HIS31910 Murder in the South Seas

Academic Year 2018/2019

Between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War, the world became increasingly interconnected, as a dense web of global and imperial networks, ideas, and institutions emerged. In the middle of this era of change, on 20 September 1871, John Coleridge Patteson, bishop of Melanesia and the leading Anglican missionary in the South Pacific, landed on Nukapu, a tiny island in the Santa Cruz group. Later that day some of the islanders killed Patteson. The murder, its causes, and its consequences reveal much about the new world being forged in the middle of the nineteenth century. This module will provide context and explanation for the killing of Patteson - the presence of missionaries, the agency of islanders in revolutionary economic conditions, the growth of plantation economies following the American Civil War, the politics of labour supply, the reaction of humanitarians, the development of international law, and the relationship between imperial expansion and globalization. The lectures will provide broad context, while in the seminars we will examine primary sources, including newspapers, official reports, and memoirs.