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‘Black and white, a significantcontrast’: Race, humanism andmissionary photography in thePacificRichard EvesPublished online: 16 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Richard Eves (2006) ‘Black and white, a significant contrast’: Race,humanism and missionary photography in the Pacific, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29:4,725-748, DOI: 10.1080/01419870600665490
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‘Black and white, a significant
contrast’: Race, humanism and
missionary photography in the Pacific
Richard Eves
Abstract
Taking the example of ‘Studies in black and white’, a genre ofphotographs taken around the end of the nineteenth century byMethodist missionaries in the Pacific, this article seeks to go beyondconventional analyses that scrutinize colonial photography for forms ofdomination. I argue that these photographs, and the context in whichsome of them were published, reveal a complex interplay between twocontradictory principles: on the one hand, a Christian humanism,articulating a vision of commonality and equality, and on the other,paternalism, articulating a vision of superiority and inequality.
Keywords: Colonial photography; Pacific; missionaries; race; humanism.
Introduction
Speaking of British colonialism and colonial evangelism in thesouthern African context, John Comaroff (1995, p. 226) remarksthat it ‘was two-faced, everywhere a double gesture’. On the one hand,he argues, ‘it justified itself in terms of difference and inequality: thegreater enlightenment of the coloniser legitimised his right to rule andto civilise. On the other hand, that legitimacy was founded, ostensibly,on a commitment to the eventual erasure of difference in the name of acommon humanity and modernity’ (1995, p. 226). Colonialism, hesuggests, ‘promised equality but sustained inequality’ (1995, p. 226).Thus, while the evangelists considered themselves to be ‘friends of thenatives’, they also viewed ‘Africans as generic and genetic inferiors,primitive beings still a long way back on the great evolutionary road ofuniversal history’ (1995, p. 226). Similar arguments can be applied tothe history of missionary endeavour in the Pacific, where Methodist
Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 29 No. 4 July 2006 pp. 725�748
# 2006 Taylor & FrancisISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01419870600665490
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missionaries also articulated notions of a common humanity, that is, ahumanism, but at the same time promoted themselves as superior andcivilized in comparison to the islanders whom they arrogantlyconsidered to be in need of civilizing and conversion.
In this article, I shall explore this juxtaposition of belief incommonality and equality together with superiority and inequality.Using examples of photographs drawn from the Methodist missionaryarchive and their propaganda publications, I examine the ways inwhich the Methodists in the Pacific reconciled these seeminglyincompatible ideas. I propose to do this through considering theways that missionaries and other colonizers were represented inphotographs, especially the spatial placement of colonizer andcolonized. In particular, I consider the genre of photographs whichthe Methodists often call ‘Studies in black and white’ in whichmissionaries are placed in close proximity to Pacific Islanders. Suchexamples illustrate clearly how they sought to construe themselves, touse Comaroff’s phrase, as ‘friends of the natives’ and this brings intoquestion how their ideas and values concerning human beings wereconstituted.
Over the last several years, studies of the various forms ofrepresentation of colonized peoples have tended to stress negativeconstruals of difference, as part of a general recognition that colonialsubjects were represented in particular ways in order to justify thecolonial relations of domination and exploitation. One example of thisapproach occurs in the recent book by Vergara (1995), DisplayingFilipinos, which explores the relationship between photography andcolonialism in the early twentieth century Philippines. Vergara arguesthat, as a privileged mode of expressing reality, photography wasparticularly useful both for presenting and justifying colonialistideology. Examining travel literature and official documents, he arguesthat both genres used the camera as an instrument of surveillance anddisplay, positioning the Filipinos as racially and technologicallyinferior, negative representations which ultimately legitimated theAmerican colonization of the Philippines (1995, p. 4). Similarly, inher book Colonial Photography and Exhibitions, Maxwell (1999, p. 9)argues that colonial photography ‘was in the business of confirmingand reproducing the racial theories and stereotypes that assistedEuropean expansion’.1 I argue, however, that although there is muchmerit in such interpretations of colonial representation, the over-whelming focus on negative images and representations is unnecessa-rily limiting. A much more complex picture emerges if attention is alsogiven to images and representations that are far more ambiguous andnot so easily categorized.
A similar limitation exists in the fact that by far the greatestattention has been given to representations of the colonized in
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photographs, while the colonizers have been relatively ignored. To putthis another way, if we look on the black and white photograph as ametaphor for studies of colonial visuality, the focus has beenpredominantly on the black, to the exclusion of the white.2 Thisindicates an assumption that colonial relationships represent only thecolonized and not the colonizers but, given that images are shapedthrough the perceptions, beliefs, and visual vocabulary of the photo-grapher, colonial photographs in fact tell us less about the colonizedand their culture, than about those who produced that particularportrayal. Therefore, attention should be directed also to the ways thecolonizers are positioned and represented (see Said 1978; and alsoEdwards 1990, p. 238; Lalvani 1993, p. 449).3
The focus on the colonized is partly a consequence of the waycolonialism has been seen as a monolithic and all-encompassingstructure, which bears down upon the colonized. In photographs, thecolonizers are often absent, but where they are included, the imagestend to typify the colonial relations of power and to confirm the viewof colonialism as uniform in its mode of operation. For example,we see the colonial officer in uniform, the patrol officer extractingtaxes, the proclamation of a colony, the military parade, the metingout of punishment, the doctor healing the sick, the missionaryconducting a service. Such examples tell a singular story of thecolonial encounter � the enactment of power, the regulation of bodies,the nature of colonial governance, the interventionary civilizingmission. There are, however, other stories embedded in other colonialphotographs which, although also about the enactment of colonialpower, carry a more subtle and nuanced message, presenting a pictureof a colonialism more complex than we usually see.4
The Methodist missionaries in the Pacific
The Methodist missionaries discussed here were members of theWesleyan Methodist Missionary Society who, as part of the Protestantrevivalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, saw their role asspreading the Gospel throughout the world. Following after theLondon Missionary Society and the Church Missionary Society, theMethodists arrived in New Zealand in 1819, and from there theirsphere of interest expanded to include Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, theSolomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.5 The material I draw oncomes from a number of Methodist missionary areas in what arenow the independent nation-states of Papua New Guinea and theSolomon Islands.6 In the period I discuss (roughly the 1890s to the mid1930s) Papua New Guinea was divided into Papua (called British NewGuinea for a period) and New Guinea, each territory beingadministered by different colonial governments.7 The Solomon Islands
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were a British Protectorate governed from Suva by the HighCommissioner for the Western Pacific.8 In practice, the differentadministrative regimes had little effect on the day-to-day workings ofthe Methodists, who generally had fairly close working relationshipswith the various administrations. While some of the key figures amongthe Methodists were associated with particular areas within onecountry, others, because of the role they occupied in the missionhierarchy, straddled those boundaries. For example, the ReverendGeorge Brown, who features in some of the photographs I discuss, wasstrongly associated with the establishment of the Methodists on theislands of New Ireland and New Britain (in New Guinea), and alsowith the Solomon Islands.
