1. The Arrival of Europeans
PEOPLING OCEANIA
The Arrival of Europeans

2. OBJECTIVES You should be able to:
Differentiate between beachcombers and castaways
Know the roles that beachcombers and castaways played in island life
Understand and discuss the social, economic and political influences or effects they had upon island societies
Understand how island identity changed due to biological, social and cultural interactions between indigenous Pacific Island and European people

3. INTRODUCTION
The contact between Europeans and Pacific islanders occurred in Guam and was one that ended in bloodshed.
After that contact became more frequent and more foreigners landed on Pacific shores.
The early Europeans attracted towards the pacific for different region.
The Beachcomber and Castaways were the first group of Europeans who breached the world of Island.

4. Early Europeans to come to the islands:
Beachcombers
Castaways
Explorers
Whalers
Planters
Government officials
Our focus : Beachcombers & Castaways
They entered the islands with little or no intension of causing change.
They had few possessions and lived at the mercy of islanders.
They lived according to dictates of island life.

5. They caused a number changes to island life including
the introduction of firearms
home-brewing
genetic mixing
language and writing.
It was a warning to islanders of the approaching agencies of the West.
Consequences: their role in island life was immense

6. BEACHCOMBERS & CASTAWAYS DEFINITIONS
People who chose to drop out of the European money economy.
A settler on the islands of the Pacific, living by pearl fishing etc and often by reputable means so mostly termed as resident rather then settler.
Depended on indigenous island communities for their livelihood and later integrated into island societies
Majority of them did not have political ambitions, but many of them loved alcohol and women
They were foreigners and living in pacific by own choice.
They played a number of roles, but they earned their name through their activities.
They were essentially integrated into and dependent for their livelihood on the indigenous communities; this source of maintenance might occasionally be supplemented by causal employment, with payment usually in kind, as agents and intermediaries for the captains or supercargoes of visiting ships, but to all intents and purposes they had voluntarily or perforce contracted out of European monetary economy.

7. CASTAWAYS or simply involuntary beachcombers
Lived on the islands against their wishes
They have been forced to settle due one of following reasons:
Shipwrecked
Captain or mutiny had caught them
Islanders had kidnapped them for prestige or other reasons, desired a resident white man in their community.
Reaching the islands: Captains who found themselves short- handed were evidently permitted to sign them on as crew, on the understanding that they would be returned at the end of the voyage. Most of all got away by seizing any craft that would float. Some of the voyages made by these convict escapees were quite spectacular.

8. The Significance of Beachcombing
Hazardous though his journey there might be, the early European beachcomber or castaway was reasonably assured of his welcome, once ashore, at almost any island in Polynesia or Micronesia, including most (but not all) of Fiji.
The local communities in Polynesia and Melanesia were, in fact, highly receptive to the assimilation of immigrants, whether Europeans, negroes or other Pacific Islanders. The island world had never been a closed one, and there is abundant evidence to show that long before the European arrived on the scene canoes had brought visitors to all except perhaps the remotest islands, some deliberately seeking new homes and others accidental voyagers who had drifted or been storm-blown from their own.

9. BEACHCOMBER/CASTAWAY ACTIVITY & ECONOMIC CHANGE
The beachcomber's contribution to economic change At first a mere exotic curiosity from a fabulous race clearly superior in material goods, the newcomer was apt to be considered as a sort of status symbol of the local chief and his followers.
Important role in introducing a money economy
Many beachcombers became part of chiefly households and obeyed their commands
They acted as agents and intermediaries for captains and supercargoes. They were paid for such services with goods and/or services rather than money
They became intermediaries for the locals and the world outside. Roles in introducing a monetary economy.
It was not long, in fact, before the European came to be regarded for more practical reasons, As an economic and political asset. He was sought after because he was able to look after and repair not only the all-important muskets, pistols and cannon but all the numberless other European articles which were beginning to come into the islands.

10. Beginning of Beachcombing
Historically beachcombing is as old as European contact itself, for the first beachcombers came fromM agellan's own Trinidad, deserting at one of the northern Marianas. Two were killed but the third, a Galicin named Goncalo de Vigo, accompanied the natives for some 450 miles down the Mariana chain to Guam, where four years later he greeted the astonished Spaniards on Loiasa's expedition of Though he joined his countrymen again he was long remembered on Guam, for when Legaspi visited the island 40 years later they still knew his name and often spoke of him.
Despite this promising start not more than a handful of Europeans settled in the islands, either voluntarily or as castaways, in all the two and a half centuries of the age of discovery, which may be said to have lasted roughly to the founding of New South Wales.

