Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0279/02796.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 43KB | 673 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02796}
$Pretitle{294Q}
$Title{Papua New Guinea
Chapter 2.    The New Postwar Order}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Mark Easton}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{new
papua
government
party
guinea
bougainville
local
somare
highlands
administration}
$Date{1984}
$Log{Mekeo People, Part 1*0279601.scf
Mekeo People, Part 2*0279602.scf
Children Holding National Flag*0279603.scf
}
Country:     Papua New Guinea
Book:        Oceania, An Area Study: Papua New Guinea
Author:      Mark Easton
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1984

Chapter 2.    The New Postwar Order

     In July 1945 the Australian minister for external affairs announced
that the new Labour Party government believed that his country owed a
"debt of gratitude" to the territories of Papua and New Guinea. It was in
this  spirit that Australia raised its direct subsidy from (L)212,500 for
Papua alone during the 1936-41 period to (L)16 million for both territories
during the 1945-50 period. In 1946 Australia received a mandate from the
United Nations (UN) to administer the Territory of New Guinea as a trust
territory, an agreement that provided for UN missions to visit every three
years to determine how well Australia was promoting social, economic, and
political development. Between 1946 and 1949 Australia established a joint
administration over both the Trust Territory of New Guinea and the Territory
of Papua under the leadership of J.K. Murray. Separate statistics, however,
were kept both halves of the jointly administered area. It became increasingly
common thereafter-especially as the country moved toward independence-for the
two territories to be called Papua New Guinea and its people Papua New
Guineans.

     The task of postwar reconstruction was enormous. Little remained of the
towns in the Territory of New Guinea, and many plantations were in ruins. The
revival of agriculture was one of the most critical needs in both areas. Copra
exports in the territory had fallen from 71,000 tons in 1939 to 4,500 tons in
1946, and in Papua, copra exports had decreased by one-half and rubber exports
by one-quarter. The government built four main agricultural research stations
and 10 smaller extension centers by 1949 and attempted to develop agricultural
cooperatives. Some success was achieved in increasing cacao production on the
Gazelle Peninsula and coffee production in the Highlands. Many other projects
failed. Compensation for war damages was paid to the villagers in hopes that
such funds would be invested in cash cropping or other economic activities,
but much was consumed rather than saved.

[See Mekeo People, Part 1: Mekeo people from Central Province performing a
traditional ceremony. Courtesy Government of Papua New Guinea]

[See Mekeo People, Part 2: Highlanders visiting a government-run cattle
farm-two of many Papua New Guinean peoples. Courtesy Government of Papua New
Guinea]

     Initiatives in the area of social welfare proved difficult to implement.
To ensure that adequate staff would be available, Australia established the
Australian School of Pacific Administration, which offered training in
colonial administration, tropical agriculture and medicine, anthropology,
and a variety of other subjects relevant to working in the territories. A
comprehensive program for training indigenous healthworkers was also started,
and the government took steps to establish a public school system. The
"new deal" offered by the Australian government was only a start, and a
limited one at that, but it did signal a new set of attitudes in the
administration. Although initiated by the Australian Labour Party
government, it soon enjoyed bipartisan support.

     The Development of the Highlands. Perhaps the most dramatic events of the
immediate postwar period concerned the exploration and development of the
Highlands. Until 1930, when two prospectors entered the area, the Highlands
were thought to be a series of uninhabitable mountain peaks. Systematic
exploration, which had been interrupted by the war, recommenced thereafter
and led to the discovery that the Highlands housed the largest population
cluster in all of the Pacific islands. Between 800,000 and 1 million people
were estimated to live there; they shared essentially the same social
institutions and spoke some 60 dialects-42 of which were related.

     The Goroka Valley, where missionaries had been active before the war
and where some army units had been stationed during the war, became the
center of development in the Highlands; Goroka proper became the
administrative center of the vast Central Highlands District in 1950. The
first step of the new administration was to bring the "uncontrolled areas"
under its fiat. By 1956 contact had been made with about 400,000 people in the
"new" areas, which covered about 26,300 square kilometers.

     The opening of the Highlands met a very real need for a labor force
to expand the economy. The government instituted the Highlands Labour
Scheme in 1950, which encouraged workers from the Highlands to contract their
labor on the coastal plantations. The number of such laborers rose from
2,300 in 1953 to over 15,000 in 1968-laborers typically agreeing to work for
18 months. The laborers received better rations than their prewar
counterparts, protection from unwarranted fines, immunization from
tuberculosis, suppressants for malaria, and generally increasing wages
throughout the period. In other respects, however, they followed
long-established patterns by which young villagers moved out of their
districts to earn cash and learn modern ways. By 1970 Highlanders made up
almost one-half of the work force employed in lowland areas.

     The Highlanders also moved into the cash cropping of coffee in their
home district. The boom in coffee prices during the Korean War and the fertile
valleys of the Highlands attracted white settlers to the area. They made
substantial profits growing coffee, showing villagers how to do so, and
processing and marketing the villager's coffee output. From 1954 onward
villagers' production exceeded that of the settlers in the main districts.
By 1967 the villagers sold twice as much coffee as foreign-owned plantations.
A number of successful villagers expanded into other areas, such as peanut and
passion fruit cultivation, cattle raising, and the running of trade stores.
Although not all such ventures were successful, many Highlanders in Goroka
and other areas learned the nature of bisnis, even financing most of their
ventures with their own capital.

     Profound changes had taken place in many areas by 1960. Goroka was the
territory's largest inland town and boasted a population of more than 450
Europeans and three times that number of Papua New Guineans. It had the
inevitable golf course, club, and school for expatriates, as well as schools
for Highlanders through form (grade) nine, a technical school, and a teachers
college that provided new opportunities.

     The first local village council had been established in the Highlands in
1958. It was empowered to impose head taxes and raised L9,000 in 1959. It
built medical aid posts, schools, and roads; elected councilors; and disposed
of considerable sums of money.

     During the 1950s the Highlanders developed a sense of common identity
and a recognition that their past isolation, state of development, and common
cultural and physical characteristics made them separate from others-a sense
that was reinforced by their experiences in the coastal areas. Many had passed
through revolutionary economic and social change within a generation,
advancing their standard of living while retaining their sense of personal
dignity. At the same time, they were acutely aware that even the most
developed areas of the Highlands were sadly behind the developed areas of
coastal Papua New Guinea. Highlanders were thus less anxious than others in
the decades ahead to move rapidly toward independence.

     Health, Education, and Social Legislation. At the same tim