All nations have their myths. The ones to our immediate north and north east -- Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu -- like to pretend that they always settle disputes through the "Melanesian way" of discussion and compromise.
The peaceful conclusion to last week's army mutiny in Port Moresby brought the usual self-congratulatory claims about Melanesians' ability to "solve conflict by talking things through". In this case, "talking things through" meant abandoning essential reforms, weakening the position of a principled and sensible prime minister, and allowing soldiers who had criminally repudiated their obligations to get off scot-free. This was capitulation, not compromise.
And while this crisis may have ended without bloodshed, the same cannot be said of the long-running and ruinous Bougainville rebellion, the bitter violence between Guadalcanal and Malaita islanders in the Solomons, or the recurrent episodes of tribal warfare in the PNG Highlands in which dozens of people are killed.
So the "Melanesian way" is not so apparent in contemporary Melanesia. Like similar myths elsewhere, it was initially promoted by foreign educated intellectuals -- particularly by men such as Bernard Narokobi, a Papua New Guinean lawyer and politician who studied at Sydney University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Narokobi saw traditional Melanesian communities as being harmonious and egalitarian, committed to the collective ownership of property, and with a mystical attachment to the land. It was a view that was attractive not only to indigenous political elites, but to many expatriates as well, who actually believed that the best hope for the future lay in recovering aspects of a romanticised Melanesian past.
This broad appeal is hardly surprising, for as the anthropologist Colin Filer has pointed out, the notion of the "Melanesian way" is just the old European fantasy of utopia recast into a Pacific setting. But the reality was very different. In the blunt words of Sir Pita Lus, a veteran politician from the East Sepik, the real Melanesian way is "you shoot me, I shoot you".
Indeed, traditional Melanesia was a remarkably fractious, distrustful and violent place. The size of the largest political community was tiny, seldom more than a few hundred people. Communities usually teetered on the brink of disintegration, threatened by personal rivalries, disputes over women and property, accusations of sorcery, and the settling of old scores.
With the exception of only a few societies, the notion of legitimate authority held by men occupying a particular status or political office was absent. Men jealously asserted their own autonomy, which made co-operative ventures difficult to organise. When people did pull together, it was usually due to the efforts of "big men", ambitious individuals who achieved their limited power through a combination of wheeling and dealing, cajolery and intimidation.
In some areas, one out every three deaths was due to homicide or warfare. In the Vanuatu village where I carried out anthropological research, the whole population, with the exception of one man, had been killed in fighting with their close neighbours during the latter part of the nineteenth century, although warfare there had become more deadly through the introduction of rifles.
If there was ever a time when the "Melanesian way" of compromise and peace was prevalent in the south-west Pacific, it was during the few decades when colonial rule held sway. To say this is not to hanker after some golden age when white officials kept Melanesians in their place, for whatever its short-term benefits, in the long run colonialism usually has damaging and degrading consequences for both the rulers and the ruled.
Rather, it is to recognise that peaceful relations and effective consensus building amongst tribal people required the presence of a credible external power which made it clear that violence would not be tolerated. Anthropologists working in some parts of Melanesia, particularly the PNG Highlands, have noted that people quickly saw the advantages, economic and social, of going along with the colonial administration.
Although there were occasional displays of colonial force, there were also many cases of what has been called "voluntary pacification", where villagers would effectively collude with patrol officers to exaggerate the mystique of the new regime and its ability to intervene quickly in local affairs. Had this not been the case, it would not have been possible for a mere handful of officers to establish control so rapidly in places such as the Highlands, where they were vastly outnumbered by the local population in an often unfavourable terrain.
Once regions were pacified, traditionally-derived mechanisms for resolving conflicts and promoting co-operation could flourish and achieve an effectiveness that was rarely possible before the imposition of state control. But the continuation of this benign situation was only possible while the state retained its legitimacy.
This meant being able to preserve law and order, maintain an appropriate degree of neutrality between rival tribes and clans, and provide basic services, such as health, education, infrastructure and assistance with economic development. The capacity of the post-colonial Melanesian states to meet these requirements has declined markedly -- corruption and lawlessness is rampant, and in some areas the provision of even the most essential services is virtually non-existent.
There was nothing inevitable about this deterioration. But unfortunately, the indigenous elites and expatriate advisers responsible for developing new national institutions in the late colonial and early independence years were in thrall to a naïve and sentimental view of traditional societies and their relationship to modern states. The poor villagers of today's Melanesia are paying the price for the Western-based fantasy of the "Melanesian way".
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