Photography was an important tool in the Methodist missionaryproject, both in the metropolitan centres and in the colonies.9
Numerous missionaries, including some of the most prominent, suchas George Brown, took photographs and amassed large collections, nodoubt helped at a later point by the development of more compactcameras.10 Many layworkers and missionary sisters also took photo-graphs. Missionaries’ journals, notebooks and letterbooks containscattered references to their photographic pursuits; Brown, forexample, detailed the photographs he took, though not in great depth(Brown 1897). Photographs were widely used in missionary publica-tions to convey to the readership of the home countries theachievements of the mission and the need for their support.Missionaries’ photos were also sometimes reproduced in secularnewspapers and other popular texts representing different cultures,such as Customs of the World . Photography was also used as an aid inthe conversion of the Pacific Islanders, and lantern slide shows wereorganized to demonstrate how the missionaries had transformed thelifestyles of other peoples they had converted.
Missionary photographers were not averse to using photography toportray Pacific peoples in negative ways, and their collections containmany images of the ferocious ‘savage’ or the semi-naked ‘heathen’.While such impressions were often encoded by having the subject wielda weapon or take a menacing demeanour, it was also often achievedthrough the wording of captions which appealed to existing prejudices.However, in terms of publicity, negative representations are limited,particularly since an important aspect of missionary work is toillustrate the successes of the mission in foreign fields to supportersin the metropolitan centres. Stories and images of ‘savagery’ need to becoupled with stories and images of salvation, achieved throughnarratives of conversion, statistics of burgeoning attendance at church,‘before and after’ photographs (or ‘old style, new style’ as they weresometimes called) and, of significance for this study, ‘Studies in blackand white’.11 The latter genre is unusual in colonial photography for its
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sympathetic positioning of European and Pacific Islander in relationto each other. Not only are colonizer and colonized placed within thesame visual and spatial field, but they are placed in very closeproximity, a point I will return to below.12
In the colonial encounter, space and race are reciprocally related,spatial distance often being used to signify racial distance. This is mostevident in photographs that show Europeans in their roles as colonialofficers, as in Figure 1, a photograph of a white official, probably anAustralian patrol officer extracting taxes and conducting a census, onthe island of New Britain in the Territory of New Guinea in 1933. Theofficial is seated at a table in the foreground, while three government-appointed village leaders, all wearing peaked hats as marks of theirauthority, stand in a line nearby. A fourth man, a police officer, standsin the line with the village leaders. (Another man, partly obscured,wearing a hat, stands behind him). Several metres away stands a line ofsome of the inhabitants of the village, men and children, who unlikethe patrol officer, village officials, and police officer, are clothed onlyon the lower half of their bodies. Clothing here becomes a marker ofcivilization and authority. The contrast between those with shirts andthose without tends to highlight difference and confirm the hierarchybetween the civilized, as clothed, and the uncivilized, who have yet to
Figure 1. Patrol Officer in New Britain receiving head-tax, 1933, MethodistChurch Overseas Mission, Methodist Overseas Mission papers (MOM) 248,Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
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acquire those markers of civilization. While the wearing of clothing insuch a context tends to highlight the issue of difference, it is adifference that the colonial authority wished to emphasize, as NewGuineans were not permitted to wear clothing other than thatillustrated in this photograph. From 1923 all New Guineans otherthan small children had to wear a loin-cloth and it was illegal for mento wear a non-traditional covering on the upper part of the body,although there were exceptions to these rules, as I note.
It was a legal requirement that the inhabitants must presentthemselves for purposes of census and taxation, and a person whodid not attend was liable to prosecution and punishment (see Wolfers1975, p. 95).13 Such acts of census taking were an important means bywhich colonial governments sought to enumerate and classify itscolonized population, enabling it to keep track and thus, control,forming part of what Anderson has referred to as a ‘totalizingclassificatory grid’ (see Anderson 1991, p. 184; also Cohn 1987;Appadurai 1993; Vergara 1995).14 Thus, this photograph captures andreveals the efforts of the colonial government to regulate thepopulation under its control.
