Doug Munro
Biographic Data
| ID | 78609 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Doug Munro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Doug |
| FAMILY NAME | Munro |
| SIGNATURE | MUNRO D |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7681-6389 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Remembering Brij V. Lal
The present article is a slight reworking of a Zoom presentation at the book launching ceremony of Dire l’engagisme dans l’océan Indien: histoire, circulations, pluralitès , ed. Céline Ramsamy-Giancone (Saint-Denis, Réunion: TER’LA Éditions, 2025) at the University of Mauritius, 12 August 2025. It briefly surveys the life and work of the late Brij Lal, a historian of indenture and of contemporary Fiji, from the standpoint of a close friend and co…
Colin Newbury (1929–2025)
Colin Walter Newbury was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 4 March 1929.1 His father, Walter, had survived the Western Front as an under-age army volunteer as well as the Spanish flu pandemic and ma...
Brij V. Lal & K.L. Gillion: The apprentice and the sorcerer
Brij Lal was mentored by Ken Gillion during the former’s doctoral work at the Australian National University in the late-1970s. The resulting thesis was a pathbreaking quantitative analysis of the 45,439 North Indians who went to Fiji as indentured labourers between 1879 and 1916 – centering on such variables as the places of origin, their age, gender, marital status, caste, and family circumstances. 1 The much-reduced monograph that derived from…
Australian Political Science in the 1960s: Establishing the Discipline of Politics at Flinders University
The appointment of foundation professors and establishing Departments/Disciplines in the new Australian universities of the 1960s could be fraught, as the example of Political Theory and Institutions at Flinders University demonstrates. It is worth examining the dynamics of this particular case study because it throws light on the state of Political Science Australia‐wide and the nature of the academic job market at the time, as well as revealing…
Chicanery: Senior Academic Appointments in Antipodean Anthropology, 1920–1960
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors’ reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine…
Chicanery: Senior Academic Appointments in Antipodean Anthropology, 1920–1960
Chicanery: Senior Academic Appointments in Antipodean Anthropology, 1920-1960
Prologue
As a professional field of inquiry, social anthropology emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, though it had many progenitors.It evolved from a field of sister disciplines and developed complex relationships with these.A racially informed psychology and colonial-experienced Christian mission are two to mention.Some of our cohort had an interest in or studied psychology, such as Ralph Piddington, who was awarded a Master of Arts in ant…
Plantation Workers: Resistance and Accommodation
Brij Lal: Confronting Fiji’s coup culture with courage and conviction
Brij Lal: confronting Fiji’s coup culture with courage and conviction." The Round Table, 111(1), pp. 133–134
The Tinker-Gillion Controversy in Indo-Fijian Indenture Historiography
In 1975 the historian K.L. Gillion diminished his reputation among scholars in Fiji with a harsh review of Hugh Tinker’s A New System of Slavery. The ensuing controversy was unusual in that neither of the principals participated. Instead, local scholars entered the fray, overwhelmingly in support of Tinker, and this despite Tinker and Gillion being in agreement that indenture was an oppressive labour system. Fuelling the controversy were the pass…
True to his vocation
Oliver MacDonagh: Foundation Professor of History at Flinders University
Oliver MacDonagh, a distinguished historian of Britain and Ireland, was appointed in 1963 to the foundation chair of history at what became the Flinders University of South Australia. The present article dissects the process of his elevation to the Flinders chair, at a time when senior academic appointments were handled differently than today, and discusses MacDonagh’s work at his new place of abode. As one of the new universities in Australia du…
Clio’s Lives: Biographies and Autobiographies of Historians
Including contributions from leading scholars in the field from both Australia and North America, this collection explores diverse approaches to writing the lives of historians and ways of assessing the importance of doing so. Beginning with the writing of autobiographies by historians, the volume then turns to biographical studies, both of historians whose writings were in
Bearing Witness: Essays in honour of Brij V.Lal
Brij V. Lal is a singular scholar. His work has spanned disciplines-from history to politics-and genres-from conventional monograph history, to participant history, political commentary, encyclopaedia, biography and faction. Brij is without doubt the most eminent scholar Fiji has ever produced. He also remains the most significant public intellectual of his country, despite
Michael Turnbull, G. R. Elton, and the Making of the Practice of History
