Arundel (1814-1919) was a leading figure in the Pacific phosphate industry from the 1860s until his death, active largely in Kiribati and Nauru. See Pacific Islands Monthly, April 1974, pp.59-61.

The correspondence is chiefly with Lord Stanmore who was chairman of the Pacific Islands Company Ltd, and later the Pacific Phosphate Company Ltd, of which Arundel was the Vice-Chairman.

Please see PMB 738 for full entry.

Continued from PMB 752 - Volume 13: correspondence, 1890-99.
Volume 14: Reports, minutes, estimates, cables and statistics, etc., 1900-09, relating to mission stations in the Gilbert Islands and on Guam, Kusaie, Ponape, Truk, the Mortlock Islands and Nauru (continued on PMB 754).

These Patrol Officer field notebooks are about the Worin village of the Huon Peninsular in the Morobe District of New Guinea. Edwin Ernst Styants primarily kept the first register, but during the period 1944-1946, Patrol Officers L. Williams, Stuart Rylands and A.J. Leyden also recorded their observations and findings. The register includes clear instructions and orders on how to compile or record the names of village men and women and their dates of birth if known. Patrol officers recorded the names of all the village and hamlets inhabitants including those who were absent on indentured labour recruitments. The details recorded provided valuable and useful census data for the colonial authorities. This data formed the basis of the inspecting officer of the Department of District Services to crosscheck all births, deaths, migrations or relocations.

This register also lists the names of village or group, hamlets, native district, Luluai, Tultul, Medical Tultul by the Patrol Officer. There are blank pages for patrolling officers to enter their notes and instructions for the inspecting officers of the Department of District Services. The first register lists Uron as the Luluai of the Dopet hamlet and Dingson of the Nakom hamlet. Tultul MUSU of Mumbok served for 24 years and was presented a signed certificate of his services at Mumeng on 22nd October 1962. The Medical Tutul was SIWI of Dopet hamlet.

Of note in the first register is an entry stating that Tultul Dunjiyong wielded considerable power and was instrumental in giving full assistance to Peter Ryan during the Second World War. Ryan was the author of ‘Fear Drive My Feet’, a classic memoir of his time patrolling isolated regions of New Guinea during World War 2/World War II.

The second Village Register is divided into the following columns:
Males, Females, Estimated or known Year of birth. The entries in these columns have their original native names and often lists husband and wife but also whether the adult member of the village lives on his or her own.

General information on condition of roads, tracks, water supplies, gardens, distances between the villages as well as sanitation and latrines. All are hand written by the visiting Patrol Officers.

Eleanor J. Walker was a member of the Methodist mission at Dobu in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands of Papua New Guinea (then called British New Guinea). The mission was established in June 1891. For details, see George Brown, D.D., Pioneer Missionary and Explorer : An Autobiography, London, 1908, pp485-92.

The diary describes how the diarist came to join the mission and gives an account of her life at Dobu.

This is a collection of 134 digitised slides of Falefa, on the northeast coast of the island of Upolu, 20 km from the Samoan capital Apia. With a population in recent years of over 1500, Falefa comprises four ‘sub’ villages - Sagapolu, Saleapaga, Gagaemalae, and Sanonu. Its leading matai [chiefly] ali’I titles Leutele and Salanoa and leading tulafale [orator] titles Moeono and Iuli figure prominently in Samoan political history, particularly in relation to the district title Tui Atua, and Tama Aiga titles Tupua Tamasese and Mataafa.

The photographs were taken in Falefa by Robert Norton during four periods of sociological field research - October 1975-January 1976, August-September 1977, December-January 1980, February 1982. Norton was studying aspects of social and political change, particularly influences of the growing remittance economy. The large scale emigration of Samoans to New Zealand for wage employment was encouraged by the hurricane destruction of banana plantations in 1966 and an increasing need for industrial labour in New Zealand. Norton began his research in Falefa just nine years after the commencement of this exodus of young people to earn money to send home.

Many of the photos illustrate the changes in housing underway funded mainly by remittances in the early years of the labour emigration. A family’s success in establishing members in New Zealand’s work force was soon displayed and measured by the construction of modern houses. The change had slowly begun some years before the labour emigration wave, but was greatly accelerated by it.

Some families were a lot more successful than others in their access to remitted funds, having established several members in overseas employment. So the new era of migration and remitting brought a new dimension of economic and social inequality in the village. The inequality was sometimes quite stark in housing contrasts even between different households of the same aiga [land-owning descent group] - Traditional fale [houses] were still common in the village. Some families also used the new income to make a strong showing in their funding of fa’a’lavelave - important and expensive events such as weddings, matai title bestowals, funerals, and church dedications. The new source of economic inequality led to new dependencies between different households within an aiga.

Remittance income to village families was spent to a lesser extent in capital investments in plantation production, copra driers, utility vehicles etc; Vehicles were very few in the village during the 1970s [around half a dozen]. Although some people became successful entrepreneurs on their aiga land with the aid of remittances, more became less interested in their plantations and more contemplative of anticipated regular money gifts from emigrant family members.

Before the labour emigration wave, money income was gained mainly by the sale of produce from the land and sea [taro and other root vegetables, coconuts and copra, fish]. A few households included members with salaried jobs in town or in the village itself [the school, and the health centre], and several maintained small shops with everyday commodities purchased in Apia, Samoa’s main town. Travel to Apia 20 km to the west was mainly by bus - to schools, to visit and attend social events in other villages, or for shopping or visits to government offices, banks, hospital, lands and titles court etc

Norton also gave particular attention to leadership and authority, eventually publishing an academic paper on electoral politics at the village level. To enable him to sit with the matai [aiga titled chiefs] in the village fono [council] meetings he was given an honorary title.

