Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies State, Society and Governance in Melanesia State Society and in Governance Melanesia DISCUSSION PAPER Discussion Paper 2009/4 MOBS AND MASSES: DEFINING THE DYNAMIC GROUPS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA1 From their first arrival in Papua New Papua New Guineans were placed in HANK Guinea, Europeans were quickly defined as groups by place and family, extended family NELSON belonging to particular groups. What placed and culture. That was a result of what them in groups was occupation and intent. was easily observed and because of the The dominant groups of missionaries, miners, concurrent growth of anthropology as a planters and traders, and government officers discipline with the timing of the European (often reduced to field officers - kiaps - only) century of contact in Papua New Guinea. accepted that they were indeed different from That dominance of place, family and culture each other. They wrote aggressive statements has continued to be used to define Papua about their own interests as opposed to New Guinean groups and to explain social, those of the other groups in the Rabaul political and economic behaviour. Two Times and Papuan Courier. If representatives exceptions have been the police and army. were needed for a legislative council, then There has been enough written about these a planter, missionary and miner would be two occupational groups that it is possible to found to join the government offices. It was write histories of their histories. These reveal said that the groups naturally came together much about Australian colonial hopes and on the boats that took them to and from Port regrets. But the police and army aside, we Moresby or Rabaul. These groups continued now have a nation of six million, many urban to be recognized as dominant when they dwellers, many people whose first language were no longer clearly important by numbers is tok pisin or English and almost no analyses or influence. Race and nationality were also of what are the dynamic groups other than significant in defining groups, and much of those identified in generalities a hundred the defining was in legislation as well as years ago. This is primitive scholarship. in the unwritten rules that determined how people were expected to behave. Mobs and Masses: Defining the Dynamic Groups in Papua New Guinea SCHOLARS REQUIRE GROUPS FIRST ENCOUNTERS: FIRST 2 GROUPS Margaret Thatcher said, perhaps decreed: ‘society. There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are Those scholars who have looked at families and no government can do anything early encounters between islanders and the except through people and people look to outside world have seen the significance of themselves first.’2 That belief in the primacy the men of the beach – those men who left or of the individual and the absence of any escaped from their own communities, took up group other than the family was consistent long-term residence near an anchorage and with then common political and economic became the interpreters for foreigners and beliefs in the virtue of small governments and islanders in their interactions.4 Harry Maude free markets. The result, the free marketeers has pointed out that before they were ousted argued, of unfettered individuals pursuing by more numerous foreigners, there may economic self-interest was going to be have been ‘2000 or more [beachcombers] greater national growth shared by more. scattered throughout the South Seas’.5 While crude assertions of that dogma have The beachcombers of Melanesia are rarely lost favour with pundits and voters, and most recalled, but Maude says that , ‘James dramatically with share market investors and Selwyn came to live in New Britain about the growing numbers of unemployed, the 1816 and Thomas Manners in New Ireland significance of the individual is retained by during 1826, both being still there in 1835’.6 those who proclaim the importance of choice They pre-dated those other ‘firsts’, the (of school, hospital, superannuation scheme, missionaries, miners, government officers, and electricity and telephone supplier) and traders and planters, by several decades.7 of the people who make the money, rather than governments, know best how to use That last sentence illustrates the ease with it. Although in practice this may mean that which popular and scholarly commentators individuals and private companies look after have grouped foreigners in Melanesia by profit and governments continue to pick up their aim, ideology, and economic interest: debt. planters, traders, missionaries, miners and government officers. Those divisions among Politicians and economists can stress the foreigners were evident even on the ships importance of the individual, and a Margaret that took Australians north. Keith McCarthy Thatcher can assert that ‘the quality of our on his first voyage to New Guinea noted lives will depend upon how much each of us is how the ‘civil servants and planters on board 3 prepared to take responsibility for ourselves’ ; began to gather in cliques’.8 