Now available in paperback, Death on the Hellships chronicles the true dimensions of the Allied POW experience at sea. It is a disturbing story; many believe the Bataan Death March even pales by comparison. Survivors describe their ordeal in the Japanese hellships as the absolute worst experience of their captivity. Crammed by the thousands into the holds of the ships, moved from island to island and put to work, they endured all the horrors of the prison camps magnified tenfold. Gregory Michno draws on American, British, Australian, and Dutch POW accounts as well as Japanese convoy histories, declassified radio intelligence reports, and a wealth of archival sources to present a detailed picture of the horror.

In 1938, the anthropologist Norman Tindale gave a classroom of young Aboriginal children a set of crayons and asked them to draw. The children, residents of the government-run Aboriginal station Cummeragunja, mostly drew pictures of aspects of white civilization boats, houses and flowers. What now to make of their artwork? Were the children encouraged or pressured to draw non-Aboriginal scenes, or did they draw freely, appropriating the white culture they now lived within? Did their Aboriginality change the meaning of their art, as they sketched out this ubiquitous colonial imagery? Australian Settler Colonialism and the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station traces Cummeragunja's history from its establishment in the 1880s to its mass walk-off in 1939 and finally, to the 1960s, when its residents regained greater control over the land. Taking in oral history traditions, the author reveals the competing interests of settler governments, scientific and religious organizations, and nearby settler communities. The nature of these interests has broad and important implications for understanding settler colonial history. This history shows white people set boundaries on Aboriginal behaviour and movement, through direct legislation and the provision of opportunities and acceptance. But Aboriginal people had agency within and, at times, beyond these limits. Aboriginal people appropriated aspects of white culture including the houses, the flowers and the boats that their children drew for Tindale - reshaping them into new tools for Aboriginal society, tools with which to build lives and futures in a changed environment.

In Alchemy in the Rain Forest Jerry K. Jacka explores how the indigenous population of Papua New Guinea's highlands struggle to create meaningful lives in the midst of extreme social conflict and environmental degradation. Drawing on theories of political ecology, place, and ontology and using ethnographic, environmental, and historical data, Jacka presents a multilayered examination of the impacts large-scale commercial gold mining in the region has had on ecology and social relations. Despite the deadly interclan violence and widespread pollution brought on by mining, the uneven distribution of its financial benefits has led many Porgerans to call for further development. This desire for increased mining, Jacka points out, counters popular portrayals of indigenous people as innate conservationists who defend the environment from international neoliberal development. Jacka's examination of the ways Porgerans search for common ground between capitalist and indigenous ways of knowing and being points to the complexity and interconnectedness of land, indigenous knowledge, and the global economy in Porgera and beyond.

This is the first in-depth study of the sojourn in Sydney made by Nicolas Baudin's scientific expedition to Australia in 1802. Starbuck focuses on the reconstruction of the voyage during the expedition's stay in colonial Sydney and how this sheds new light on our understanding of French society, politics and science in the era of Bonaparte.

During World War II the Solomon Islands became the scene of a titanic struggle between Allied and Japanese forces. After their victory on Guadalcanal, American forces advanced into the New Georgia Group and suffered horrendous casualties. Admiral Halsey then implemented an "island hopping" strategy, by-passing Japanese strongpoints. The first occasion he used this was on an obscure island called "Vella Lavella". This book is the first detailed examination of the struggle for Vella Lavella covering the ground, air and sea battles and the involvement of American and New Zealand soldiers, the coast watchers, South Pacific Scouts and the Islanders.

In the past decades historians have interpreted early modern Christian missions not simply as an adjunct to Western imperialism, but a privileged field for cross-cultural encounters. Placing the Jesuit missions into a global phenomenon that emphasizes economic and cultural relations between Europe and the East, this book analyzes the possibilities and limitations of the religious conversion in the Micronesian islands of Guahan (or Guam) and the Northern Marianas. Frontiers are not rigid spatial lines separating culturally different groups of people, but rather active agents in the transformation of cultures. By bringing this local dimension to the fore, the book adheres to a process of missionary "glocalization" which allowed Chamorros to enter the international community as members of Spain's regional empire and the global communion of the Roman Catholic Church.

Although most people associate the term D-Day with the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, it is military code for the beginning of any offensive operation. In the Pacific theater during World War II there were more than one hundred D-Days. The largest -- and last -- was the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, which brought together the biggest invasion fleet ever assembled, far larger than that engaged in the Normandy invasion.
"D-Days in the Pacific" tells the epic story of the campaign waged by American forces to win back the Pacific islands from Japan. Based on eyewitness accounts by the combatants, it covers the entire Pacific struggle from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Pacific war was largely a seaborne offensive fought over immense distances. Many of the amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands were among the most savagely fought battles in American history: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, New Guinea, Peleliu, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.
Generously illustrated with photographs and maps, "D-Days in the Pacific" is the finest one-volume account of this titanic struggle.