Many of the photos were taken at Fono meetings - at village, sub-village, and inter-village levels. Some photos are of a Fono meeting functioning as a court hearing and judging minor disputes and imposing fines. These photos are restricted access. Norton himself once faced the prospect of attracting a fine that would be levied on the matai head of his host household if he refused to remove his beard. The village fono had for a year or two decreed it an offence for men to grow beards or long hair and for women to wear slacks. The rule expressed tension between the Fa’a’Samoa [Samoan way] and the Fa’a’Palagi [European way] that had strengthened a little with the impact of the labour migration, not just on material living conditions and social competition, but on popular consciousness, particularly in the youths who became accustomed to interactions with emigrants returning to the village for important social celebrations and to display their successes and tell stories about life in New Zealand. Norton didn’t hesitate to shave for the duration of his short stay in 1977. But by his next stay three years later the anti-beard rule had been dropped.

The copra trade was the core business of the Deutches Handel und Plantagen Gesselschaft. The company had monopoly recruiting rights enabling it to draw labour for its plantations in Samoa from the eastern New Guinea islands and the northern Solomon Islands. The labour registers give the number and name of the labourer, his or her village and district. The registers also note the plantation on which the labourer worked and transfers to employment elsewhere. If applicable, the date and cause of death is noted. There was a high mortality. Otherwise the register notes the date of return. There is also a column for further notes.

Arbeiter Register, Nos.6367-7832, 25 May 1887-24 Feb 1891 [16 Mar 1891];
Arbeiter Register, Nos.7833-9409, 16 Mar 1891-Jan 1897;
Arbeiter Register, Nos.9406-10128, Nos.1-1237, Jan 1897-Jan 1906;
Arbeiter Register, Nos.1238-3187, Jan 1906-Sep 1913.

Captain Hamilton (1852-1937) was born in Scotland and came to Australia at the age of 10. In 1882 - 1883 he made voyages from Brisbane to Vanuatu (at that time the New Hebrides), New Britain and New Ireland (Papua New Guinea) in labour recruiting vessels. For a dozen or so years from the late 1890s, he ran the Hamilton Pearling Co. with luggers operating out of Komuli in the Admiralty Islands and Gizo in Solomon Islands. This company also traded in copra, tortoise shell, black lip and green snail shell. Later, Captain Hamilton had big planting interests in the Solomons, mainly on Choiseul. He died in Sydney in November, 1937.

The papers copied on this microfilm are the most interesting and valuable historically of a large collection (in the Oxley Memorial Library) relating to Captain Hamilton's career. They comprise:

• Diary of a recruiting voyage in the schooner Lochiel from Brisbane to the New Hebrides from September 20, 1882, to December 29, 1882.
• Diary of a recruiting voyage in the schooner Jessie Kelly from Brisbane to the New Hebrides, New Britain and New Ireland from March to September, 1883.
• Two reports on voyages in search of pearl shell in New Guinea and the Solomons in 1899-1900.
• Log of the pearling lugger Nippon from April 20, 1901 to September 24, 1901, kept at the Hamilton Pearling Company's station at Komuli, Admiralty Islands.
• Log of the Hamilton Pearling Company's station at Komuli from September 27 1902 to March 10 1903.
• Logs and diaries kept by William Hamilton in the vessels Canomie, Ysabel, Gazelle and Kambin from January 1 1903 to November 14 1905. These concern the operations of the Hamilton Pearling Company in New Guinea and the Solomons.

For further details of Captain Hamilton's career and of his other papers in the Oxley Memorial Library, see the Bureau's newsletter 'Pambu' October 1968:3, pp.3-6.

Reverend John Kissack Arnold (1895-1955) was a Methodist missionary in the Dobu circuit of Papua New Guinea. He went to Papua in May 1923 and left in January 1928, but spent some time in Australia on furlough in 1926. He was the author of a grammar of Edgaula, the language of Dobu, and the lingua franca of the D' Entrecasteaux Group and beyond.

The diaries cover the period 1 May 1923 - 5 January 1926. They cover visits to the D' Entrecasteaux and Kiriwina Islands. The diaries are in three volumes and each has its own index.

The Rev. James Egan Moulton (1841-1909) was a noted Methodist missionary in Tonga from 1865 to 1906. He was the founder of Tubou College, Nuku'alofa.

1.Tongan history from 1797-1854, commencing with the death of Mumui on 29/4/1797. 2. The history of the Tui Kano Kupolu. 3. Story of origin of Fakafonua. 4. Legends: Bugalotohoa and Munimatahai; Abakula; The Fuaa; Lafa

Fison (1832-1907) a university-educated man, with a keen interest in anthropology, was born in Suffolk, England. He migrated to Australia in 1856, joined the Methodist Church, and went to Fiji as a Wesleyan missionary in 1864. He remained in Fiji until 1884, when he returned to Australia and became editor of the Spectator, a Melbourne church paper.

Copies of letters, notes on Fiji customs and personalities, sketches of life in Fiji, and an early draft of Fison's book 'Tales of Old Fiji' (London, 1907). The wording of some of the tales, as recorded in these papers, has been much worked over and occasionally differs in its final form from that in the published versions.