A pity you didn't wing him: gender, sexuality and race in colonial Tulagi, Solomon Islands

Presenter: Emeritus Professor Clive Moore in conjunction with the UQ Solomon Islands Partnership

Tulagi was the pre-Second World War capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate which was never rebuilt after being bombed in 1942. In the 1920s and 1930s the Tulagi enclave (including two neighbouring islands that were commercial bases) had a population of only 150 to 250. It was a miniature Pacific urban community, much smaller than urban settlements in neighbouring colonies, yet it exhibited many of the same social issues relating to gender, sexuality and race. Through a focus on sexual incidents which occurred during the pre-war decades, the paper examines the construction of imperialism and the colonial domestic scene.

Presenter biography

Clive Moore CSI, FAHA is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at The University of Queensland.  He is one of Australia’s leading Pacific historians. His major publications have been on New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, the Pacific labour reserve, Australia’s Pacific Island immigrants, federation, masculinity and sexuality. Inaugural President of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies (2006-10), in 2005 he was awarded a Cross of Solomon Islands and in 2011 he became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
 

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