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South Pacific
As Bernard Smith has analysed in European Vision and the South Pacific (1960), the islands of the Pacific - represented as a tropical paradise with impeccable climate, fertile soil and handsome, available women - held a fascination in European thought from the eighteenth century on. While this gave the islands a positive image in the Western mind, it encouraged exploitation and hindered the emergence of a more realistic post-colonial self-definition.
Like the labels 'the West Indies' and 'the Caribbean', the label 'the South Pacific' is used by different commentators with different levels of inclusiveness. The narrowest formulation groups the English-speaking, ex-British colony, island nations along with Papua New Guinea. This excludes the American islands such as American Samoa, the French-speaking ones, such as Tahiti and New Caledonia, and Spanish-speaking Easter Island. Other formulations are more general, including some of the islands or all of them; by dropping 'South' from the label, Hawaii can be included. The most inclusive formulations include white Australia and New Zealand, and, in its 'Pacific Rim' manifestation, the west coast of the USA and Canada. The concept of a regional Pacific has only a limited place in local consciousness, however, despite a determined attempt during the 1970s to promote 'the Pacific Way'. That term had been used in political circles for some years, since Ron Crocombe formulated its 'theology' and outlined the practical benefits of cultural cooperation in The Pacific Way; An Emerging Identity (1976). But although there are regular Pacific Arts Festivals, there is no pan-Pacific cultural or sporting event with the cohesiveness and international recognition of the West Indian cricket team.
South Pacific literature, as the term is most widely understood, is bi-polar, having a loose cohesion, but being divisible into a Papua New Guinea strand and a Pacific island strand. Although there is considerable cross-fertilization, differences in geography, race, population, size and national allegiance all affect the texture of the literature. The mindscape of a writer living on an atoll a few miles in circumference in a nation of 100,000 people is necessarily different from that of a writer from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, with its mountainous terrain, population of almost five million, hundreds of languages and complex two-tiered government. The economic background, the...