1Historical accounts of the European settlement of the south coast of what is now Papua New Guinea (png) mostly dichotomize the colonial-era population into Europeans and natives, and discuss one or the other of these designated groups, or the interactions between them (e.g. Inglis, 1974; Jinks et al., 1973; Legge, 1972; Nelson, 1976; Whittaker et al., 1975). Barely mentioned in this characterization are the early non-European settlers referred to as “Malays and South Sea Islanders", or “alien natives” in 19th-century colonial documents (e.g. bngar, 1886: 16, 21). In his definitive colonial history of Port Moresby, Nigel Oram wrote of the early-20th-century status of these immigrants:

“Europeans [...] treated them as inferiors. They did not form a corporate social group because they were few in number, differed in racial origin and did not live in the same residential area. They had virtually no political influence and made little impact on the social life of the other racial groups.” (Oram, 1976: 38)

2Also, the late-19th-century Asian and Pacific Island settlers in and around the colonial headquarters at Port Moresby who married indigenes had became discursively reduced by the end of the colonial era to progenitors of “mixed-race” people, who the psychiatrist B.G. Burton-Bradley claimed were typified by a person “having no culture of his own, and an unsatisfactory group status within the larger society” (Burton-Bradley, 1968: 42).

4In combination, Dutton’s work, my own fieldwork experiences, and Oram’s notes convinced me of a need for a salvage exercise, a recovery of these “alien natives” from the margins of the historical record. This article draws on these sources as well as archival resources, some of which had been unavailable for nearly a century, until I found them in unpublished collections. I was also able to take advantage of the advent of digital copies of early documents, in the late 1990s. Below I consider the settlers’ relations with local villagers, their contributions to the early colonial project, and their legacy. As Dutton’s list of early colonial foreigners (European and non-European), with brief notes on each (Dutton, 1985: 149-194), indicated, the real origins, names, achievements and fate of many of them remain unknown. An exhaustive accounting, therefore, is impossible at this historical distance. However, the archival and other documentary material gathered here is clear evidence of the indispensability of the “alien natives” to the early colonial Administration on the one hand, and their integration with indigenous sociality on the other.

“Alien natives” in a British Protectorate

5Papua New Guinea’s present day capital city, Port Moresby, began as a British Protectorate headquarters on the territory of two intermarried groups known as the Motu and Koita, who controlled roughly 100 km of New Guinea’s south coast and its hinterland. When the first missionaries and British government officers were establishing themselves, other foreigners – adventurers, gold miners, ships’ crews, drifters – also arrived, mostly from Australia, the Pacific Islands and south-east Asia. Oral legends suggest that Indonesian traders were visiting the south coast of New Guinea before the arrival of Europeans (Laba, 1999). Whether, and to what extent, they had already established trading or other relationships with the Motu and Koita by the time of European contact is unknown. While some oral history and linguistic evidence implies that Torres Strait Islanders interacted with New Guineans on the southwest coast (Laba, 1999: 299-302), there is no evidence that they visited the Port Moresby area, 500 km eastward, in the late nineteenth century. However, other non-European foreigners were clearly in residence by the time Britain declared the area a Protectorate in 1884. The Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Anthony Musgrave, lamented in 1886 that he had no legal authority over Germans, Chinese, French, “escapees”, “alien natives”, Malays, Polynesians and others, “yet all these are found on this coast” (bngar, 1886: 21). When the Administration started purchasing land to establish offices and residences, one hurried purchase in 1885 of 333 acres of land handy to the harbour at a place the Administration called Badili, was driven by Musgrave’s expressed concern that indigenous landholders might demand excessive payments for, or be reluctant to sell, particular plots of land sought by the British near the harbour “on the advice of certain Malays and South Sea Islanders who have taken Motu women as ‘wives’ and who use some influence over the aboriginal villagers” (1886: 16).