In its spatial arrangement, this photograph conveys a furthermessage concerning the regime of governmentality of the colonialstate, for in the disposition of race in relation to space, we can see howthe occupation of space by the colonized was regulated. Thephotograph discloses a segregationist policy and details of how thiswas practised, displaying a hierarchy of racial difference marked by ahierarchy of spatial distance, within which only those villagers who areinvested with the authority of the colonial state may positionthemselves in proximity to a white official � though not too close �while those not so invested must keep a greater distance. This was anabiding feature of the various colonial governments in New Guineafrom the beginnings of colonization to independence in 1975. Duringthe era of Australian administration when this photograph was taken,among the many regulations that were used to police the colonizedand their movement in space were rules which restricted theirmovement from the territory (of New Guinea) and their movementto towns, where they were not allowed to stay for more than four daysunless they were employed. When New Guineans did stay in towns,their movement was again restricted by a curfew between the hours of9 p.m. to 6.30 a.m. A New Guinean working for a European could notbe housed in or under the house of the European without permissionfrom the relevant colonial official, and any housing built for them hadto be one hundred yards from any road or street and fifty yards fromany European dwelling.
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Studies in black and white
While the photograph I have just discussed clearly illustrates thelinkage between space and race and the exercise of colonial power,other photographs exist which do not follow this pattern, providing apicture where the rendering of colonial power is considerably moresubtle and nuanced.15 The photographs, ‘Studies in black and white’,tell a different story to the tale of colonial segregation, showing insteadhow missionaries sought to present themselves as brothers and sisters,as members of the same ‘family of man.’
If, as Barthes (1977, p. 19) has remarked, the photograph ‘is notonly perceived, received, it is read , connected more or less consciouslyby the public . . . to a traditional stock of signs’, then the messagescarried by ‘Studies in black and white’ destabilize that repertoire(emphasis in original). To some extent, these photographs call intoquestion the segregationist policies and practices of colonial regimesand articulate a message of common humanity, despite racialdifferences. They do not clearly display the workings of colonialgovernance, but, through their positioning of European and PacificIslander bodies in proximity, subvert its hierarchical arrangements ofrace and space. Such close positioning of bodies evinces a sympatheticportrayal of the local people, a common humanity beneath thesuperficial differences of skin colour and cultural practices. If spatialdistance is to be read as a marker of racial difference, as it often was incolonial contexts, then this genre of photographs is remarkable for itsattempt to bridge that racial and cultural difference. Because theyhumanise the other, these photographs constitute a reversal of thetraditional scientific, anthropological or travel photography thatobjectifies and dehumanises the other.16
A good example of this is shown in Figure 2, a photograph entitled‘A Study in Black and White’, taken from the autobiography of theMethodist missionary, George Brown, showing Brown standingbetween two Solomon Island men.17 These men are highly likely tobe local chiefs, although their identity is not given. What is mostsignificant for my purposes is that George Brown has his hands on theshoulders of each of the men. Though neither reciprocates this gesture,the message is clear that Brown himself does not intend to be seen asanother overbearing and racist colonial who believes Pacific Islandersshould keep their distance. Brown and one of the men are smiling, andthe whole scene could be taken as conveying conviviality and friend-ship, a view reinforced by the close proximity of the three men, with itssuggestion of familiarity, intimacy, sociality and equivalence in therelationship. Though the image does convey some equivocation inBrown’s attitude � his position in the centre is perhaps hierarchicaland the placement of his hands on the two Solomon Islanders suggests
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paternalism � this does not negate the great degree of closeness in thephotograph.
Other photographs exist in which Pacific Islanders are placed insimilarly close proximity to European missionaries, but wearingWestern clothes, as in Figure 3. Taken in Papua, this photographfeatures a European woman and two Papuans, a teenage girl and child.The European woman is Mrs Bromilow, wife of the ReverendBromilow, the missionary responsible for establishing the Methodistmission in Papua (then called British New Guinea) at Dobu Island in1891. The teenage girl Elenoa and the child in the photograph isGideon, who was saved by Mrs Bromilow from customary burial withhis deceased mother in March 1894. Such action was referred to as‘child rescue’ and became an important component of missionary
Figure 2. ‘A Study in Black and White’, by H. P. Berry in George Brown (1908)George Brown, D.D. Pioneer-Missionary and Explorer: An AutoBiography,London: Chalres H. Kelly, p. 532
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intervention into the lives of Papuans, often coupling the ideaof indigenous maternal neglect with the redemptive power of themission to save lives, both literally and metaphorically. A number ofphotographs of Gideon were reproduced in the main propagandavehicle for the Methodists, the Australasian Methodist Missionary
Review (sometimes referred to simply as the Missionary Review), andMrs Bromilow, as well as a number of the missionary sisters stationedat Dobu, related his progress and adventures to readers in Australiaor recounted stories about him when they gave speeches toMethodist congregations in Australia (see Eves n.d.; also Bromilow1929, p. 132�41).
As in the photograph of George Brown discussed above, this onefeatures a European positioned in close proximity to the PacificIslanders, subverting the separatist colonial practice, which deemedthat relationships between them should be characterized by separate-ness and restraint.18 While this photograph appears more formal, anddoes not convey the same sense of conviviality as Figure 2, it
Figure 3. Mrs Bromilow, Elenoa and Gideon at Dobu Mission, Papua, circa1894, Methodist Church Overseas Mission, Methodist Overseas Mission papers(MOM) 159, Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
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nevertheless conveys familiarity and intimacy, in this case of amaternal nature. Particularly important here is the positioning ofbodies and the holding of hands, suggesting the sympathetic attach-ment of motherhood. As in the previous photograph, this close spatialpositioning suggests a common bond of humanity, which transcendsdifferences. As with Figure 2, this photograph also betrays signs of ahierarchical relationship, of a matriarch exercising considerablecontrol over her offspring and commanding their respect, but again,I argue that, though not absolute, the degree of intimacy is impressive.
