Pacific Islanders Under German Rule: A Study in the Meaning of Colonial Resistance

Abstract

Pacific Islanders under German Ruleof New Guineans with another and with European governments.Nonetheless I have been persuaded to publish the account of New Guinea under German rule with all its deficiencies, because basic information about the German period is still very incomplete.It is imperative to present Papua New Guineans, indeed Pacific Islanders in general, with as much inform ation about those early times as possible so that they may refine and balance the interpretations from their own store of social knowledge and oral tradition.The work is offered in this spirit: that it may serve as a useful building block in the construction of a proper, Islandswritten history of the Pacific.In the final analysis, only the Pacific Islanders can capture the full dimension which they give to their own past, and to time and change. PlatesFacing page I M a ta 'afa Josefo 64 II Richard Deeken 64 III Lauaki Namulauulu 64 IV Solf's Faipule meeting at Mulinu'u 65 V William Solf 65 VI The Mountain of Sokehs 80 VII Henry Nanpei 80 VIII Melanesian police and German marines marching to war, Ponape 80 IX Lepen Ririn and Soumadau 81 X Albert Hahl 81 XI A Tolai of the early days 81 XII To Bobo 112 XIII A New Ireland war party 112 XIV A leader of the Baining massacre 113 XV The execution of one of the leaders of the Baining massacre 113 XVI Pominis 128 XVII Men from Pak Island, Admiralties Group 128 XVIII A Wampar man during German times 129 XIX Men from Siar, near Madang 129 Map 1 The Pacific A H istory of th e G erm an P a cificPacific Islanders under G erm an R ule tainous in the east beyond Saluafata.Western Sam oa's major port and only large town is Apia, roughly in the middle of the north coast.Today it lies about thirtynine kilometres from the pleasant airport of Faleolo, which lies in M ulifanua district at the western end of Upolu, along a road which follows the coastline and gives uninterrupted vistas of sea, reef and mountain.The wellsurfaced road passes through innumerable villages with their neat oval houses, high roofs of thatch or corrugated iron supported by an open cluster of stout poles, with no walls and surrounded by hibiscus, frangipani and greenery of all kinds.The local church, perhaps paint peeling in the tropical sun, is a landm ark in the village, along with the fale, the round house for ceremonial meetings.Apia is a sudden departure from this colour and order.An old port town with dusty roads and patched weatherboard buildings, it fringes the shoreline along Beach Road.The h arbour itself provides little inspiration to lift the setting.It is a reef h arbour in an open bay, roughly semicircular, and about one and onehalf kilometres across.It has no special virtues and can be quite dangerous in the hurricane season with winds from the northwest quarter, a feature which was demonstrated dramatically in 1889 when three German and three American warships were driven onto the shore in a hurricane, with the loss of 210 lives.To the west of the town lies the peninsula of M u lin u 'u.For over a hundred years it has served as ceremonial seat of government and figured in all the m ajor political disputes.Today the round, faleinspired House of Assembly occupies a prom inent position on the peninsula.Presently there are over 100,000 citizens of Western Samoa, a threefold increase in the population which helped to glorify the German Empire before 1914.The social structure of Samoa is founded on a number of ranked lineages, within which lesser chiefs and groups must defer to greater, on the basis of inherent societal ra n k .1The descent groups consist of people born or adopted into localised households, as well as their descendants outside the village, all adult members having a network of relations throughout Samoa with whom they have frequent com munication in a variety of ceremonial and social activities.At the local level, the unit of social and political control is the village, consisting of several extended families joined together to deal with com m on problems.A chief, or matai, is at the head of each household, controlling the domestic tasks of its members and taking part in village organisation.Decisions affecting the latter are taken in the formal village council, the fo n o f a 'alenu'u.Only m atai possess a seat and a highranking m atai is the crucial factor.Family heads possess a quasiconsultative vote in discussing a problem prior to an assembly, but during council proceedings a heavy emphasis is placed on at least a public show of unanimity.Above the village units there was no centralised political institution with control over all Samoans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.The problem of maintaining order in the complex of crosscutting associations fell to the village, which jealously guarded its independence, and acted vigorously against transgressors of its residence rules.Though villages were linked in loose, ascending grades of political association, and