In 2016, Gordon Peake answers a job advertisement for a role with the government of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, a collection of islands on the eastern fringe of Papua New Guinea looking to strike out as a country of its own. In his day job he sees at first hand the challenges of trying to stand up new government systems. Away from the office he travels with former rebels, follows an anthropologist’s ghost and visits landmarks from the region’s conflict. In 2019, he witnesses joy and euphoria as the people of Bougainville vote in a referendum on their future. Out of these encounters emerges an unforgettable portrait of this potential nation-in-waiting. Blending narrative history, travelogue and personal reminiscences, Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation is an engaging memoir as well as an insightful meditation on the realities of nation-making and international development.

In 2016, Gordon Peake answers a job advertisement for a role with the government of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, a collection of islands on the eastern fringe of Papua New Guinea looking to strike out as a country of its own. In his day job he sees at first hand the challenges of trying to stand up new government systems. Away from the office he travels with former rebels, follows an anthropologist's ghost and visits landmarks from the region's conflict. In 2019, he witnesses joy and euphoria as the people of Bougainville vote in a referendum on their future. Out of these encounters emerges an unforgettable portrait of this potential nation-in-waiting. Blending narrative history, travelogue and personal reminiscences, Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation is an engaging memoir as well as an insightful meditation on the realities of nation-making and international development.

A Theory of De Facto States offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of de facto states — political communities that manifest forms of statehood in international politics but lack international legal recognition — zooming in on two prominent examples, Somaliland and Kosovo. Employing a thorough understanding of classical realist theories of international relations, this book provides a fresh critique of the common ways in which existing research tends to identify the ostensible state features of these communities. In contrast to the prevalent portrayals of such features in terms of international legal, discursive, and/or everyday logics, this book argues that de facto states can be most fundamentally characterised as exceptional polities in international relations. Showcasing how the statehood and sovereignty of de facto states is based in international political crises, this book concludes that these entities function as recurring disruptions of any supposed international political order. A Theory of De Facto States will therefore be of interest to researchers of secession, de facto statehood, and International Relations theory alike.

Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, this book examines the challenges youth and their teachers face in the post-conflict settings of Bougainville and Solomon Islands. Youth in these places must reconcile with the violent past of their parents’ generation while also learning how to live with people once on opposing ‘sides'. This book traces how students and their teachers form connections to the past and each other that cut through the forces that might divide them. The findings illustrate novel ways to think about the potential for education to assist post-conflict recovery.

This study addresses the neglected history of the people of the Federated States of Micronesia’s (FSM) engagement with the outside world. Situated in the northwest Pacific, FSM’s strategic location has led to four colonial rulers. Histories of FSM to date have been largely written by sympathetic outsiders. Indigenous perspectives of FSM history have been largely absent from the main corpus of historical literature. A new generation of Micronesian scholars are starting to write their own history from Micronesian perspectives and using Micronesian forms of history. This book argues that Micronesians have been dealing successfully with the outside world throughout the colonial era in ways colonial authorities were often unaware of. This argument is sustained by examination of oral histories, secondary sources, interviews, field research and the personal experience of a person raised in the Mortlock Islands of Chuuk State. It reconstructs how Micronesian internal processes for social stability and mutual support endured, rather than succumbing to the different waves of colonisation. This study argues that colonisation did not destroy Micronesian cultures and identities, but that Micronesians recontextualised the changing conditions to suit their own circumstances. Their success rested on the indigenous doctrines of adaptation, assimilation and accommodation deeply rooted in the kinship doctrine of eaea fengen (sharing) and alilis fengen (assisting each other). These values pervade the Constitution of the FSM, which formally defines the modern identity of its indigenous peoples, reasserting and perpetuating Micronesian values and future continuity.

