On Being a Historian of Tuvalu: Further Thoughts on Methodology and Mindset

Abstract

Over twenty years ago, I started writing a doctoral dissertation on the history of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, an exercise that has had enduring professional and personal repercussions. Tuvalu is an atoll archipelago near the junction of the equator and the international date line, and is identified on older maps as the southern portion of a British dependency, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony—now the independent nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu respectively. The nine Tuvalu islands are tiny even by atoll standards, an aggregate 26km2spread over 360 nautical miles. During the nineteenth century Tuvalu was incorporated into the world economy by a succession of European influences. The early explorers gave way in 1821 to whalers, who, in turn, were superseded by copra traders during the 1850s. From mid-century the pace of events quickened, with the traders being joined by the very occasional labor recruiter and, more to the point, by a concerted missionary drive.Accomplished largely through the instrumentality of resident Samoan pastors, missionization was comprehensive in scope and repressive in character. From the 1870s the occasional naval vessel visited the group and a British protectorate was declared in 1892, interspersed by the occasional scientific expedition and a brief and disastrous interlude in 1863 when some of the atolls were caught in the final stages of the Peruvian slave trade. The dominant European influences were the familiar triad of commerce, the cross, and the flag, with the primacy of trade giving way to missionary supremacy which, in turn, was displaced in local importance by a British colonial administration.