Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire

Critical Perspectives on Empire

by Tracey Banivanua Mar

This book charts the previously untold story of decolonisation in the oceanic world of the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, presenting it both as an indigenous and an international phenomenon. Tracey Banivanua Mar reveals how the inherent limits of decolonisation were laid bare by the historical peculiarities of colonialism in the region, and demonstrates the way imperial powers conceived of decolonisation as a new form of imperialism. She shows how Indigenous peoples responded to these limits by developing rich intellectual, political and cultural networks transcending colonial and national borders, with localised traditions of protest and dialogue connected to the global ferment of the twentieth century. The individual stories told here shed new light on the forces that shaped twentieth-century global history, and reconfigure the history of decolonisation, presenting it not as an historic event, but as a fragile, contingent and ongoing process continuing well into the postcolonial era.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Indigenous History, Race

275 pages, Hardcover

Published April 26, 2016

Reviews

[Minosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was SO GOOD, and I’m devastated to find out after reading that Tracey Banivanua Mar passed away a year after writing it in 2017. The title is almost misleading because this is not just a study of “how the Pacific was decolonized.” Above all it is a study of the transoceanic transnational connections that facilitated decolonization in the Pacific. A few contributions really stood out for me: first, the fact that Banivanua Mar traces the history of these Decolonial linkages back to the early 1800s, and second, the way she reassesses so-called “Cargo cults” as “doing decolonization.” I don’t know enough about cargo cults to say if it’s convincing from an expert perspective but I definitely found it intriguing.

One thing that is not really a criticism of the book specifically but more of a general thought it inspired is the way I think a lot of academics in the “transnational turn” often conflate transnational with “sophistication” (there is a line in the book that literally uses the phrase “their sophisticated transnationalism”). What about transnational connections makes them more complex, sophisticated, whatever, than local movements? I think this book does a good job of attending to both transnationalism and local specificity, but in broader context it does bring these questions to mind.

Overall I would highly recommend this book not just to people interested in Pasifika history but to anyone interested in Indigenous and Black decolonial movements worldwide. (Forgot to mention, I also really appreciate the broad view of “Pacific” in this book which includes Australia, Papua New Guinea, and to a lesser extent Hawaii.)

[Ivan Kvesic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting explanation of colonization in the Pacific.

Empirical research with great anecdotes.