6The influence of Polynesian mission teachers placed in villages along the south coast by the London Missionary Society (lms) from the 1870s seems not to have caused Musgrave the same concern, although he was perplexed by their high death rate (Dutton, 1985: 242). Most of the mission teachers were married couples, but adultery and polygamy did occur, according to oral history (Sinclair, 1982: 20). In comparison to the presence and activity of non-missionary “South Sea Islanders”, that of the mission teachers has been extensively documented especially in lms-related historical literature and memoirs (e.g. Chalmers, 1887: passim; Chalmers and Gill, 1885: passim; Crocombe and Crocombe, 1982; King, 1909: passim), and therefore is not addressed in this article.

8Paradoxically, in the face of extremely prejudicial British attitudes towards, especially, Chinese in its colonies in the nineteenth century (see Huttenback, 1973), and the scarcity of Chinese in the Port Moresby area, Mohammed Ali’s strategy actually risked attracting the persecution he was trying to avoid. In contrast to the hundreds of Chinese who settled in German New Guinea in the late nineteenth century under the German Administration’s economic development strategy (Biskup, 1970; Firth, 1986: 116-118), there is no reliable evidence of Chinese settling in British New Guinea in the same period, and the only Chinese identified as such in the south coast area were transient trading-boat sailors (see for example Bevan, 1890: 4-12). Ironically, despite his Chinese name, Ah Wong was regarded by Europeans as a “Malay” (Green, 1892a). Other “alien natives”, including the Pacific Islanders known as Jack Tanna, Joe Fiji, Joe Eromango, Harry Niue, Peter Lifu, and several other “Lifus” (Dutton, 1985: 173, 181, 187) accepted their colonial ascriptions. Some settlers are thought to have arrived together, like a group of “Malays” including “Sariman”, “Kassman”, “Jimmy Malay”, “Charlie Malay”, “Umara” and Ah Wong (Oram, 1963a). By marrying into local villages they were able to acquire land before the British Government began to control land dealing between natives and foreigners.

9The traditional landholding attitudes of the Motu and Koita reflected a common Melanesian model (e.g. Crocombe, 1971; Hogbin and Lawrence, 1967; Sack, 1973), complicated by a prehistory of movement and inter-ethnic marriage (Dutton, 1969; Oram, 1981). Authority to use land largely derived from membership of a kin-ordered group. Neglect of kinship obligations could result in individuals losing their privileges, while non-members could be allowed to inhabit or use land by arrangement. Land could also be held at a distance, either by reciprocal arrangements between groups seeking resources in each other’s territories or by out-migrants who maintained access to their previous habitat by strict attention to kinship obligations. The types of land-use could include, for example, hunting, foraging, gardening, house building and rituals. Frequent previous movement around the region by a number of groups meant that any one piece of land could be the subject of multiple historical claims regardless of who its present occupants were.

11Non-European foreigners like Sariman and Jimmy Malay served in a number of expeditions and ventures led by Europeans in the mid 1880s, but most of them remained anonymous in records of the period. For example, an expedition attempting to climb Mt Owen Stanley in 1885 led by the naturalist Henry Forbes involved “twenty-five Malays” (Romilly, 1893: 252), none of whom was named. Captain H.C. Everill, leader of an expedition to the Fly River in 1885, listed the 12 Europeans in the party by name and occupation in his report, but the 12 non-Europeans (recruited from Thursday Island) remained anonymous:

“[...] eleven Malays and one cook Cingalese, the Malay names being difficult to remember. Some of the most facetious of the party re-christened them by the following names... Marco Polo, Barabas, Lucy, Scotch Lizzie, Anchises, Chandos, &c.” (Everill, 1887: 172)

12Shortly after arriving in the Protectorate in 1885 Musgrave investigated an incident involving a “Malay” living on Tatana island and married to a village woman. The Malay had assaulted an indigene who, he alleged, had stolen a piece of his boat fittings, and Musgrave, who had no legal authority, warned him “against taking the law into his own hands” (bngar, 1886: 22). The Malay was unidentified, and could have been one of a number including Jimmy Malay, Ah Wong, Kassman and Sariman, all of whom married Tatana women and owned small boats (Dutton, 1985: 171, 176, 185; Green, 1892a-b). As the incident implies, from 1884 until 1888, when British New Guinea changed from a protectorate to a colony, the handful of British Government representatives had no legal powers beyond protecting British subjects. They recruited guides, carriers and interpreters mostly from among the same impermanent drifters, traders and adventurers over whom Musgrave had complained that he had no control.