In 1941 Jim but most of the time social scientists trying to Huxley on his way to a job at Bulolo named carry out their basic tasks of explaining the the three men who left the Neptuna with behaviour of a population have to be able to him at Salamaua. They were all like him, identify groups - groups that drive, enable, battlers hoping to make a quid on a frontier accept, resist or are by-passed by change. – a chicken farmer, a Bulolo dredge master But those scholars working on the Pacific and an independent miner returning to Edie Island states have been unable to agree on Creek.9 Huxley was already within a group which groups have been important and some defined by aspiration and industry. Rodger have written as though there are no coherent Brown, a Methodist missionary sailing second groups other than those defined by kinship class on the Nanking in 1939, mentioned and place. The problem is now long-lasting three other Methodist missionaries on board and finding a working solution becoming and when the ship called at Brisbane he more important in Papua New Guinea and went ashore and met executive officers of the Solomon Islands and less urgent in New Methodist church in Queensland, and he was Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji where history, greeted on the wharf in Rabaul by his mission migrations and inherited or assumed rank 10 have resulted in cleavages in populations. chairman. By contrast Pat Boys on her The following is a commentary on scholarly way to marry a plantation manager enjoyed and popular perceptions of groups of people changing each night into a ‘long elegant’ frock 11 in Papua New Guinea. and entering the Macdhui’s dining saloon. She travelled with a different group defined Mobs and Masses: Defining the Dynamic Groups in Papua New Guinea by economic interests and conforming to well-kept appearance is ruined by Chinese different rules on social behaviour. trade stores in their midst with crowds of 3 bui-chewing natives around?’16 The Chinese The different groups of white foreigners were then seen to be at fault for failing to attacked each other with frank fury in the keep their distance from both white and Rabaul Times and the Papuan Courier and black. their divisions were apparent on particular issues. Planters and traders objected to From 1942 to 1945 the foreigners in any suggestion of an increase in wages Papua New Guinea were certainly divided by for labourers or diverting government funds nationality: uniforms, accents and behaviour to educate Papua New Guineas. On New made the differences explicit. But there were Ireland, McCarthy’s attempts to assist the also other divisions. The services - navy, villagers to build their own copra driers were army and air force - retained their separate taken by the planters as evidence of the identities, and that continued in the official ‘incompetence and stupidity’ of government histories and much scholarship so that an officers. In that case, the Administrator Australian history of Kokoda is likely to leave sided with the planters and McCarthy was out the war in the air and the sea.17 But the shifted and lost his acting rank of Assistant Japanese accounts of Kokoda emphasise the District Officer.12 But the foreigners may air war in which they were initially dominant, have exaggerated their differences. Jack enjoyed technical superiority and could fight O’Neill, a miner, mentions going to see with a flamboyance that was impossible the Government officer, Bill Kyle, and the for their ground troops trapped in rain and Lutheran missionary, Wilhelm Bergmann mud, suffering from malaria and malnutrition, (‘who had been so hospitable’), at Kainantu and facing an enemy growing in strength in 1933: in the absence of other Europeans and competence.18 More significantly, race and living close to several thousand turbulent blurred distinctions between nationalities. Highlanders, miner, kiap and missionary were At Talasea, Father Bernard Franke had to conscious of what they had in common.13 decide whether he assisted the Japanese allies of his native Germany or the Australians Cadet Patrol Officer Malcolm Wright learnt escaping from Rabaul and later those quickly that he was not to act against planters serving with the coastwatchers. He chose in a way that would lower the ‘prestige of the – at great personal risk - the Australians, European’, but he did not think that this but he may have been motivated simply consideration was extended to missionaries, by friendship to some government officers especially those who were German - and and planters whom he had come to know truly ‘European’.14 In New Guinea, but not well during his years on north New Britain.19 in Papua, the number of Germans (and In the Madang and Morobe Districts the Austrians) in the Catholic and Lutheran conflict was more complex because Lutheran mission was significant, 399 in 1940.15 missionaries shared a religion and a German heritage but were separated by culture and To the 1950s, Chinese and the few nationality into Australians, Americans and Malay, Japanese, other Asians and mixed Germans.