This interdisciplinary collection explores the confluence of American and British (neo)imperalism in the Pacific, as represented in various forms of Pacific discourse including literature, ethnography, film, painting, autobiography, journalism, and environmental discourse. It investigates the alliances and rivalries between these two colonial powers during the crucial transition period of the early-to-mid twentieth century, also exploring indigenous Pacific responses to Anglo-American imperialism during and beyond the decolonization period of the late twentieth century. While the relationship between Britain and the US has been analyzed through prominent forms of economic and cultural exchange between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, there is to date no sustained study of the relationship between British and US colonial expansion into the Pacific, which became central to ideas of developing ‘European’ modernity in the late eighteenth century and has played a pivotal in the history of Anglo-American colonialism, from the establishment of plantation economies and settler colonies in the nineteenth century to various forms of military imperialism during and beyond the twentieth century. The wide range of discursive and expressive modes explored in this collection makes for a rich and multifaceted analysis of representations of, and responses to, Anglo-American imperialism, and is in keeping with the current interdisciplinary turn in postcolonial studies.
List of figures Acknowledgements Foreword: Making and Unmaking the Anglo-American Pacific ROB WILSON Introduction MICHELLE KEOWN, ANDREW TAYLOR AND MANDY TREAGUS PART I Military, Religious and Cultural Imperialism in Pacific Literature 1 War and Redemption: Militarism, Religion and Anticolonialism in Pacific Literature MICHELLE KEOWN 2 Reading Imperialism in the Pacific: The Prose of Joseph Veramu and the Poetry of Sia Figiel TERESIA TEAIWA 3 Slow Walking, Fast Talking: PI Poetry and Imperialisms SELINA TUSITALA MARSH PART II Transatlantic Trajectories in Pacific film, photography and the visual arts 4 It’s Raining in Pago: The Body, Religion and Race in W. Somerset Maugham’s ‘Rain’ and its Film Adaptations MANDY TREAGUS 5 The Voyager’s Sublime: Kodachrome and Pacific Tourism JEFFREY GEIGER 6 Culture and Imperialism: John Pule’s Painting, 1990-2010 NICHOLAS THOMAS PART III Cross-cultural Alliances and Tensions in Pacific Discourse 7 Lunchtime at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum: Notes on Working Friendships among Natives and Non-Natives and Imperial Anglo-Americanism in Territorial Hawai‘i (1900-1959) PAUL LYONS 8 Cowboys and Coconuts: Robert Dean Frisbie in the Colonial Pacific PAUL SHARRAD 9 Annexation and the Environment: Writing, Reading, Reanimating ‘Āina SUSAN NAJITA Afterword: In Memoriam Teresia Teaiwa (1968-2017) MICHELLE KEOWN AND MANDY TREAGUS Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index
Michelle Keown is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Andrew Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Mandy Treagus is Associate Professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
