Description: 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.
Brief description: Tracey Banivanua Mar is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Principal Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Victoria. She specialises in the interconnections linking histories of Indigenous peoples and colonialism in the Pacific and Pacific Rim nations of Australia and New Zealand. Her award-winning research, published in Violence and Colonial Dialogue (2007), explored the Australian Pacific labour trade, and was shortlisted for numerous prestigious prizes, including the New South Wales Premiers Prize in Australian History (2007) and the Australian Historical Society's W. H. Hancock Prize (2008).
Review Quotes: 'This is an arresting and important work - one whose time has come. In a boldly reimagined history of Pacific decolonisation as a struggle over not only territories, but bodies, minds, and cultures, Tracey Banivanua Mar shows us how Oceanic peoples engaged with a world-wide political consciousness, committed to asserting their own histories and futures. Through a deeply researched array of sources and characters, she illuminates the ways that local struggles for self-determination were also contests for global change.' Matt K. Matsuda, Rutgers University, New Jersey