Colonial identities

13In 1888 legal control began in the new colony with the arrival of an Administrator, William MacGregor. He developed a body of legislation and, by arrangement with the Governor of Fiji, formally recruited some Fijians and Solomon Islanders to begin a police force (bngar, 1890-1891: xix). Colonial status enabled the Administration to better control the arrival and conduct of foreigners, and a bureaucratic proliferation of licenses, registration forms and detailed record keeping contributed to the “Malays” and other non-European foreigners becoming less anonymous. Firearm permits, applications to register marriages that had previously been “customary”, applications for Crown land, and so on, required individuals to give a “real” name, and occupation. Thereby, the various “Lifus”, began to be better differentiated by first names (Peter, George, Caesar, Willie, Charlie) as did Charlie and Jimmy Malay (e.g. bnggg, 1891: 21-22; bnggg, 1892: 3; bnggg, 1893: 2). Some began offering alternative surnames. Jimmy Malay gave the surname “Solien” for documentary purposes, but continued to be commonly referred to as Jimmy Malay. Charlie Malay became Charlie Jardine. Some were recorded under various spellings and approximations (presumably by Europeans) until a convention evolved. Thus, for example, “Suleiman” and “Serriman” were alternatives for “Sariman” (e.g. bnggg, 1894a: 2; Oram, 1963a), until “Sariman” prevailed.

14Jimmy Malay was particularly entrepreneurial, building a large house on the northern shore of Port Moresby harbour and trading bêches-de-mer, shells, sandalwood and other items, including birds of paradise that he hunted himself and sold to the newly-established Burns Philip Company store near the government headquarters (Anon, 1897: 10). He had lost a hand in 1883 when his gun exploded, and the lms missionaries William and Fanny Lawes performed makeshift surgery, during which he “never uttered a sound” (Lawes, 1883). Despite the loss of his hand Jimmy Malay continued to use guns, and in 1891 he was classified as a “native resident” when issued a gun permit by the Administration (bnggg, 1891: 21-22). He was reclassified as a “trader” in 1892 when the permit was renewed (bnggg, 1892: 3). By 1895 he was classified as a “settler” (bnggg, 1895a: 2), and employer of an indigene (who was also issued a gun permit). He took foreign adventurers on hunting and gold-seeking expeditions into the hinterland mountains (e.g. Anon, 1897), and also made himself useful to the Administration, assisting expeditions (e.g. bngar, 1897-1898: 19-20, 28, 33) and on one occasion voluntarily pursuing a raiding party that had descended from the mountainous interior and killed 14 people in a “pacified” village (bngar, 1893-1894: 88). The Administrator, William MacGregor, praised him as “a man of integrity and of remarkable ability and courage” (bngar, 1897-1898: 2). His useful co-operation with the Administration, his connections with indigenous local groups, and his hunting and exploratory skills facilitated encounters with visiting dignitaries in search of recreation. For example Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire who was travelling the world in 1892-93 under the alias “Count of Hohenberg”, visited him in 1892 and was taken on a short bird hunt (Ferdinand, 1893a). The Archduke noted in his diary that “the Malay” was said to be very wealthy (1893a), a comment perhaps based on rumours that Jimmy Malay had discovered gold in the mountains (e.g. Anon, 1897: 9).

