Of field encounters and metropolitan debates

Research and the making and meaning of the Melanesian 'race' during demographic decline

Abstract

In this article, I trace the significance of Melanesians' psychological and intellectual capacities for the making and meaning of racial and demographic knowledge from 1900 to 1935. I begin with descriptions of field encounters in the New Hebrides to discuss how knowledge about race and depopulation was collected, and then move to the meanings of the Melanesian race in
researchers' reports of depopulation in the New Hebrides. I conclude with a discussion of how knowledge of Melanesians figured in metropolitan debates on race and demographic decline. For the historiography of 'race' or 'human variation', depopulation offers an interesting context in which to explore notions of 'race' because population decline was recognised to be such a complex issue. Depopulation provided a context in which to debate 'hybridity', 'racial mixing' and concomitant concepts like heredity, the environment and cultural adaptation. Through an understanding of what Melanesians meant to these researchers in both field encounters and demographic debates, I argue, we can see both the malleability of racial thinking and the intransigence of racial categorisation at that time.