Seminar Series: Abstract

Ambivalent Empire: Indigenous and colonial histories of the Trobriand Islands
Andrew Connelly - PAH Candidate

My doctoral research investigates the colonial history of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. My goal is to write a microhistory that provides a critical synthesis of the administrative history of the islands during colonial rule, as seen through the lens of government documentation, balanced with indigenous histories and historicity as documented by first-hand investigation in the islands. While the Trobriands have long been seen as a venue for anthropological research and writing, the administrative, political and economic history of the group has been somewhat neglected. A large corpus of extant colonial government documents from the islands provides an excellent opportunity to flesh out this unwritten history. These documents – patrol reports, station journals and related material – while chronicling the activities of the Australian administrators, also provide tantalizing glimpses into local lives, politics and personalities. These glimpses can be fleshed out with oral histories from the islands, furnishing an indigenous history to counterbalance long-prevailing colonial accounts.