15Other “alien natives” favourably mentioned in early colonial documents included Peter Lifu and Jack Tanna. Peter Lifu, a Loyalty Islander, is believed to have arrived in British New Guinea about 1882 after spending some time in Australia (Clarkson, 1886: 5; Dutton, 1985: 173-174). He made an exploratory journey into the hinterland in 1885 with the pioneering missionary James Chalmers, who described him as “one of the mission boatmen” (Chalmers, 1887: 112). Like Jimmy Malay, he took part in colonial Administrative expeditions of exploration or responses to mortal skirmishes in the hinterlands (e.g. bngar, 1890-1891: 24, 35-39; bngar, 1897-1898: 1, 13-16, 89). In the 1890s he moved with his Papuan wife and an adopted child from his initial residence in Port Moresby to Bomana, 14 km inland, where his savanna house served as a rest-stop for officials and foreign dignitaries on journeys to and from the hinterland (e.g. Bailey, 1898: 8). In 1898 it was intended that Peter Lifu would be appointed Government Agent in the Bomana district: “His principal duty will be the pacification of tribes at present hostile to each other, and to bring the natives to see the advantages of conforming to the laws established by the Government” (Bailey, 1898: 10). However, I have found no record confirming the appointment.

17Another frequently mentioned figure was George Belford. He was described as a “half-caste” in the terminology of the time because his father was Samoan and his mother was English (Ferdinand, 1893b), and had thereby an ambiguous identity in relation to the “alien native” category. He appears to have arrived in New Guinea via Thursday Island in 1883, with W.E. Armit, who led an exploration into the mountains behind Port Moresby (Souter, 1963: 53). In late 1884 he was one of a party led by a Queenslander, W. Clarke, exploring the Kabadi area (Anon, 1885: 2). In 1885 he was employed by Acting Commissioner Romilly to collect birds and fish for the Government’s scientific interest and exhibition overseas (Romilly, 1893: 251, 256). He was part of Forbes’ unsuccessful expedition (which included Jack Tanna, above) to climb Mt Owen Stanley in 1887 (bngar, 1887: 29-34), and in 1889 was a member of a large party led by William MacGregor (which also included Peter Lifu, Caesar Lifu and Jack Tanna) to extensively explore the Owen Stanley Ranges. In his report on the exploration MacGregor described Belford as “a man of excellent character” (bngar, 1888-1889: 39). Belford was also a member of a party led by MacGregor on an inspection tour of the Roro District in 1890 (bngar, 1889-1890: 79-80). When Franz Ferdinand made his pseudonymous visit to British New Guinea in 1893, MacGregor provided Belford (whom the Archduke mistakenly referred to as “Bedford”) as a guide for a trip up the Laloki River into the foothills behind Port Moresby (Ferdinand, 1893b). In 1897 Belford went with Jimmy Malay and four Australians on an unsuccessful search for gold in the area he had explored with MacGregor in 1889. The trip was disastrous, the Australians quarrelled among themselves and challenged Jimmy Malay’s leadership, and the latter swore he would never lead another “white” party into the interior (Anon, 1897: 9). Belford was still active in 1906, making an unsuccessful gold exploration to the Brown River headwaters (bngar, 1905-1906: 23), but subsequently disappeared from records. Unlike his fellow “alien natives” he was frequently referred to in correspondence with the honorific “Mr” (e.g. bngar, 1888-1889: 39-48), perhaps because of his English surname, and physical appearance – he was called a “white” in a newspaper report on the gold search with Jimmy Malay (Anon, 1897: 9).