In contrast to the previous photograph in which the SolomonIslanders are wearing indigenous forms of clothing, both Papuans inthis photograph are wearing western-introduced clothes, the childwearing a blouse and the young woman a sarong and what is called a‘Mother Hubbard’ blouse. These were popular forms of clothing forwomen, the ‘Mother Hubbard’ having been specially designed andintroduced by missionaries as a suitable form of clothing for thewomen of the Pacific (where it continues to be worn in many places).Such clothing signified that the wearer had converted to Christianityor had at least come under its influence. As I have argued elsewhere,the visible cast of the body was considered a marker of character andbecame a cornerstone of the Methodist pedagogic practice in thePacific, where great emphasis was placed on reconstituting outwardappearances (Eves 1996). In Methodist thought, there was a conflationof morality with physicality, and their project of bodily rehabilitationwas considered a key to improving the presumed fallen state of thePacific Islanders. Uplift from the fallen state occurred throughchanging bodies so that their appearance reflected the morality ofthe converted Christian within. Such things as nakedness and generalbodily demeanour were singled out for correction, and as a resultclothing became a significant marker of conversion and the moralreform that accompanied it.19
As my discussion of Figure 1 suggests, the wearing of clothes wasalso the subject of some negotiation between the colonial governmentand the mission. While the government sought to regulate the wearingof clothing, the missionaries desired that their converts cover theirnaked bodies. In addition to its desire to emphasize difference, thecolonial state expressed concern over the declining population, sayingthat if clothing on the upper body were allowed to remain wet it wouldbring illness or death. Thus, from 1920 all Papuans, both male andfemale were forbidden to wear clothes on the upper part of the body, alaw that stayed in force until 1941. Importantly, however, those in theservice of the colonial government, and those involved with themission, such as teachers, students and other residents on missionstations, were exempt, a measure that would have been welcomed bythe Methodists, given the importance they attached to clothing
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(Wolfers 1975, p. 47). If the Solomon Islanders in Figure 2 weredressed in Western clothes, the image would not serve the purposes of‘Studies in black and white’, for their indigenous clothing indicatesthey have not been subject to much Western influence and have not yetbeen converted to Christianity.20
In such circumstances, the juxtaposition between the colonizer andcolonized is all the more powerful because it suggests that, even beforeattempts at missionary enterprise have begun, there is a commonalitybetween the missionary and the Islanders, indicating a potential forconversion. Such photographs, therefore, convey ambiguous andmultivalent meanings. On the one hand, the representation of theSolomon chiefs as they ‘naturally’ are, without obvious signs ofWestern influence, tends to highlight the issue of difference. The visualcontrast created by George Brown wearing only white clothing furtheremphasizes the difference between himself and the Solomon Islanders.On the other hand, George Brown’s friendly pose suggests anunderlying common humanity that transcends the differences other-wise emphasized. The emphasis given to difference makes the bridgingof that difference, through the placement of George Brown’s hands onthe shoulders of the chiefs, all the more powerful. That the chiefsallowed themselves to be placed in this position also indicates thepotential of the missionary venture, suggesting an openness toChristianity and that the prospects of successfully establishing amission there were very good, and worth supporting.
When displayed without the intervention of a text that structuresunderstanding, this photograph confounds some of the clear-cutdualisms that have characterized perceptions of the colonies. Conceptssuch as ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ become decidedly murky, if the ‘savage’is seen in a pose with the ‘civilized’ conveying sociality and friendship.Viewers of the image are led to ask if the Pacific Islanders are indeedso ‘savage’ and different, when George Brown, looking so relaxed andhappy, has his arms around them.
Significant contrasts
I now turn to another similar photograph (of which, unfortunately, Ihave been unable to obtain a suitable reproduction). This oneillustrated an article from which the title of this study was drawn:‘Black and white: a significant contrast,’ published in the Methodistnewspaper Glad Tidings on 4 October 1902. Showing George Brownsitting with a local chief, it was taken during his journey to theSolomon Islands to establish a mission station there, in May 1902.21
Though missionary publications abound with photographs andcaptions that erase individuality and typify diverse cultural groupswith homogenizing labels � for example ‘a typical Solomon Islander’
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or ‘a typical New Guinean’ � this article actually names the local chief,Wonge, thus bestowing an individual identity on him.22 However, theauthor reinstates conformity to the negative image by adding that he isan ‘old savage, head-hunting chief’. Although Brown does not have hisarm around Wonge, this photograph is like the previous one Idiscussed in showing George Brown giving the impression of afriendly and informal encounter. This is partly achieved by Brownnot wearing a jacket, and also, as in Figure 2, the body of themissionary and the body of the Solomon Islander are touching. Whilemuch the same as the two previous photographs in the humanistmessage it conveys, the article in which it is placed provides theopportunity for a greatly expanded understanding of this genre ofphotograph.
There are difficulties, as Street (1992, p. 123) has noted, ininterpreting photographs from other eras in that there is ‘the dangerof giving them a ‘‘modern’’ reading’.23 Though this is an importantqualifier, it is not applicable here because, unlike many of thephotographs which appear in the missionary archive and which areusually divorced from the context in which they were taken, thisphotograph is not open to such radical decontextualization because ofits accompanying text. ‘Black and white: a significant contrast’ isunusual for the extent to which it provides a context for interpretingthe photograph. If a ‘free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to[photographs]’ and ‘they demand a specific kind of approach’, asBenjamin (1969, p. 226) has suggested, then texts like ‘Black and white:a significant contrast’ direct that approach. Generally, the photo-graphs that were a common feature of the published writings ofmissionaries and of magazines and newspapers such as the Australa-sian Methodist Missionary Review and Glad Tidings, often carried littletextual intervention beyond a caption. Frequently, the photographsdid not specify what they were or where they came from. Photographstaken in one missionary field were often used to illustrate an articledescribing a missionary venture in another, sometimes even in anothercountry. Divorced from the situational anchors that help the viewernegotiate the process of understanding and interpretation, the contentof photographs simply comes to act as a generic marker of racial andcultural difference. An unmediated image of a man from the SolomonIslands in indigenous clothing, thus, without the intercession of textwould lead the viewer to conclude the figure is of a ‘heathen’ in need ofconversion. Of course, such a conclusion is more likely in a missionarynewspaper or magazine, where the readership is disposed to viewimages through a framework stressing the need for missionization.
