unemployed and fewer people now come to town from other islands for just a few months at a time. Only people who are skilled or professionally qualified remain for years. Whether or not they will ultimately return to their home island depends on many things, such as the person they marry and if they own the land they live on. Today’s unskilled migrants tend to be individual young men with a sense of adventure. 1980 1980; the year Vanuatu achieved independence. 1980; the year Ni-Vanuatu suffered, in a concentrated fashion, the unnecessary consequences of having lived under a two-headed Condominium for 74 years. As the Vanuatu Government’s press officer stated, “Despite what they have claimed, the British and the French have not prepared the way for independence. The government administration has been left understaffed and lacking in experience”. By October that year two men had died violent deaths, 31 had been deported and many more prohibited indefinitely from returning. The fledgling republic was left to shoulder the great expense of raising its own army and with the feeling of tension, so high for most of the year, only beginning to decrease slowly. * * * The political year proper begins with the November elections. To their surprise and great dismay, the moderates had failed to gain a majority in both the Santo and the Tanna Regional Councils, losing each by less than 2.25%. They immediately claimed that there had been instances of electoral fraud and refused to attend meetings of the Assembly or to co-operate with the Vanuatu Government until these instances had been investigated satisfactorily. To them, the VP conception of decentralization was grossly insufficient, and they threatened to secede unless they achieved some measure of confederation. They wanted a weak central government and strong regional assemblies. Early January, both RCs and a Vanuatu Government mission flew to Paris to meet with Dijoud and Blaker, junior minister at the Foreign Office. In their discussions, the two powers affirmed, for the first of many times, their support of the elected government, condemned all secessionist activity and declared their commitment to bringing Vanuatu to independence in an atmosphere of peace and unity. A Security Council was to be set up, composed of both RCs and Fr. Walter Lini and ‘to be concerned with the maintenance of law and order and the investigation of the activities of foreigners within Vanuatu’. Foreigners considered undesirable were not to be granted entry – a measure aimed, in particular, at American libertarians who were aiding Nagriamel in their hope of establishing a tax-free haven on Santo. The Vanuatu Government had also been deeply disturbed by recent outbreaks of lawlessness in the islands: early 1979, Tannese Moderates kidnapped several VP members, accused them of practising sorcery and ‘tried’ them at the Kapiel headquarters. On hearing the election results, Santo ‘Moderates’ had scared 200 VP members and sympathizers out of town. While the mission was in Europe, leaders of Vemarana (an alliance of Nagriamel and certain French settlers and half-castes) opened an office in Santo town and raised the Vemarana flag before a crowd of hundreds. With the backing of American libertarian extremists, they wished to set up Santo as a republic (Vemarana), independent of Vanuatu – rather like Mayotte Island in the Comores. Late January, 200 Santo bushmen quietly filed into town and up to the District Agency, whose doors they barred with tabu, namwele leaves. No one was to enter the building, effectively preventing government rule on Santo. The Ni-Vanuatu District Commissioner (a post localized only a few days before) was not to be seen. On Tanna, there was a similar, but unsuccessful, attempt to oust the DC for the southern islands and his assistant. To lower the tension and re-open dialogue, Dijoud and Blaker invited a ‘Moderate’ mission for talks in Europe. But first government authority had to be re-established on Santo. It was, and the namwele leaves were removed from the doors of the Santo DA. Next week (early March) a Vanuatu Government mission also flew to Europe to discuss future aid for Vanuatu. There Dijoud informed the members of the mission that it was useless to talk about the nature and volume of French aid until the political future of Vanuatu was settled, otherwise the money would be wasted. The Vanuatu Government had to give assurances that the rights of minorities would be respected. Under such pressure the elected government, which had wanted to keep the issues of aid and the date of independence separate, agreed to talks with the ‘Moderates’. They met briefly and quickly decided it was better to continue their discussions in Vanuatu. Mid-February Gerard Leymang, Maxime Carlot and Vincent Boulekone, all ex-ministers and the only ‘Moderates’ to attend meetings of the new Assembly consistently, had declared their tripartite alliance: the Group of Independents. Separate from the other ‘Moderates’ (who were openly advocating secession), the Independents saw themselves as an instrument of dialogue between the Vanuatu Government and the secessionists and were greatly concerned to ensure that the rights of minorities, especially the Francophones, would be respected. They claimed the VP was using the Assembly to rubber-stamp any legislation the Government proposed and were ignoring any criticism made by the opposition. The name chosen for the new republic, for instance, ‘Vanuatu’, was too close to ‘Vanua’aku’ and would only serve to polarise opposition, not to decrease it. Early April: