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As I wrote this review, Oxfam Australia was running a campaign to grow a drought-tolerant pineapple in Mozambique for people to eat, to trade for vegetables or to sell at the market. Pineapples ‘truly are the new superfood’, helping in the global fight against poverty, Oxfam declared. Meanings for food are malleable, yet I had never considered pineapple a superfood before. In A Pacific Industry, Richard A. Hawkins explores how pineapple was another potential ‘king’ crop in Hawai‘i – a superfood, perhaps, but its status in this context derived from the profits to be made from its industrial manufacture and marketing to well-off ‘First World’ consumers rather than from its role in supporting or nourishing some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.

On a tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in 1909, assistant undersecretary of state for the colonies Sir Charles Lucas ventured to suggest 'that in Australia the "bush" must necessarily have a greater effect on the future than in New Zealand, and that in New Zealand the sea will play a greater part in the call of the race than in Australia'. The 'back blocks', he remarked, 'have more especially fashioned Australian life and character'. Although brief and impressionistic, his assessment of the relationship between geography, identity and the course of history still resonates today. The bush is a defining symbol of the Australian imagined community, an enduring source of scholarly and popular inspiration and debate.2 Yet, as the Australian national anthem proclaims, the island continent is also 'girt by sea'. In light of Lucas's predictions about the formative influence of the sea in New Zealand, it is perhaps striking to note that while there have been a number of landmark Australian maritime histories, notably Geoffrey Blainey A Tyranny of Distance (1966), John Bach A Maritime History of Australia (1976), and Frank Broeze An Island Nation (2000), New Zealand boasts no equivalent.

A building of particular note stands at the intersection of Dunedin's Water and Cumberland streets. Unlike other well-preserved examples of the city's rich architectural heritage, upgraded for new offices or converted into inner-city apartments, it is now largely unoccupied. Broken windows and grime-streaked paintwork speak of years of neglect. This building was constructed int he early 1880s, a time of unparalleled growth and prosperity in Dunedin as the city capitalised on the rush to Central Otago following the discovery of gold in 1861. The handsome solidity of the original structure embodies the certainty and progressive vision of the city's political and business leaders. It was from these premises, centrally located in the railway, harbour and exchange precinct, the city's former commercial and transport hub, that the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand (USSCo.) commanded a vast network of steamers, port branches and maritime labour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today this building stands as a rather tires remnant of what was one of teh largest and most important maritime enterprises in the history of the South Pacific.

A building of particular note stands at the intersection of Dunedin's Water and Cumberland streets. Unlike other well-preserved examples of the city's rich architectural heritage, upgraded for new offices or converted into inner-city apartments, it is now largely unoccupied. Broken windows and grime-streaked paintwork speak of years of neglect. This building was constructed int he early 1880s, a time of unparalleled growth and prosperity in Dunedin as the city capitalised on the rush to Central Otago following the discovery of gold in 1861. The handsome solidity of the original structure embodies the certainty and progressive vision of the city's political and business leaders. It was from these premises, centrally located in the railway, harbour and exchange precinct, the city's former commercial and transport hub, that the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand (USSCo.) commanded a vast network of steamers, port branches and maritime labour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today this building stands as a rather tires remnant of what was one of teh largest and most important maritime enterprises in the history of the South Pacific.

On a tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in 1909, assistant undersecretary of state for the colonies Sir Charles Lucas ventured to suggest 'that in Australia the "bush" must necessarily have a greater effect on the future than in New Zealand, and that in New Zealand the sea will play a greater part in the call of the race than in Australia'. The 'back blocks', he remarked, 'have more especially fashioned Australian life and character'. Although brief and impressionistic, his assessment of the relationship between geography, identity and the course of history still resonates today. The bush is a defining symbol of the Australian imagined community, an enduring source of scholarly and popular inspiration and debate.2 Yet, as the Australian national anthem proclaims, the island continent is also 'girt by sea'. In light of Lucas's predictions about the formative influence of the sea in New Zealand, it is perhaps striking to note that while there have been a number of landmark Australian maritime histories, notably Geoffrey Blainey A Tyranny of Distance (1966), John Bach A Maritime History of Australia (1976), and Frank Broeze An Island Nation (2000), New Zealand boasts no equivalent.

