Ask anyone about British history, and it’s fairly likely that they will associate the nation with its former Empire. A subject hotly debated in the media, Britain’s colonial past is extensive, and the challenge now facing it is deciding what stance to take on its morally questionable past. The more important, and often least considered aspect, is how these powerful nations changed the places that they colonised, and perhaps also what action must now be taken, five hundred years later, to rectify historical wrongs. In the South Pacific, English influence radically altered every aspect of the indigenous populations’ lives, from language and religion to art and law, in the process creating a new hybrid society. I intend henceforth to explore the cultural shift across the islands of Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and the Society Islands, Fiji, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.

Pre-colonisation, the South Pacific islands were not nations in their own right, but disparate societies sharing common Austronesian ancestors. Upon arriving in the South Seas, the Europeans immediately applied European cartographic logic to their mapping of the area in grouping islands together into groups. This very first action is indicative of the future treatment of the islands in a manner regardless of the existing native populations, as little effort was made by European explorers to learn place names, nor of the rivalries between villages and islands that would make grouping them together illogical. In one example, the Colonial Office made a proposal for the incorporation of Fiji with New Zealand (1), creating ‘huge agitation’ amongst their people, as the British government failed to take into consideration the political tension such an action would create, as they failed to understand the long-standing cultural incompatibility of Fiji and New Zealand.