Displaying results 1341 to 1350 of 2610.

The Melanesian environment: [papers presented at and arising from the ninth Waigani Seminar, Port Moresby, 2-8 May 1975] »

Publication date: 1977

Expatriate and multinational businessmen and companies have, over the last hundred years, drastically changed the environments of some of the islands of Melanesia. In some, like Fiji and parts of New Caledonia, the changes have taken place over a long period of foreign exploitation. In others, like the island of New Guinea, large-scale forestry, mining, hydroelectric, agricultural and fishing projects are more recent. In both, poorly planned and insensitive {u2018}development{u2019} has destroyed or is threatening to destroy the people{u2019}s economic, spiritual and aesthetic relationship with the land and, indeed, the land itself. The seminar from which this book was born was held in Papua New Guinea in 1975, its year of independence. The only other independent nation in the Melanesian region is Fiji. While Fiji tends the wounds caused to its environment by foreign business, Papua New Guinea warily plans for an expanded economic base that does not jeopardise the subsistence base of the majority of the people. They and their Melanesian neighbours will avoid such destruction partly by heeding the experiences of one another and of other third world countries. This book records some of those experiences, ranging from situations in which the subsistence economy has been destroyed to make profit to take out of the country to others in which the people have successfully defended their subsistence way of life against such exploitation.

View title

Tin roofs and palm trees: a report on the new South Seas »

Publication date: 1977

"From the eighteenth-century accounts of Captain James Cook to the writings of James A. Michener, enraptured descriptions of the Pacific islands have identified the term 'South Seas{u2019} with visions of a blissful life in perpetual summer on white beaches shaded by swaying palm trees. {u2026} Since the arrival of Western civilization, however, more of the virgin landscapes admired by Cook and later visitors have sprouted incongruous masonry hotels, and countless palms cast their shade on tin roofs in villages where metal was unknown in Cook{u2019}s time." Such are the changes encountered throughout Tin Roofs and Palm Trees, a portrait of the emerging island states and territories of the South Pacific painted by a journalist who has scrutinized the developments in this romantic yet increasingly troubled area for thirty-five years. Robert Trumbull joined the staff of The New York Times in 1941 as Honolulu correspondent and served throughout World War II as a war correspondent in the Central Pacific arena. In covering the South Pacific for the Times in later years, Trumbull visited all of the major islands, as well as several out-of-the-way spots rarely seen by travelers. Drawing upon this background, Trumbull tells the story of each major island group, tracing its history, describing its current problems and prospects for the future, in an anecdotal style highlighted with the many colorful and significant figures he has come to know personally over the years. Each chapter brings together elements which give that island population its individual identity. Yet as one reads these accounts - from Papua New Guinea through the Solomons, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue and the Tokelaus, the Samoas, Nauru, Gilbert and Ellice (now Tuvalu) Islands, to the Trust T erritory of the Pacific Islands - one discerns common traits that bind these diverse entities into an awareness of community. Perhaps most important today, the different cultures presented are all faced with the problems of modernization, of reconciling Western values with their traditional way of life; and even though the islands' generally thin economic bases preclude hope of immediate self-sufficiency, the peoples of the South Pacific are demanding more and more claim to their rightful place in the world. Tin Roofs and Palm Trees is anauthoritative and readable introduction to the South Seas today. From the strange cargo cults of New Guinea to the plight of tiny Nauru, whose terrain is daily being digested by phosphate-gobbling steamshovels, the story is alive, personal, and important.

View title

Geomorphology of Papua New Guinea »

Publication date: 1977

Papua New Guinea's rugged terrain, dense rain forest, extensive swamps and adverse climatic conditions present formidable barriers to scientific exploration and field research. In spite of this remarkable progress has been made in the last two decades and scientists have filled many of the 'blank spaces' on the map and have greatly increased knowledge of the country. This book is the first major synthesis of our present knowledge of Papua New Guinea's land forms, their distribution, origin and development, the processes that acted on them - and are continuing to act. Such things as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, and subaerial and subsurface erosion processes, changing river systems and their role in the formation of plains can be better understood by those who read this book: those working in Papua New Guinea and directly concerned with its development and environment such as geologists, agriculturalists, engineers and conservationists, and scholars generally concerned with problems of the geomorphology of the humid tropics. Particularly valuable are the illustrations, which cover a wide range of land forms and illustrate vividly the often dramatic topography.

