A Good Moral Effect?: Local opposition and colonial persistence in Malakula, New Hebrides, 1875-1918

Physical clashes between Europeans and Indigenous populations across the islands of the New Hebrides/Nouvelles-Hébrides (now Vanuatu) date from the earliest contacts. As outsiders settled there from the 1840s and European empires encroached on and carved up the Pacific Islands, such clashes became more frequent and more lethal. On the island of Malakula, effective opposition to colonization and associated punitive expeditions continued for generations. This paper provides a short history of such clashes and the underlying influences which led to a state of colonial exhaustion in relation to punitive expeditions against Malakulans.