European Society for Oceanists 2022 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

The Oceanic Exchange: disease, depopulation and disruption in the post-contact Pacific

Coordinator(s)

Christophe Sand, Chris Ballard

Session presentation

Of all the transformations experienced by Pacific societies since the 16th Century, the most consequential was perhaps the encounter with successive movements into the region of new viruses and bacteria. An Oceanic Exchange, paralleling the better-known Columbian Exchange, saw the transfer of commodities, bodies and knowledge out of the region, and the introduction of new crops, technologies, languages and diseases in exchange. Measles, smallpox, influenza, dysentery and tuberculosis were just a few of the epidemic diseases which ravaged Pacific populations, particularly during the hundred years from the 1820s to the 1920s, but earlier in some areas and later in others. For some communities, population losses were in excess of 90% of the pre-contact population, and many have yet to recover to those earlier levels. Religious conversion, political destabilisation, formal colonisation and land grabbing were just some of the consequences facilitated by this collapse in population and ensuing social disruption. This panel will invite specialists from multiple disciplines – including anthropology, archaeology, history, geography and demography – to reflect on recent changes in thinking about the scale and impact of depopulation in the Pacific, including a critical review of earlier tendencies to downplay reports of population loss.

Paper submissions are closed

Accepted papers

Demographic dynamics and health of past populations in Melanesia

Frédérique Valentin (CNRS)

The present paper will examine demographic dynamics and the health situation of past populations in Melanesia using published data and personal data gained from a set of 10 samples. The rates of total fertility and natural population increase, estimated for the populations from Melanesia, will be compared with both modern and past Polynesian populations rates, highlighting distinctive patterns of regional variation, with lower values in Melanesia than in Polynesia. The general pattern of variation of the rates of the sampled populations of Melanesia does not seem to be correlated to the time (BP) estimated for the burial site. Such patterns will be evaluated in relation with variations in peopling and migration(s). Factors inherent to the nature of the Melanesian samples, including patterns of mortality by diseases or famine and cultural selection, will be explored. To this end, non-adult age distributions will be compared with models thought to be representative of natural mortality, and with mortality profiles of European samples known to have suffered ailments. Results will be evaluated in the light of palaeo-health evidence, suggesting a trend towards degraded conditions for some burial sites over the last 500 years.

Identifying the Role of Fertility in Population Decline and Recovery in the Pacific Islands

McFadden Clare (The Australian National University)

Post-contact depopulation in the Pacific Islands was varied and multifaceted: warfare and the introduction of infectious diseases created catastrophic conditions resulting in mass mortality in many communities. But alongside mortality, fertility reduction has to be considered an important contributor to population decline more broadly. In the case of depopulation in the Pacific Islands, fertility reduction may have been a direct consequence of mass mortality itself, as well as via other pathways such as the spread of sexually transmitted diseases that limited fertility and thus the capacity of populations to regenerate. The often-observed rebound effect of fertility in response to mass mortality events can also help us understand how populations recover from such dire circumstances as European invasion. In this paper, I suggest that fertility is an important line of evidence in our understanding both of the scale and nature of depopulation in the Pacific Islands, and of the population responses that followed. I outline how we might go about estimating fertility rates prior to European contact and at the time of contact, and how this helps us to understand the legacy impacts of European depopulation on fertility strategies up to the present day.

Reconstructing Population at Contact in Papua New Guinea

Bryant Allen (The Australian National University)

With contributions from Bryant Allen, John Burton, Colin Filer and Robin Hide this paper will attempt to reconstruct population decline or growth for the nation of Papua New Guinea as a whole, covering the extended period from initial contact through to the first national census in 1966. This absence reflects the highly variable history of contact and colonial control, from the early 1600s through to the 1960s, as well the exceptional diversity of ecological and cultural conditions for the communities of PNG. Even today, population figures at the provincial and national scales remain uncertain. Our paper aims to sketch the scale of this challenge by presenting a series of demographic cameos from particular communities with which the contributors have worked, either individually or in combination. These cameos serve to illustrate certain of the trends that might be anticipated on a national scale, but also demonstrate the difficulties encountered on the ground in establishing demographic baselines at contact, and tracking subsequent changes.

