TAHITI NUI Tu-Nui-Ae-I-Te-Atua
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TAHITI NUI Tu-nui-ae-i-te-atua. Pomare I (1802). ii TAHITI NUI Change and Survival in French Polynesia 1767–1945 COLIN NEWBURY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF HAWAII HONOLULU Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In- ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per- mission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre- ative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824880323 (PDF) 9780824880330 (EPUB) This version created: 17 May, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. Copyright © 1980 by The University Press of Hawaii All rights reserved. For Father Patrick O’Reilly, Bibliographer of the Pacific CONTENTS Dedication vi Illustrations ix Tables x Preface xi Chapter 1 THE MARKET AT MATAVAI BAY 1 The Terms of Trade 3 Territorial Politics 14 Chapter 2 THE EVANGELICAL IMPACT 31 Revelation and Revolution 33 New Institutions 44 Churches and Chiefs 56 Chapter 3 THE MARKET EXPANDED 68 The Middlemen 72 The Catholic Challenge 87 Chapter 4 OCCUPATION AND RESISTANCE 94 Governor Bruat’s War 105 Governor Lavaud’s Peace 118 Chapter 5 CHURCHES AND STATE 125 Etaretia Tahiti 127 Catholics And Mormons 134 Chapter 6 THE SEARCH FOR STAPLES 148 The Traders 151 The Planters 158 Chapter 7 QUEEN POMARE’S PROTECTORATE 172 La Roncière’s “Tahitian Kingdom” 180 vii CONTENTS Annexation 188 Chapter 8 THE POLITICS OF ASSIMILATION 195 The General Council 198 Land and Territory 207 Chapter 9 MERCHANTS AND MINERS 225 The Société Commerciale de l’Océanie 232 The Compagnie Française des Phosphates de l’Océanie 242 The Tributaries 248 Chapter 10 FRENCH ASCENDANCY 255 The Demography of Survival 258 The Economic Crisis 267 The Political Crisis 285 Notes 299 References 341 About this Book 365 About the Author 367 viii ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES Tu-nui-ae-i-te-atua. Pomare I (1802). 2 “A View of Port Royal (Matavai) Bay.” 4 Tu-nui-ae-i-te-atua. Pomare II (ca. 1819). 46 Teremoemoe (wife of Pomare II), Pomare (or Tapoa, spouse of Pomare IV), Pomare Vahine, Otoore. 58 “The Harbour & Town of Papahitie. Island of Tahiti. Society Group. South Pacific.” 1839. 71 Paraita, Regent. 84 Tahitians Coming from Church. 89 John Brander’s House at Ha‘apape. 156 “Montcalm,” Atimaono Plantation. 166 Queen Pomare IV. 176 Pape‘ete Town and Harbor about 1900. 227 Makatea: CFPO Installations. 246 Tahiti: Copra-loading. 272 Tuamotu: Shell-diving and Trading Craft. 283 FIGURES 1 French Polynesia: Enumeration of Indigenous and Other Populations 260 2 Chinese Migration: Arrivals and Departures, 1905–1946 263 3 Copra Production and Export: 1897–1945 280 MAPS Tahiti and Mo‘orea 15 Pape‘ete Waterfront and Commercial Center: 1914 234 French Polynesia 368 ix TABLES 1 The Pomare Lineage in the Hau Feti‘i 19 2 Titles and Chiefs: 1818–1845 113 3 Total Trade Values: 1840–1915 150 4 Agricultural Survey of Districts: 1866 162 5 Anglo-Tahitian Descent Lines 166 6 Annual Average Prices (f.o.b. per kilo): 1880–1914 229 7 SCO Profit and Loss Accounts (in francs) 236 8 SCO Abstract of Debtor Totals: 1909–1910 238 9 Population Enumerations 227 10 Metropolitan French, Chinese, and Foreign Nationals 262 11 French Polynesia: Land Tenure Survey, 1950 278 12 District Council Membership: 1933–1939 283 x PREFACE IN THE LITERATURE of the Pacific Tahiti holds a special place. There is solid documentation on the European explorer’s view from seaward and on Europe’s appreciation of that view—from the end of the eighteenth century to the modern tourist in- dustry’s exploitation of the South Seas image. More recently, too, reprints of older works on the oral traditions and ethnology of Tahitians have been supplemented by archaeological evi- dence for settlement patterns in the eastern Pacific and a re- vision of our thinking about the navigational techniques that may have guided the first people there. A summation of scholarly rediscovery of the island and its inhabitants has been magnificently presented in Douglas L. Oliver’s Ancient Tahitian Society. There are few interpretations of the period of nineteenth- century European contact with Tahiti, however, though the mis- sionary period and events leading up to French occupation have featured prominently in detailed and specialized works by Dr. Niel Gunson, Professor W. P. Morrell, Léonce Jore, and J.