NIKO BESNIER, Literacy,
emotion,
and
authority:
Reading
and
writing
on
a
Polynesian
atoll. Cambridge
& New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xx, 234.
AbstractIn the 1860s, life on Nukulaelae, part of Tuvalu
in the Polynesian Central Pacific, changed forever. Christianity
and literacy were introduced by a shipwrecked sailor, Tom
Rose; by Samoan missionaries including Elekana, who reached
Nukulaelae by drifting 1500 miles off course in a storm;
and by Ioane, the first person to be officially sent by
the London Missionary Society. In 1863, blackbirders –
Peruvian slavers – used the islanders' interest
in Christianity to kidnap between 100 and 400 people. Able-bodied
islanders, particularly men, were lured aboard the slave
ship for a purported religious service and were never seen
again. The population remaining consisted of those who
had been unable to get out to the ship: the young, the
old, and women who hadn't been able to get away. A
German coconut plantation operation then leased (under
unclear terms) the largest islet of the atoll, bringing
in laborers from all over Polynesia. Many of these stayed
and intermarried with local women. The literacy developed
in this context was and is inextricably intertwined with
Christianity, and with communicating with relatives and
other loved ones off island.
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