with everyone back in Vanuatu, the first round of all-party talks was held. But the secessionists, demanding more time, did not attend and the talks were adjourned. The next round, to which the secessionists came, merely prepared the way for the round after that – to be held in Santo town at the end of the month. This third round of talks failed: the secessionists, suspicious of the apparent goodwill and intentions of the government, refused to compromise while government representatives asked them yet again what exactly they meant by ‘Confederation’. The secessionists did, however, agree to the government’s proposal to set up a new all-party commission to study the possibility of constitutional reform by which certain powers would be delegated to regional bodies. But, as they stated, the secessionists wanted a fundamental revision of the constitution, not the mere changing of a few clauses. With July 30th fixed by the Council of Ministers as the date of independence, there seemed precious little time for such a commission to carry out its study properly. The secessionists were not prepared to wait, and took matters into their own hands in late May. On Tanna the DC and his assistant were kidnapped, only to be freed two days later after a shoot-out at the Kapiel HQ between ‘Moderates’ and the Police Mobile Unit (PMU). No one was injured. Next week, policemen aided by Tannese VP vigilantes, arrested many ‘Moderates’, those still free concentrating in Sulphur Bay. On the night of June 10th, they marched across the island to liberate their comrades imprisoned on the government station. There they found themselves confronted by the police and VP vigilantes. Then the prisoners, hearing the commotion outside, burst out of their cells, shots rang out, the ‘Moderates’ fled and Alexis Yolou, one of their leaders, fell to the ground fatally wounded. The Tannese rebellion had been put down and the hundreds of people who had been seeking refuge in the bush could now start to return home. The resulting inquiry into the shooting could not gather sufficient evidence to find out who killed Alexis Yolou. Vemarana supporters attacked the British Paddock, Santo town, the night of May 27th. Tear gas was fired, property smashed and the DC and several policemen taken hostage. Next day people awoke to find the town under the control of the Vemarana Provisional Government. Vanuatu Government swiftly retaliated by declaring a blockade of Santo and had 2,000 Anglophones and VP sympathisers evacuated from the island the next week. The metropolitan governments refused to use force against the Vemarana rebels until all attempts at negotiations had failed. The elected government, without a force of its own, had to agree. Once the hostages had been freed, a government representative did meet with Vemarana leaders but they were only able to agree upon the pre-conditions for holding further talks. The Vemarana Provisional Government demanded the raising of the blockade and the Vanuatu government the restoration of its authority in Santo town. Both sides refused to meet the pre-condition of the other and there were no further talks. On Efate, people were worried, thinking there would be similar outbreaks of violence within the capital. Demonstrations in Vila by both sides passed peacefully, however, though anti-Anglophone graffiti were painted throughout town one night by the clandestine ‘Secret Army’. Santo, emptied of opposition, was calm with most public services working normally. Certain people made quick money running the blockade, ferrying reporters and cargo, while Radio Vemarana broadcasters interrupted their programme of Madness and other New Wave rock bands to shout secessionist slogans. Vemarana policemen, partly dressed in English uniforms and foot-sore from their stolen, ill-fitting regulation boots, patrolled the town. Late June: the Independents tried to press the government and the two residencies to participate in constructive negotiations with the secessionists in order to achieve some kind of consensus rapidly about decentralization. But the government would not bow to pressure, whether from an indigenous political party or a metropolitan government, and reaffirmed that both July 30th as the date of independence and the Constitution were non-negotiable. The government would also not surrender the Presidency of Vanuatu as a political concession to the opposition. As Lini had said, “We believe that it is important, especially where there have been divisions for a long time, to have a strong and homogenous government with, on the other hand, an opposition party. . . . A coalition government would only prolong the condominial system”. George Kalkoa (later re-named Sokomanu) was elected unanimously on July 4th; none of the opposition appeared for the election. In an attempt to break the current stalemate, the metropolitan governments sent two representatives and two experts in constitutional law as a negotiating team to Vanuatu. Though they met with leaders of both sides several times they were unable to bring about any agreement and Arnaud Lizop, the team’s French legal advisor, resigned, openly stating the failure of their efforts. In the meantime ‘Moderates’ on Malakula, Ambae and Ambrym had formed their own provisional governments and seceded from the country. Then, on July 20th, a grand meeting of all the provisional governments was held in Santo town when a Provisional Government of the Northern Islands was proclaimed. Lini, however, did not have to rely solely on the two Metropolitan governments. At the mid-July meeting of the