What makes ‘Black and white: a significant contrast’ so interesting isthat it offers significant insight into the specific kind of negotiatedreading that was expected of viewers in interpreting this genre of
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photographs. Moreover, this article clearly illustrates the interplaybetween positive messages, such as ideas of common humanity, andother more negative representations, such as the Pacific Islander as‘headhunter’ and ‘savage’. The author draws particular attention tothe photograph, which is described as of ‘extraordinary character’, notbecause of its artistic qualities, but because of its significance andsuggestiveness. I shall return to this, but first I want to elaborate on thearticle itself which begins by introducing George Brown as a familiar,friendly and worthy figure: ‘Who throughout Australian Methodismdoes not know Dr. Brown?’ the reader is reassuringly asked (GladTidings 1902, 4 Oct.). Then this comfortable familiarity is contrastedwith the receptions experienced by many missionaries in the region:24
‘The first glimpse that many a missionary has had of his new spherehas been black and swarthy nude men, armed with huge clubs andpoison-tipped spears, still alert, in a defiant attitude, or sullen andsuspicious, and whose every gesture seemed a threat of martyrdom’(Glad Tidings, 1902 4 Oct.).
The author continues in a style common to many missionary texts,evoking the ‘savagery’ of the Solomon Islanders and describing thehead-hunting practices at some length, before remarking that it was tocarry the Gospel to these head-hunting tribes that Dr. Brown set sail:
Among these is the island of New Georgia, one of the SolomonIsland group, the natives of which have long been known as the mostinveterate head-hunters in Melanesia. They build large canoes and fitthem especially for the horrible practice. . . . The head-huntingexpeditions were accustomed to make long voyages, arrive at thescene of their operations just before dawn, and then � often by the aidof natives of the place who had been captured at former raids � theywould attack some village and kill indiscriminately men, women,children, for the sake of taking home the heads of their victims.These expeditions were always undertaken on the occasion of thelaunch of a large canoe, the building of a house or temple, somegreat feast, or other special occasion (Glad Tidings 1902, 4 Oct.).
The author, however, equivocates, saying that Brown’s reception was ofa much more pleasant order, but continues to evoke the spectre ofhead-hunting since not all the ‘savage tribes’ have been Christianized.The writer now refers to the illustration, comparing it favourably withsome of George Brown’s photographs that have recently appeared inthe Sydney paper, The Town and Country Journal . ‘Take a secondglance at this picture’ the reader is invited:
The figure on the right looks anything but clerical, but there is nomistake that’s the face of the renowned missionary Dr. George
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Brown. What idea or impression can clerical robes or vestmentsconvey to the dark mind of an untutored savage? The gentleman onthe left is in full native and well-fitting dress � Wonge, the old chief. Iam supposing this to be the first interview that ever those two menof one blood, yet as diverse in colour, character, and history asmidnight darkness and noonday light, had; and yet there they are,side by side, without a sheet of tissue paper to divide them. What isthe charm which the doctor carries, which can win the confidenceand disarm the fears of an old savage, head-hunting chief? And whatis the secret of the missionary’s courage and temerity, to placehimself into such close juxtaposition with this sable savage islander?The only true answers are � the attractive and subduing power ofthe Cross: � ‘‘And I will be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me,’’that’s for Wonge. ‘‘I can do all things through Christ whichstrengtheneth Me,’’ � and that is for Dr. Brown (Glad Tidings1902, 4 Oct.).
The article ends with a predictable appeal for funds for the missionaryenterprise. However, even more than in the previous example, themessage conveyed by this photograph is of the essential humanitybeneath different skin colours and cultural practices. At the same time,the text of the article, through presenting various contrasting negativeimages of head-hunting and savagery, demonstrates the heroic natureof the missionary endeavours of figures like George Brown, as well asthe potentiality of the Solomon Islanders for conversion. In both thearticle and the photograph, the construal of universal humanityindicates a basis of commonality, not such radical difference thatconversion is impossible. Thus, while the author early invokes thespectre of a fearsome head-hunter, he also shows a local chief quiteprepared to engage in intercultural contact. While utterly negativerepresentations may be desirable in some colonial contexts, such assettler colonialism, where the aim is merely to alienate the colonizedfrom their land, for the Methodists excessive recourse to these wouldindicate the unredeemable nature of their intended converts.25 Thehumanist idea of shared kinship and commonality articulates a viewthat beneath the veneer of different cultural practice, Pacific Islandershave the potential to be converted and redeemed. The invocation of acommon humanity is reminiscent of the comment by Barthes (1973,p. 101) that: ‘Any classic humanism postulates that in scratching thehistory of men a little, the relativity of their institutions or thesuperficial diversity of their skins . . . one very quickly reaches the solidrock of a universal human nature’ (see also Sartre 1967; Young 1990).
Thus the appeal to the commonality of blood in the text cited is anattempt to reconcile the obvious difference of the Solomon Islanderswith the idea of a common humanity, uniting them through the
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kinship of blood into one ‘family of man’, which has the potential tobe converted and civilized. The missionary recourse to blood as ametaphor of commonality is especially interesting, for in late nine-teenth-century racial thinking blood had been evinced as the arbiter ofracial difference, for example by Richard Wagner, who held thatGerman blood had to be cleansed of contaminating Jewish blood (seeSombart 1982[1913]; Rose 1990, pp. 373�4). Here, the significance ofblood is inverted, from marking insuperable difference to marking anessential sameness beneath superficial differences.
