Teachers All: Samoan, Fijian, and Queensland Melanesian Missionaries in Papua, 1884–1914

Abstract

Pacific Islands mission teachers were powerful agents of culture change in Oceania, and the Christianity they taught is part of the ideological and constitutional underpinnings of several independent Pacific Island states. Their fullest impact was felt in the period between the 1880s and 1914, when vast distances were being crossed and diverse populations reached by evangelists from half a dozen Pacific nationalities. Below the common religious motivations professed by the Islands teachers there were sharp contrasts in expectations and behaviour. This paper compares the Samoan, Fijian, and Queensland Melanesian missionaries in Papua, a colony where Islanders were concentrated in larger numbers than elsewhere. The Samoans are given the greater balance of analysis in the paper, because the 187 male Samoans outnumbered both the Fijians (110 males) and Queensland Melanesians (46), and because the Samoans’ expectations diverged more sharply from those of their European colleagues than was the case with their Fijian and Queensland Melanesian contemporaries.1