11. The Beachcombing Era
One consequence of the establishment of a British settlement at Port Jackson in 1788 was to change this leisurely tempo of European contact with the South Seas. Its planners were fully conscious of the economic importance of the islands to the new colony ; and it was not long before Port Jackson became the base for Pacific whalers and sealers and an entrepot

12. MUSKET POWER They took part in intertribal island warfare
During this time the islanders were still using traditional simple weapons: spears, clubs, bows and arrows
Their ability to handle musket was identified by the chiefs
Chiefs had realised that they could use the muskets to terrify and confuse their enemy

13. Beachcombers trading activities
As contacts with the outside world developed the beachcombers found a new and profitable employment in acting as trading masters, the liaison between the masters and supercargoes of visiting ships and the chief or people of the area where they lived, usually though not always combining this work with that of interpreter and pilot, or overseer of sandalwood, beche-de-mer and other working gangs.
Other beachcombers succeeded in obtaining land from their chiefs in return for services rendered or presents in kind, and though the tenure was at will and precarious many of these semi-subsistence cultivators

14. Beachcomber Activities
It should be emphasized, however, that in the economic sphere the beachcomber performed a service of more lasting value to the islanders than merely mending their muskets, tools and utensils; he taught them how to do the job themselves, and a hundred and one other arts and crafts of the European. When he first arrived the islanders had little knowledge of the use of any article not forming part of their own material culture, much less how to make or mend them, and it was mainly the beach combers who first taught them the manual arts, and left as their legacy innumerable skilled craftsmen able to turn hands to anything from building a boat to mending a gun lock.
The imparting of European techniques was not done without opposition. Mariner quotes as a general beachcomber maxim : "not to teach the natives more than was sufficient to gain themselves a good footing.

15. Political role played by Beachcomber
This picture was dramatically changed by the advent of the European; for with him came firearms?a new offensive weapon against which there was no adequate local defence. True enough, but even muskets and cannon were of little value without someone familiar with their use and servicing ; and it was essentially at this point that the beachcomber came into his own.
Clearly it was the exceptional receptivity of the local societies in Polynesia and Micronesia to the assimilation of immigrants that enabled the beachcomber to play such a significant role
The beginning of the beachcomber era in each of its main centres: it ended when the beachcombers were ousted from their predominant position by other immigrant groups.

16. Beachcomber lost importance.
with the advent of the missionaries, the growth of a commercial community, the development of governmental institutions and the appointment of consular agents, the beachcombers ceased to be of importance as a community.
Most beachcombers, of course, eventually left the islands of their own free will, usually as seamen on visiting ships. Others were killed in their recurrent brawls, or by the natives, particularly on Rotuma and the Micronesian Islands; while a few succeeded in crossing the divide and became traders and planters/152* Still others continued to live as they were, though increasingly under sufferance, their numbers being added to from time to time, particularly during the whaling period; therem ay even be some living on the remoter islands today.
In their passing, however, the beachcombers left behind them two legacies: one demographic and one literary.

17. LIMITED AUTHORITY
The chiefs and other islanders controlled how much beachcombers got involved in island warfare
They were only used when needed i.e. they dictate military policy or became commanders in the army
They served as snipers or marksmen and were rewarded with women and property
Muskets enabled Rewa to conquer Kadavu

18. King Kamehameha
Most of the early Europeans congregated on Hawaii itself, around the chief Kamehameha, who was quick to realise their importance to his plan for conquering the other islands; there were at least 11 with him in 1794
Obtained a cannon and several muskets. Captured the Fair American, kidnapped John Young and Isaac Davis.
Kamehameha won battles, using white men, and united all of Hawai’i.

19. TRANSCULTURISTS
Slowly they became ‘agents of change’ although they had no intention of effecting any change in island life.
Maude describes them as ‘transcuturists’ or beachcomber: a person, throughout history, are temporarily or permanently detached from one group, enter the web of social relations that constitute another society and come under influence of its customs, ideas and values to a greater or lesser degree.
As they integrated into island life they learnt island languages, took part in war, tattooed their bodies, eat island food, found island wives and fathered many children

20. GENETIC & CULTURAL EFFECTS
Chiefs often rewarded them with wives and they fathered many children and left their gene in the islands.

21. Mutiny on the Bounty The British ship Bounty, arrived in Tahiti, 1788.
Captain William Bligh – cultivating breadfruit trees in the West Indies.
6 months: Tahiti grew seeds into seedlings.
Crew: sex and alcohol.
Some crew members resented Bligh and rebelled against him.
Bligh and 18 others banished.

22. Bligh and company survived: arrived in Timor, 6,000 km
Bligh and company survived: arrived in Timor, 6,000 km. away 6 weeks later.
Rebels sailed the Bounty back to Tahiti. But soon left because they feared reprisal by the British.
Arrived in the Pitcairn Islands (January 1790); 12 Tahitian women, 8 Tahitian men, and mutineers.
Mutineers fought bitterly and burnt the ship.
Only one mutineer remained alive by 1800.

23. Pitcairn Islands today
Location: between New Zealand and Peru.
1.6 km. wide; 3.2 km. long.
Population 47 (2005): descendents of the Bounty mutineers and Tahitians.
English is spoken, but a new language developed. A ‘Creole’ mix of English and Tahitian languages.

24. SUMMARY
Integration enabled the introduction of new goods, knowledge and experiences
Islanders shared their way of life with the early Europeans
They acted at agents and intermediaries of the captains or supercargoes of visiting ships
They became agents of change