Here the author shifts attention away from the visible to theinvisible, indicating that the invisible essences linking humans aremuch more important than the visible manifestations of skin colour orcultural practices. This erasure of visible difference contrasts with theimportance the Methodists invested in visibility in other ways, for, as Iremarked above, they judged the moral uprightness of converts andpotential converts by their outward appearance, which was thought toreflect morality (see also Eves 1996). This approach was similar tophysiognomy, which also postulated an essential relationship betweenthe surface and the underneath, so that inner character could bedetermined from signs borne on the outer surface of the body,particularly the face (Lury 1998, p. 43). In the ‘Black and white’article, the invocation of the invisible indicates an ambivalence, aprivileging of the visible or the invisible at various times for particularpurposes.
Viewed in isolation, the photographic series ‘Studies in black andwhite’ can be read as giving the impression that the Pacific Islandersare being accepted on equal terms. The spatial proximity, the facialgestures, the joining of black and white in one relation through theterm ‘and’ in the title, all this suggests sympathy, equivalence andunity. Despite a subtle ambiguity, because they suggest a paritybetween peoples, photographs of this genre are an importantconstituent of the Christian humanist project in the colonial Pacific,and they could be interpreted as subverting the colonial ranking ofsuperior master and inferior native. The humanism of the Methodists,which sees all people as God’s children, differs from some othermodern forms of humanism, such as liberal-humanism, which replaceGod with Man. However, I suggest that, in its aim of converting andcivilizing, the missionary project essentially sought to erase difference.Thus it valued sameness rather than equality, or, rather, made equalitycontingent upon sameness. The Christian vision of equality is onlynotional, for in practice it does not entail respect for the other, butrather antipathy to the other’s difference, seeking to erase differenceand subsume the other into the same.
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Christian humanism and the question of human diversity
People, as the Methodists saw it, were of equal value, but their cultureswere not, and these could be judged as wanting in God’s eyes. Inconformity to God’s paternal relation to his human children, thenotion of equality is framed by a paternalism which renders somepeoples as child-like. Pacific Islanders, including the peoples of theSolomon Islands, New Guinea and Papua, belonged, according to theMethodists, to what were sometimes called ‘child-races’. Like children,they were believed not to be entirely responsible for their actions, theirbehaviour was deemed undesirable and they were in need of thecorrection and guidance provided by education (see Eves 1996).
This designation of Pacific Islanders as children was most clearlyexpressed by the Reverend John Wear Burton, a former GeneralSecretary of the Methodists and author of several books on the projectof missionaries in the Pacific, when he invokes the half-devil, half-childfrom Kipling’s poem, ‘Take up the White man’s burden’ (Burton 1910,caption facing p. 166; see also Goldie 1914, p. 569). For him the Pacific‘is in reality, only a kindergarten’ and:
is peopled with child-races, and childhood (even when it is naughty)is never without its peculiar attraction. These island children havebeen undoubtedly wicked and vulgar at times; but because they arechildren we find it easier to forgive, and their manifest contritionmakes a tender appeal to us. We must remember . . . that it ischildhood with which we have to deal, and we must orient our mindsaccordingly (Burton 1912, p. 3).
Lacking the capacity for self-government, the ‘child-races’ of thePacific required the benevolent paternalistic interventions and guidinghands of the missionaries to see them to the maturity of adulthood, ascivilized Christians. While they could be seen as nominally equal to theEuropean missionaries, ‘as brothers and sisters’ sharing one blood,they were in fact always seen as younger ‘brothers and sisters’. Thus,the form of humanism the Methodists espoused was founded on auniversalism that encompassed all humans within the same frameworkof equality and yet provided justification for their intervention throughhierarchical paternalist metaphors. This rhetorical conjunctureallowed the contradiction between notions of equality and inequality,alluded to at the beginning of this essay, to be reconciled. For theMethodists, the rhetorical human commonality linked people withinthe same moral framework and the missionaries were designated, asGod’s representatives, to be especially equipped to guide others.Further, as I suggest below, the Methodist need for a justificatoryinequality meant that they also invoked the civilizational hierarchiesfounded on evolutionary ideas.
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A central issue being addressed in photographic studies such as‘Studies in black and white’, is the question of human diversity andhow this is to be reconciled with other frameworks, such as theuniversalizing humanism with its notions of human sameness. Thisproblem was a primary concern of racial theorizing for many yearsand had particular ramifications for the missionary enterprise andcolonial practice. Since the Enlightenment, considerable attention hasbeen paid to the questions of human nature, the human conditionand human rights, and the relation of human diversity to thesequestions. In the nineteenth century, the polygenists took the viewthat the diversity of humans was so great that the different peoples ofthe world constituted separate species. This involved, as Stepan(1987, p. 4) has noted, ‘a change from an emphasis on thefundamental physical and moral homogeneity of man, despitesuperficial differences, to an emphasis on the essential hetero-geneity . . . despite superficial similarities’. The Methodists, on theother hand, like most Christians, professed to believe in an essentialoneness despite superficial differences, in conformity with Genesis,which holds that ‘mankind in the beginning was the creature of asingle creative act, at a single moment in time, and at a single spoton the earth’s surface’ (Hodgen 1964, p. 222�3).26 A considerableamount of Christian-inspired ethnological speculation in the nine-teenth century was concerned to confirm the connections of modernday peoples to those of the Bible.
Christian ethnologists such as James Cowles Prichard were at theforefront of what Stocking (1996, p. 30) has called ‘diffusionaryphilological ethnology’ which sought through the examination oflanguages to show the common origin of all peoples.27 Such amonogenist view is, of course, a central prerequisite of the missionaryproject, for in order to save the souls of the heathen, it must berecognized that they are human and have souls to save.28 The centralquestion then becomes how to explain diversity and difference in sucha way as to maintain the universalism, and hierarchies such as theadult/child and those of evolution, with its stages of progress, seemparticularly appropriate for this. Indeed, as Stocking has argued, the‘specific attraction’ of evolutionism was that it ‘offered a way ofreformulating the essential unity of mankind’, given that various ‘earlynineteenth century intellectual currents had undercut the basis for theutilitarian assumption of a common human nature’ (1974, p. 410).‘Mankind was one not because it was everywhere the same, butbecause the differences represented different stages in the sameprocess’ (Stocking 1974, p. 410). Certainly, in the Pacific the Methodistmissionaries used such hierarchies to explain racial and culturaldifference despite their recognition of essential unity (see Eves 1996,1998, 2000).
