“a pity you didn’t wing him”: Gender, Sexuality and Race in colonial Tulagi, Solomon Islands”

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.

Further Details: Clive Moore is an Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland, where he worked for 28 years, retiring as McCaughey Professor of Pacific and Australian history in 2015. In 2005, he received a Cross of Solomon Islands for his historical work on Malaita Island. He was inaugural President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies (2006–10), in 2011 became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. 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.