WINNER OF THE 2014 ACT BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD At the stroke of midnight on 20 May 2002, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became the first new nation of the 21st century. From that moment, those who fought for independence have faced a challenge even bigger than shaking off Indonesian occupation: running a country of their own. Beloved Land picks up the story where world attention left off. Blending narrative history, travelogue, and personal reminiscences based on four years of living in the country, Gordon Peake shows the daunting hurdles that the people of Timor-Leste must overcome to build a nation from scratch, and how much the international community has to learn if it is to help rather than hinder the process. Family politics, squabbles, power struggles, old romances, and even older grudges are woven into life in this land of intrigue and rumours in the most remarkable ways. Yet above all, Beloved Land is a story about the one million East Timorese who speak nearly 20 different languages, and who are exuberantly building their nation. Written with verve and deep affection, the book introduces a set of colourful Timorese and international characters, and brings them to life unforgettably. PRAISE FOR GORDON PEAKE ‘Besides being a political diagnosis, it’s an absorbing piece of travel writing, vivid and full of well-turned character sketches … The mixture of forthrightness and warmth, and knowledge, makes this book not simply informative but in a quiet way exemplary.’ The Saturday Age ‘Peake’s book is a poignant and invariably deadpan mix of anecdote and analysis, and in my view is the best thing written in English about the country in many a long year.’ The Edge Review

This book offers a wide-ranging survey of Australian engagement with the Pacific Islands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through over 100 hitherto largely unexplored accounts of travel, the author explores how representations of the Pacific Islands in letters, diaries, reminiscences, books, newspapers and magazines contributed to popular ideas of the Pacific Islands in Australia. It offers a range of valuable insights into continuities and changes in Australian regional perspectives, showing that ordinary Australians were more closely connected to the Pacific Islands than has previously been acknowledged. Addressing the theme of travel as a historical, literary and imaginative process, this cultural history probes issues of nation and empire, race and science, commerce and tourism by focusing on significant episodes and encounters in history. This is a foundational text for future studies of Australia’s relations with the Pacific, and histories of travel generally.

Malaita is one of the major islands in the Solomons Archipelago and has the largest population in the Solomon Islands nation. Its people have an undeserved reputation for conservatism and aggression. Making Mala argues that in essence Malaitans are no different from other Solomon Islanders, and that their dominance, both in numbers and their place in the modern nation, can be explained through their recent history. A grounding theme of the book is its argument that, far than being conservative, Malaitan religions and cultures have always been adaptable and have proved remarkably flexible in accommodating change. This has been the secret of Malaitan success. Malaitans rocked the foundations of the British protectorate during the protonationalist Maasina Rule movement in the 1940s and the early 1950s, have heavily engaged in internal migration, particularly to urban areas, and were central to the ‘Tension Years’ between 1998 and 2003. Making Mala reassesses Malaita’s history, demolishes undeserved tropes and uses historical and cultural analyses to explain Malaitans’ place in the Solomon Islands nation today.

How can India become a great country once again, is the question explored in this book. In the past, India had significant achievements in science, technology, mathematics and business. A failure to build robust institutional networks of information and trust and indifference of the state to business communities, brought all that crashing down within a generation. Many of these historical patterns persist till today. The ability to create wealth has everything to do with such networks. There was never any shortage of innovation in India. What was lacking was the ability to learn from their own experience. The building of learning networks and a learning ecosystem that could be used by people to leverage success – this is what is needed to unlock the huge talent pool that India possesses. This book addresses young, educated and aspiring Indians in different walks of life who are interested in contemporary issues relating to nation, society and economy. It puts forward some solutions to the problems that India faces. It would be of interest to anyone who would like to know how history can teach us to re-write the Indian growth story and to re-build a great nation. The book could also be used as reading material for students of history, political science, public administration, business administration, in under-graduate and post-graduate classes. Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

This work is a history of the Pacific, the ocean that became a theatre of power and conflict shaped by the politics of Europe and the economic background of Spanish America. There could only be a concept of &�the Pacific once the limits and lineaments of the ocean were set and this was undeniably the work of Europeans. Fifty years after the Conquista, Nueva Espaą and Peru were the bases from which the ocean was turned into virtually a Spanish lake.