-P. Faivre. Not till after 1945 did the period of French rule and its consequences for Tahitians arouse a limited amount of investi- gation into the politics of local government in French Polynesia and socioeconomic changes resulting from the development of local markets and intensive investment in the economic infra- structure of the nuclear testing program of the 1960s. It is easy to emphasize the structural changes that have taken place between the late eighteenth century and the mid- twentieth. It is more difficult to trace the continuities that have been a feature of contact between islanders and alien visitors and settlers for over a century and a half. Some of the drama at the beginning and end of that period has obscured significant adjustments, accommodations, and, above all, the slow creation of new social groups within Tahitian society—groups that, to a xi PREFACE great extent, are the political and economic legatees of the in- stitutions of government, business, and the churches evolved during the early period of missionary and French tutelage. Advances in the history of other island groups in the Pacific —more particularly the Hawaiian Islands, Western Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, and New Guinea—have drawn attention, too, to parallel developments in the exploitation of resources and in systems of administration used to regulate and arbitrate Pacific markets. Compared with historical insights obtained into the operations of traders, labor recruiters, companies, and officials in these is- lands and archipelagoes, the French territories, including the more advanced industrial economy of New Caledonia, are in- sulae incogni tae; and works in English or French dealing with their societies concentrate heavily on the age of exploration and the activities of the first settlers. An interest in those activities and encouragement by the late Professor J. W. Davidson, head of the Department of Pacific His- tory at the Australian National University, led me to begin this study over twenty years ago. Since then, the eventual thesis on French administration in eastern Polynesia has been revised and expanded, along with my own academic interests in other societies in Africa. Materials not available to me in the 1950s—particularly on the economic history of the region—have been located and are open to students. A curiosity about the complex correlation between markets and the exercise of po- litical authority in other societies under European rule has also led me to reexamine some of the methods, assumptions, and conclusions I reached earlier. But I still owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the Australian National University, which mate- rially assisted my first exploration of French Polynesia in the archives of Australia and Europe and in the field. I have also gained more than I can say from the insights of the late Richard Gilson and J. W. Davidson into Samoan history, from the work of Niel Gunson on the first missionaries, and from Professor H. E. Maude’s pioneer study of early Tahitian trade. It is impossible for a historian not to be also in the debt of social anthropolo- gists; and I have learned to ask questions raised by the later studies of Bengt Danielsson for Raroia and Professor Ben Fin- ney for Tahitian socioeconomic behavior. Consequently, the emphasis in this book is more on the eco- nomic interchanges that have characterized European contact with Tahiti and adjacent islands and much less on formal pat- terns of government and administration. For that contact re- sulted in a crude market, as a working compromise, in 1767. By xii PREFACE the date of the Second World War, Tahitian markets absorbed the produce of most of the region under French rule and had been closely integrated into the political economy of the colonial power. But this integration was a relatively recent de- velopment, under French rule, giving rise to a dependency and to a class of Franco-Tahitian intermediaries which differed from nineteenth-century Tahitian society in important ways and which was to play an enhanced political and commercial role after 1945. Throughout these interchanges a constant theme in Tahitian history has been land as a valued resource; and within the limits of our very partial understanding of Tahitian land tenure, I have stressed the place of attitudes to resource zones (including transferable estate) at critical periods at the outset of French occupation and in nineteenth and early-twentieth-century in- vestment in commodity exploitation. It could not be claimed, however, that evidence on land tenure or on trade is readily quantifiable in terms that would be essential to a thorough eco- nomic history of the period; and historians of other developing societies will recognize familiar problems in using qualitative data to describe continuity and change. We are, however, for- tunate in having a reasonably complete set of business records for an important commercial enterprise up till 1914, and I have used a German firm as an example to illustrate a number of themes related to commodities, credit, and the advancement of Tahitian intermediaries within the structure of a colonial “pe- ripheral” economy linked to world markets.