Pacific Islands History: A One-Lifetime ‘Sunset Industry’

Abstract

In the unprecedented expansion of historical studies after the Second World War, the ‘Third World’ as it later came to be called, attracted new interest, not just as places of European imperialist activity, but as places worthy of study in their own right. Rather surprisingly, the remote and insignificant Pacific Islands were amongst the earliest to come under this new gaze, mainly because of Australian security concerns. Pacific history thus achieved a precocious institutional identity in a dedicated Department of Pacific History at the new Australian National University, intended for research and post-graduate training only. Its founding member and professor was J. W. Davidson, appointed in 1950.