Main journal entries written from Taviuni (Taveuni?), Macuata, Vanua Levu, Koroivono and Levuka, Fiji; on board schooner "Daphne" towards Futuna and Uvea; at Futuna and Uvea; on board schooner "Louisa Ryder" towards Samoa; Apia, Mulifanua and Falelatai, Samoa; Tutuial (now American Samoa); on board barque "Metaris" towards Fiji; on board schooner "Pio Nono" towards Samoa.

James Lyle Young (1849-1929) was born in Londonderry (Derry), Ireland, and went to Australia with his parents in the mid-1850s. After working in Australia as a station hand, Young, in 1870, went to Fiji where he was associated for five years with a cotton-planting venture at Taveuni. In April, 1875, he left Fiji on a trading voyage to Samoa via Futuna and Wallis Island.

The journal gives a vivid account of Young's life during three of his most adventurous years. It begins with a trading voyage round the Macuata coast of Fiji followed by a voyage to Samoa via Futuna and Wallis Islands. In Samoa, Young saw a great deal of the American adventurer, Colonel A.B. Steinberger, who headed the Samoan Government for 10 extraordinary months. After playing a prominent part in the events that led to Steinberger's downfall, Young sailed for the Marshall Islands in May, 1876, to open a trading station for Thomas Farrell at Ebon Atoll. He remained in Farrell's employ until November, 1877 when he went to Majuro.
See also PMB MS 22 and 23 and the Bureau's newsletter Pambu, Dec. 1968:5, pp.1-12.

James Lyle Young (1849-1929) was born in Londonderry, Ireland, and went to Australia with his parents in the mid-1850's. After working in Australia as a station hand, Young, in 1870, went to Fiji where he was associated with a cotton-planting venture at Taveuni. In 1875, he left Fiji on a trading voyage to Samoa, and from May, 1876, to October, 1881, he worked as a trader in the Marshall, Mariana and Caroline Islands. In 1882, Young went to Tahiti to become manager of the Papeete trading store of Andrew Crawford & Co., of San Francisco. In 1888, he went into business in Tahiti on his own account. He was closely associated with the Pacific Islands for the rest of his life, as managing director of S.R. Maxwell & Co., of Tahiti, and owner of Henderson and Macfarlane Ltd., of Auckland. He became recognised as an authority on the life and culture of the region.

Letters, notebooks, memoranda, articles, etc. dealing with Young's career and interests from 1878 to the year of his death. Includes a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on 'The Trouble in Samoa' (31/3/1899), a paper on German expansion in the Pacific (1908), correspondence on the Pitcairn Islanders between Young and the British Consulate in Tahiti (1911-13) and an account by Young of his family's history and his own career (1919, c.1924). Some letters written in Micronesia as well as materials from French Polynesia. A full list of other items in the Bureau's newsletter Pambu, Dec. 1968:5, p.12 and Jan. 1969:6, pp.10-11. See also PMB 21 and 22.
See Finding aids for details.

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.

‘A Paradise of the Gods. Writings and Drawings of Handley Bathurst Sterndale.’ is an unpublished digital edition edited by J.J. Overell. In 1870, Handley Bathurst Sterndale worked as a surveyor on the island of Upolu, Samoa, for the German trading company Goddefroy & Sohn. In this capacity, he made an expedition across Upolu, making notes and sketches about the journey as he went. In 1871, on Motu Kotawa on the islet of Pukapuka atoll in the Cook Islands, he worked these notes into the manuscript ‘Upolu; or, A Paradise of the Gods’, and worked his sketches into finished drawings. Some accounts are not his first hand observations and others are demonstrably wrong. Sterndale sought to have the manuscript published, but was unsuccessful in finding a publisher before his death in 1878. After his death, it was listed in a catalogue among the publications of Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington of London, but the manuscript never made it to print.

The original notebooks have since been lost, but the surviving manuscript and drawings have been passed down to Sterndale’s descendants. This edition brings together edited excerpts from Sterndale’s original manuscript and is illustrated with his original drawings, which were digitised by photographer Rod Howe. It also includes a detailed introduction by editor J.J. Overell, and contextual chapters on the geology of Upolu, a chronology of Sterndale’s life and detailed appendices, including a complete transcript of the original manuscript.

Subjects covered by Sterndale include beachcombers, Samoan cultural beliefs and practices, civil conflict, diet, agriculture, wildlife, disease - amongst others. In addition to Upolu, Sterndale writes about Levuka in Fiji and Easter Island or Rapa Nui.

Correspondence with New Zealand Administration, Samoa, cont. 1930-1946

Correspondence with New Zealand Administration, Samoa 1915-1929

These documents originally formed part of the archives of the Samoan District Committee and later Samoan District Council of the London Missionary Society, and were formerly held at Malua, Western Samoa. The Samoan District Committee was replaced by the Council in 1928.

Correspondence of the Samoan District of the London Missionary Society with the New Zealand Administration, Samoa.