When Cook and other early settlers first came to the South Pacific, they were keen to find translators, and teach indigenous people (such as Bennelong, and indigenous children in mission schools) English, but made little effort to learn local languages. One of the greatest colonial legacies left in the South Pacific is linguistic. Most Melanesian countries, with the exception of Fiji, speak a form of broken English known as Pidgin English or Bislama, with which they can understand one another. (15). In a region where 1244 languages are spoken by 300 million people (16), a common language is extremely useful, thus the British Empire has positively contributed to international relations, although Pidgin is a purely functional language with only one tense, so is limited in its use. There was also great success in introducing phonetic spellings of indigenous languages, based on the Latin alphabet that had been introduced by the missionaries in around 1814. Many chiefs saw the importance of written communication, especially given the presence of Europeans, who placed significant emphasis on the written word. The general European practise had been to limit the spread of indigenous languages, as it was believed that removing people’s ability to communicate by non-European means would facilitate their ‘civilisation’, so indigenous children taken from their parents were not taught their mother tongues, instead learning English and Latin from the missionaries. In this way, the most innate expression of culture was suppressed. It is only with the government backed re-introduction of these languages that their speaker base has risen in the last century, although many had already died out.

The impact of the British Empire persists even in 2018. Much of the bureaucratic structure of Australia, New Zealand and the Solomon Islands is a remnant of British autocracy. Australia employs a Westminster system, sometimes now referred to as ‘Ausminster’, indicating the progression of the Au