Murray, Kirsteen Jean

2018-05-22T12:46:05Z

2018-05-22T12:46:05Z

2002

This thesis examines the involvement of members of the London Missionary Society in drafting law codes in Tahiti. It seeks to establish the missionaries' reasons for participating in the process and the explanations they gave of their actions. The thesis also considers the way in which the LMS presented these events to the public.

The role played by the Tahitian Mission in drafting the law code in 1819 assisted Pomare II in increasing his authority beyond traditional limitations. Pomare II, through the advice of the mission, appropriated Western institutions which strengthened his claim to be king. The missionary fostering of a Tahitian monarchy had its roots in earlier European descriptions of Polynesian 'monarchs' upon which cross-cultural relations had already been established.

The early missionaries developed a special relationship with Pomare II, their patron and protector, which eventually led to his adoption of Christianity in 1812. The Tahitian mission did not dominate Pomare but it did have a significant influence in the creation and presentation ofTahiti as a Christian Kingdom.

The willingness of the missionaries to help Pomare II transform himself into a Christian monarch can be traced to factors in the origins of the LMS. The genuinely ecumenical character of the LMS in its early years resulted in the presence of missionaries and directors whose acceptance of close relations between Church and State was not typical of the Congregationalists who later dominated the Society. The influence of the Anglican Rev. Thomas Haweis, architect of the South Sea Mission, was particularly important in the years before 1819.

Far from being a contradiction of the LMS regulation forbidding the involvement of missionaries in politics, the advice given by the missionaries to Pomare II can be interpreted as a result of the constant admonitions to avoid radical politics and obey lawful authority. These instructions, intended to convey and ensure the respectability of the newly founded LMS, when read in the Tahitian context, implied a duty to support the Pomare dynasty.

The drafting of a law code for Tahiti, and the spread of the practice to other islands, reflects the Society's evangelical theology of conversion and a belief that all people had the capacity to appropriate the benefits of Christian civilisation. The law codes were briefly celebrated as a proof of the transforming power ofthe Gospel and the abilities of Pacific Islanders. The reticence of the LMS about the Tahitian laws in later years can be attributed to changing racial attitudes and a colonial discourse which presented Pacific Islanders as incapable of self-government. This embarrassment about the laws should not, however, be read back into the period of their composition or the years before 1847.

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/30555

The University of Edinburgh

Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2018 Block 19

Already catalogued

Missionary Kingdoms of the South Pacific?: the involvement of missionaries from the London Missionary Society in law making at Tahiti, 1795-1847

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy