HISTORY OF NEW IRELAND
Excerpts from ‘The Song of New Ireland’ by Dr. Bruce Harris,
and ‘A History of New Ireland’ by Jim Ridges
The Song of New Ireland is ancient. Humans first came to New Ireland as the easternmost extension of the initial wave of human migration originating in Africa as long as 150,000 years ago. New Guinea - and Australia, as the two were then connected by a land bridge across the Torres Straits - saw the culmination of that migration between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago.
The next significant period in the history of New Ireland came with the migration of Austronesian peoples arriving from eastern Asia, and proximally Formosa (modern-day Taiwan), from five to seven thousand years ago.
When these people arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago they found the main island of New Ireland already occupied by the earlier migrants. As a result, they chose to settle on the islands offshore from the main island. This could have been a recipe for conflict, but the newcomers brought two things of great interest to those already in the area – pottery and pigs.
These items have played a central role in uncovering the origins and timing of migrations beyond the Bismarck Archipelago. The original migrants arriving in New Guinea, and New Ireland, did not venture further into the Pacific. Though they arrived probably 50,000 years ago, they ventured no further east. That process did not begin until about three thousand years ago, and it was the later arriving Austronesians who undertook the journey. The outlines of that process have now been established by anthropologists.
Excerpt from ‘The Song of New Ireland’ by Dr. Bruce Harris
While Lapita Pottery was developed in situ in New Ireland, there was another important item which the Austronesians brought with them from Asia - pigs. New Ireland, and specifically the smaller islands off the north and east coast of the main island, was the first location in Melanesia/Polynesia in which domesticated pigs were kept.
These two goods – Lapita Pottery and pigs – effected a social and cultural revolution in New Ireland, the rest of the Bismarck Archipelago and, eventually, all of New Guinea, Melanesia and the Pacific. The attractiveness of the pottery and pigs as trade goods promoted an active trade network between the new arrivals and the original populations, both of the Bismarck Archipelago and the main island of New Guinea.
Excerpt from ‘The Song of New Ireland’ by Dr. Bruce Harris
The Austronesians who arrived in New Ireland were unlike the earlier migrants to New Guinea in another important respect. They possessed seafaring skills on a scale previously unknown in the region. From their points of origin along the east coast of Asia and Formosa, they had crossed thousands of miles of sea to arrive in the Bismarck Archipelago, unlike the original settlers who had migrated during the most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene Period. This meant most of the journey from Africa was accomplished by land as the seas were considerably lower than during the Austronesian migration. At that time, most of Indonesia consisted of a land bridge reducing the need for long distance navigation on the part of the first migrants.
The Austronesians were different. They were seasoned seafarers, and after a relatively brief respite (in historical time) of only a few thousand years, New Ireland became the staging point as the Austronesians continued their migration into the Pacific, reaching Fiji, Tonga and Samoa between three and four thousand years ago.
Anthropologists have established that the original settlers of Fiji came from New Ireland between 1300 and 1100 BC. They landed at Bourewa Beach on the island of Viti Levu. This is verified by both Lapita Pottery fragments and the bones of pigs which were found in archaeological digs at the site. These findings constitute the first evidence of human habitation of Fiji, and there is no doubt they originated in New Ireland.
Fiji was just the first stop. The remains of initial human settlement of Tonga and Samoa date from only shortly after the Fiji evidence. All three of these collections of islands were settled before 1000 AD, and all three were settled by migrants originating from New Ireland.
So, the Song of New Ireland has been spread throughout the Pacific over the past four to five thousand years. The Song of New Ireland has influenced the development of societies and cultures across nearly half the world. The Song of New Ireland constitutes the foundation, the very roots of most Melanesian and Polynesian societies and cultures. That is the heritage which has been passed down through the ages to us.
Excerpt from ‘The Song of New Ireland’ by Dr Bruce Harris
The first travellers from the ‘old world’ of Europe to see New Ireland were the Dutch, The first European ship ever to sail around, and name, Cape Hoorn at the southernmost tip of South America was the Dutch sailing vessel Eendracht. Jacob le Maire, with his pilot Willem Schouten then sailed across the Pacific Ocean and on June 24 1616, sighted the Anir/Feni islands and named them St.John's Island, because it was that Saint's day.
They continued NW along the coast of New Ireland, thinking, such were the difficulties of determining longitude at the time, they were on the north coast of New Guinea island. They carryied with them New Ireland’s first recorded, and probably reluctant, overseas traveller. He was nicknamed 'Moses' by the crew and had failed to be ransomed by his people for food, following an attack on the ship in which three New Irelanders were captured. He went with the ship to Jakarta where it was impounded and no more is known of 'Moses' fate.