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This form of reinscription is important for my argument, because itallows those hierarchies to be assimilated within that humanistframework of equality before God. With Europeans at the top ofthe evolutionary and civilizational ladder, Methodists could feeljustified in expecting and encouraging sameness in other races, andin discouraging difference. At the same time, colonized peoples couldbe embraced as equally brothers and sisters under the skin, though, asI have argued, not equally developed siblings. The Methodistmissionary view, thus, converges with nineteenth-century evolutionistthinkers in that, while all humans comprised only one species, diversitywas due to the different stages reached on the evolutionary ladder bydifferent peoples. Thus, although the Methodist missionaries couldcount themselves as ‘brothers and sisters’, they could also view thePacific Islanders as somewhat less than themselves, who remained inneed of supervision and careful schooling to bring them to maturity(see Comaroff 1995, p. 226).
Conclusion
Though photographs such as ‘Studies in black and white’ and theiraccompanying texts appeal to a form of humanism which postulateshuman equality, the ultimate aim of the missionaries’ agenda was thereconstitution of Pacific Islanders to become like themselves. Seeingthemselves as more civilized and superior to Pacific Islanders, andtheir role as transforming those people, the notion of equality that isarticulated in the humanism of the Methodists was not founded on theacceptance of difference but rather its erasure. Rather than acceptingPacific Islanders for what they were, the Methodists sought tosubsume them into a particular European model of humanity, ofwhich the missionary in the photograph is the exemplar. This seemingcontradiction at the heart of the colonial enterprise can be explainedas resulting from the concepts the missionaries took with them to thePacific. On the one hand, they believed that the unity of humanitybestowed a relationship of equality among people. On the other hand,they believed firmly in the righteousness of adult discipline and controlover errant children. As I have argued, they reinscribed the rhetoric ofhumanism within racialized and parental hierarchies, and applied theirpedagogic regimes towards reforming the Pacific Islanders. In thehorticultural metaphors they often used, this reformation wasthought of as cultivation through which tender seedlings are nursedto maturity through the guiding hands of the missionary. Thecombination of humanism as equality with the evaluation of othersthrough dualist hierarchies make it seem that the humanism of theMethodists was a form of dissimulation, but this is not so. Rather,what it enunciates is that the missionary project exhibits considerable
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fluidity and complexity in the way that seemingly obvious contra-dictions are reconciled and negotiated.
Acknowledgements
This article has benefited greatly from the insightful and constructivecomments of Roe Sybylla, Nicholas Thomas and the Ethnic and RacialStudies reviewers. The manuscript research and writing was under-taken at the Gender Relations Centre at the Australian NationalUniversity, first as a Visiting Fellow and then as an AustralianResearch Council Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow. I thank theUniting Church in Australia for granting access to the MethodistOverseas Mission archives, and the Mitchell Library, State Library ofNew South Wales, Sydney for permission to reproduce Figs 1 and 3.
Notes
1. However, for Maxwell the picture is slightly more complicated in that while most of the
photographers she examines dealt in colonial stereotypes, a minority produced images that
empowered the colonized.
2. My interest in this issue has been stimulated partly by Dyer’s (1997, p. 1) remark, in his
book White, that an interest in racial imagery is synonymous with being interested in ‘any
racial imagery other than that of white people’. This is a valuable work but not without its
own problems. Dyer tends to make the boundaries between black and white far too distinct.
As in much colonial discourse theory, Dyer tends to construe black and white in binary
terms, rather than as categories which can be seen as blurred and subject to crossing.
3. An alternative approach is to see photographs as containing valuable information that
can be used for historical reconstruction. This as been labelled by Geary (1990, p. 290) as the
‘documentary mode of interpretation’. Underlying this approach is a particular form of
empiricism which seeks to extract the truth value contained in photographs. Geary contrasts
the ‘documentary mode of interpretation’ with what she calls the ‘reflexive mode of
interpretation’. The latter involves an emphasis on photographs as the ‘products of the
photographers’ visions and preoccupations by focusing on the subjective nature of the
photographic record and reflecting about those who created it’ (1990, p. 290). This seems to
place an undue emphasis on the ‘subjective’ and fails to recognize that photographers
themselves are also participants in historical moments and this can be reflected in their
photographs.
4. Studies of colonialism are becoming increasingly sophisticated, turning a critical gaze
upon the colonizers themselves, scrutinizing and analysing the many ways colonizers were
positioned in the colonial project. Exemplary in this has been the work of Ann Stoler. See
Stoler (1989a, 1989b), Cooper and Stoler (1989, 1997), Stoler and Cooper (1989, 1997), and
also Thomas (1994) and Thomas and Eves (1999). There has, however, been little work that
explores such complexity in relation to colonial visuality and photography.
5. Since some of the material I draw on straddles some of these different organizations, for
simplicity I will refer to the missionaries I discuss by the much simpler designation as
Methodist.
6. See Gunson (1978) for a history of missionary presence in the Pacific from 1796�1860.
For works that cover the history of the Methodists in Papua New Guinea, see Williams
(1972), Threlfall (1975) and Langmore (1989). For works that cover the history of the
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Methodists in the Solomon Islands, see Williams (1972). For missionary accounts, see
Bromilow (1914, 1929), Brown (1908) and Danks (1914, 1933) and Goldie (1914).
