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The Study of Colonial History*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

F. J. West
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Extract

Charles Kingsley, a popular novelist, — he had written Westward Ho among other books and was yet to write The Water Babies, — was appointed to the Regius Chair of Modern History in Cambridge in May 1860. His lectures, it was said, were those of ‘a poet and a moralist, a politician and a theologian, and, above all, a friend and counsellor of young men’. They were, his critics agreed, certainly not those of an historian and a scholar. Such attacks upon him as an historical novelist rather than an historian, combined with the strain of coming up to Cambridge from his rectory twice a year to deliver his lectures, caused him to resign his chair in 1869, to be succeeded by John Robert Seeley. Seeley was a classicist, who had also published a religious work, Ecce Homo, the centre of one of those ferocious Victorian doctrinal controversies. He had published nothing historical but historical speculation had always interested him, and thus qualified, he became Regius professor, holding the Chair until 1895. After his Inaugural Lecture, W. H. Thompson, the witty and acid Master of Trinity, observed, ‘Well, well. I did not think we should so soon have occasion to regret poor Kingsley.’ Such were the beginnings of the serious study of imperial and colonial History in English universities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian History , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , October 1961 , pp. 70 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1961

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted to an historian, Professor Asa Briggs, and an anthropologist, Professor Max Gluckman, for reading and commenting on this paper.

References

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2. Seeley, J. R., pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

3. Cambridge History of the British Empire, (Cambridge, 1929) i, v. (Cambridge 1940).Google Scholar

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7. Gallagher, and Robinson, , pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

8. Davidson, J. W., The Study of Pacific History (Australian National University, Canberra, 1955) pp. 8–9 Google Scholar is one of the most recent statements of the view.

9. For example, Perham, M., Native Administration in Nigeria, (Oxford 1937)Google Scholar; Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice, (Cambridge 1949)Google Scholar; Gann, L. H., The Birth of a Plural Society, (Manchester 1958)Google Scholar, have all begun to come to grips with the existence and the importance of indigenous peoples but, unfortunately, Bastin, J. S., The Native Policies of Sir Stamford Raffles in Java and Sumatra, (Oxford 1957), has not.Google Scholar

10. C.H.B.E. III. (1959) in its references to Africa or Malaya hardly touches upon the indigenous peoples.

11. For example Legge, J. D., Britain in Fiji 1858–1880 (London 1958)Google Scholar, who makes an attempt to explain Fijian society; Morrell, W. P., Britain in the Pacific Islands, (Oxford 1960)Google Scholar, who is aware of the problem but principally concerned with Europeans; Rowley, C. D., The Australians in German New Guinea (Melbourne 1959)Google Scholar who fails to grapple with it; Beaglehole, J. C., The Journals of Captain James Cook (Cambridge for the Hakluyt Society 1955) vol. i. clxxii Google Scholar, whose discussion is admirable but doubted by some anthropologists.

12. Part of a comparative study of native administration in Fiji, American Samoa, and French Polynesia, to be published under the title Political Advancement in the South Pacific, Oxford University Press, 1961.Google Scholar

13. See Taylor, C. R. H., A Pacific Bibliography, (Wellington 1951).Google Scholar

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21. The principal anthropological works are Williamson, R. W., The Social and Political Systems of Central Polynesia, (Cambridge 1924) 3 vols.Google Scholar; Handy, E. S. C., History and Culture in the Society Islands, (Honolulu 1930)Google Scholar; and a more modern interpretation Sahlins, M. D., Social Stratification in Polynesia, (Seattle 1958).Google Scholar I am also indebted to Professor Douglas Oliver of Harvard University who is presently engaged in anthropological research in the Society Islands.

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23. By name Teriirere i Tooarai, arii nui of Papara.

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25. One statement will suffice. ‘In the absence of sons, daughters inherited chieferies and property in the lands that went with the chief's names or titles, and these chiefesses in their own right were much the same sort of personages as female sovereigns in European history; they figured as prominently in island politics as Catherine of Russia, or Maria Theresa of Austria, or Marie Antoinette of France, or Marie Louise of Parma, in the politics of Europe.’ Adams, , p. 10.Google Scholar

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32. Such victories had been known in pre-European Tahiti. The Papara chiefs had themselves overthrown the power of the more ancient family of Vaiari. What distinguished Pomare's victory was not really his new weapons, but the fact that European support made it permanent.

33. The marae of which there were a great many to be seen in Tahiti by the early visitors, was a stone meeting place ir which each member of the family had a seat or leaning stone. It was a social, ceremonial, and religious meeting place, with which went the family title and lands. A seat in the marae established rights in both of these. The marae also helped to preserve the family genealogy, and the socially superior families had ancient and famous marae. Thus Vaiari, the most distinguished, had two, the marae Farepua and the marae Tahiti from which the head of the family took his titles, Maheanu of Farepua, Teriinui of Tahiti, the last of which was borne by Adams' friend Arii Taimai. Without a seat in the marae of district or family a man or woman had no standing.

34. Unlike Samoa, where the matai system of rank and titles still functions and is an essential part of the machinery of modern government, see Keesing, F. M., Modern Samoa, (London 1934).Google Scholar

35. Hempel, C. G., ‘The Function of General Laws in History’, Journal of Philosophy Vol. 39.Google Scholar

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