18While some “alien natives” like Jimmy Malay, Peter Lifu, Jack Tanna, and George Belford were frequently mentioned in official communications, other non-European foreigners served relatively inconspicuously. For example, a Rarotongan named Maka, who arrived as an lms pastor in 1878, left the mission in 1885 to become a Government interpreter. He was knowledgeable in several languages, and in 1888 was appointed Government Agent for the Cloudy Bay district. He was barely mentioned in Government correspondence, the main reference being a note of his death from malaria shortly after his 1888 appointment: “From his tact and knowledge, and on account of his quiet but firm character, there was every reason to believe he would become a valuable public servant” (bngar, 1889-1890: 16). Aisideris (“Harry”) Saïd accompanied William MacGregor on an exploration of the Mount Yule area, north of Port Moresby in the Owen Stanley Ranges in 1890, and was part of a subgroup including Peter Lifu and Harry Niue tasked to ascend the mountain itself. In the principal account of the difficult expedition he was mentioned only in a list of team members, by the incorrect mononym “Sai” (Harry Niue fared little better, called “Harry Nino”) (bngar, 1890-1891: 24). A more detailed report by the subgroup leader, George Belford, discloses the harsh conditions on their assignment, during which Saïd suffered fever and ague, and Peter Lifu struggled with an injured foot (1890-1891: 39-41). The following year Saïd served as the gaol warder at Samarai (Dutton, 1985: 203), before settling at Kapa Kapa (nowadays called Gaba Gaba), a coastal village east of Port Moresby, to develop a coconut plantation (see below).

20From the late 1880s through the 1890s the resident European population of Port Moresby was sparse – about seven in 1888 and 40 (25 men and 15 women) in 1897 (Oram, 1976: 35). The “Malays and South Sea Islanders” of whose influence Assistant Deputy Commissioner Musgrave was apprehensive in 1885 had, within a few years, become an invaluable and trusted resource for the skeletal Administration. Their contribution did not go unnoticed by MacGregor. During the 1889 exploration of the Owen Stanley Ranges, he named a number of hills and mountains after people he considered worthy of remembering: “The intention was that the names given to the mountains of or near the main range should present a permanent historic record of those concerned in founding British New Guinea” (bngar, 1888-1889: 47). Several landmarks were named after high-ranking colonial officers, but he also named a rock outcrop identified by Jack Tanna “Jack’s Rock”, named a hill “Caesar Hill” for Caesar Lifu, and named a mountain Mt Belford for George Belford (1888-1889: 39-40). He also named a species of honeyeater found by Belford “Melidectes belfordi” (1888-1889: 58) (nowadays commonly called Belford’s honeyeater, cf. fig. 1).

Land and business

22Their indigenous marriage links, and consequent intergroup liaisons beyond Port Moresby, were instrumental in the settlers’ attempts to find suitable plantation land, and the acquisitions were often consolidated by using the Crown land grant procedure. That is, the settlers would apply to the Administration for specified areas of desirable land outside the Port Moresby area whose use they had already negotiated with indigenous territorial groups. The Administration would then ask those groups if they were willing to sell that portion. If so, the land would be purchased and leased as Crown land to the applicants. As the enterprises were only smallholdings, and land surveying and purchase was a process still being refined, a period of “permissive occupancy” (Lewis, 1996: 22) was often allowed before the land was formally acquired and leased. By the mid 1890s small plantations had been established one way or another by a number of non-European settlers including Jimmy Malay, Sariman, Peter Lifu, and Harry Saïd. Jimmy Malay and Sariman began coconut and rubber plantations in the Galley Reach area (Wilson, 1975: 125; Oram, 1963). Peter Lifu developed a 50-acre coconut plantation at Bomana, in Port Moresby’s hinterland (bnggg, 1895b: 5), and Saïd began a coconut plantation near Kapa Kapa, about 80kms to the east (bngar, 1892-1893: 1). During this period the “Chinese Immigration Ordinance” of 1898 was added to colonial migration restrictions, its broad definition effectively preventing the arrival of any more “Malays” (i.e. Asians) into the territory until after the Second World War (Oram, 1976: 38).