7. In November 1888 the southern part of the main island of Papua New Guinea and a
number of the smaller island groups to the east of the mainland were annexed and declared a
colony of Britain. British New Guinea, as the colony was known, was called Papua by the
Australian government when it took over responsibility for administration in 1906. For
simplicity, in the remainder of this article I shall refer to it as Papua, even when the period I
discuss is prior to 1906. In 1884 the German government annexed the northeastern portion
of the mainland and a number of outlying islands, including the large islands of New Ireland,
New Britain and Bougainville. This area was referred to as German New Guinea until 1914
when Australia took control of it, thereafter referring to it as New Guinea and administering
it separately from Papua.
8. The High Commissioner was also the Governor of Fiji and as such was not involved
very closely in the day-to-day administration of the Protectorate. This was undertaken by a
Resident Commissioner, who in turn controlled field officials � District Commissioners or
District Officers (Belshaw 1950, p. 3). For a more comprehensive account of the
administration of the Solomon Islands than I can offer here, see Bennett (1987).
9. As part of the interest in colonial photography and other forms of colonial visual
representation there is an increasing scrutiny of mission photography. See for example Pels
(1988), Prins (1992), Thomas (1992, 1994), Jenkins (1994), Webb (1995a, 1995b, 1997).
10. George Brown’s photographs are to be found in Sydney, in the Australian Museum and
the Mitchell Library. Webb suggests that between 1876 and 1903 Brown produced
approximately 900 images during his residence and travel in Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, New
Britain, New Ireland and New Guinea (1995b, p. 59).
11. For discussions of the importance of before and after photographs to the missionary
project, see Eves (1996, p. 104), Thomas (1992) and Webb (1997, p. 14).
12. In relation to some similar photographs in the National Geographic, Lutz and Collins
suggest that the conjuncture between westerners and locals can serve the validating function
of proving that the author was there, that the account was first-hand rather than retrieved
from a photographic archive (1993, p. 373). While this may be true for some touristic and
journalistic photographs and even to some extent with missionaries, I think with the latter
case these sorts of photographic constructions require deeper probing.
13. Here and below I draw extensively on Wolfers’ excellent survey of these issues (1975).
14. As has been remarked in the Indian context by Appadurai, numbers were an important
part of the illusion of bureaucratic control, creating a sense of controllable indigenous reality,
which was probably never realized in practice (1993, p. 317). Appadurai suggests that such
enumerative strategies eventually helped to foment communitarian and nationalist identities
that undermined colonial rule (1993, p. 317).
15. A prevailing assumption with a number of recent studies of colonial photography has
been that the photographers were solely interested in difference and distance. See, for
example, Macintyre and MacKenzie (1992, p. 158) and Pinney (1992, p. 165).
16. See also Tayler who explores the photography of Everard im Thurn and argues that his
work is the antithesis of this form of dehumanizing photography (1992, p. 189).
17. Because this photograph accompanies Brown’s account of the establishment of the
mission at New Georgia in the Solomon Islands in May 1902, it may be assumed that it was
taken at that time, but it was actually taken during a much later trip by Brown in 1906
(although other similar photographs were taken on the 1902 trip, as I show later). I am
grateful to Allan Davidson for pointing out to me that the photographer Berry accompanied
Brown in 1906.
18. There is a clear gender dimension to the Methodist use of these photographs. While it
may be possible to photograph a black male child with a white female child holding hands, it
is not possible to photograph a black male adult and a white female adult holding hands.
And while in the archive there are some photographs that feature white men with black
women in obvious relationships of familiarity, these do not appear to have been used in
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missionary texts. Photographs that imply the possibility of intercultural sexual encounters
and relationships thus occupy the terrain of the forbidden.
19. This is not to deny the disciplinary aspect of proper bodily behaviour and appearance
(see Eves 1996).
20. It is actually unlikely that they have not been subjected to considerable Western
influence, since in his more detailed accounts Brown indicates that the white traders who have
been helping him have been working in the region for many years.
21. The journey was at the behest of the Mission Board which had instructed Brown to
make enquiries towards establishing a mission station there, following a resolution from the
General Conference of 1901 (Brown 1908, p. 519). See also Brown’s (1865�1909) letter books
for a slightly more detailed account. In a letter to his wife at this time, he writes that it will be
uphill work but will be all right in the end.
22. George Brown is also named and individualized, apparently like Wonge, but there may
be elements of asymmetry in the style of naming, with familiarity in relation to one and
formality in relation to the other.
23. In an approach not unlike mine, Street suggests that particular attention be paid to
context and to the content of contemporary ideas about other cultures (1992, p. 123).
24. Though pointing out that Brown’s own reception in this part of the world was of a
convivial nature.
25. Here, I have in mind Boer settlers to southern Africa, who saw the blacks as the
children of Ham and beyond redemption (Comaroff 1989, p. 673).
26. This view, central to the antislavery movement, was succinctly put by Prichard, the
Christian physician and opponent of slavery, when he wrote: ‘it appears that we may with a
high degree of probability draw the inference, that all the different races into which the
human species is divided, originated from one family’ (cited in Stepan 1987, p. 2; see Aho
1997, p. 64).
27. His work was influential not only to the study of languages by missionaries, but also to
the humanitarianism of the Anti-Slavery Society and the Aborigines Protection Society. A
similar form of Christian inspired humanitarianism also structured the ways in which many
officers of the Royal Navy in the Pacific dealt with Pacific Islanders in the nineteenth century.
Informed by what Sansom has called imperial benevolence, Britain’s naval representatives
saw their role in the Pacific as much more than a question of ‘policing’, but as enabling the
improvement of the Pacific Islanders (1998, p. 174).
28. This issue was debated among the Catholics during the Spanish conquest of South
America. See Hanke (1937, 1959).
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