The Battle for the Falklands is a thoughtful and informed analysis of an astonishing chapter in modern British history from journalist and military historian Sir Max Hastings and political editor Simon Jenkins. Ten weeks. 28,000 soldiers. 8,000 miles from home. The Falklands War in 1982 was one of the strangest in British history. At the time, many Britons saw it as a tragic absurdity - thousands of men sent overseas for a tiny relic of empire - but the British victory over the Argentinians not only confirmed the quality of British arms but also boosted the political fortunes of Thatcher's Conservative government. However, it left a chequered aftermath and was later overshadowed by the two Gulf wars. Max Hastings' and Simon Jenkins' account of the conflict is a modern classic of war reportage and the definitive book on the conflict.

Consuming Ocean Island tells the story of the land and people of Banaba, a small Pacific island, which, from 1900 to 1980, was heavily mined for phosphate, an essential ingredient in fertilizer. As mining stripped away the island's surface, the land was rendered uninhabitable, and the indigenous Banabans were relocated to Rabi Island in Fiji. Katerina Martina Teaiwa tells the story of this human and ecological calamity by weaving together memories, records, and images from displaced islanders, colonial administrators, and employees of the mining company. Her compelling narrative reminds us of what is at stake whenever the interests of industrial agriculture and indigenous minorities come into conflict. The Banaban experience offers insight into the plight of other island peoples facing forced migration as a result of human impact on the environment.

Colonial Genocide has been seen increasingly as a stepping-stone to the European genocides of the twentieth century, yet it remains an under-researched phenomenon. This volume reconstructs instances of Australian genocide and for the first time places them in a global context. Beginning with the arrival of the British in 1788 and extending to the 1960s, the authors identify the moments of radicalization and the escalation of British violence and ethnic engineering aimed at the Indigenous populations, while carefully distinguishing between local massacres, cultural genocide, and genocide itself. These essays reflect a growing concern with the nature of settler society in Australia and in particular with the fate of the tens of thousands of children who were forcibly taken away from their Aboriginal families by state agencies. Long considered a relatively peaceful settlement, Australian society contained many of the pathologies that led to the exterminatory and eugenic policies of twentieth century Europe.

The Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation was formally established in 1997 under the leadership of South Africa, India and Australia. The demise of Apartheid, the fall of the Soviet empire, and the rapid advance of globalization altered the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region in the early 1990s and served as a catalyst in the creation of the IOR. This book contextualizes the founding of the IOR by outlining the historical aspects of economic ties across the Indian Ocean and previous attempts to promote regional cooperation. The contributors to this volume analyse the post-colonial ideological legacy, the political and economic constraints caused by Apartheid and communism, the end of protectionism and the problem of globalization. These major themes in the history of the IOR are applied to what the future holds for Southern Africa within this economic grouping, and whether or not regional cooperation will manage to compete with globalization. This volume will be of interest to scholars of development studies, international relations, Third World studies, and regional development.

Spanning the late 18th century to the present, this volume explores new directions in imperial and postcolonial histories of conciliation, performance, and conflict between European colonizers and Indigenous peoples in Australia and the Pacific Rim, including Aotearoa New Zealand, Hawaii and the Northwest Pacific Coast. It examines cultural "rituals" and objects; the re-enactments of various events and encounters of exchange, conciliation and diplomacy that occurred on colonial frontiers between non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples; commemorations of historic events; and how the histories of colonial conflict and conciliation are politicized in nation-building and national identities.

A book about the past and present Pacific Islands, wide-ranging in time and space spanning the centuries from the first settlement of the islands until the present day.

This book contributes to the global turn in First World War studies by exploring Australians' engagements with the conflict across varied boundaries and by situating Australian voices and perspectives within broader, more complex contexts. This diverse and multifaceted collection includes chapters on the composition and contribution of the Australian Imperial Force, the experiences of prisoners of war, nurses and Red Cross workers, the resonances of overseas events for Australians at home, and the cultural legacies of the war through remembrance and representation. The local-global framework provides a fresh lens through which to view Australian connections with the Great War, demonstrating that there is still much to be said about this cataclysmic event in modern history.