View title

Australian economic development in the nineteenth century »

Publication date: 1977

The book is a comprehensive survey of nineteenth-century economic development in Australia. Lucidly written and with extensive illustrations, the text deals with fundamental aspects of development - population, export and the balance of payments, transport, urbanisation, manufacturing, money and banking - set against a broad outline of development to 1900 and with a valuable chapter on the role of government in the economy. Written by a practical teacher and designed for readers without formal training in economics or statistics, this book will be as valuable to general historians as it will be to students of economic history in schools or at university.

View title

The Fiji Indians: challenge to European dominance 1920-1946 »

Publication date: 1977

Today the descendants of immigrants from India in Fiji outnumber the original Fijians. They are an integral and vital part of Fiji's multi-racial population. In this book, a sequel to the author's, Fiji's Indian Migrants, Dr Gillion deals with the very important period when there were strikes, boycotts and communal disputes as the Indian community sought dignity, identity and acceptance in its new home.

View title

China and the world »

Publication date: 1977

Dr Stephen FitzGerald is Professorial Fellow in Modern Chinese History, Head of the Department of Far Eastern History and Head of the Contemporary China Centre in The Australian National University. He was formerly a member of the (then) External Affairs Department from which he resigned to enter academic life. In 1971 he accompanied the then-Leader of the Opposition, E. G. Whitlam, to China and in 1973 he was appointed first Australian ambassador to the People's Republic of China. During his tour of duty from 1973 to 1976 he established Australia's first embassy in China and has served under both Labor and Liberal ministries. Dr FitzGerald's knowledge of China and Chinese has greatly enhanced Chinese-Australian understanding. This book achieves a difficult feat of interpretation: to explain, from the Chinese point of view as its author understands it, China's approach to the world outside its own boundaries and the difficulties most western governments experience in coming to terms with China. Against the background of past and contemporary Chinese history Dr FitzGerald builds an analysis of present-day China's approach to other countries of the world: the United States and the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Australia. He believes there is a stability and a subtle and continuing theme unbroken even by the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and the overthrow of the 'Gang of Four'. This book - which embodies the revised ANU Convocation Lectures for 1977, given throughout Australia and broadcast by the ABC, and the 1977 Arthur Yencken Memorial Lectures - is unusually wide in the interest it will attract from 'China Watchers', academics, diplomats, businessmen, students of history and inter national relations; above all, from those concerned to know and understand China. A transcript of the questions and answers at the lectures is available from Secretary, Contemporary China Centre, Australian National University, Canberra.

View title

Humid landforms »

Publication date: 1977

Landscapes which contain moving water are perhaps the most sccnically attractive, and to a geomorphologist have long been a central focus for landform studies. Humid Landformsexamines from a novel angle the effects of running water on the landscape, emphasising the processes changing valleys and rivers. The author takes the humid tropics as the most characteristic case of landform evolution through water erosion and deposition and treats humid temperate lands, previously accepted as the 'normal' pattern of landform evolution, as a variation of the situation in the humid tropics. The book emphasises the basic principles of chemical, physical and biotic interrelationships which affect the pattern of landform evolution and provides the reader with a greater understanding of the changes, sometimes dramatic, that moving water makes to the surrounding countryside.

View title

Tropical shrubs »

