Suva under steam: mobile men and a colonial port capital 1880s-1910s
RIS ID
29544
Additional Publication Information
ISBN: 9780252033759
Abstract
In her narrative of a cruise through the South Pacific, travel writer Beatrice Grimshaw's initial impressions of Suva echo "first contacts" between indigenous islanders and European explorers. Although Grimshaw writes from an early twentieth-century vantage point, aboard a steamship entering a colonial port town, these men staring back are unknown and, perhaps, forever unknowable. They remain "strange," "dark," and "savage." Their appearance conjures up "horrible" visions of the likely harm that awaits landing. Yet on clo er reflection, this is the European capital of Fiji, a "populous and busy town." Fijian "savages" have become peaceable, nonthreatening wharf l aborer and passive "spectators" through the transformative reach of imperial tran portation and trading networks.
Publication Details
Steel, F. M. 2008, 'Suva under Steam: Mobile Men and a Colonial Port Capital 1880s-1910s', in T. Ballantyne & A. Burton (eds), Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire, 1 edn, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago. pp. 110-126.