This book illuminates Australian soldiers' voices, feelings and thoughts, through exploration of the words and language used during the Great War. It is mostly concerned with slang, but there were also new words that came into Standard English during the war with which Australians became familiar. The book defines and explains these words and terms, provides examples of their usage by Australian soldiers and on the home front that provides insight into the experiences and attitudes of soldiers and civilians, and it draws out some of the themes and features of this language to provide insight into the social and cultural worlds of Australian soldiers and civilians.

In 1938, the anthropologist Norman Tindale gave a classroom of young Aboriginal children a set of crayons and asked them to draw. The children, residents of the government-run Aboriginal station Cummeragunja, mostly drew pictures of aspects of white civilization boats, houses and flowers. What now to make of their artwork? Were the children encouraged or pressured to draw non-Aboriginal scenes, or did they draw freely, appropriating the white culture they now lived within? Did their Aboriginality change the meaning of their art, as they sketched out this ubiquitous colonial imagery? Australian Settler Colonialism and the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station traces Cummeragunja's history from its establishment in the 1880s to its mass walk-off in 1939 and finally, to the 1960s, when its residents regained greater control over the land. Taking in oral history traditions, the author reveals the competing interests of settler governments, scientific and religious organizations, and nearby settler communities. The nature of these interests has broad and important implications for understanding settler colonial history. This history shows white people set boundaries on Aboriginal behaviour and movement, through direct legislation and the provision of opportunities and acceptance. But Aboriginal people had agency within and, at times, beyond these limits. Aboriginal people appropriated aspects of white culture including the houses, the flowers and the boats that their children drew for Tindale - reshaping them into new tools for Aboriginal society, tools with which to build lives and futures in a changed environment.

Germans in Tonga is the culmination of an eight-year research project in which the author and his team of researchers gathered biographical material on Germans in Tonga. There are four main sources: the British Consul Tonga files, held in the Western Pacific Archives of the University of Auckland Library Special Collections; the Defence Department Enemy Aliens files and Aliens Records held at Archives New Zealand in Wellington; the Archives of the German Foreign Office (Auswartiges Amt) in Berlin; and the Ministry of Justice Archives in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. The volume contains short biographies of over 350 Germans in Tonga born over a 110-year period between 1822 and 1932 and features an introduction by the author on the historical background to the German connection with Tonga.

Through a literary lens, Neoliberalism and Cultural Transition in New Zealand Literature, 1984-2008: Market Fictions examines the ways in which the reprise of market-based economics has impacted the forms of social exchange and cultural life in a settler-colonial context. Jennifer Lawn proposes that postcolonial literary studies needs to take more account of the way in which the new configuration of dominance-increasingly gathered under the umbrella term of neoliberalism-works in concert with, rather than against, assertions of cultural identity on the part of historically subordinated groups. The pre-eminence of new right economics over the past three decades has raised a conundrum for writers on the left: while neoliberalism has tended to undermine collective social action, it has also fostered expressions of identity in the form of "cultural capital" which minority communities can exploit for economic gain. Neoliberalism and Cultural Transition in New Zealand Literature, 1984-2008 advocates for reading practices that balance the appeals of culture against the structuring forces of social class and the commodification of identity, while not losing sight of the specific aesthetic qualities of literary fiction. Jennifer Lawn demonstrates the value of this approach in a wide-ranging account of New Zealand literature. Movements towards decolonization in a bicultural society are read within the context of a marginal post-industrial economy that was, in many ways, a test case for radical free market reforms. Through a study of politically-engaged writing across a range of genres by both Maori and non-Maori authors, the New Zealand experience shows in high relief the twinned dynamics of a decline in the ideal of social egalitarianism and the corresponding rise of the idea of culture as a transformative force in economic and civic life, tending ultimately to blur the distinction between these spheres altogether. This work includes well-recognized authors such as Alan Duff, Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Eleanor Catton and Maurice Gee, but also introduces a number of non-canonical or emergent writers whose work is discussed in detail for the first time in this volume. The result is a distinctive literary history of a turbulent period of social and economic change.

'Of all the books about the ground war in the Pacific, (With the Old Breed) is the closest to a masterpiece.' - The New York Review of Books 'One of the most arresting documents in war literature.' - John Keegan, in The Second World War E.B. Sledge's memoir of his experience fighting in the South Pacific during World War II is powerful because of its honesty and compassion. With the Old Breed presents a stirring, personal account of the bravery of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Eugene Bondurant Sledge 'Sledgehammer' joined the Marines the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbour and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in this book. Sledge enlisted out of patriotism and youthful courage but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he simply and directly recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain. The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire, unimaginable brutality and, above all, constant fear. Sledge still has nightmares about 'the bloody, muddy month of May on Okinawa.' He also tellingly reveals the bonds of friendship formed that will never be severed. Sledge's account of other marines, even complete strangers, sets him apart as a memoirist of war. Read as sobering history or as high adventure, this is a moving chronicle of action and courage. About the Author E. B. Sledge was born and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. His father, a physician, taught him to hunt and to describe his surroundings. Sledge enlisted in the US Marine Corps and was sent to the Pacific Theatre. He fought at Peleliu and Okinawa where some of the fiercest battles of WWII took place. Although he survived it took him years to recover from the psychological wounds from that experience. He has since pursued his studies in all manner of subjects, earning a PhD in Zoology at the University of Florida.