In 1964, the editor of Sydney University Press, Michael Turnbull, approached G. R. Elton to write the book that became The practice of history ( 1967). Remarkably, a famous University of Cambridge historian was persuaded to embark on what Turnbull correctly sensed would be an influential and profitable text, and this for an obscure and recently established publishing house located at the other end of the earth. Were it not for Turnbull, The pract…
We Haven’t Abandoned the Project’: The Founding of The Journal of Pacific History
Scholars at War: Australasian Social Scientists, 1939-1945
Examines the effect World War II had of the careers of Australasian social scientists. It links a group of scholars through geography, transnational, national and personal scholarly networks, and shared intellectual traditions, explores their use and contextualizes their experiences and contributions within wider examinations of the role of intellectuals in war
Scholars at War: Australasian Social Scientists, 1939–1945
Scholars at War is the first scholarly publication to examine the effect World War II had on the careers of Australasian social scientists. It links a group of scholars through geography, transnational, national and personal scholarly networks, and shared intellectual traditions, explores their use, and contextualizes their experiences and contributions within wider
Leach would be first rate – if you could get him’ 1: Edmund Leach and the Australian National University, 1956
In June 1956, after an extensive search, Edmund Leach was offered the Chair of Anthropology at the Australian National University. Leach was brought to Canberra and wooed but he declined to accept the appointment. Contemporaries were never quite sure why Leach turned down his first offer of a chair. Recourse to institutional and personal papers reveals that family impediments rather than professional misgivings ensured that Leach would not take u…
Biographies of Historians – or, The Cliographer's Craft
There is a recent named sub-set of biographies—cliographies—dealing with historians. This article will explore who are the subjects and authors of cliographies and what are their nature. My quest is both normative and explanatory in seeking to analyse the practices and issues of these works, not least the way cliographies are changing, and what cliographies might tell us about the historical discipline. I will argue that cliographies, while not a…
Mary Boyd, 1921–2010
Islanders
Exhibitions
Australian Aboriginal anthropology at the crossroads: Finding a successor to A. P. Elkin, 1955
A. P. Elkin, who had dominated Australian anthropology since his appointment to the Chair of Anthropology at the University of Sydney in 1934, was concerned that coinciding with his retirement in 1955 was the possibility of the demise of Aboriginal anthropology as the core of the Sydney department. He thus attempted to influence the University authorities in their selection of his chosen successor, Ronald Murray Berndt. Such a selection would ens…
The Labor Trade in Melanesians to Queensland: An Historiography Essay
Journal Article The Labor Trade in Melanesians to Queensland: An Historiography Essay Get access Doug Munro Doug Munro School of Social and Economic Development, University of the South Pacific, P.O. Box 1168, Suva, Fiji Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 28, Issue 3, Spring 1995, Pages 609–627, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/28.3.609 Published: 01 March 1995
The Ocean Island (Banaba) and Nauru labour trade 1900-1940
Shlomowitz Ralph, Munro Doug. The Ocean Island (Banaba) and Nauru labour trade 1900-1940. In: Journal de la Société des océanistes, 94, 1992-1. pp. 103-117
The pacific islands labour trade: Approaches, methodologies, debates
(1993). The pacific islands labour trade: Approaches, methodologies, debates. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 87-108
From company rule to consular control: Gilbert island labourers on German plantations in Samoa, 1867–96
Australian Aboriginal anthropology at the crossroads: Finding a successor to A. P. Elkin, 1955
A. P. Elkin, who had dominated Australian anthropology since his appointment to the Chair of Anthropology at the University of Sydney in 1934, was concerned that coinciding with his retirement in 1955 was the possibility of the demise of Aboriginal anthropology as the core of the Sydney department. He thus attempted to influence the University authorities in their selection of his chosen successor, Ronald Murray Berndt. Such a selection would ens…
Who ‘Owns’ pacific history? Reflections on the insider/outsider dichotomy
(1994). Who ‘Owns’ pacific history? Reflections on the insider/outsider dichotomy. The Journal of Pacific History: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 232-237
The Cargo of the Montserrat: Gilbertese Labor in Guatemalan Coffee, 1890-1908
Upon the plantations themselves the laborers are not so badly treated, for there they are the property of their owners, and men treat their own property well, especially when it is of considerable value. But they are brought from a thoroughly healthy climate, where disease is almost unknown, to a feverstricken region. Within twelve months their numbers will probably be reduced to one-third, and at the expiration of the three years a woefully dimi…
