Clive Moore
Clive Moore is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland, where he worked for 28 years, retiring as McCaughey Professor of Pacific and Australian history in 2015. In 2005, he received a Cross of Solomon Islands for historical work on Malaita Island. He was inaugural president of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies (2006–10) and was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2010. He has written extensively on Australian South Sea Islanders, New Guinea and Solomon Islands. His recent major publications are Solomon Islands Historical Encyclopaedia, 1893–1978 (2013) and Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s (2017).
Tulagi »
Pacific Outpost of British Empire
Authored by:
Clive Moore
Tulagi was the capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate between 1897 and 1942. The British withdrawal from the island during the Pacific War, its capture by the Japanese and the American reconquest left the island’s facilities damaged beyond repair. After the war, Britain moved the capital to the American military base on Guadalcanal, which became Honiara.
The Tulagi settlement was an enclave of several small islands, the permanent population of which was never more than 600: 300 foreigners—one-third of European origin and most of the remainder Chinese—and an equivalent number of Solomon Islanders. Thousands of Solomon Islander males also passed through on their way to work on plantations and as boat crews, hospital patients and prisoners.
The history of the Tulagi enclave provides an understanding of the origins of modern Solomon Islands. Tulagi was also a significant outpost of the British Empire in the Pacific, which enables a close analysis of race, sex and class and the process of British colonisation and government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Making Mala »
Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s
Authored by:
Clive Moore
Malaita is one of the major islands in the Solomons Archipelago and has the largest population in the Solomon Islands nation. Its people have an undeserved reputation for conservatism and aggression. Making Mala argues that in essence Malaitans are no different from other Solomon Islanders, and that their dominance, both in numbers and their place in the modern nation, can be explained through their recent history.
A grounding theme of the book is its argument that, far than being conservative, Malaitan religions and cultures have always been adaptable and have proved remarkably flexible in accommodating change. This has been the secret of Malaitan success.
Malaitans rocked the foundations of the British protectorate during the protonationalist Maasina Rule movement in the 1940s and the early 1950s, have heavily engaged in internal migration, particularly to urban areas, and were central to the ‘Tension Years’ between 1998 and 2003. Making Mala reassesses Malaita’s history, demolishes undeserved tropes and uses historical and cultural analyses to explain Malaitans’ place in the Solomon Islands nation today.