Pacific Islanders under German Rule : a study in the meaning of colonial resistance

This is a book about the nature of Pacific Island politics under colonial rule. By the late nineteenth century and the partition of the Pacific among the European Powers, violence and conquest were established features of cultural contact. Colonialism was a dirty business, even to contemporaries who believed in the white man's burden. The Governor of German East Africa told the Reichstag candidly in 1905: 'Kolonialpolitik has always been the politics of conquest, and nowhere in the world does the occupation of a land by a foreign people succeed without conflict'. Governor Albert Hahl in German New Guinea frequently took exception to press reports sensationalising acts of violence because, as he pointed out, they were simply part of the inevitable conflict between 'cul.ture' and 'savagery'. Colonial settlers in general worked and lived on the assumption that 'the natives' were constantly waiting for the opportunity to murder the white people and seize their treasures. Many believed that Pacific Islanders would not accept foreign domination, that when a foreign flag went up over their islands the people would b111 ready to rise up against it and must be stopped from doing so, if necessary by force.1st ed