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Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay (1846–88), the Russian explorer, naturalist and anthropologist, dedicated 12 years of his short life to field research in Oceania, from 1871 to 1883. Here we provide the first translation into English of an important but unfinished essay by Maclay, written early in the course of his travels, between 1871 and 1872, and titled 'Why I chose the is[land] of New Guinea as the base of my voyage to the is[lands] of the Pacific Ocean?' Intended as a draft introduction to his major book, the final manuscript of which was later lost, the essay was neither completed nor published during his lifetime. Our introduction sets Maclay's essay within the contexts of the development of ethnographic method, European knowledge about Papuans and New Guinea, and his own unfolding research programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In introducing a collection of papers deriving from a workshop dedicated to Pacific film and history, this article takes the opportunity to broadly map the disciplinary and textual terrain of professional historians' engagement with the cinema. The papers introduced by this essay were selected from the first workshop dedicated to the topic of film and history in the Pacific, held in Canberra in 2007, which brought together film-makers and scholars from a wide variety of backgrounds. Despite pioneering work in the 1980s and early 1990s, historical scholarship concerned with film in the Pacific has been sporadic and remains relatively undeveloped, in contrast to research on film in other regions or the growing study of the relationships between film, colonialism and postcolonial identity. The article first reviews recent literature on history and film, and advocates further exploration of the distinctive 'history-making properties of this medium. A survey of the evolution of cinematic imaginaries for the Pacific highlights the development of colonial technologies and documentary traditions, and concludes with reflections on the growing body of film made by Islanders, marking the emergence of a new range of visual sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note describes the results of research into the provenance of a small collection of human remains currently held at the Natural History Museum in London. These remains consist of four skulls, which almost certainly derive from individuals of the Amungme community in what is now the Indonesian province of Papua (Irian Jaya). The precise circumstances of the original collection of these skulls by the Wollaston Expedition to Dutch New Guinea of 1912–13 have not previously been clarified, and evidence is offered here to suggest that the silence on this matter has been deliberate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the different existing genres of West New Guinea history. Lack of community consultation by consultative political leaders; Broad disregard for indigenous voices in the writing of history; Evolution of West New Guinea's cartographic profile; Parallel history of contest over the naming of West New Guinea.