Decolonisation and the Pacific

Tracey Banivanua Mar is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Principal Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Victoria. She specialises in the interconnections linking histories of Indigenous peoples and colonialism in the Pacific and Pacific Rim nations of Australia and New Zealand. Her award-winning research, published in Violence and Colonial Dialogue (2007), explored the Australian Pacific labour trade, and was shortlisted for numerous prestigious prizes, including the New South Wales Premiers Prize in Australian History (2007) and the Australian Historical Society's W. H. Hancock Prize (2008).

• Introduction: sailing the winds of change: decolonisation and the Pacific; 1. Borders: the colonisation of mobile worlds; 2. Currents: the well springs of decolonisation; 3. Churn: restlessness and world government between the wars; 4. Saltwater: the separation of people and territory; 5. Flight: territorial integrity and dependent decolonisation; 6. Black: internalising decolonisation and networks of solidarity; Conclusion: procedural decolonisation and indigenous philosophies of un-colonising; Bibliography; Index.

'This is an arresting and important work - one whose time has come. In a boldly reimagined history of Pacific decolonisation as a struggle over not only territories, but bodies, minds, and cultures, Tracey Banivanua Mar shows us how Oceanic peoples engaged with a world-wide political consciousness, committed to asserting their own histories and futures. Through a deeply researched array of sources and characters, she illuminates the ways that local struggles for self-determination were also contests for global change.' Matt K. Matsuda, Rutgers University, New Jersey