3 - Colonizing Oceania

Summary

This chapter begins with the concepts of colonialism and imperialism, their ideological content and their association with power and control, domination and subordination as well as with a ‘civilizing process’. It goes on to examine early (European) colonizing activities in Oceania, all of which have shaped the region in one way or another, and then the quest to establish a ‘British Oceania’, pursued largely by colonists in Australia and New Zealand. This is followed by discussion of the Western Pacific High Commission, established initially as a means of controlling the behaviour of British subjects in the region. The last section highlights the fact that although the idea of a ‘Pacific World’ arose in the later colonial period, the persistence of imperial rivalries in the region until well into the twentieth century ensured that it remained a rather incoherent one.