South Pacific Forum, all of the members declared their support of the Vanuatu Government. Lini was able to discuss with the Prime Ministers of Papua New Guinea and Australia about the possibility of sending New Guinean troops plus Australian military advisors to Vanuatu to quell the secession. These troops, however, could only be deployed after independence. So, in a last desperate attempt to reopen negotiations in the week remaining before independence, the Metropolitan Governments sent 200 French parachutists and British Marines to Santo town to re-establish the authority of the Vanuatu Government. Forewarned of their arrival by the FRC, Vemarana supporters greeted the troops with smiles and garlands of flowers. But with the Vemarana Police now officially disbanded, the troops, with no powers of arrest, could only watch helplessly as people began to loot certain large stores. Whatever negotiations did occur did not succeed and, as the Vanuatu flag was raised on July 30th throughout the group, Peter Blaker, who had earlier confessed to “bewilderment”, was forced to admit that the metropolitan governments had completely failed in their objectives. In Santo, the flag was raised to the sound of hoots and jeers from the secessionists, who were kept away from the flagpole by heavily armed soldiers. The Condominium had ended in the way it had begun – in disarray and lawlessness. The European troops left Santo mid-August and were immediately replaced by a detachment of the PNG Defence force. Santo residents felt betrayed by the FRC who had told them the day before the European troops arrived that “a quasi-Condominium government will continue in Santo in as much as British troops and French paratroopers will stay here until some solution is found”. French protected women and children, scared and informed only by rumour, were flown to Noumea by French naval planes. The Vemarana Government tried to organize some sort of resistance but leading settlers in the movement panicked and either gave themselves up or were quietly arrested. Without their promised arms, the resistance quickly collapsed, though not before extensive damage had occurred – some houses burnt and the oil mill and two bridges blown up. The Vanuatu Government, with Santo town now back in its hands, restarted negotiations yet again with Jimmy Stephens. But Stephens appeared to be procrastinating and Radio Vanafo was still broadcasting statements like, “it’s not a question of us yielding. We’ll struggle until the end. Everything that Radio Vanuatu says is false. We’ll never yield”. August 29th, Jimmy’s son, Eddie, was killed by a grenade as he tried to drive through a government roadblock. Stephens was told to surrender and, in the early morning of September 1st, 150 PNG troops walked into Vanafo to find him and his supporters sitting quietly in the shade of a banyan tree, around a white flag. Hundreds were arrested throughout Santo, settlers who had participated in the movement voluntarily expelled and Vanafo emptied of all but man ples. VP members and sympathizers, evacuated three months before, returned slowly to Luganville – now almost a ghost town. The cattle on the deserted plantations were left to fend for themselves. (Photograph) Independence (Jeune Mélanésie). As I write (mid October) arrests continue, now on islands other than Santo. Some detainees have already been freed, others tried and sentenced. Jimmy Stevens and other prominent leaders have yet to come to court. The rebellion over, the PNG Defence Force has returned to a joyous welcome in Port Moresby. A few have remained to help train the proposed Vanuatu Army; the government intends that a similar uprising will never be able to happen again. (Photograph) PNG soldiers confiscating Nagriamel bows and arrows. (Tam-Tam) * * * THE LAST CHAPTER ‘La Australia del Espiritu Santo?’, ‘The Cannibal Isles?’, ‘Fragments of Empire?’, ‘The New Hebrides?’, ‘Vanuatu?’ Whatever they are or have been called, the 80-odd islands from Hiu in the north to Aneityum in the south gathered in the bottom left-hand corner of the Pacific have at last gained their independence. For the first time, the people of the islands are able to determine their own future as a nation. Although the new Republic, like all ‘lesser developed countries’, will remain dependent on foreign aid for some time to come, Ni-Vanuatu now have the chance to put into effect the policies promoted by the political parties for the last decade. Unification, the overcoming of imported divisions and the taking by kastom of its proper place in the new order are none of them easy goals, especially for a nation with the same number of people as live in a small English market town. If the predominantly Christian Ni-Vanuatu truly live their motto, ‘In God We Stand’, and choose a path of conciliation, then there is a real possibility of lasting peace throughout the archipelago. Above all, the future, if it is not to be a cargo-cult notion, must be worked for, not passively awaited. Economic independence, set for 1990 by the VP will not be an easy aim to fulfill, even given the relatively great industrial development of Vanuatu in the 1970s. Only one thing is certain among the collection of extrapolated possibilities that we call the future: whatever changes do actually occur, the result will not be a mere imitation of elsewhere, but a dynamic, unique conjunction of the past and present. Whether that amalgam is satisfactory to the people of the islands is a question to which they alone will create the answer. One’s future is one’s own responsibility. Endnotes 92