Publication date: 1977

Hawaii is the home of one of the world{u2019}s greatest collections of tropical and subtropical plants. The Islands' benign and varied microclimates have accepted plants from many different places, ranging from humid jungle rain forests to arid deserts, and from seacoasts sprayed with salt to mountainsides of almost Andean heights. With the enormous variety of plants that have made Hawaii one great botanical garden, comes also a great curiosity and search for knowledge about them. Everywhere people ask, when they see a new one they like, "What plant is that?" "Where will it grow?" "How do I care for it?" The Hawai'i Garden is a series of books written to help the plant lover and amateur gardener identify, select, install, and care for the whole fascinating range of beautiful, interesting plants that are available in modern Hawaii and other mild-climate areas. Magnificent color photographs, each a work of art in interpreting the special qualities of the plant illustrated, will delight armchair gardeners and active gardeners alike. For anyone who appreciates the col orful plants associated with the tropics, these large-format volumes offer both visual enjoyment and a comprehensive practical guide. Tropical Shrubs is the first fully illustrated book on the subject to be published in the United States. The authors describe those shrubs under eighteen feet in height which they recommend for creative use as screen, accent, or border hedge. Unusual selections include Wheeler's dwarf pittosporum, Okinawan holly, dwarf geometry tree, bell flower from Dominica - 103 useful and decorative shrubs altogether. Each plant discussed is illustrated with a full-page color photograph by Rick Golt. The accompanying text gives a complete description of the plant, the origin of its name, its practical uses, required growing conditions, horticultural and landscape uses, propagation, insect and disease control, pruning, fertilizing, and significant disadvantages.

View title

The diaries and correspondence of David Cargill, 1832-1843 »

Publication date: 1977

The diaries and correspondence of David Cargill, Wesleyan missionary in the Pacific, reveal the story of a tragic life. His greatest success came early in his life in the 1830s, when he achieved a mass conversion of thousands of Tongans. His story in Tonga was a happy one, for there he found satisfaction in the fellowship of his colleagues and his achievements as the only trained linguist at the mission. In 1835 he was transferred to Fiji as the first Wesleyan missionary. Here he found life increasingly bitter; four years of work on translations were wasted because the dialect he used was not appropriate as a lingua franca. He quarrelled with his colleagues. He was nauseated by horrifying scenes of widow-strangling, cannibalism and warfare. His beloved wife and one of his children died. Cargill returned to England, remarried, and went back to Tonga and to disappointment: many of his converts had reverted to their old ways. Now known by his colleagues as an alcoholic, sick, and depressed as the aftermath of dengue fever, he committed suicide. Cargill{u2019}s diaries and letters show in graphic detail the impact of two alien cultures on a sensitive man unable to come to grips with these two cultures, a man of high ideals who died a tragic failure.

View title

Climates of hunger: mankind and the world's changing weather »

Publication date: 1977

Climate is changing. Parts of our world have been cooling. Rain belts and food-growing areas have shifted. People are starving. And we have been too slow to realize what is happening and why. In recent years, world climate changes have drawn more attention than at any other time in history. What we once called "crazy weather," just a few years ago, is now beginning to be seen as part of a logical and, in part, predictable pattern, an awesome natural force that we must deal with if man is to avoid disaster of unprecedented proportions. Along with drought in some places and floods in others, both caused by changing wind patterns, average temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere have been falling. The old-fashioned winters our grandfathers spoke of might be returning. In England, the growing season has already been cut by as much as two weeks. The selection of food crop varieties in both North America and Europe is in for sharp reappraisal, in view of the shrinking frost-free agricultural season and other climatic changes. Climate has always had profound effects upon human history, helping both to build and to destroy great civilizations. Until now, we have not had the knowledge to react intelligently to the signs of shifting climate. Today, even though we remain essentially powerless to affect climate purposefully, we are ready to recognize the signs of change and we are somewhat better able to predict the effects of those changes. This book will help. Here, climatologist Reid A. Bryson and science writer Thomas J. Murray present a broad view of climatic change, examining the past in order to view the future. The prospects are not bright. Bryson, whom Fortune magazine called "the most outspoken perceiver of climatological danger signals" in the United States, says that world temperatures since the sixteenth century have been significantly cooler than those of the first half of the present century. Temperatures now seem to be falling, and many of the weather irregularities we have experienced in recent years are, in great part, an expression of this broad reversal. Unfortunately, we came to view the recent warm period as "normal," and based many of our institutions upon it. The world added a billion people to its population during that time, thanks in part to an unusually favorable agricultural climate. Now we must be able to adjust quickly to climatic changes or face the potentially tragic consequences of inaction. The climatic problems Bryson and Murray speak of are not in some vague geological future. They are upon us now, and we are not prepared. Climates o f Hunger is a book of paramount importance for our time. It will be essential reading not only for professionals in the field - including agricultural meteorologists, political scientists, geographers, sociologists, and business counselors - but for all who are concerned in any way with environmental trends, world and domestic food supplies, and their effects on human institutions.

View title