Epidemics and Religious Conversion – the Neuendettelsau Missionary Society in German New Guinea (1886-1919)

Magdalena Kittelmann (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU))

This paper analyses the cultural and religious interaction between the indigenous population of Colonial New Guinea and German missionaries within the context of epidemics and disease. Two years after the proclamation of German New Guinea in Finschhafen in 1884, the Neuendettelsau missionary society entered New Guinea at the same location. And with the growing number of Europeans, new diseases started to spread.
The interaction between Europeans and the local population in this area mainly took place through Lutheran missionaries. In the missionary reports, there are numerous descriptions of medical topics like disease and healing. Some reports also reveal aspects of the heavy impact of epidemics like influenza, measles and dysentery on the indigenous population. Especially the smallpox epidemic from 1893-1895 shows the interconnectedness between epidemics and conversion. The colonial government supported smallpox vaccination – but the missionaries acted as intermediaries towards the local population. And through the discourse about disease and spirituality in both indigenous and missionary culture, missionaries could use the epidemic to frame it religiously. According to the missionary reports, the interpretation of the protective effects of vaccinations in a religious sense led to the conversion of people.
Based on research on (un-)published missionary sources, the paper refers to the medical aspects of the Columbian exchange in German New Guinea between 1886-1919.

Depopulation on Efate, Vanuatu: A History from Fragments

Stuart Hugo Bedford (The Australian National University)

The island of Efate in central Vanuatu has long been a focus for settlement by outsiders, both before and after contact with Europeans. Extensive losses of land and of population have been a common experience for most Efate communities since the early 19th century, resulting in massive disruption to local social structure and languages, and dislocation from ancestral territories. One consequence of this concentration of European settlement and investment has been a corresponding lack of interest in Efate culture and history amongst anthropologists, linguists and other researchers seeking “pristine” societies, resulting in a very limited formal record of social impact and transformation. All of the available evidence suggests that population losses may have been as heavy on Efate as anywhere else in Vanuatu, but our grounds for determining these losses more precisely rely on disparate sources of evidence, including archaeological sites, LiDAR mapping, oral traditions and linguistic reconstruction, as well as mission and government censuses and other records. This paper is a preliminary attempt to assemble the available data from these varied sources in order to reconstruct both the likely causes and consequences of depopulation on Efate.

Population collapse in North-Malekula, Vanuatu

Jean Louis Rallu (INED)

While there are many informal accounts that address post-contact population decline in the islands of Vanuatu, there is very little formal data, except for Aneityum. For this paper we draw on a genealogical survey of upper North Malekula – Guiart’s 1951 sociological ’inventory’ of North Malekula and the colonial administration’s 1951 census – to estimate the population of this region at contact. The genealogies show that the population of surviving hamlets or social units (nakhamal) declined by 56 per cent from 1900 to a low point around 1940. Population density varied from 66 / km2 on the large coastal plain of the upper North, to 35 / km2 in the hilly South-East and 25 / km2 on the drier tableland of the Big Nambas. In contrast, population density was very high on the nearshore islets (around 400 / km2 in 1900 – reaching above 600 / km2 by 1951), mostly supported on mainland gardens. Depopulation varied greatly, with declines of almost 95 per cent amongst the mainland Small Nambas and 60 per cent for the Big Nambas; while Vao and Atchin probably experienced minimal decline before 1900 and a small increase in the early 20th century. Thanks to the islets and the Big Nambas, the total population of North Malekula declined by only 88 per cent, from 20,000 in about 1900 to 3,652 in 1951. In 1926, A. B. Deacon witnessed a similar situation in South Malekula. The large diversity of population trends at a fine local level shows that socio-cultural survival was strongly conditioned

Imaginaries of Work, Labour and Land during Times of Pacific Depopulation

Alexandra (Sandra) Widmer (York University)

“Why should we bring children into the world only to work for the white man?” is what W.H.R. Rivers reported ni-Vanuatu told him in the early 20th century. He, and other researchers at the time, heard ni-Vanuatu narratives like this in relation to the broader phenomenon of rapid population decline in the 1910s-20s. The researchers worked to understand such Pacific narratives of depopulation in terms of the psychological effects of colonialism, women’s fertility control and especially infectious diseases brought by Europeans. In this paper, I will hone in on the fact that in this phrasing, the undesired future is imagined in terms of particular kinds of work under colonial conditions. I will focus on the place of work, labour migration and land in the imaginaries and narratives of Pacific depopulation, with a particular focus on Vanuatu. The paper will also connect these Pacific depopulation narratives to broader colonial demographic imaginaries of land and labour in the early 20th Century.