The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard is the first critical examination of Australia's post-Vietnam military operations, spanning the 35 years between the election of Gough Whitlam and the defeat of John Howard. John Blaxland explores the 'casualty cringe' felt by political leaders following the war and how this impacted subsequent operations. He contends that the Australian Army's rehabilitation involved common individual and collective training and reaffirmation of the Army's regimental and corps identities. He shows how the Army regained its confidence to play leading roles in East Timor, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, and to contribute to combat operations further afield. At a time when the Australian Army's future strategic role are the subject of much debate, and as the 'Asian Century' gathers pace and commitment in Afghanistan draws to an end, this work is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the modern context of Australia's military land force.

The Chinese Hsinhai Revolution explores and explains for the first time the important role of G. E. Morrison in great power diplomacy in China from the end of the Russo-Japanese War to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. The work is based on a wide range of multinational scholarly sources and in order to develop the context in which Morrison carried out his personal diplomacy and to delineate the many-sided story into which Morrison has to be placed, Woodhouse has in addition to mining the very rich Morrison collection, drawn upon British, Japanese and American personal and official materials.

Australians have been making pilgrimages to the battlefields and cemeteries of World War Two since the 1940s, from the jungles of New Guinea and South-East Asia to the mountains of Greece and the deserts of North Africa. They travel in search of the stories of lost loved ones, to mourn the dead and to come to grips with the past. With characteristic empathy, Bruce Scates charts the history of pilgrimages to Crete, Kokoda, Sandakan and Hellfire Pass. He explores the emotional resonance that these sites have for those who served and those who remember. Based on surveys, interviews, extensive fieldwork and archival research, Anzac Journeys offers insights into the culture of loss and commemoration and the hunger for meaning so pivotal to the experience of pilgrimage. Richly illustrated with full-colour maps and photographs from the 1940s to today, Anzac Journeys makes an important and moving contribution to Australian military history.

Company towns are often portrayed as powerless communities, fundamentally dependent on the outside influence of global capital. Neil White challenges this interpretation by exploring how these communities were altered at the local level through human agency, missteps, and chance. Far from being homogeneous, these company towns are shown to be unique communities with equally unique histories.Company Towns provides a multi-layered, international comparison between the development of two settlements--the mining community of Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, and the mill town of Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada. White pinpoints crucial differences between the towns' experiences by contrasting each region's histories from various perspectives--business, urban, labour, civic, and socio-cultural. Company Towns also makes use of a sizable collection of previously neglected oral history sources and town records, providing an illuminating portrait of divergence that defies efforts to impose structure on the company town phenomenon.

Baby booms have a long history. In 1870, colonial Melbourne was 'perspiring juvenile humanity' with an astonishing 42 per cent of the city's inhabitants aged 14 and under - a demographic anomaly resulting from the gold rushes of the 1850s. Within this context, Simon Sleight enters the heated debate concerning the future prospects of 'Young Australia' and the place of the colonial child within the incipient Australian nation. Looking beyond those institutional sites so often assessed by historians of childhood, he ranges across the outdoor city to chart the relationship between a discourse about youth, youthful experience and the shaping of new urban spaces. Play, street work, consumerism, courtship, gang-related activities and public parades are examined using a plethora of historical sources to reveal a hitherto hidden layer of city life. Capturing the voices of young people as well as those of their parents, Sleight alerts us to the ways in which young people shaped the emergent metropolis by appropriating space and attempting to impress upon the city their own desires. Here a dynamic youth culture flourished well before the discovery of the 'teenager' in the mid-twentieth century; here young people and the city grew up together.

In 1945 a joint committee of the US Senate and House of Representatives was appointed to investigate and hear testimony from a variety of military and civilian leaders about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Brought together here is a cross-section of the relevant testimony from the Congressional committee's 39-volume report. Witnesses recount events leading up to the war, American espionage efforts, the failure of radar, the penetration of the Japanese diplomatic codes, and the performance of the military.