In 1643 Abel Tasman in the Heemskerck was the next visitor following almost exactly Le Maire's route. On 1st April he reported his position as "off Cabo Santa Maria, as named by the Spanish" so he must have known they were there earlier, but this information as to definitely who it was is not now unavailable to us. Cape St Mary is on all the old maps and is now called East Cape, near Maritsoan.
Tasman was returning to Batavia, in today’s Indonesia, having discovered Van Diemans land (Tasmania) and New Zealand in 1642. He named the Tanga and Lihir islands as Anthony Caens island and Gerrit de Nys island respectively. Tabar island he called Fischer island and a sketch was made recording the first ethnological item from New Ireland, a canoe with carved prows carrying shark-killing equipment.
The next European sailing ship passing through New Ireland waters, but from the opposite direction, having 'discovered' Mussau and Emirau islands (St. Matthias group), was the English Royal Navy Roebuck, with former buccaneer William Dampier as Captain, in 1700. He recorded sailing into a large bay with many canoes encouraging him, but when in late afternoon he changed course to head out to sea for the night, many of the men in the canoes used their slingshots to hurl stones at the ship. He named it 'Slingers Bay' and it is probable that it was Ramat/Nabuto Bay. Dampier went on to round and name Cape St.George and sailing west along a southern coast discovered for the first time a strait between New Guinea and the island that he called New Britain, and the strait, Dampier Strait.
So at that time, and for 67 years, Europeans thought that New Britain island was much larger and included all of what later was to be called New Ireland.
CARTERET 1767
The next significant visitor was Captain Philip Carteret of the Royal Navy in the Swallow. On his round the world voyage he called into Lambom Harbour (picture left) in September 1767 and no doubt annoyed everyone very much by cutting down the coconut trees for their edible crown as a fresh vegetable, so great was the need of his crew suffering from scurvy.
Carteret had no contact with the local people and when he left he sailed north finding and naming the Duke of York islands, and realising for the first time that New Britain was separate from the other island, he named it New Ireland and the passage St. George’s Channel. The Frenchman Louis de Bougainville visited Lambom the following year, and in 1781 the Spanish warship Princesa under Captain Maurelle sailed along the East Coast of New Ireland.
Until that time and a few years more, the occasional visits by sailing ships probably had little effect on the lives of people, but events taking place across the world were to hasten the process of change for ever.
Surgeon John Coulter on the American vessel Hound in 1835 recorded meeting a British sailor Thomas Manners from London who had been living with the natives in southern New Ireland for ten years and accompanied the 'king' Boolooma on board where they had a meal in the Captain's cabin. He claimed to have four wives, one of whom was a daughter of the chief and he appeared to exercise authority over most of the many natives coming to trade with the ship.
Surgeon John Wilson of the whaler Gypsy recorded how on December 4 1840 near Cape St.Mary the 3rd mate Mr. White went ashore to trade and "got abundance of taro & yams, bananas, plantains, mangoes, & but one pig". He was introduced to a chief "& to some other sable damsel with whom he cohabited, at the cost of a common clasp knife. The women had a leaf, bunch of grass or small piece of tappa to cover their shame: as for the men, they had none, & therefore were they naked, the more comfortable in so hot a climate".
On the next day, meeting up with the barque Kitty, Capt.Brown told them that the Caroline had been at anchor in Gowers Harbour (Lambom area) near Cape St.George, to procure wood and water "and there 14 of the crew of the Caroline deserted her, & 4 other men from another ship; all from Sydney, probably runaway convicts afraid to return: they have formed a settlement near the harbour; as there are but few natives thereabouts."
Wilson commented that it was "by such worthless and reckless characters that…white men…are the first to reconcile the dark savage to hold a friendly intercourse with the white…it is startling to contemplate the ultimate fate of numerous island natives who have acquired a taste for European vices! Rum and tobacco and disease."
This seems to be confirmed by the record of Captain Keppel in the H.M.S Meander in 1849 who, again in the Lambom area, says "it is a place occasionally visited by English and American whalers- as was proved by a salutation which met our ears, while we were standing in to shore. 'What ship that?' shouted a black savage, one of a party in a canoe; 'Tobac got!'- God dam!'- 'Rum got'."
These influences had been continuous spasmodically for nearly a hundred years before a very different type of white man landed on 16th August 1875 and settled in the Duke of York islands. Christian missionaries from the Australian Wesleyan Methodist Mission with their Pacific island counterparts, 8 Fijians and 2 Samoans with wives and helpers, arrived on the John Wesley and some quickly visited southern New Ireland, particularly the SW coast.
