Mapping the Pacific.

Abstract

This paper considers the history of the arbitrary colonial division of the Pacific region into the areas of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. While the terms have acquired significance attached to cultural and national identities, political agendas, and regional relationships, it is nevertheless important to understand their genealogy and the racist and imperialist understandings that are encoded within them. Reading maps as historical artifacts rather than as things that are fixed and immutable, introduces an awareness of the arbitrary nature of geographic divisions and opens discussion about the types of imperatives which drive territorial naming and claiming. With regard to the Pacific region they help students to understand some of the reasons why cultural and ethnic difference exists within national boundaries and why similarities might exist beyond this.