Pacific Islanders under German Rule m ore than the records ever revealed. Paul M. Ehrlich in Ponape acted as guide, interpreter and raco n teu r, tu to rin g me unselfishly in the results of his own extensive fieldwork. I owe him special thanks for perm ission to quote from his paper, 'The Sokehs Rebellion 19101911', presented to a conference of the A ssociation for Social A nthropology in O ceania, Florida, M arch 1975. O thers in the islands to whom I am indebted for inform ation and insights were Ersin Santos, N an sau R irin en Kiti, Carlos Etscheit and Fr M cG arry S. J., all of Ponape; and T upuola Efi in W estern Samoa. Ms Robyn Gay typed the m anuscript with care and infinite patience. Finally, to my wife, w ho had to live so long with the project and still m anaged to keep us both sane, I owe the deepest debt of all. xii Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi A H istory of the Germ an P acific

What is New Zealand, and where is New Zealand other than alone in the earth's watery hemisphere, immersed in the South Pacific, 2000 kilometres from anywhere including Australia? Like Australia, New Zealand was imagined long before it became a political entity. Co-constituted with the future Australia as part of Australasia, this settler community is an invention of two worlds, firstly Polynesia, followed 500 years later by the British world south of Asia, which grew from a beachhead at Sydney. What was the experience of modernity and modernism at the edge, by voyagers to this thinly populated archipelago, the last major landmass occupied by humans? We ask these questions in exchange with our trans-Tasman friends and neighbours at Thesis Eleven, with whom we share the region which our authors call 'Australasia', and which we call the 'Tasman world' (Mein Smith and Hempenstall, 2008). This issue is designed, however, to demonstrate the distinct perspectives on the 'antipodean condition' (Pocock, 2005: 6) which New Zealanders possess.To think in terms of traffic with neighbours across the Tasman Sea offers one way to overcome the limits that national narratives impose on how communities view their worlds, or see themselves in relation to others. Being antipodean serves as a reminder of how national identity and global outreach are interdependent. Yet, in foregrounding links and shared histories in the southern ocean, we cannot dismiss the identity stories that communities create for themselves. New Zealanders, however connected they are culturally to Australia by a long history of traffic, are differently positioned from Australians within world systems as well as within their separate, recent, national myths and storylines. Both New Zealand and Australia belong to a complex of histories south of Asia. But New Zealand's relationship to Asia assumes a different shape because of its geographical position. Both New Zealand and Australia share much culturally with the United States, yet New Zealand has a differently configured historical relationship with that country. New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand have a shared past, but not a shared history. A project at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand addresses this problem by exploring the relationship between the two countries on multiple levelspolitical, intellectual, cultural, social and economic -from the 1880s to 2000. It analyses the nature of Australia -New Zealand ties, where they are strongest and weakest, and how they have changed. The investigators are collaborating to address the deficits in knowledge about trans-Tasman relations -beyond foreign affairs -since the 1880s. This missing knowledge of trans-Tasman ties impoverishes both national stories and the quality of public commentary.

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