The Tinker-Gillion Controversy in Indo-Fijian Indenture Historiography
In 1975 the historian K.L. Gillion diminished his reputation among scholars in Fiji with a harsh review of Hugh Tinker’s A New System of Slavery. The ensuing controversy was unusual in that neither of the principals participated. Instead, local scholars entered the fray, overwhelmingly in support of Tinker, and this despite Tinker and Gillion being in agreement that indenture was an oppressive labour system. Fuelling the controversy were the pass…
J.W. Davidson at Cambridge University: Some Student Evaluations
Before arriving in Canberra in 1950 as the foundation Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University, J.W. (Jim) Davidson (1915-1973) was an Oxbridge don and author of a small book on The Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council (1948). A New Zealander by birth and upbringing, Davidson arrived at Cambridge in late 1938 on a Strathcona Scholarship and embarked on a PhD dissertation at St John's College, becoming a Fellow in 1945 …
J.W. Davidson and Western Samoa University politics and the travails of a Constitutional Adviser
J.W. Davidson, the foundation Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University (1950-73) is best remembered as the scholar-activist who championed the cause of indigenous self-determination in the Pacific. His most important assignment involved being the Samoans' Constitutional Adviser in the run-up to independance (1959-61), and much of his later reputation rests on his book recounting the experience. What is not realised is th…
On Being a Historian of Tuvalu: Further Thoughts on Methodology and Mindset
Over twenty years ago, I started writing a doctoral dissertation on the history of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, an exercise that has had enduring professional and personal repercussions. Tuvalu is an atoll archipelago near the junction of the equator and the international date line, and is identified on older maps as the southern portion of a British dependency, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony—now the independent nations of Kiribati…
The Peruvian slavers in Tuvalu, 1863: How many did they kidnap
Munro Doug. The Peruvian slavers in Tuvalu, 1863 : how many did they kidnap ?. In: Journal de la Société des océanistes, 90, 1990-1. pp. 43-46
German labour policy and the partition of the Western Pacific: The view from Samoa ∗
Discusses the competition for labour supplies in the 1880s in the Pacific Islands. Focuses on the role of a German firm, the Deutsche Handels-und Plantagen Gesellschaft der Sudee-Inselm zu Hamburg (DHPG) in Samoa. Outlines its relationship with the British authorities. Examines the influence of DHPG and its policies in Samoa. Looks at its political and personal contacts
From the archives: Pacific material in the H. E. Holland papers
Bibliography of current publications
Cultural/Ethnology: The Aboriginal Tasmanians. Lyndall Ryan
Towards Colonial Protectorates: The case of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
From company rule to consular control: Gilbert island labourers on German plantations in Samoa, 1867–96
Compagnie et consulat: Lois germaniques et emploi des travailleurs sur les plantations de Samoa, 1864-1914
Compagnie et Consulat. Plantation development in Samoa until the outbreak of the First World War was overwhelmingly dominated by the Hamburg firm of J. C. Godeffroy & Sohn and their commercial successor, the DHPG. Far from being a triumph of free enterprise capitalism, the company's Samoan plantations were only successful because the directors in Berlin and the managers on-the-spot so assiduously and successfully courted state support. During the…
The Peruvian slavers in Tuvalu, 1863: How many did they kidnap
Munro Doug. The Peruvian slavers in Tuvalu, 1863 : how many did they kidnap ?. In: Journal de la Société des océanistes, 90, 1990-1. pp. 43-46
German labour policy and the partition of the Western Pacific: The view from Samoa ∗
Discusses the competition for labour supplies in the 1880s in the Pacific Islands. Focuses on the role of a German firm, the Deutsche Handels-und Plantagen Gesellschaft der Sudee-Inselm zu Hamburg (DHPG) in Samoa. Outlines its relationship with the British authorities. Examines the influence of DHPG and its policies in Samoa. Looks at its political and personal contacts
The Ocean Island (Banaba) and Nauru labour trade 1900-1940
Shlomowitz Ralph, Munro Doug. The Ocean Island (Banaba) and Nauru labour trade 1900-1940. In: Journal de la Société des océanistes, 94, 1992-1. pp. 103-117
Conversion and Church formation in tuvalu∗
Labour in the South Pacific
INTRODUCTIONJacqueline Leckie and Doug Munro1. PREAMBLE Jacqueline LeckieLabour and work is such an essential aspect of people's lives, yet in the Pacific, it has escaped attention as a focus of academic interest. This anomaly is even more striking when we consider that so many Pacific Islanders' lives have been shaped by conditions of labour, particularly through processes of colonial and capitalist expansion into the region. The neglect has bee…