23The smallholdings served to integrate the settlers with indigenous communities nearby, from which they also employed labourers. At that time the Administration was trying to protect the indigenous population from exploitation by European settlers, encouraging villagers to be self-sufficient by developing their own plantations and cultivating saleable crops. Its efforts were reinforced by the Native Regulations Ordinance of 1889, which included provisions for the forced planting of coconuts by villagers (McKillop and Firth, 1981: 95). In this context, for example, Saïd was praised in 1893, when he had developed several hundred coconut trees, for making a “good example of industry and application” to local villagers (bngar, 1893-1894: 8). Some of the ventures were short lived. Saïd, who had married a Kapa Kapa woman, died in 1894 (1893-1894: 62). Peter Lifu’s coconut plantation, employing local labour, was reported in 1898 to be thriving, and he was clearing land to experiment with cotton (Bailey, 1898: 8). He died, however, in 1905 (Dutton, 1985: 174). Jack Tanna, after marrying and settling at Veimauri, acquired a small area of Crown land there in 1891, but there is no record of the success, or otherwise, of his venture. He died in 1899 (Wilson, 1975: 125, 162n2).

24Under British administration there were few inducements to large-scale agricultural development, and plantations – whether in the hands of European and non-European settlers or villagers – remained small and not particularly profitable (McKillop and Firth, 1981: 95; Lewis, 1996: 24-25). In 1902 colonial control was transferred to Australia, and “British New Guinea” became “Papua”. A period of decline in the hands of an inexperienced new Administration necessitated an investigation into the conditions and methods of Government of the territory by a Royal Commission in 1906, which made recommendations about land use and legislation (Commonwealth of Australia, 1907). In the same year a new Land Ordinance offered better terms for settlers. Consequent improvements in administrative efficiency and land availability contributed to a plantation land boom (McKillop and Firth, 1981: 96-97). Enterprises from overseas, such as the Australian firm Clarke and Whiting and the British New Guinea Development Company Ltd, acquired large areas near Port Moresby (Lewis, 1996: 78-86) and a number of European colonial officials whose plantation experiments had been a means of “spreading the base of their incomes” (1996: 25) began expanding their existing smallholdings or entering into corporate relationships with others (1996: 90-101). The non-European foreigners, however, kept their enterprises small, maintaining a balance between livelihoods governed by the indigenous sociality into which they had married, and small commercial enterprises providing employment for local villagers (e.g. Wilson, 1975: 134, 136). Some, including Jimmy Malay/Solien and Sariman, transferred part of their land in Galley Reach to large incoming ventures like Clarke and Whiting (Oram, 1963a) while maintaining smaller plantations for family livelihoods.

Amnesia, genealogy

25By 1910 a number of the “alien natives” had been settled for more than two decades, and had adult children. The children’s marriages manifested a dispersal that partly eluded governmental record keeping. They were classified awkwardly as “half-caste”, a term really intended to apply to children of a union between a European and an indigene (Inglis, 1974: 15-20). Males tended to retain their fathers’ surnames as patronymics, and “Sariman”, “Kassman”, “Ah Wong” and “Solien” are among surnames still shared today particularly in the National Capital District and the surrounding Central Province. A significant number of the children married among themselves, creating for example an enclave in the Galley Reach plantation area where the surnames Sariman, Kassman and Solien were, and remain, common (e.g. Wilson, 1975: Appendix C, 13-44; tpng, 1961: 9). Another enclave developed in the areas known as Badili and Koke a little outside Port Moresby’s town boundary (Oram, 1976: 33). Other children married into villages. In village tradition, a male parent’s first, or given, name became his childrens’ patronymic, and females took their husbands’ given names as a surname. Thus a foreign “surname” such as “Sariman” could be obviated, to outsiders’ perceptions, in a generation or two. Alternative names used by original settlers, as well as “village names” and vernacularizations of names such as Charlie (to Sali, or Sale) John (Sione), Jack (Siage), and others, also confused colonial record keeping (e.g. lcs, n.d.). An example of the complexity of this problem occurred in my own fieldwork, attempting to clarify the movements of Ah Wong. I found that at Hula in later life, he was also known as Ali, and by a village name, “Useni”, that was a vernacularization of “Hussein” (conversation with Stella Peter and accompanying villagers, November 2010).