MARQUIS DE RAYS - NOUVELLE FRANCE
That mission influence was confined to that small area but as at the same time traders had appeared on the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, and one of their commodities was to supply black labourers for Queensland, Fiji and Samoa; the infamous ‘blackbirding’; some New Irelanders were taken away, and those lucky to return were undoubtedly influenced by their experiences, including christianity and the ways of the white man.
1880 also saw the arrival near Lambom island of the first vessel carrying settlers from Europe for the ‘Free Colony of New France’, the infamous scam perpetrated by the Marquis de Rays and his cohorts. Altogether over a period of about 18 months four ships carrying over 700 persons landed at ‘Port Breton’ perhaps the most inhospitable part of New Ireland. Had another place been chosen we might have been speaking French?
Thousands of investors in Europe paid money for land in this new colony in the tropics that was to include all of PNG and the Solomon Islands. It was not supported at all by France. When the ships arrived and found nothing established as they had been promised, most soon left. Many finished up in Australia and some founded ‘Little Italy’ near Lismore in NSW. Almost 100 never made it and are buried in unmarked graves on New Ireland.
boluminski administration
Such was the enthusiasm of Boluminski’s administration, and his tough but fair dealings with natives and whites alike, that New Ireland was frequently referred to by visiting Germans as the South Sea Pearl of German colonial possessions. He had built a fine residence on a ridge with a grand staircase descending to the harbour with extensive gardens. A Post Office was established in 1904 and overseas vessels were visiting Kavieng by 1912.
By the time of Boluminski’s death on 28th April 1913 at Kavieng; he is buried there in the Bagail cemetery marked by a large concrete cross; a fine road capable of being used by the new motor vehicles just arriving, stretched 165 kilometres from Kavieng carrying the produce to the port and facilitating the administration by strategically located government resthouses. It was the longest and best road in the Pacific until the 1950’s.
Photo by Elise Hassey
first world war
The First World War put an end to the rapid development and Australia occupied German New Guinea in September 1914 at Rabaul, and at Kavieng in 17th October. Australian military administration until May 1921 was content to care take while the many developing plantations of the Germans were improved as the profits could not be exported to the enemy Germany.
The blow fell in 1920/21 when the Australian government legislated to expropriate all German property as reparation for part of their costs in fighting the war. At about the same time the League of Nations mandated the Territory of New Guinea to Australia’s care. Thus many pioneer overseas Germans with little interest in Europe, and who had spent years building up the province and developing their businesses, suddenly lost everything and were returned penniless to a Germany on its knees and economically depressed.
Image: Kavieng waterfront, Government Station 1914 (Australian War Memorial)
post world war i
Australian ex-servicemen were eventually offered credit to tender for plantations in 1926/7, which many did. Indirectly it was also a way to defend New Guinea not allowed by the mandate. Little new development occurred and it was 1935 before the road started by Boluminski reached Namatanai, 265 kilometres from Kavieng, New Ireland’s second administrative centre started in 1904.
The depression years of the 1930’s had been hard as the price of copra the main plantation product was low and many of the settlers ended up mortgaging their properties to the large shipping and trading companies of Burns Philip and Carpenters.
world war ii
War came to New Ireland on 23rd January 1942 with the arrival of the Japanese forces and the departure of about 150 members of the Australian army 1st Independent Company. Whilst the European women and children had hurriedly been evacuated in late December about 100 civilians remained and only a handful survived. A plaque naming those who died was unveiled at the Kavieng War Memorial on 4th July 2002. 32 had been garroted on the Kavieng Wharf in March 1944 and Rear Admiral Tamura was hanged in Hong Kong in March 1948 following a War Crime trial there. About 13,000 Japanese troops were on New Ireland in September 1945 when the HMAS Swan arrived to accept their surrender.
Essentially nothing remained of infrastructure in Kavieng as a result of the almost constant bombing in 1944/45 and the plantations had been largely destroyed. The local people had suffered horribly from mistreatment, malnutrition and lack of health services.
Independence
Prewar there had been only one small government school in New Ireland and apart from the recovery of the plantation sector and the rebuilding of the government stations and extension services, the main change was the establishment of more schools and in1963-5, following and adverse UN report, a crash education plan saw many new schools built in PNG.
Independence came to PNG in 1975 and in 1977 the New Ireland Provincial Government was established. Gold was found on Lihir Island and saw the opening of a large gold mine there in 1997.