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Pacific Islands

Statehood à la carte

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July 2023, no. 455
Jack Corbett on sovereignty games in the Pacific Islands

In 22 May 2023, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Papua New Guinea (PNG) Defence Minister Win Bakri Daki signed a defence and maritime cooperation agreement in Port Moresby. Blinken stepped in after US President Joe Biden’s last-minute cancellation. Had he attended, it would reportedly have been the first time a US president had visited a Pacific Island country other than US territories such as Hawaii and Guam. This is on the back of having pledged an additional US$800 million at a US-Pacific Summit in late 2022 to help tackle climate change, overfishing, and maritime security.

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The Cruise of the Janet Nichol among the South Sea Islands edited by Roslyn Jolly & Robert Louis Stevenson edited by Roger Robinson

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April 2004, no. 260
Kate Darian-Smith reviews ‘The Cruise of the Janet Nichol among the South Sea Islands: A diary by Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson’ edited by Roslyn Jolly, ‘Robert Louis Stevenson: His best Pacific writings’ edited by Roger Robinson and more

Whether it’s fate or mere coincidence, the life stories of the two most celebrated writers of the Pacific – Robert Louis Stevenson and Albert Wendt – dovetail together on the small tropical island of Upolu in Western Samoa. In 1889, when Stevenson concluded his third Pacific cruise on the Janet Nichol, he told his readers in Europe and America that: ‘Few men who come to the islands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palm trees and trade-wind fan them till they die.’ In hindsight, this reads as a premonition, but, after years of ill-health Stevenson was seduced and invigorated by sweet air and unexpected interests, describing his time during the Pacific voyages as ‘passing like days in fairyland’.

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