Labour in the South Pacific
Patterns of Resistance and Accommodation
The pacific islands labour trade: Approaches, methodologies, debates
(1993). The pacific islands labour trade: Approaches, methodologies, debates. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 87-108
The Cargo of the Montserrat: Gilbertese Labor in Guatemalan Coffee, 1890-1908
Upon the plantations themselves the laborers are not so badly treated, for there they are the property of their owners, and men treat their own property well, especially when it is of considerable value. But they are brought from a thoroughly healthy climate, where disease is almost unknown, to a feverstricken region. Within twelve months their numbers will probably be reduced to one-third, and at the expiration of the three years a woefully dimi…
Who ‘Owns’ pacific history? Reflections on the insider/outsider dichotomy
(1994). Who ‘Owns’ pacific history? Reflections on the insider/outsider dichotomy. The Journal of Pacific History: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 232-237
The Labor Trade in Melanesians to Queensland: An Historiography Essay
Journal Article The Labor Trade in Melanesians to Queensland: An Historiography Essay Get access Doug Munro Doug Munro School of Social and Economic Development, University of the South Pacific, P.O. Box 1168, Suva, Fiji Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 28, Issue 3, Spring 1995, Pages 609–627, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/28.3.609 Published: 01 March 1995
The Vaitupu Company Revisited: Reflections and Second Thoughts on Methodology and Mindset
It has been said that “Old movies seen again after many years seem different not because they have altered but because we have.” For the same reason, a rereading of older historical texts will convey different meanings, and reveal deficiencies and perhaps even profundities that were not initially apparent. In this paper, these observations are applied to a piece of research that was special to me at the time. I now see more clearly the extent to …
The Covenant Makers: Islander Missionaries in the Pacific
On Being a Historian of Tuvalu: Further Thoughts on Methodology and Mindset
Over twenty years ago, I started writing a doctoral dissertation on the history of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, an exercise that has had enduring professional and personal repercussions. Tuvalu is an atoll archipelago near the junction of the equator and the international date line, and is identified on older maps as the southern portion of a British dependency, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony—now the independent nations of Kiribati…
J.W. Davidson at Cambridge University: Some Student Evaluations
Before arriving in Canberra in 1950 as the foundation Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University, J.W. (Jim) Davidson (1915-1973) was an Oxbridge don and author of a small book on The Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council (1948). A New Zealander by birth and upbringing, Davidson arrived at Cambridge in late 1938 on a Strathcona Scholarship and embarked on a PhD dissertation at St John's College, becoming a Fellow in 1945 …
J.W. Davidson and Western Samoa University politics and the travails of a Constitutional Adviser
J.W. Davidson, the foundation Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University (1950-73) is best remembered as the scholar-activist who championed the cause of indigenous self-determination in the Pacific. His most important assignment involved being the Samoans' Constitutional Adviser in the run-up to independance (1959-61), and much of his later reputation rests on his book recounting the experience. What is not realised is th…
A More Democratic Overlapping Consensus: On Rawls and Reasonable Pluralism
Books
This book makes me wonder why Australian \nhistorians have so readily agreed to \na history that starts at 1788. Perhaps the \nFirst Fleet's entertaining publishing enterprises \nhave been too seductive. Whereas \nhistorians may doubt that it is possible \nto write history without archival word \nmiddens, archaeologists doubt that one \ncan write without material discoveries. \nSources and methodological expertise \nhave created a major chasm bet…
Australian Aboriginal anthropology at the crossroads: Finding a successor to A. P. Elkin, 1955
A. P. Elkin, who had dominated Australian anthropology since his appointment to the Chair of Anthropology at the University of Sydney in 1934, was concerned that coinciding with his retirement in 1955 was the possibility of the demise of Aboriginal anthropology as the core of the Sydney department. He thus attempted to influence the University authorities in their selection of his chosen successor, Ronald Murray Berndt. Such a selection would ens…
History (29 works) · Political science (21 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs (20 works) · Australian History and Society (17 works) · Law (16 works) · History (11 works) · Geography (10 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Law (9 works)