In examining the significance of mobility in the long sweep of human history in the Pacific, the world's largest ocean where seventy per cent of the world's islands are to be found, one cannot but begin with the words of the late Tongan scholar, writer and visionary, Epeli Hau’ofa. In 1993 Hau’ofa proposed a new way of thinking about the region he called Oceania. He critiqued the limitations of an imposed regional imaginary, fostered by imperial rulers, western diplomats, academics, aid donors and the like, which emphasised the smallness, isolation and dependency of tiny islands in a far sea. Starting instead with the ways indigenous inhabitants understood their own environment, he embraced the sea as an expansive, active, connecting space, rather than a dividing element. Regarding both water and land equally as sites of history, Oceania is, he argued, ‘Our Sea of Islands’.

In examining the significance of mobility in the long sweep of human history in the Pacific, the world's largest ocean where seventy per cent of the world's islands are to be found, one cannot but begin with the words of the late Tongan scholar, writer and visionary, Epeli Hau’ofa. In 1993 Hau’ofa proposed a new way of thinking about the region he called Oceania. He critiqued the limitations of an imposed regional imaginary, fostered by imperial rulers, western diplomats, academics, aid donors and the like, which emphasised the smallness, isolation and dependency of tiny islands in a far sea. Starting instead with the ways indigenous inhabitants understood their own environment, he embraced the sea as an expansive, active, connecting space, rather than a dividing element. Regarding both water and land equally as sites of history, Oceania is, he argued, ‘Our Sea of Islands’.

The late-nineteenth-century brochure for the Australian and American Line (A & A Line) charts the trans-Pacific leg of the international mail route. The integrated passage by steamer and train cuts a solid red track across the globe, with the kangaroo, bald eagle and lion, the emblematic creatures of the main countries connected by this route, poised dramatically on the globe's top edge. In the bottom quarter a steamer is depicted in its oceanic element, with the thick black smoke billowing from its funnels commingling with the fiery plumes spewing forth from the Kilauea volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and threatening to engulf the very world. This adds depth to an otherwise empty ocean, depicted as smooth, blue, featureless expanse marked only by the ports of call at Auckland and Honolulu.

In examining the significance of mobility in the long sweep of human history in the Pacific, the world's largest ocean where seventy per cent of the world's islands are to be found, one cannot but begin with the words of the late Tongan scholar, writer and visionary, Epeli Hau’ofa. In 1993 Hau’ofa proposed a new way of thinking about the region he called Oceania. He critiqued the limitations of an imposed regional imaginary, fostered by imperial rulers, western diplomats, academics, aid donors and the like, which emphasised the smallness, isolation and dependency of tiny islands in a far sea. Starting instead with the ways indigenous inhabitants understood their own environment, he embraced the sea as an expansive, active, connecting space, rather than a dividing element. Regarding both water and land equally as sites of history, Oceania is, he argued, ‘Our Sea of Islands’.

The late-nineteenth-century brochure for the Australian and American Line (A & A Line) charts the trans-Pacific leg of the international mail route. The integrated passage by steamer and train cuts a solid red track across the globe, with the kangaroo, bald eagle and lion, the emblematic creatures of the main countries connected by this route, poised dramatically on the globe's top edge. In the bottom quarter a steamer is depicted in its oceanic element, with the thick black smoke billowing from its funnels commingling with the fiery plumes spewing forth from the Kilauea volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and threatening to engulf the very world. This adds depth to an otherwise empty ocean, depicted as smooth, blue, featureless expanse marked only by the ports of call at Auckland and Honolulu.