27The most enduring persona from the original “Malays and South Sea Islanders” has been that of “Jimmy Malay” Solien, who was also identified as “James Subtino Solien” in Catholic Church records (Solien’s children were baptized into the Church: see Wilson, 1975: 4). His large European-style house was an early colonial landmark on the harbour shore (e.g. Bramell, 1914; Erua, 1929: 7), and the well-worn story of his two wives and many children, (Oram, 1963a; Wilson, 1975: 4; Robson, 1958: 85) and rumours of his discovering gold, contributed to his longevity as a colonial-era folk legend (e.g. Robson, 1958). More recently, as online family history research has become popularized, the term “Solien Besena” has been adopted as a collective name for a broad social media coalition in the Port Moresby area, implying quasi-cognatic links among them with James Solien as a historical apex. They use the theme to reconstruct family histories which include a number of Solien’s settler contemporaries (e.g. Solien Besena, n.d.). The Motu word besena derives from bese, a flexible concept roughly equivalent to “family”: /na/ is a possessive suffix. Besena can be used in combination with an apical name, sometimes to mean “children” and sometimes to imply an entire tribe of “descendants” (it was, for example the name of a political movement, Papua Besena – “Children of Papua” – in the 1970s (McKillop, 1982). The title “Solien Besena” is also used self-referentially by a mixed-heritage group in Australia composed of people who identify themselves as cognatically related to James Solien. The group, engaged in “dance and related cultural activities” (Lewis-Harris, 2005: 3), represents itself as a “clan” among a wider community of Australia-based Papua New Guineans.

Conclusion

29The catalogue I have given here of the “alien natives” and their activities is sadly incomplete, and dependent largely on scattered references in colonial documents that reflected the preoccupations and projects of Europeans. A number left no children (including Peter Lifu, and George Belford), and are consequently absent from parochial genealogies. Others were officially noted only in a record of a gun permit issued, or a Crown land application made, with no further information on their activities. Yet there is enough here to collectively salvage them from the anonymous undesirables whose presence Musgrave lamented in 1886 (bngar, 1886: 21), and to suggest that their marginalization in later historical accounts of early colonial encounters does less than justice to their integral place in the political economy of British New Guinea.

30They were partly absorbed into indigenous sociality through their marriages and customary land acquisitions while, at the same time, they supplied trade goods and artefacts to the Administration and to commercial exporters. Their economic effect is indicated in an official report on the decline in traded sea produce due to a collective shift in 1892 to sandalwood gathering (bngar, 1892-1893: xxxi). In the 1890s they were active in the establishment of rubber and coconut plantations, some of which were passed on as family smallholdings (particularly in the Galley Reach area), while others were transferred one way and another to foreign companies during the plantation boom of the early 1900s (Lewis, 1996: 77-89; Oram, 1963a). Their direct service to the Administration in exploration and trouble-shooting expeditions is clear from colonial reports of the time, but this evidential documentation is frustratingly incomplete. One could only speculate, for example, about the identity of a non-European foreigner, “Harry”, mentioned just once in a report of a Government expedition in the Brown River and Yodda Valley area in 1899 (bngar, 1892-1893: 42) or the work of “Joe Fiji”, encountered in a coastal village east of Port Moresby in 1895 by a Government patrol, and cryptically reported as having been “formerly in the service of the Government” (bngar, 1894-1895: 6).

31In his book on Police Motu, Dutton comments that the credit for the lingua franca’s development probably lies with “the largely overlooked and forgotten group of foreigners, but especially the so-called ‘Malays’ and ‘South Sea Islanders’” (Dutton, 1985: 58). Arguably, the latter deserve further credit for their extensive contributions to exploration, trade, the beginnings of the plantation economy, and their integral social role in the encounter between the early colonial Administration and indigenous society, from which conventional historical accounts have largely excluded them.