Indigenous Depopulation in New Caledonia and Fiji Compared

Christophe Sand (IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement)

New Caledonia and Fiji are located at the southern and eastern limits of Melanesia and are the only two archipelagos of this cultural region that are free of malaria, a pathology repeatedly advanced to explain the low Indigenous population densities emphasized for the southwest Pacific before European colonisation. This presentation first summarises the main estimates that have been proposed for the Kanak and Fijian populations at “first contact”, setting the stage for the “orthodox scenarios” currently accepted for the depopulation process in both locations. The second part of the paper focusses on the chronology of Fijian depopulation, drawing on the records assembled by a Colonial Commission put in place in 1893 specifically on this topic, along with later documents. The main patterns of Fijian population collapse contrast markedly with the very fragmentary data for New Caledonia. A study of New Caledonia’s archaeological landscapes, as an alternative source of analysis of pre-contact population densities, challenges the “orthodox scenario” of low traditional Kanak population numbers and the prevailing historical view that Kanak depopulation was “amongst the less severe of the Pacific” (Rallu 1990, p. 280). A concluding discussion identifies possible future directions to reassess the correct timing of the start of population collapse in Southern Melanesia, highlighting some of the consequences inferred by a re-evaluation of Indigenous population densities at contact.

Using probabilistic modelling to reconstruct archaeological populations in Tonga

Phillip Parton (Australian National University)

As in many parts of the world, Oceanic societies suffered severe declines in population following the introduction of new pathogens by Europeans, who first entered the Pacific in the sixteenth century. The speed at which these populations declined and a historical record weighted towards later missionary accounts have combined to confound our estimates of islander population size and distribution. Estimates of past population size in Tonga suffer from the same complications. To address this issue we developed a probabilistic model to integrate airborne laser scanning, archaeological and ethnographic data to estimate the pre-contact population of the island of Tongatapu. Validation of the model against unpublished records from the earliest Christian missions in Tonga indicates population loss in the range of 70% to 86%, which is much larger than previously considered plausible. The results provide a new and quantifiable foundation that will allow us to investigate demographic and spatial attributes of Tonga’s population, helping us to understand the impacts of this tragedy on Tongan society. Our new population estimate for Tonga has important implications for both researchers and especially descendant communities in Tonga who have been adversely affected by globalization.

Lepers and leprosariums: unravelling the history of Hansen’s disease in French Polynesia

Emilie Nolet (University Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne)

While historians and archaeologists have documented fairly thoroughly the development of Hansen’s disease and its consequences for the populations of Hawai’i, the Cook Islands, Samoa and Fiji, the case of leprosy in the Établissements Français de l’Océanie (EFO, now French Polynesia) has remained overlooked. In this region, there is archaeological and linguistic information that relates to a pre-European presence of leprosy in the Marquesas. However, leprosy was certainly re-introduced along with other diseases through European contact. The epidemics reached their height by the turn of the 20th century, leading to the establishment of several leper colonies. In this paper, we propose to review the introduction and development of Hansen’s disease in the EFO. We investigate the perception and management of leprosy by different categories of actors, its socioeconomic consequences and the new material conditions in which the infected were placed. The forms of management of this disease are indicative of social and cultural representations and power relations rooted in the long term. At the same time, leprosy could be the cause of cultural and social change, linked to the regrouping or displacement of patients, to the circulation of care professionals, or to the introduction of new approaches and theories of the human body. This study aims at providing a preliminary background and context for an upcoming detailed investigation of leprosariums and health transformations in the EFO.