subdistricts did develop in former times, based on com m on village locality and lineage affiliation, these were generally less stable than the village system itself, and were always susceptible to factionalism and disintegration.Villages were also loosely linked together in wider district organi sations.These were rarely distinct and perm anent groupings, depending for their shape and definition upon allegiances to one or other 'royal' lineage and support for senior chiefly titles.The most im portant districts exhibiting this cohesion in the nineteenth century and thus enjoying relatively fixed boundaries were Atua, Tuam asaga and A 'ana in Upolu; the combination of M anono, Apolima and M ulifanua; and Fa'asaleleaga in eastern Savai'i.Districts were not administrative units but spheres of influence grounded in kinship, traditional history and policy.Their politics revolved around questions of family prestige, im portant marriage alliances and the pursuit of the highest chiefly titles, at the apex of which lay a claim to p aram ount chieftaincy, and with it nominal ascendancy throughout Samoa.Contention for the param ountcy was to Europeans the most disruptive feature of Samoan political life in the nineteenth century.To understand why, it is necessary to sketch in the structure of chiefly politics and examine the complexities of traditional group alliances in Samoa.Chiefs with high titles are the elites in Samoa and they are divided into two categories, the a li'i and the tulafale.The tulafale or 'orator chief' was originally a kind of personal assistant to the ali'i, who possessed a particular sanctity in Samoan tradition and enjoyed exclusive privileges and the right to special deference.O n public Pacific Islanders under German Rulerelationship between the N ahnm w arki and the N ahnken, and a state of delicate balance which seldom erupted into open discord.T h roughout Ponape great social pressures operated in favour of political conformity, and in public affairs the N ahnm w arki and N ahnken presented one face to the world.Ponapean political life centred round the pursuit of enhanced status, the capture of titles, and personal competition.The major cause of conflict was the inherent contradiction between theory and practice, in particular between the rules of matrilineal seniority and the effects of personal performance on the prom otions system.Between districts, political vainglory played a large role in the frequent collisions.Each district guarded its independence and power fiercely and worked to have them acknowledged by other districts.A balance of power had gradually crystallised, so that by the time of G erm an rule hostilities had been fixed for some years: the northern districts of Sokehs and Net against the rest.Clan members of different districts enjoyed much less contact than in Samoa.For a commoner, travel into another district was always dangerous unless a message had been sent ahead by the N ahnm w arki.High Chiefs themselves never travelled unless accom panied by displays of men and equipment sufficient to maintain the frail peace.It was this situation, fraught with instabilities and worsened by the Ponapean experience of Spanish colonisation, that G ermany inherited in 1899.As for New Guinea, it would be impossible here, as well as pointless, to describe fully the area's physical and cultural characteristics.It will suffice, first, to establish the scale of the colonial enterprise in which New Guineans and Germans were involved and, second, to give a broad and superficial description of those social features which most influ enced relations between the two communities.The protectorate of G erm an New Guinea consisted of the northeast q u ad ran t of the mainland of New Guinea together with about 600 islands stretching east through the Bismarck Archipelago to the western fringes of Polynesia.With its most northerly point less than 80 kilometres from the equator, the protectorate ran south to the border with Papua and the British Solomon Islands protectorate, and from the Dutch border in the west to N u k u m an u in the Tasm an Islands-740 kilometres from the northern extremes to the southern, and 1770 kilometres from west to east.The mainland is 181 299 square kilometres in area and extremely m ountainous, a feature it shares with most other parts of the protec Pacific Islanders under German Ruletorate.The Bismarck, Kratke and Finisterre ranges rise to over 3048 metres, forming a massive cordillera covered with thick tropical jungle lying between the thin coastal belt and the western Highlands.Extensive plains on the coast are few, concentrated around the lower reaches of the Sepik and the Ramu rivers, on the Astrolabe/M aclay coasts and in the lower M arkham River valley.As for rivers, only the Sepik and Ramu were navigable during G erm an times.Nearly a quarter of the total population of the old protectorate lived in the Sepik area.The rest of the coast was populated only in patches.The Germans never r

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